Don't worry: it's a lot easier than resistances.
Diablo 4’s newest season introduced a whole heap of exciting changes, but there’s one seemingly small adjustment that keeps causing some confusion online: the armor cap. In seasons past, the armor system would continuously scale with enemies of increasing level, even beyond 100, within Nightmare Dungeons. But now, a much lower hard cap has been introduced, so we’re going to take a look at the number to hit and how to do it.
What is the armor cap in Diablo 4?
The new armor cap is 9,230 Armor – once you reach this value, any more armor is a wasted stat. This value will provide 85% physical damage resistance against monsters of level 100 and beyond. Reaching this value isn’t too difficult, at least not compared to juggling the various resistances in the game.
If you’re in the process of leveling, you can check if you’re “keeping up” with the armor cap by hovering over the armor on your character screen. This will tell you how much physical resistance you’re currently being granted. Below, you can see my unoptimized in-progress Barbarian overshooting the armor cap by a troublesome amount:
How to reach armor cap in Diablo 4
Reaching this cap, as mentioned, isn’t too difficult. It used to be suggested to take the Legendary Aspect Juggernaut to reach the old, higher cap, but that’s no longer strictly necessary (the Barbarian shown above has it, and it’s nearly a wasted Aspect slot).
Instead, you should focus on getting two or three high armor aspects on your gear. A Greater Affix for armor would put you very near the cap if you’re decked out in 925 item level armor, but two or three “normal” bonuses to armor such as flat +X Armor or multiplicative +% Armor should push you over the threshold quite easily. There are also sources of armor in the Paragon Board, or you can give it a slight boost by slotting skull gems into your jewelry.
Capping armor is absolutely necessary for tackling endgame content, primarily when entering the Pit. Physical damage is everywhere in Diablo 4, and if you’re soaking up even a single unnecessary percent when the damage values get high enough, you’re sure going to feel it.
