Question for fire giants vs invokers. afflictive save.

[Fireballer]

Does aff save tone down aff damage a lot? Does it really help vs some spell like icicle vs a vuln like fire giant? should I always wear at least some aff save to mitigate the damage? If the invoker wears aff break will it bonus damage against the fire giant, or simply strips all aff save down to zero and no further?

will invoker always be wearing aff break, expecting the fire giant to wear saves?

[Smotpoker]

yes, yes, not sure, not always

[Fireballer]

[Pops]

Aff saves are important not just for damage, but to prevent dispels, especially if you're caballed and using defenders. Fire zerkers seem to get pretty buff saves when raged, so they may be able to skimp a little more than warriors in that area. What you don't want to do is gimp your damage too much with saves. Better you take a little more damage and hit like a freight train. A lot of invokers will just use hellstream on fire giants even though they have icicle. Personally, I'd use icicle on warriors and hellstream on berserkers. Ice storm is notoriously unreliable also, so you probably wont see it too much. What you WILL get is ice shield. That sucks, not much you can do about it.

[Fireballer]

[Fireballer]

one further question: Do afflictive saves usually get added to you incidentally when finding a good gear set? I seem to remember it being that way with my last warrior/etc.

[Pops]

Fire giants can't use ice weapons, so no, that wont help. Always expect one when fighting an invoker. Set bonuses vary with the set.

[Fireballer]

derp moment. you are of course correct. wasnt talking about SETs speficially, just higher level gear also happens to have incidental bonuses to other stats sometimes, however slight. like +1 vs aff and such.

[Erlwith]

I played all my invokers with trial and error. Generally, I didn't expect to win the first time, just set my opponent up. Wear some fire weapons so I can get an ice shield next round, figure out what saves be best, see if there's enough following him for chain lightning, maybe even set a trap, etc.