Diablo IV 1.2 Update Bolsters Unique Items, Reworks Damage, and Makes Elemental Resistance Much More Important

wccftech.com:

Yesterday, Blizzard held a Campfire Chat stream to discuss Diablo IV's 1.2 update, due to go live alongside Season of Blood on October 17th.

To begin with, the developers have taken to heart the Diablo IV community's feedback that Unique items should be much more powerful. As such, these items will get completely new stats to empower them further, along with increased ranges on existing stats and adding stats (such as Critical Strikes) to slots that previously hadn't existed.

Another common piece of feedback is that Elemental Resistance simply wasn't useful enough. Now, though, it'll become a core component of a character's survivability. Associate Game Designer Charles Dunn explained:

Going forward into the Season of Blood, Elemental Resistances are going to change how they're calculated. They're now going to be additive. That means if you have the 20% poison resistance and you have another piece that has 20% more, you're going to have 40% resistance on your character stat sheet, exactly as you would expect. Although, since this adds up additively now, we do need to add a cap, so the Elemental Resistances are going to be capped at a baseline of 70%. There are some effects in Diablo IV that allow you to go up to 85% with various effects that increase your maximum resistance, but those are rather rare because they are quite powerful.

Elemental Resistances are going to matter a lot more in Season of Blood. They are just going to be a very important part of building your character. You're definitely going to want to try to cap up at that 70% as you're getting into the late game and fighting the most dangerous monsters.

Blizzard is also reworking how damage is calculated. There will still be different damage buckets, but the