Tool Tip Physical Damage Reduction Problem

I have racked my brain for over an hour trying to figure this out and if this isn't a bug of some sort I'm clueless.

My son made a new character based on my RF Juggernaut build. He followed the same skill tree, same ascendency, all of the same equipment for the most part, just minor differences in rare rings, amulets and helm and boots. 95% of his gear came from me and I allocate most of (and oversee all of) his skill points. His character is level 69 mine is level 91 and his Tool Tip Physical Damage Reduction is stupidly higher than mine. It's just way too damn high and it makes no sense to me!

I thought maybe I stumbled on to some amazing mechanic I can exploit to get stupidly high DR with less armour but after over an hour I can't figure out why the hell his tool tip DR is so crazy high.

Here is my physical DR with Grace & Iron Reflexs 15,134 = 55% DR


Here is his physical DR with IR and NO Grace 8,789 = 60% DR!!!


Here is his with Grace & IR 14,051 = 70% DR!!!


To prove this is not gear related I striped both characters naked, my character has 1161 = 9% DR


His character naked has 848 = 13% DR!!! WTF!!??


My character is years old and his is brand new, is there new quest rewards he has done that I have not done yet that is granting him more DR??? I have not done all of the A4 Quests on this character, I just realized Tatsuni gives me a skill book for releasing the spirit, that was new to me and I has stoked to get 3 new skill points at level 91 for completing this in norm, cruel and Nightmare. Is there some other quest I missed that is responsible for this HUGE discrepancy?

Please link us to both characters. You may need to go into privacy settings and set the characters tab to public if it's already. This may need to be done on both accounts.

If you're not comfortable doing that, then that's totally fine. But most likely we won't be able to answer questions on characters which we can't see. While somebody else might get lucky taking a shot in the dark, I'm probably not able to and won't waste my time trying.

Hope you understand.

yeah, thanks...no offence but I was hoping for a mod to chime in. This is a bug, I've been playing PoE since beta and this is just not right

"

Vipermagi wrote:

Physical Damage Reduction is explicitly described to be an estimate. It's calculated based on how much Physical damage a monster of your character's level deals. Your Armour rating is checked against higher Physical damage, and thus ends up at a lower estimate. It's not a bug.

In case you're unfamiliar with how Armour works: Armour grants an amount of Damage reduction relative to the amount of Damage you take. Higher damage = lower %Damage reduction.

Yes I understand how armor works and also that tool tip is an estimate... I did not understand that my rating was being checked against a higher physical damage based on my characters much higher level. I guess that makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up Vipermagi