Hey as some of you could probably see my opinions before, i was always for keeping immunities and fought for that idea. After doing several solo runs I have to say that I was wrong and I changed my mind. But please read to end before you react, its important.
I have to admit that dealing with immunities is often more frustrating than challenging with big groups of immune monsters and its not fun to build your character in certain way to deal with that. Or wasting respec and then go back to my original build.
Can I finish game with immunities? Yes, but in some cases it will be extremely slow and it is not fun. Its not question of difficulty but question of wasted time to deal with some immune monsters.
For example i am playing javazon currently. I basicly one shoted everything on normal and nightmare on players 3. Then hell came and i started to have serious issues in act 2. I was able to run past everything lightning immune but not maggot lair. It was impossible to deal with that. I used teleporting amulet which i had to use even for rest of act 3. Question is why even have immune monsters when you can skip majority of game with that? . Act III was honestly very frustrating.
Did i build my character wrong? Well i dont think so. I simply didnt find any better weapon than basic normal javelins and merc had hwanin weapon. I even tried respec few times out of curiosity and even fully maxed guides and magic arrow and dmg it did was incredibly low for hell. Fully leveled valkyria wasnt good either., poison javelins were too weak. Anya giving you freaking bow when you are javazon was not good either. Jab could not do anything with low dmg.
So yeah there is that. My conclusion is that immunities on regular monsters is not fun to deal with, but i would like to clarify two important things before i will share my solution:
I am talking only about single player/offline. I dont think immunities should be touched on live servers because there is group play and players having various sources of damage.
I would lower resistances only to regular monsters, unique monsters still should have immunities to present challenge. I would also add chance to have new auras to unique monsters if they are aura enchanted: resist fire, resist cold, resist lightning and salvation to compensate for removal of immunities on regular monsters.
So what i would do with normal immunities on regular monsters? I think resistance of regular monsters in offline mode should be capped at 90%.
Honestly…that’s the price you pay for playing javazon. The going through hell process on a javazon is not easy, but that’s okay, because the payoff/reward for getting through it, with your combination of Jab, Merc/Valk, etc (not to mention destroying anything not Light immune) is you become the near ultimate cow killer (and whatever else Javazon farms, idk I switched to Bowazon after I got through hell with Javazon, I think they’re sorta overrated at least on players 1). I think you may just be a prisoner of the moment, get some rest, come back with fresh eyes and mind, and you’ll be back on the immunities train. At least, I’d hope so…
I am not saying i cant do it. I am in act 4 but my point was that its not fun. I could farm game more but i didnt have to do that on sorc while doing same run. So is that fair?
Javazon is ultimate cow killer, true. But do i have to suffer for that while doing playthrough?
I would rather kill monsters than skip them you know?
Yes, agreed. An illustrative example is the last Baal I ran on my bliz sorc 5 minutes ago. That second boss group in the throne room, a bunch of revilers and skels. Bliz down the revilers, but skels are cold immune. I get to stand there for about 90 seconds, watching my merc, who is decrepified by Baal and frozen by skel mages, go after them one by one, in slow motion. While I stand there behind a pillar to avoid being hit by ice bolts. Variations of this on every run.
That was not hard. It just was not fun.
You can keep boss immunities, but for all others, immunity should change to 95 resist. Nerf cold mastery to give 3 points of reduction per skill point instead of 5. Then either nerf conviction aura or nerf infinity by giving it level 6 conviction instead of level 12. Call it a day.
Which begs the question. If making immunities easy to break is a solution here, then why are there immunities at all? If you’re going to have them, in concept they should be hard to break or there is no point to them.
That’s a l2p issue. Why wouldn’t you just tele stomp them? Just cast static and then port your merc around.
I think the big problem is that there are always whole maps with 1 sort of immunity which makes you suffer in a playthrough.
So capping res on white mobs and minions could be nice. But caster are already very powerful and I think melee should be buffed first. Increase base dmg on all phys dmg weapons and increase the Ed on magic/rare and increase the chance to roll Ed on them
They key issue is, would there be a way for cold based builds, especially bliz/cold sorc, to break them? Because right now that is one which cannot be broken. Allowing it to be broken would over-power bliz sorcs because this is part of the balance. Bliz gets +300% damage from support, and cold mastery will bottom out the resistances of non-immunes to -100%. They get higher damage against non-immunes to compensate for having an unbreakable immunity.
Yet if you do not allow them to break immunities, you face that boredom and frustration that I described.
Hence, the solution is what I said. End immunities, nerf cold mastery and either conviction aura or infinity to rebalance.
That’s a l2p issue. Why wouldn’t you just tele stomp them? Just cast static and then port your merc around.
My understanding of static field is that it cannot lower a mob’s life below 50%, right? So I can’t kill anything with it. And damage short of killing is irrelevant. The merc does about as much damage as is statistically possible for a merc to do in this game. He one shots every skel. So it wouldn’t speed anything along. The issue is when he is slowed, especially when decrepped and frozen at the same time.
I do hope I’m missing something here though. If I can L2P to end this annoyance and time sink, explain.
If your merc already 1shots the skels you can skip that part and just tp your merc from skel to skel. Also stand next to baal so your merc doesn’t get decrepified. It speeds up the process
I’m thinking much of the same, I’m also playing javazon now, just got to Hell act 3. I teleported passed everything in the maggots lair and managed to grab the staff from the chest. Even with jab maxed out it took too long to kill anything, i will try poision javelin, if that doesn’t help then I will abandon my amazon untill I get Infinity. Not sure if I like that idea.
What I’m reading here is that in order to progress solo somewhat smoothly and with a modicum of fun, certain one-trick builds are more or less off the table. The alternatives are to…
Play builds that are able to deal with at least two immunities
Play with others
This seems to be working as intended?
I think that the OP’s post is reasonable as far as it goes, though I’m not sure what should happen with Hell ancients. They are a hard stop unless you can deal with at least two immunities, regardless.
