I’d just really like to avoid having a second spec in the game that is op at everything like Hammerdin is. I’d like for all builds to struggle at least sometimes.
If lower resistance does stay at 1/5 effectiveness after breaking immunity, then I agree it would not be so bad. I’ve always believed it goes back to full effectiveness when you get lower than 100% though. I could be wrong, I used to believe lots of things that were simply not true, such as “Only the cowking can drop cowking chest, but the rest can drop from all cows”. Truth on that one is the entire set can be farmed from any cow.
I am curious to see the results of IIell’s testing
Someone should break out “Hero editor” and make a maxed out character on single player and transfer it to the new game. I think since its single player its allowed.
From what I have heard you can’t edit a d2r save file with the old hero editor, but you can create a new character using it and just copy that over to d2r.
I have not used hero editor since probably 2009 though so I wouldn’t really know
you can break all but 2 cold immunes with the highest possible cold sorc gear perfect lower resist wand and an infinity merc but you won’t do much damage to about 20 types of mob because it just barely breaks immunity. (you also lose your mf gear to do this where as with lightning it can still use full mf)
with a lightning sorc you can break all but 2 with a lower resist wand and infinity merc and 0 other gear and do more damage.
fire admittedly has the lowest usage in this case but the tier list for hell would still be light on top like it is now just cold would not be as useless for as many areas.
This is definately wrong and doesn’t go with the authentic D2 experience (at least from 1.10 and on, which is what we refer to).
Combined with infinity, runeword doom (another -50 to 60% enemy cold res, working at 100% effectiveness after immunity is broken) + cold facets for more reduction, blizz sorc will be very op, even compared to lightning imo (for example the big weakness of light sorc is that she cannot kill uber mephisto, but blizz sorc can kill all ubers very fast and will be able to do all the content that light can do, probably even faster)
Fire and dual element builds will be completely dead.
Laughable. Even after you break immunity, they still only take 20% damage.
Again, laughable. If you invest all 80 points into cold, or whatever, sure, your blizzard will hit like a truck loaded with tiny missiles. But you’ll still be blocked by cold immunes - and you won’t have any Fire spells to fall back on. I think that’s a fair trade-off.
I actually like having a build that goes all-in on a single element. Sure, it kind sucks that most zones will have cold immunes ruining around, but it’s nice to have the fantasy of being a straight up Cold sorceress if that’s what you want to do.
In Hell, the first immune enemies that you have to kill to beat the game are the Council Members in Act 3; Ismail Vilehand (Fire Immune), Geleb Flamebringer (Fire and Lightning Immune), and Toorc Icefist (Fire and Cold Immune). With Cold Mastery breaking immunities, Icefist’s 108% Cold resistance is easily broken with a level 6 Cold Mastery. This makes the Cold sorceress the only “Pure Sorceress” that can clear Travincal while naked.
In Act 4, the only immune enemies who need to be killed to progress are the Infector of Souls (Fire Immune), Lord De Seis (Cold Immune), and The Grand Vizier of Chaos (Fire Immune). Forget the Fire Sorceress, cause she can barely clear this place with the best gear, but both the Lightning and Cold Sorceress can clear the Chaos Sanctuary naked with the help of a good mercenary.
In Act 5, the Ancients must die. Talic is Fire Immune, Korlic is Cold Immune, and Madawc Lightning Immune. With a mighty mercenary and good roll on monster modifiers, all three elemental sorcerers can defeat the Ancients. It’s hard as hell though, good luck.
And then we have Baal’s minions… First wave has fire immunity but with a good merc its easy enough. Next wave we have the Greater Mummies and their Cold Immune Minions - they die to a strong merc who cannot be frozen. Thirdly we have Bartuc the Bloody and his non immune buddies - they’re easy money. The fourth wave, is completely poison immune and have 95% Fire Resistance. The fifth and final wave, Lister the Tormentor and the Minions of Destruction, a great band name with even greater fire immunity. So the Lightning Sorc gets a free pass, the Cold Sorc needs a merc, and the Fire Sorc gets sat on. Luckily you can bypass the last 3 Baal Waves by baiting them out of the Throne Room, allowing us to ignore their immunities.
In summary, the Cold Sorceress is the best to level up untwinked because she can now break the only cold immunity that truly stood in her way - Toorc Icefist. She also has an easier time with the Ancients because of the nature of Blizzard when compared to Lightning and Meteor which have to actually target the opponent to do damage.
I’m sorry for making you read all this. I hope it brought some useful perspective.
-GG
As a SSF player (offline) the biggest hurdle as a sorc is immune mobs. SSF for example, will not, in my lifetime, have access to everything people theorycraft around here. HR’s as solo-player is very scarce, if not non-existent sometimes, so uber geared merc’s to help out is a true rarity.
I understand, that most peoples perspectives is what can be accomplished, and rarely what is feasible to obtain for a normal player like me. Don’t even think that SSF are the only ones struggling with immune mobs. People who don’t trade (For one reason or another) or simply don’t have the time to farm, again, for one reason or another, will have similar experiences.
So it is pretty arbitrary, seeing folks list up all sorts items, a good deal of people won’t ever obtain if they have a life. Which is fine (not advocating for drops or anything of that nature) Just putting a realistic perspective on that hardcore players (who trades, uses jsp, farm to they keel over etc.) is arguing from that standpoint, and not the average player.
Anyways, Cold Mastery being able to do a small amount of damage to immunes isn’t a big deal. The bigger offender in the first place, in my view, is immunities themselves.
And that bug actually also happens when monsters damage players and pierce/penetrate player-resistances, which makes D2R much harder than original D2 lol.
A lot of players have the feeling some monsters in D2R hit WAY harder than in original D2, and thats because they do.
If this cold-mastery bug exists in D2R (and yes it does), then the same BS is happening the other way around and we get hit much harder than it is the case in original D2.
Also Merc with God-Gear is getting occasionally almost one-shot, where as in original D2 that never happened with identical gear and Merc-Level.
I dont know what the F they were doing to the balance of the game behind the curtain but it certainly is evident that a lot of BS is going on in D2R.
How does it change anything for the monsters. Players CANT get to 100% immune (most you can reach is 95%) so monsters having piercing does not matter nor does it change anything.
+14 and +21 to skills
Conviction Aura level 12
Lower Resist Level 5
Results still need more testing, but at +14 to skills with both Conviction and Lower Resists, you will break cold immunity and actually do decent damage to some cold immunes.
It’s extremely overpowered. Basically the only class that can just put skills into breaking immunes (Aside from like Necro and Paladin who don’t specifically need to break the elements, aside from maybe poison). As a lightning Assassin, my only hope to break lightning immunes is an Infinity and or lower resist wand. +Lightning damage % and -Lightning resist items don’t even apply to traps.
Cold sorces aren’t that strong… back in the day the vast majority of sorces were never pure cold, they were fire/cold hybrids or lightning. I have not seen anything showing how much damage a cold sorc will do with infinity, but I’d be surprised if it is significantly more than lightning.
