Resistance

Resistances are a type of defense against spells. They are the magical counterpart to mitigation, according to the tooltip, as they absorb a flat percentage of incoming damage. There are 7 types of resistances, sometimes described in 3 different categories by resistance-increasing spells.

The tooltip on the Persona window states "You will absorb X% of the (resist type) damage from a level Y opponent", Y being your current level.


 * Elemental
 * Heat damage
 * Cold damage
 * Arcane
 * Magic danage
 * Mental (mind) damage
 * Divine (holy) damage
 * Noxious
 * Poison damage
 * Disease damage

The race of a character affects their resistances, as does their Wisdom and equipment and buffs that are on them. Wisdom increases all resistances equally.

Absorbtion has diminishing returns. Increasing absorbtion% takes more resistance points as absorbtion% gets higher.

It appears that the inherent resistances are determined by race, increase upon leveling, and become more and more disparate according to race; a 70th level Erudite will have more mental and magic resistance than a 70th level Ratonga when armorless, who will have him beat on noxious resistance.

Whether a particular amount of wisdom is better than the same amount of stamina, or what a particular amount of + category or + specific resistance is worth on an item is debatable and flexible. The more health you have, the more resistance will help you.