Resist

Resistance is one of the basic character stats in Diablo III. As in previous games in the series, characters must use equipment and skills to build up resistance to various types of damage, thus decreasing the health they lose when faced with those attacks.

There are eight types of damage in Diablo III, six of which can be resisted. Damage may also be blocked, absorbed, or reduced.

Diablo III Resistances

Diablo III's eight types of damage are: Fire, Cold, Lightning, Arcane, Poison, Disease, Physical, and Holy. The first five of those are resisted by character resistances of the same name. Disease is also resisted by a character's Poison resistance. Physical cannot be resisted, nor can Holy, though other forms of damage mitigation are available.

Diablo III Resistance Changes

Jay Wilson answered a question about resistance and immunities this during the BlizzCon 2010 Panel: Open Q&A:

Jay Wilson: Resistance was changed from a flat percentage to a basically a rating, that works how defense did (in Diablo II). It scales with the level of the monster. So it can grow to higher values over time. With this change we do not have to include resistance penalties for Nightmare and Hell, as was done in Diablo II. In a lot of ways our resistances are the same. Resistance is still a big part of the game. It's a focus of your defensive building of your char in higher levels.

As for immunities, we're not doing double/triple immunities (in monsters). We don't want to completely hurt a character's ability to hurt something. We also diversify damage types more across the classes (than was done in Diablo II). But we still can't count on a class having a diversity of damage types we can use.

Question: Will characters need to stack resistances for particular fights?

Jay Wilson: Sometimes. It's kind of an end game question, so haven't done it yet. We'll look more at it as the time comes closer.

Diablo II Resistances

Diablo II had six types of damage, four of which could be resisted by players. Lightning, Fire, Cold, and Poison. Magic damage could not be directly resisted by players, nor could Physical, though they could be reduced or absorbed.

In Diablo II resistances were unevenly-distributed, and characters benefited far more from resistance to Lightning than to any other element. Nothing is known about this sort of balance in Diablo II, but one assumes the dev team will aim for a more even distribution in the types of damage.