Synergies force people to spend all points to make 1 skill good.
Immunities stop these 1 skill builds from being able to complete content.
Even with a sturdy merc you will not be able to kill all mobs. There will always be a Phys/Yourdamagetype immune.
I say get rid of synergies and let skills be viably proportional to the amount of points you put into that skill alone.
Let the people who player single player be able to enjoy hybrids without suffering from being underpowered by not having synergies. Not to mention new players who are tricked into fully synergizing a skill not knowing about all the immuntites they will run into.
Newer players and older returning players from pre 1.10 who dont know this will get be in for a rude awakening when they try this broken sysem and find they cant complete the game. They will simply quit the game or look up a guide and make a Hammerdin.
Even with respecing your character, No matter what single element you choose you will always have mobs with dual immunities that will wall you from progressing.
The final difficulty of the game should be kind of difficult. Immunities are way better than D3’s old difficultly system where you just hit walls and had no way of progressing.
Damage type immunities in D2 are not a challenge or difficulty spike. They are a wall that you bypass. That’s bland and did not age well. Players will always find a META way to accomplish things, and the META way for hell damage immmunities is to run by them or save scum the area until its got enemies you can damage.
Even the answer of diversifying your damage, like a fire/cold sorc build will run by and not bother with a fire/cold immune enemy. Like Hell Countess lol. And lower resist wands are not effective enough to break it.
It would have aged well if they left synergies out of the game. Being a hybrid meant you could swith damage types to overcome a challenge. The original game up until 1.10 did NOT have Synergies. once they were added and mobs buffed the game was ruined.
Thats basically what you have here now. Fully synergiezed characters CANNOT complete content. You MUST make a weaker Hybrid if you want to be able to progress through hell mode.
YEA… let’s water the game down and make it even EASIER… let’s remove all monsters, and you can just stand in town playing the loot slot machine!
Nobody is forcing you to choose one skill. They are forcing you to make choices about how you want to build your character… do you want to do max damage with a specialist, knowing that you’re going to have problems with immunities, or are you going to do less damage with a dualist, and have less problems overall.
Meaningful choices is what seperates this game from D3… where you can swap skills/ gear at will…
If you don’t like synergies or immunites, I suggest going to another game.
Removal of synergies and immunites means exactly that. Everyone would be able to have a single damage type maxed out and run through the entire game with just the one ability destroying everything.
If you take a new player or returning player from pre 1.10 You shoul at least
WARN THEM
that there are immuntites and not spend hours of their time to find out they cant comlete the game.
Then at least then they can make that decision. But they way it set up now the game TEACHES you to synergize but doesnt warn you or give you the ability to complete hell mode.
You’re also not acknowledging the 300 pound gorilla in the room. Player counts. Especially for offline players.
If you remove synergies, then a good portion of classes won’t be able to effectively play at higher player counts, because synergies buff their power to be able to use this mechanic.
Damage immunities are game breaking, just face it. Synergies are fine, and fit the lore. There’s no reason why a skill I invest in early, should not make my later skills more powerful. The problem from the gameplay design is, there isn’t enough levels to be able to diversify your damage enough to tackle the challenges the game presents, so the META evolved to just skip the areas you can’t do.
Just another reason why the game isn’t doing well, and won’t do well even with 2.4/ladder.
If I put 20 points into a skill that should be good enough like it was PRe 1.10
How in the world does knowing how to run faster (Vigor) make my hammers hit harder?
Or why does Ice bolt make Blizzard hit harder? Besides being cold they are nothing alike.
I agree at a high level, but one of the not-fun aspects of earlier patches was that when you were leveling up you were just putting skill points into useless skills that you wouldn’t use later or just not spending them and playing with lvl 1 skills (maybe some + gear). That doesn’t feel great, especially for new players. True you get respecs now, but not that many. You sort of also lose the idea of being a certain kind of build when you can max almost 6 skills completely (5 easily). Some may consider that good or bad, but I think most would consider it bad.
An end game Sorceress can call meteors, throw chain lightning and cast Blizzard all at max strength (you don’t max cold mastery) which is more than a bit crazy, isn’t it? I mean I guess you’re more like the sorcerer from Diablo 1 (Use the right tool/spell for the job at hand), which is cool, but in terms of game difficulty things just got a lot easier for the sorceress.
So, I guess what I am saying is that without synergies you don’t really play a build as much as you just play a class in some cases, which does homogenize the crap out of the game.
Please look up the definition of viable, I don’t think it means what you think it means. Plenty of great and fun hybrid builds out there, that are completely viable. Now are they or will the be the best in every scenario? Nope. But to compare hybrid builds, to “Punch Barb” is truly disingenuous.
As for the example you seek, lets use that Fireball sorc you talk about, and turn it into a MeteOrb sorc, voila, Fireball/Meteor/FrozenOrb along with Physical damage from Mercenary, that’s 3 types of damage, and classically one of the most viable hybrid builds out there, without suffering much in the way of power/clear speed or anything else.
I didn’t even say infinity, either.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Oh dang I forgot to mention Static Field as well, so that’s 4 elements, whoa, MeteOrb truly is a monster hybrid build, isn’t it!