Resistance

Resistances are a type of defense against spells. They are the magical counterpart to mitigation , according to the tooltip, as they absorb a flat percentage of incoming damage. It appears they also affect the chance of typed spells being fully resisted (please confirm).

There are 7 types of resistances, sometimes described in 3 different categories by resistance-increasing spells.

• Elemental
  • Heat damage
  • Cold damage
• Arcane
  • Magic damage
  • Mental (mind) damage
  • Divine (spiritual/godly) damage
• Noxious
  • Poison damage
  • Disease damage

The tooltip on the Persona window states "You will absorb X% of the (resist type) damage from a level Y opponent", Y being your current level.

The race of a character affects their resistances, as does their Wisdom and equipment and buffs that are on them. Wisdom increases all resistances equally.

Increasing absorbtion% takes more resistance points as absorbtion% gets higher, however, the survivability provided by absorbtion% increases as well.

It appears that the inherent resistances are determined by race, increase upon leveling, and become more and more disparate according to race; a 70th level Erudite will have more mental and magic resistance than a 70th level Ratonga when armorless, who will have him beat on noxious resistance.

Whether a particular amount of wisdom is better than the same amount of stamina, or what a particular amount of + category or + specific resistance is worth on an item is debatable and flexible. The more health you have, the more resistance will help you.