- Changed the 'Reduce Magic Damage' property to spread across frames for multi-frame attacks (such as firewall).

What does that really mean? The common epxlanation one see in various forums is that it means the ammount rediced is no longer "per attack" (somewhat erroneously called "per frame" by most) but per second.

The immediate question is, how did they implement it, since they still do attacks as often, it doesn't count attacks done, so the only sensible thing to do is to have a factor that reduces the effect of MDR each attack. Which turns out to be exactly what the game do, each missile (and non missile) attack now has such a factor (found in missile.txt for the interested). It happens that for firewall for example, this factor result in a reduction of the MDR value of about (not exact for various reasons we shall soon see) 1/25. One may wonder how this works out with truncation and precision and such. Well, since the game keep track of life and thus damage with 8 extra bits of precision, a -5 MDR is actually a -5*256 = -1280 MDR. Thus it works alright to for example divide by 25.

Now, the game don't use the factor to divde directlt, it uses it as follow:

modMDR = baseMDR*factor/1024

So it expresses it as fractions ot 1024. A quick check tells that if factor is 41, we get about 1/25, and that happens to be the exact factor the firewall attack has.

The interesting thing is then, which other values has a factor and what is the value of it. Most have 0 (or rather 1024, but the game express it as 0 and if so don't modify). Many complained that MDR was a good way to fight Diablo and now it was almost impossible and so on. Those had of course not yet played the game and tried, because Diablo's lighting atatck does NOT have a factor, your MDR works just as before versus that attack (his firewall one has a factor though. Below I have made a rather crude collection of all "missiles" that has such a factor. NOte that basically everything in the game that is not a pure melee atatck is a "missile", even a firewall (which can be seen as a stationary missile). The names are as one finds them in the missile.txt file, I have not translated them into more appropraite skill related ones, it is usually obvious what attack they refer to:

InfernoFlame1 82
InfernoFlame2 82
Firewall 41
VampireFirewall 41
FetishInferno1 82
FetishInferno2 0
DiabWall 41
ImmolationFire 41
MeteorFire 41
CountessFirewall 41
Catapult Meteor Fire 41
MoltenBoulderFirePath 41
FireStorm 41
ArcticBlast1 41
ArcticBlast2 41
Wake of Destruction maker 205
Wake of Destruction 205
Inferno Sentry 1 82
Inferno Sentry 2 82
ArmageddonFire 41

Turns out it does not apply to that many atatcks and note, some are spread over only half a second (the 82 ones) and wake of Destruction over just a 5th of a second (5 frames). NOte that I included the Fetish Inferno 2 as it had a 0 value, for players both where the same. Not sure what the difference betwen those 2 infernos are or if this is a bug.

Well, that was it, turns out it was not THAT bad as one may perhaps initially think. Any attack not listed above should thus not be affected.

It may not be completely random. I think it starts with 1 and throws in occasional 2. I am not certain,

Perhaps not modifying Fetish Inferno 2 was a way to make them a little less survivable, but not a lot less?