Impale in 3.9

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jlh165 wrote:

I always thought impale was calculated as reflected physical damage and didn’t hit. As such it bypassed physical damage reduction given that it had previously been calculated into the initial strike. :/ It hits, but it is not you hitting...

Reflected damage is... weird, to say the least. Even more so for impale. While it doesn't hit, it operates very similar: it can be blocked, dodged, evaded, avoided and mitigated. Reflected damage cannot be modified except for modifications to the receiver of said damage.

Impale makes things even weirder... you aren't even the source of it's damage. The source is the impale debuff. This primarily means that impale can't heal you via crown of the pale king.


TL;DR: Pretty much all defenses applicable to a hit also work on reflected damage, which is why this change was needed, given the new monster armour values.