Whether it's being employed as intended or bugged continues to be unclear, however, the resistance stat doesn't currently do much.

Diablo IV players are scratching their heads regarding the game's resistance stat, which based on one content creator, is all about 10 times worse than the game's other defensive stats.

Kripparrian, who's known for creating content around Blizzard's ARPG franchise in addition to Blizzard's digital card game Hearthstone, tries to explain in a single of his latest videos. He is playing a Sorceress and it has stacked resistances because of the main Sorceress stat, Intelligence, also rewarding an added bonus to all resistances. In doing so, he's learned that resistances don't appear to compare favorably with regard to other defensive stats.

Breaking on the numbers, Kripparrian explains that each other defensive stat in Diablo IV, including armor and damage reduction from close, are vastly better than stacking resistances. Armor, for instance, grants both physical damage reduction and resistance to any or all elements, whereas bits of gear typically have only resistance to a particular element.

At first glance, a bit of gear that has a 50% elemental resistance roll might seem good. But in reality, it only enhances the overall potential to deal with that element with a few percentage points, and overall offers hardly any actual damage reduction. A bit of gear with a decent plus percent to armor value, however, raises overall mitigation to each type of damage with a higher percentage.

"Any type of resistance, on a piece of content of gear, is undoubtedly the worst stat onto it," Kripparrian says. "Don't make use of a single bit of resistance gear, since it is a total waste until they review this horrendous system."

He uses a couple of the game's elixirs for example. One elixir grants players 30% more Life, a substantial boost, while another elixir within the same tier that increases a specific resistance stat by 20% only means less than 1% damage reduction overall.

"It's among those situations where it's whether completely bugged system or someone forgot part from the equation, they missed a decimal at the minimum," Kripparian writes.

Part of the issue, as Kripparian along with other content creators like Onepeg note, would be that the actual calculations behind resistances are really confusing. Other defensive stats, like close damage reduction, are one-to-one when it comes to how much damage reduction they provide, whereas a bit of gear with plus 50% to some resistance only actually increases that resistance with a few percentage points.

"I have no idea if it's a bug or otherwise," Onepeg says. "All I know is appropriate now the stats of the items this says it's doing can be quite misleading."

Funnily enough, the category that Kripparian says is one kind of Diablo IV's weakest because of how resistances work, the Sorcerer, can also be the game's most-played class. According to Blizzard, Diablo IV may be the studio's fastest-selling game ever, beating out both Diablo III and World of Warcraft's Shadowlands expansion. That means Diablo IV likely sold a lot more than 3.7 million copies in the first twenty-four hours, although Blizzard has yet to show official sales numbers.