Potency is the most misunderstood stat in Diablo Immortal. In a game that’s all about building your stats to perfection, many players simply have no idea what Potency is for — and there’s a pretty good reason for that. Even if you investigate on your own and read the in-game tooltips, Potency isn’t fully explained and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Potency basically increases the effectiveness of damaging effects like fire, ice and poison. If you’re a damage-dealing magical type, Potency is probably going to be important for your end-game build. Let’s make sense out of Potency together. Here’s a simple and quick explainer for the uninitiated.
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Potency | How It Works
Potency is a stat related to damaging effects and their duration. Instead of making damaging effects more damaging, they increase the amount of time damaging effects last — specifically, against PVE monsters and PVP players. Here’s a quick rundown of what Diablo Immortal officially says about potency on Normal Difficulty.
- Potency: Compared against enemy Resistance to modify the duration of all harmful effects.
To check your Potency stat and see how it effects monsters in PVP, open your Equipment -> tap Attributes (Small icon to the lower-left of your character model) -> tap More Attributes -> tap Potency.
- Like Armor vs. Armor Penetration, Resistance vs. Potency are Yin / Yang. Armor Penetration works against Armor, while Resistance works against Potency. Armor increases damage reduction, and Armor Penetration counters it. The higher your Resistance, the less you’ll be affected by harmful effects.
Harmful effects include: fire, bile, Legendary effects, DOT skills, Loss-of-Control based and ground-based powers.
- How Potency & Resistance Interact: If your Potency is greater than an enemy’s Resistance, the duration of your harmful effect will increase. If the enemy’s Resistance is greater than your Potency, the duration of your harmful effects will decrease.
Potency’s effectiveness drastically increases as you increase difficulty, in PVP, and as you increase your total maximum Potency. It is one of the most misunderstood stats, and there’s no easy way to gauge how much Potency you’ll need for your specific build.
- Classes That Need High Potency: Wizard & Necromancer
Any class with lots of DOT (Damage Over Time) or CC (Control) skills will want to boost potency.
Potency isn’t the MOST important stat, but it is one that’s difficult to understand completely. An easy way to check your Potency across multiple levels and difficulties is to play Challenge Rifts — enter the rift and check how your Potency stacks up against the enemies. You’ll know you need more if your Potency isn’t enough to give you a duration increase.
