Chaos damage, what is it?

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Charan wrote:

Saying that chaos damage is poison is like saying that all bread is toast. Let me elaborate:

The game doesn't have poison damage, per se, so it uses a form of unblockable, direct-to-your-life damage called 'chaos damage' to represent it. Two player-skills, viper strike and poison arrow, are the best examples of this. Both will cause a poison-like Damage-over-Time effect that ignores armour, elemental resistances and energy shield.

However, there are other forms of chaos damage that are not necessarily poison, such as the projectiles fired by the Vaal constructs and the Blood Rage degeneration.

I believe that were chaos Damage meant to represent 'poison', GGG would have followed in D2's footsteps (as they have in so many other areas) and implemented antidote potions.

However, chaos damage is meant to be something a little more targeted than poison: it's the 'foil' to Energy Shield users, since it bypasses both armour and Energy Shield. Naturally, Chaos Innoculation plugs that hole nicely (discussed elsewhere on this forum).

Other than Chaos Innoculation, the only true defence against chaos damage is that granted by a few very rare unique items. There are passive nodes on the Skilldrasil that increase one's resistance to chaos damage but nothing that actually grants actual baseline resistance.

When chaos damage takes the form of damage-over-time, life regeneration is a popular countermeasure. When it's a more direct attack, such as the Vaal Constructs' projectile, the projectile itself is intended to be 'slow enough' to dodge physically, and that which fires it is relatively easy to kill.

I have been told that more mid-to-high end uniques will provide chaos resistance. Whether this goes against GGG's desire to make uniques 'quirky but not necessary' for viable builds is yet to be seen.