Abilities that affect resistance; what should take precedence?

Hey, everyone. I would appreciate it if I could get some opinions on a something that I'm debating with myself and some other friends. However, the conversation doesn't seem to be getting anywhere, so here I am.

This concerns a series of abilities that affect a unit's resistances versus elements, and what abilities should take precedence over the other.

Let me start off with the basics: Each unit in the game has it's own resistance to all damage types in the game. I wanted more control over the damage table, so I kind of had to create my own using triggers. All values in the damage table provided by Warcraft III are all set to 1.00, giving the actual damage that the damage will do for every single type. Actual armor value is vital, as well, but this does not concern it, so there is no need to explore this any further. The trigger manipulates the damage types so there is more control over what units are affected by. These are more... I guess "natural" resistances that is assigned to all unit types at the start of the game. Because every value in the damage table is set to same value and the armor tooltip is not dynamic (hopefully dynamic in SC2), the armor tooltip is rendered useless and has been replaced with a big, fat question mark. This essentially tells you, "Use skills and items that scan enemies to find their strengths and weaknesses."

There are two overarching types of resistances: Physical and Spell, and eight other ones: Fire, Water, Thunder, Earth, Light, Dark, Neutral, and Galaxy (a "negative" element). Pure damage and healing are considered damage types, but not elements unless an ability says that it the healing element is something other than Healing (indicated in the item or ability's tooltip). This is important, because there are some special abilities that take advantage of these small things.

There's a limit to far these go, though. The maximum amount of resistance you have have is 200% (absorb all of the damage), and the lowest it goes is -200% (take triple damage).

Onwards to what the big debate: In additional to what we can call Natural Resistances which is the above (resistances automatically assigned to all units), there are abilities take precedence over Natural Resistance. These come from equipment in the following flavors:

Null [Element] - Your hero completely negates [Element] damage. Secondary effects still occur, though. Forces your hero's [Element] resistance to 100%.
Absorb [Element] - Your hero is healed instead of hurt by [Element] damage. Secondary effects still occur, though. Forces your hero's [Element] resistance to 200%.
Reflect [Element] - [Element] damage is returned and the attacker/caster is hurt instead. Secondary effects are returned, too.
Weak [Element] - Your hero takes double damage from [Element] damage. Forces your hero's [Element] resistance to -100%.

What I'm concerned about is what type of ability takes priority when more than one is present on the same hero. Normally, it could be like this:

Reflect>Absorb>Null>Weak
Ex: If you have Weak Fire and Absorb Fire, Absorb Fire has priority and instead of taking double the damage, you will absorb it.

However, a friend of mine said, "Assuming that Weak [Element] is more common than rarely existent, it would make people more careful about the gear they use if it was like this:"

Weak>Reflect>Absorb>Null
Ex: If you have Weak Fire and Absorb Fire, Weak Fire has priority and you will take double the damage instead of absorbing it.

What do you guys think?

overcomplicated and counterintuitive.

What about averaging the numeric values?

Averaging numeric values? What do you mean?

Just use them as multipliers, of course. Go the Pokemon way here, it's the best. You take 50% damage from some type, and have an item that makes you take 200% from the same type. Just multiply the factors together (0.50 x 2.00 = 1.00) to get the scaling factor for the damage.

that would lead to some interesting combinations, namely weak+absorb (2.0*-1.0). Null would effectively take precendence over everything (0.0*X). Reflect is a special case either way. By the way, enjoy your infinite loop once two players get reflect on the same element.

Well, if you absorb something, your weakness to it should be removed. Guess that's what he was talking about with precedence, eh? :p
Yap, as it should.
Uhuh!

I'd let all effects occure:

eg.
you've absorb and weak then you're healed for more damage
you've reflect and weak then you'll reflect more damage
you've null and weak then you'll both will be removed
...

Agreed, simple but effective.

One way to look at it is:
Reflect sends the attack or spell back before it reaches you and thus resistances, weaknesses and everything else is neglected and the damage is dealt to the enemy.

Null reduces the effect of the element to zero and thus any weakness or resistance is no longer needed but this happens after the attack or spell reaches you and thus the element would be reflected even if you have a null ability.

Weak amplify the effect of the element (an elemental healing spell would give more HP to units who are weak to the element of the spell).

Absorb would convert the damaging energy into healing energy and thus it works after the damage calculation (after weaknesses and resistances are taken into account) and just turns the (-) sign into (+) sign, i.e. increase health instead of decrease it which would allow you to turn weakness into strength.

If you make reflect occur after damage calculation, you may want to convert the damage into non elemental spell damage (the artefact absorbs the damaging energy then channels it back at the enemy) then null would obstruct reflect and weaknesses would increase the damage reflected.

You can also make reflect so that the damage is reflected onto an aoe using the formula (damage/ number of enemy units in range) which would save you from the infinite loop Antiarf spoke of since reflection abilities don’t reflect none targeted damages.

Whatever you decide, it would be a good idea to document it in the quest section so that players can check it out when ever needing to. A cool idea would be to make knowledge of this system and any other system unavailable at the beginning of the game and you acquire it after studying magic or whatever theme you are using to justify the system at some certain location (the quest page would be hidden at the beginning of the game then it would be uncovered after studying or talking to somebody, this would give a meaning to travelling distances for the sake of gaining power other then levelling up).