This isn’t correct completely. I’ll give you some context so you understand.
My sorc is level 84, with level 35 Ice Orb. and my cold mastery (sadly due to + skills gives -175% enemy cold res)
So there’s quite a lot of monsters in hell that cannot be immune broken with cold mastery and require LR, Or Conviction.
On top of this almost any monster you break cold immune for doesn’t just instantly die. breaking cold immune simply allows you to damage them, it doesn’t instantly drop their cold res to -100 allowing you to massacre them. In fact it’s quite the opposite. Even zombies in A1 hell who are cold immune using my build It takes at least 15 ice orbs to kill a single cold immune zombie.
So with all this being said, Breaking cold immune specifically with cold mastery doesn’t work the way you think it does. I’d honestly prefer +damage %.
Conviction is special, which is why its only on 1 weapon in a runeword thats very expensive in the way that it “Removes” the immunity not just “break it” so you can damage it. So you can potentially deal full damage to something that’s effected by your infinity conviction aura. I.e you’ll do more Ice orb damage using Infinity on merc, Than you would having absolutely maximum -cold res on cold master. One breaks Res immune allowing damage… one removes the “immunity” title per say. (doesn’t mean that monster doesn’t still have res’s against your attacks. Please don’t confuse that.)
so the way i see it
cold immunes were obnoxious
a bug to penetrate their resistances got fixed
now we have a text bug saying it’s still cold immune when it’s not
i haven’t played cold sorc in d2r yet, so can’t confirm this is the actual behavior
So, I haven’t read this whole thread but I came here because I heard the Cold Mastery bug was fixed and I haven’t noticed any difference after updating to Version 1.0.66063. That’s the version everyone is on right? And you cannot damage cold immunes? Maybe I’m misunderstanding the situation.
Anyway, I went on my SP PlugY Blizz sorc and went to Cold plains with lvl 28 cold mastery (155%), no -res jewels or items, and couldn’t damage the cold immunes as expected. On 1.13c.
Jumped on my D2R Blizz sorc, I play SP there too, went to Cold Plains with lvl 27 cold mastery, no-res jewels or items, and can easily kill the cold immune Dark Hunters. Gargantuan Beasts too, they take a little longer. On Version 1.0.66063.
I don’t if it matters but I have a shortcut on my desktop for d2r.exe, I don’t use the launcher since I play SP.
The only difference this seems to make is Vile Lancers in Stony Field are now immune to my cold sorc again. It was a trivial buff, and now a trivial nerf.
It was nice it was “fixed”, but now that it’s broken again, the only difference it makes is in Stony.
Yeah I think it was a dumb fix. It just made the life of a sorc going into Hell not retarded. Would be different if 90% of hell mobs weren’t cold immune. Not hard just annoying.
“the strongest sorc spec before infinity”. The only issue I have for this is if infinity is the only item allowed to break resistance it should perform equally across the elemental types. It should not almost force you into a lightning spec because that is the only element that can be broken. Also there should be as many magic immunities as there are elemental/physical immunities to put bone necro’s and hammerdins in the same predicament. Fire/Cold needs to be given a way to break immunity to the same degree as lightning/magic or magic and lightning need to be in the same position as fire/cold and having to rely heavily upon your merc to get you through the vast amount of immunities that can’t be broken.
I agree emphatically with a lot of this. I would suggest axing concentration affecting Blessed Hammer as a starting point. Maybe those points over to Conviction would make Infinity less game breaking and buffing Hammer slightly. Dunno.
Paladin skill tree is legitimately a mess, propped up by ridiculously overtuned spells like HS, Hammer, and Smite.
My first spec in D2R was pure cold Frozen Orb max synergy 20 Cold Mastery hard points, and with +7 to skills, a level 10 fireball was faster than using Frozen Orb versus the few immunes that got their health bars tickled, mainly zombies in Den of Evil in act 1 Hell, and beyond that, not one single monster that initially was cold immune was killed with cold – making me just respec to have a stronger fireball, because it didn’t really have an impact.
I’m going to try again in endgame gear, but lightning is definitely going to remain better than cold at piercing resistances and immunities.
