Make cold mastery efficiency 1/5 too, or revert the change, otherwise cold sorcs are big-big winners of this patch and fire once again in the dumpster.
4 Likes
Revert the change it is.
This game was never and will never be balanced. We just want fun and diversity of builds.
7 Likes
I don’t mind it either way (just make it follow one rule, without Cold Mastery being outperformer). Would be fun to play and try some builds without 1/5 efficiency this season, then when they get comprehensive data see some changes.
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Sorc Frost damage is, by design, lower than all other elemental damage because it was developed around cold mastery not give +cold skill damage. If they nerf cold mastery then why would anyone play cold?
2 Likes
Because even if they make it 1/5 efficiency its still gonna be strong. Why does every other build has to stack infinity and lower resist to compare?
But even then, they can make it at least 1/3 efficiency, not 1/5 necessarily
One of my favorite features of D2R is that builds feel truly different. The Quirks of Cold Mastery, Blade Fury, Werewolf, etc - are what make D2R interesting.
There are plenty of other ARPGs where everything is just ability soup and mechanics are balanced by because they are just reskinned copy-paste of each other.
3 Likes
The thing about cold mastery on a sorceress, it’s a passive skill based form of resistance reduction, which no other class has access to anything like it. (Conviction doesn’t count, since it’s an active skill) So she is already ahead of the race right out of the gate without any additional -resistance gear.
Cold skill damage is set up around the cold mastery piercing resistances. Yes 1/5 would be a bit harsh, however I think a 1/2 or 1/3 effectiveness nerf of CM vs. sundered monsters would be acceptable.
No nerf:
CM 17 = Sundered monsters are at -5 cold resistance.
CM 27 = Sundered monsters are at -55 cold resistance.
1/2 nerf:
CM 17 = Sundered monsters are at 45 cold resistance.
CM 27 = Sundered monsters are at -5 cold resistance.
1/3 nerf:
CM 17 = Sundered monsters are at 62 cold resistance.
CM 27 = Sundered monsters are at 45 cold resistance.
1/5 nerf:
CM 17 = Sundered monsters are at 75 cold resistance.
CM 27 = Sundered monsters are at 65 cold resistance.
And this is without any additional -resistance gear or effects.
1 Like
And how does it contradict my argument? Cold mastery is now a massive outlier. Everything you need is just double spirits and a sunder charm. You are done, you won, you can farm even Uber tristram in minutes and any other area too.
Sound like yall just wanna 1 shot even more things.
Sure revert CM to 1/5th, are you going to then buff frozen orb to 8k damage?
Blizzard can’t code CM to only work 1/5th on only sundered mobs.
No. We want build variety. I have written that very clearly…
Cold Mastery is fine, I would bet it’s stil nowhere near Infinity Light Sorc. Fire is rough after this change.
But in the end who cares if the projectile is red, blue, or whitish yellow. What about Shapeshifters, Melees, different types of Assasssins, and Necromancers?
Sunder charms don’t create diversity.
Sunder charms do not create new builds.
Sunder charms do however remove immunities because game too hard
1 Like
Cold sorc and Hammerdin are Mid-tier generalist builds (also Poison Necro). Yes they can both do “anything” given enough time. However they also have a top-end throughput. Both Blizzard and Hammers are “slow” spells in grand scheme of things (where compared to other top-tier builds like Light Sorc or Java). If you like a build with a big early powerspike, but a low ceiling then these builds are great. They should keep that identity.
Think of it this way. Cold Mastery CAPS at double damage. No amount of extra -Res% or +CM Skill can improve your damage beyond dealing double damage. It was balanced this way.
Cold sorc/Hammerdin and poison necro are midtier generalists? That’s such a bad take.
Have you ever played blizzard sorc with dfathom and nightwing? Its literally the build that oneshots p8 cows and other non cold immune content. Hammerdin is literally a God with enigma and some other bits and pieces, you can do everything with it. Poison necro with BiS gear is the best content clearing character in the game, bar none.
Have you ever played a javazon? Blizzard is SO SLOW compared to java. The AOE is much smaller and you can only cast it once every 4 seconds.
Also Poison Necro is terrible at killing bosses because of the way pets and mercs “eat” poison ticks. So again, that’s what I mean about being a “generalist” they can very early in the game go anywhere and do anything - but there are other specialist specs that do one specific thing faster.
Due to the fact that you don’t need enigma, blizzard sorc is massively faster. To do good on p3-p5 you don’t even need dfathom or nightwing. But when you get there and go oneshot p8 content that’s not immune to you, java is just getting it’s first “big” thing, like infinity or enigma. With sunder charm now blizzard sorc gonna massively accelerate.
And I was talking about BiS for poison necro.
You are literally describing a Mid-tier generalist. A spec that hits a power-spike early, and can accomplish anything at a reasonable pace.
The point I’m making is that Cold Master any Hammers doing Magic damage means that a few Spirits and a crafted ammy means you’re good. However the difference between those items and the ceiling isn’t THAT far. Yeah you can do a little bit better with BIS gear, but there’s always a ceiling above your head on how good you can do based on the limits of how Blizzard, hammers, and poison deal it’s damage. Even with BIS, You will never beat the BEST specialist using the BEST gear at any given task.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about the choice between an early spiking generalist build with a early hard cap -OR- a specialist build that focuses on doing one thing really well and has a much much higher upper bound (so upgrades are more meaningful). The fact that there are specs in both of these categories is a good thing for D2R. If Flattening the game so every class has the same copy-pasted power curve is attractive to you - go play D3.
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You just don’t know what you are talking about, maybe it looks good in your head, but it seems you never actually played those builds. The only upgrade that blizzard sorc doesn’t need is infinity, as she has an inbuilt one. She still has access to big upgrades that make her way more viable on higher player counts. She hits her power spike and can go very far, stopping just shy of lightning sorc, hammerdin and javazon. The only thing that stopped her was a fact that cold immunes were just too high. Now it’s not a problem.
For example: just death fathom on naked sorc almost doubles blizzard damage. From 4218–4581 to 7436–7977. And it’s not taking into account skillers, nightwing, facets and all other stuff. You can easily go to 22k+ blizzard. Try it next season, you will be surprised.
max damage bliz/ib sorc 120k dps 15 sec to kill baal
max damage FB/m sorc 500k dps .5 sec to kill baal
both fighting baal at -35% resist to damage type
doing the math anything over -60% res is null as even at lvl 99 to put points in CM to get past -60% res to only immunes you give up the same % in damage to the whole game and this includes using infinity and 3 perfect cold facets.
With this point made considering fire has almost 5Xs the dps cold has it would only need 25% res reduction to do the same damage as a cold sorc dropping res to 0%. The time cold will save in gear will be lost in overall xp when the fire dps clear speed is addressed.
Right. I’m not sure why you consider “not needing infinity” as a plus when consider BIS gear across builds. I see this as “there is no way to increase your damage after you have max CM”
Death’s Fathom and Sundering Charm are the only possible upgrades. Once you have those two items - you’re capped. That’s your ceiling. No amount of -res% matters any more. No amount of FCR breakpoints will help you with the 1.8s delay. No amount of practice will change the 4 frame RNG nature of the Blizzard shards against small targets. You can also make a very similar argument for Hammerdins.
Where by contrast, the other elemental specs have facets, FCR breakpoints, and other optimizations they can make to continue improvement.
I don’t think these Sunder charms have nowhere near that effect with cold sorc than you fear. If you got the sunder charm very early, then, yes, the impact it has is great. But sorry to say I believe it dropping in ladder, you would have to be incredibly lucky to get it early enough.
That been said, if you compare fire sorc and cold sorc, the start goes as always: cold sorc rules over fire sorc at start because the CM and plenty fire immunes.
But once Sunder Charm drop, and correct charm too (cold sunders will be the most expensive item at first and rare since all cold sorcs want it and many have rolled a cold sorc) things get different. I bet that fire sorc has already Flickering flame and 1-2 facets at that point, and cold sorc could have nightwing. Comparing the clear speed then? I kind of think without doing any calculations, that I’d rather take the fire sorc as its overall clear speed and boss kill time is faster. And if you think lightning sorc? I think she is even faster. So I see no evidence that cold sorc would be op compared to other elements.
This ofc would be entirely different thing if cold sorc gets sunder charm early. But unless you purchase it with real money from some 3rd party site, I doubt you get it early enough to make cold rule over other elements.
Edit Note: And have you thought about it, Flickering flame will wholly cancel fire sunder charm res penalty! I think I rather roll fire sorc if I had to choose between those two.