Partials in PvP

[Technique]

I think there are two issues to blame for most of the dissatisfaction with partials in the current system:

1. The chance of landing a full dmg nuke regardless of resist appears to be too high.
2. The low-high dmg band is essentially static across all resist values. Instead, it should narrow as resists increase. This should be achieved only by lowering the high dmg end of the range, not raising the low end.

As to your second question, the possibility of outright resisting a pure nuke should only exist at max resist, if at all. This spell type is unique in that its effectiveness is already scaled along the entire resist spectrum, so subjecting it to an additional random all-or-nothing check doesn't make sense.

(I'd extend this to include all spells that're primarily direct damage, even if they have additional effects. For instance, enchanter nukes should be classified as "pure" in this sense, because it's absurd that a nuke having a 1 millisecond stun component should suffer the same all-or-nothing penalty as an 8-second stun spell.)

Up to a 30% chance to fully resist a pure nuke would be ruinous to PvP, as it effectively makes any character with max resist simply immune to at least 1/3 of all spells that save versus that resist.