Resist gear = casters useless?
 

Trying to figure out what class to roll. One one hand, with no resist gear, casters always win, on the other hand with resist gear, casters can't land spells, so... I roll a monk and hope I cruise control into phat loot before the casters find me?

solid plan, you are a bindrushing machine

Its a pay off I think. You get owned with no gear at low levels, but casters have a hard time vs you when you do get the gear and resists.

There are only 3 classes that cant cast spells and they have diciplines which are deadly.

Bro.

Random memory: As an Enchanter on TZ back in the day, I walked around with 255 MR and was invincible...well, until the usual SK's would see me and my day was over. Darkness would rarely fail to stick and that was that. Kunark/Velious timeframe. Of course, I couldn't kill anyone either with 255 MR because I was human and had maybe 120 INT with associated mana pool.

Casters are going to find you and the mages will laugh hysterically at the MR route until you've accomplished all your goals.

Well, that's if I'm playing the monk you speak of anyway.

fat

Monks can't wear most of the easy resist gear. Getting 100+ unbuffed is pretty difficult for anything except MR, and the MR is basically necessary in order for melees to PvP at all. For instance, a rogue in pretty good resist gear will sit at something like 110MR 60FR 60CR. With like the best gear he can get, it might be 100MR 90 FR 110CR or 150MR 40FR 50CR, depending on choices. Consider that many classes get spells with a negative resist modifier, or can debuff resists - wizard nukes have -10, and they can spam flux staff until it lands for another -10 or whatever it is again. Nukes tend to land alright unless someone has seriously buffed the relevant resists to hell and back at the expense of everything else. I'd say the only class that really has to worry significantly about resists for their damage is magician, or maybe wizard in the very endgame before Kunark. Enchanters as well to an extent, but they're not there for damage later on.

Wizard: -10 native resist modifier plus flux staff, lures in Kunark

Necro: most of their shit is virtually unresistable

Enchanter: tash is unresistable and reduces MR by a good deal, especially if they add the x1.5 modifier to resist debuffs. Also get unresistable mez in Kunark

Magician: kinda screwed, but who cares about magicians?

Shaman: most of damage is poison/disease which is hard to get high resists for, and they can debuff resists anyway

Druid: -100 modifier on dots (though they tend to get dispelled), higher-level nukes debuff resists

Cleric: not really there to do damage past level 30

So for the most part, spell damage should be usable. It's just stuns, roots etc. that become largely worthless when people have gear, and that's both classic and necessary in order for melee to be able to function at all in PvP. Nukes tend to be harder to resist because it can roll for partial damage while CC can just check to see if it lands or not.

I remember MR making a huge difference, but not so much CR or FR. It's not like if you have 120 CR you are going to be fully resisting ice comet every hit.