Lets Talk Runewords

Slomo4shO-1943 · February 4, 2022, 7:37pm

Before discussing runewords, lets have a small discussion about sockets in gear and some of the level requirements for higher socket items. First order of business is that Normal difficulty has a maximum of 3 sockets in any piece of gear regardless of whether the maximum sockets for said piece is higher. This limit increases to 4 for Nightmare. This is to say that it is impossible to find any weapons with 5 or 6 sockets in Nightmare and below through monster drops. Socketing using Larzuk results are based on item level. For example, an ilvl Crystal Sword between 1 and 25 will have a maximum output of 3 sockets, for ilvls 26 to 40 the maximum sockets will be 4, and for ilvls 41 or higher a maximum of 6. For normal, this means all white crystal swords found in act 4 or 5, with the exception of Worldstone Keep lvl 3 and Throne of Destruction, will result in 4 sockets from Larzuk (as a side note, it would be nice to know the ilvl of an item without the use of mods and should be included in the tool tips as a quality of life change).

The cube recipe will always roll for the maximum of 6 sockets so a crystal sword will have a 1/6 chance of rolling 4 sockets. Items that have a maximum socket cap of less than 6 will receive any rolls above the maximum cap as a count towards maximum. For example, if an armor has a max of 4 sockets, using a cube will give it 50% chance of rolling 4 sockets as a roll of 4, 5, or 6 will all count as a 4. Getting 1, 2, 3 sockets from said armor will only have a 1/6 chance for each.

With that out of the way, I would like to convey two points regarding current runewords:

Runewords exclude the majority of weapon and armor choices available to players.
In regards to Ladder, quite a few low level rune words are nearly impossible to craft around their level requirements.

Lets start with Runewords exclude the majority of weapon and armor choices available to players. I will illustrate this point by using melee 1h weapons. Between axes, swords, and maces (including scepters) there are a total of 22 weapons for each item class (normal, exceptional, elite). The number of sockets for each weapon stays the same for all 3 item classes with the exception of the Spiked club’s Elite variation which goes from 2 max sockets to 3 max as a Tyrant Club.

Hand Axe, Short Sword, Scimitar, Sabre, Falchion, Club, Spiked Club (becomes 3 sockets as Tyrant Club), Mace, and Scepter.

War Sword, Morning Star, and Grand Scepter

Axe, Broad Sword, Long Sword, and War Hammer

Double Axe, Flail, and War Scepter

Military Pick, War Axe, and Crystal Sword

Yes, the percentages don’t total 100% as they were round. Lets compare relative abundance of socket types of 1h weapons with relative abundance of sockets used for runewords (the parentheses will indicate the level requirement of the runeword) There are a total of 34 Runewords that can fit these weapons:

Steel (13), Strength (25), and Wind (61)

Malice (15), King's Grace (25), Black (35), Lawbringer (43), Crescent Moon (47), Venom (49), Fury (65), and Plague (67)

Holy Thunder (21), Spirit (25), Passion (43), Voice of Reason (43), Oath (49), Kingslayer (53), Rift (53), Heart of the Oak (55), Famine (65), Phoenix (65), and Hand of Justice (67)

Honor (27), Call to Arms (57), Death (55), Beast (63), Grief (59), Destruction (65), Eternity (63), and Doom (67)

Unbending Will (41), Last Wish (65), Silence (55), and Breath of the Dying (69)

As you see, there is a large disparity between the item types available in the game vs item types used for runewords. Weapons with 2 maximum sockets are sorely underrepresented whereas 4 and 5 sockets the most favored. In fact, there isn’t a single mid tier runeword that requires 2 sockets. Therefore the 40% of 1h weapons exceptional weapons have no utility.

Lets look at whether certain low level weapons can actually be crafted at their level requirements. Lets use Holy Thunder (EthRalOrtTal Scepters) from the examples above.

We first must determine if these runes would be available at the specified level requirements. Lets examine where these runes can drop:

Drops El through Ral in normal
Average drop rate is 1.8 runes per run in single player game.
she can drop every rune for Holy Thunder

Drops El through Amn in Normal
Only 1 guaranteed rune drop per difficulty

We have determined that all of the runes can be obtained in Normal difficulty. They can be obtained by the level requirements of the weapon. Now, the hurdle becomes the base for the runewords.

This runeword require 4 socket scepter and we have initially discovered that Normal difficulty socketed weapon drops are capped at 3. Taking a gamble through the cube is not an option as the recipes require the runes that are higher than the weapon runes. Finding the right base weapon in the right area and getting it socketed by Larzuk is our only option if we wish to make these weapons.

For Holy Thunder, our only weapon choice is a War Scepter. It rolls a maximum of 5 sockets. Larzuk will socket a War Scepter with 3 sockets if its ilvl 25 or below or with 5 sockets if its ilvl 26 or above. It appears that it is impossible for us to make a Holy Thunder outside of going to nightmare and stumbling across a 4 socket War Scepter.

Ayaki-11732 · February 4, 2022, 10:27pm

I think Runewords are in difficult-to-find bases by intent in order to differentiate them from gemmed and socketed gear. Of course, we all know that these items are pretty much a waste of time except for maybe a 6-ist’d phase blade or a 6-shael’d hammer. But that just means that Runewords are too powerful for how easy they are to make, which again justifies that their weapon/armor bases should be uncommon.

Regarding your other point about how difficult it is to create low-lvl Runewords at low-levels, I agree. But this (it is hard at low-levels) situation also applies to low-level uniques and low-level item Sets. You’ll be level 80+ before you find the complete Isenhart or Cathan’s set and those are the most common set pieces. So runewords don’t really stand out.

Now this does make me question why the dev team cares so much about about buffing these set items and creating low-level runewords that no one would realistically encounter. The only time you would have a complete set or a low-level Runeword at a low level, is if it was gifted to you by a very generous person.

So yeah, there’s nothing low-level about them except their requirements.

Slomo4shO-1943 · February 4, 2022, 10:51pm

That’s an easy cop out. The difficulty in crafting runewords early game should be the same as late game. Late game difficulty lies in the scarcity of runes. Early on it is the scarcity (non existence actually) of proper bases.

The other issue to explore is why a class like the paladin has can equip both spirit sword and shield by level 25 whereas every other class as to wait until at least level 54 to equip a 4 socket shield.

These disparities are important if we want balance and a more equal footing on ladder viability. A Leaf staff isn’t hard at all to make and the base can be purchased directly from a vendor without much difficulty. Stealth and Leaf enable a sorc to power through normal and nightmare.

I have talked about the power of Leaf here:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t/sets-need-to-roll-ethereal-and-staffmods/

Melee builds already suck, they don’t need any more hindrance from developers. You actually don’t find anything wrong with 40% of 1h weapons being 2 sockets in NM and not having a single mid level rune word for it?

Ayaki-11732 · February 4, 2022, 11:08pm

If it’s already been discussed in another topic then I guess we’re just beating a dead horse

Slomo4shO-1943 · February 4, 2022, 11:24pm

That topic was regarding sets and uniques armor/weapons lacking access to staff mods and how they are unable to compete with runewords or even white weapons/armor in certain cases

UnluckyMan-1494 · February 5, 2022, 7:05am

Most of the runewords are non-attractive. Stays at the shadow of about 15-20 overperforming runewords and about 5-10 without any kind of competition on their requirements.

Stealth it’s a strong runeword, but it’s somewhat balanced and sadly doesn’t have much direct competitor on their level range. Same could be said about 1.11 rws. Not much about 1.10 rws.

As much I would want them to improve and balance stuff, their stance it’s not nerf anything and improve underperfoming stuff.

But that design carries 3 major flaws.

First, only viable gear outside rws would be: boots, gloves, belt, rings and amulets. Because you can’t make rws on them. Some armors, helm, weapons and shields would be until you get the minimum level required and the gear for the target rw.

Second, the fact that almost every build would use about 5-10 rws in some way already generates dependency that they will not change.

Third, unless they plan a major overhaul on it, which they will not. Rws will never be balanced even between themselves, some will always be picked either at leveling or endgame gear until reach BiS, they could create a progression but that progression would be blurried because the middle-ground rws already are strong enough and can somewhat compete “fine” against endgame ones, would be way harder to make a direct stepping ladder between spirit and HotO by example.

Grief, Enigma, Spirit, CtA by example doesn’t even have a direct competitor to actually make them less attractive in majority cases and their level requirements. I could quote more, but those are for sure used in some way to any kind of build at some point.

When you have that kind of dependency and strength focused in a few instead of “split” among several with each one of them having a particular individuality. You either nerf it or just create alternatives, both cases will hurt more than help. First because the alternative would be either a ladder or just the same recipe with a “different” visual.

Rws tries to have identity on them, the problem it’s they got a ton of messed up ones in the pack. Before LoD and 1.10 folks were more motivated to mutiboxing or partying up to buffs, after it folks just do p8 solo.

If they really plan to ressurect “public”/“grouping” and revitalize most of forgotten rws they either nerf the most popular ones, create a unique perk on the underperforming ones and at same time create ways to make alternatives(non-rws) attractive. They buffed some sets, they should do the same on uniques, yellows and blues also.

To counterbalance the powercreep that would generate across all classes and builds, they would need to make foes tougher not by hp but damage reduction and damage absorption, that way they could also consider reduce overall foe’s hp. Meaning, poison, thorns, iron maiden and other “barely” viable effects on hell could be more desireable and useable, also create a better difficulty flow between all 3 difficulties, in a way that increases the overall challenge in the game.

They can do all those stuff, the problem are: “they’re willing to do it?”

Most rws has level requirements that already makes most of alternatives become useless already. Unless they create something below lvl 13-18 range and create some sort of “ladder” to make rws be changed after 10-20 levels, any additional rws would be “used a bit” then mostly left to rot, because most of rws would underperform comparated to certain consolidated ones. Spirit and Enigma doesn’t have any direct competition, maybe never will on their “requirement range”.

Slomo4shO-1943 · February 5, 2022, 4:02pm

Thank you for expanding on the topic. Most runewords are, indeed, unattractive and the most abundant weapon and armor types are underutilized.

Nerfing the game through class buffs and gear upgrades isn’t the way to go. Toning down meta builds and brings skill diversity is an amicable goal.

As for the most OP runewords, use them as as a gauge to where item power should be capped

I touched base on runewords ability to stack on staff mods here:

UnluckyMan-1494 · February 5, 2022, 6:58pm

Sadly they don’t want to do that, that’s why the most viable right now it’s them buffing stuff, then buff foes.

About rws, sadly there’s some of them that does a lot. Enigma has tp, all skils, str, mf, frw, rd, damage goes to mana.

That could be like 5 rws just by splitting: frw, mf, all skills, tp and str already.

Spirit goes almost the same path, CtA too and so on.

I will read your other post later on and comment about it. But unless they plan to nerf, which mostly after 1.10 only hammerdin got and are still strong.

If they don’t nerf either skills/builds and rws wouldn’t solve much, also they don’t plan to do it. Buffing underperforming skills and creating unique templates for rws it’s possible, if they also make foes more durable.

By example:

Pick a monster with 25 fire resist, put fire enchanted modifier on him. Then he becomes fire immune. That’s the current system with a ton hp.

Now pick the same monster and instead of 25 fire resist, he has 50 and 25% fire absorb. That way you reduced roughly to 1/3 of the OG damage already, if they become enchanted, instead of +75% resist, could be 50% + 25% absorb.

That way the resist threshold would be the same. Foes would be more durable against the element and would also expand build options. Because:

1- trying to beat the foe who has great resistance would be time consuming
2- folks would need to think how to manage each content that they plan to run and because the guest monsters and randomization, would make folks need to think on the go.
3- would solve poison, thorns, iron maiden issue easily. By reducing the crazy hp scale from monsters, which hurted the monsters to begin with.
4- would reduce the need of static field and cb also. Those are used because the huge amount of hp foes have and virtually most damage it’s a joke comparated to it, that way instead of a “25% fight” or “50% fight” should be a stable fight through beginning to end. Because both reduces on percentile, if the value it’s not that huge, the overall cut would be way less comparatively. Both would be useful but wouldn’t be that much must have if you are using their weakness.
5- make foes do more damage, to actually narrow a bit the gauge between the hp reduction and their overall strength. That way they would be a bit more deadly and less reliant only on “defensive” aspect.
6- ramp up the challenge curve, that way creative/unique perks on rws, unique items and set can flourish. Creating diversity.

Just by reducing overall damage on them by 75% you can easily reduce the foe’s hp by at least 50%.

Before on CS, physical melee classes would need either “magic damage”, “become somewhat hybrid ranged” or use some tactics to beat it, otherwise they would receive IM and oneshot themselves. There’s no tactics on d2 anymore in that regard, mostly vanished at LoD and synergy system. Folks save points for vit but most only play a single trick builds. One trick builds can be useful to a lot of stuff, but shouldn’t be that reliable than the current state, making folks compromise based on content and foes, makes the game have more depth, challenge and planning. Otherwise would be the same braindead endless grind that your gear would do 45% of the job, 9% your stats and 45% skill tree and only 1% playerskill(maps wise).

They have an unique opportunity to make it work, because they’re on a side branch following a parallel path than the OG, it’s time to then to try create something more alive than the OG had on the last 20 years.

I love the game, but, the game it’s a mess. Become easier each new content and that makes me sad to see a loved game losing it’s challenge part of it

pumpkinnose-2960 · February 5, 2022, 7:07pm

Awesome posts, a lot of good stuff that would improve the game. Situation won’t get better without nerfs to certain runewords.

Vndl-1572 · February 5, 2022, 8:04pm

Awesome posts - confirm.
I think that global changes should be introduced in the add-on, in the form of a patch, people will not perceive it correctly.
Leaving the choice to play this add-on or not.

EnTaro-21982 · February 5, 2022, 9:10pm

Thats an interesting idea about Immune monsters! With %absorb to make them tought but killable. I think that could really work. But of course more deep tought about it has to be done, for its pros n cons, etc.

First con I think off: blizzard sorc would own everything with piercing mastery. And I don’t want op chars like blizz sorc and hammerdin.

braindead endless grind that your gear would do 45% of the job, 9% your stats and 45% skill tree and only 1% playerskill(maps wise).

I don’t think this can be changed with this simple game. Your knowledge is used on how to gear and progress char. Not really used in the means of battle tactics. Just here and there - like avoiding Diablo infernos.

UnluckyMan-1494 · February 6, 2022, 12:53am

They could maintain the same degree of resistances with the purpose of immunity

Right now, the 25(base)+75(enchanted) would turn out to 50(base)+50(enchanted), they would just add the absorb portion on it. They could change the resistance itself if they really want, but that regard would need to keep attention on infinity and lower resist wand that would defeat the purpose of reducing overall hp from foes.

The idea behind absorb would be in fact, reduce overall damage on them and even heal a bit them.

1k cold damage on a 50% resistance foe it’s 500 damage, if the foe can absorb 50% then, that damage would be 500 - 500 from absorption. That way the foe itself would be not affected by that element.

That’s why, a smart choice could be: increase the base resistance from foes by 25%(all of them, that doesn’t make them immune), but also increase their absorption by 10-25%, when they get enchanted status they could get about more 10+25%. Each “absorb percentile” would effectively reduce the damage by the double of the value, til 50% that would negate the damage at the end of the math and anything above 50% would effectively heal the foe at the end of the math.

Their work cap for absorption it’s 50%, anything below to it, would deal damage at the end of the math, anything equal would negate the damage entirely and anything above would actually heal the foe. Unless they actually want to heal the foe they could toy with 50+%, otherwise anything on the 1-49% realm could actually nerf the damage by a ton.

They could even toy with: base monsters resist increased or just add 20% absorption to it, and then enchanted get more 20%. That way that elemental damage on foes would be reduced by 40% and on enchanted ones by 80%.

Damage goes against resist
The result goes against absorb
Absorb would cut that damage and heal that damage

2000 damage goes to 50%(resist)
1000 go against 20%(absorb)
800 damage will be done, 200 will be absorbed, 200 will be healed
Final damage 600.

If a monster it’s immune to something, they should be immune to it anyways. Maybe they could work with absorption percentile based on the foes resist:

100% fire resist could mean 50% fire absorption, then if you reduce the resist(on the base), to something like 70% the absorption would be cut by 15% meaning about 35% absorption. It’s a concept that could be used, also.

My goal it’s improve the overall toughness without using crazy bizarre numbers they created for it. D2 works with limited values on most of the stuff and they after LoD and patches used the “stack” multipliers system to increase damage.

Skill has X damage, synergy gives x%, Item gives x%, Resistance reduces/increases by X%. That’s why spellcasters are stronger even with foes with 50-95% resistance. They increased the hp and still folks can beat content easily paired with cb and static field, reducing it to 25-50% ish and then break the rest through bruteforce.

Monsters resists increases by AP, their base resist + any “champion/elite” modifier aren’t “multiplicative” it’s additive, most of it are static.

Players gets multipliers from different sources, their base damage get stacked by a ton. Only having resistance and HP to beat it. Absorption it’s a mechannic in the game that could cut the crazy ammount of hp that actually killed thorns, poison and iron maiden by example.

I would enjoy more the 50% absorption on foes with “enchanted”, but most folks would complaint. So the value could be anything between 1-50% range and work really nicely and would make foes be tougher.

Would solve the blizzard/ice mastery, would solve hammerdin, would solve thorns, would solve iron maiden, would solve poison.

Just by add magic, fire, cold, lightning absorption on the monster sheet, either by 10-20% on elemental and about 40% on magic. They could toy with static values but I don’t think that should be done tbh, because the % system could be used across all difficulties

base normal with 0, nightmare with 5 and hell with 10
base unique with 5, 10 and 15

then get a modifier between 5-20 based on their resists like: for 0-25 = 5, 26-50 = 10, 51-75 = 15, 76-100+ = 20, 101+ = 25

Effectively:
on hell, an unique with 50% resist fire would have 10%(base)+15%(modifer)+10%(their resist value), reaching to a total of 35% of absorption or 70% overall damage reduction stacked with the previous one.

That kind of scalability would create a pattern for them to work towards more proper values without “breaking” builds.

About this post, it’s easy to conceptualize:

First they need to pick what it’s the most strongest gear they want to achieve. Then scalate stuff:

White = remove bonuses or become lowest
Blue = 1-2 bonuses, but the highest values
yellow = 3-4 bonuses, but midrange values
set = 5-6 bonuses, but low values
unique 5-6 bonuses, but low values

If something on blue can reach 3 of particular skill, on yellow would reach 2, set would reach 2 and unique 2, while white or 1 or 0. They’re already working on that concept for D4, so it’s clear that there’s some interest on it, even on D2, blue items have better values than yellow but has less affixes on it.

That way could create more niche to rws and make bases for it less powerful and reduce the overall power of rws already, superior/crude/low already could count as modifier for those recipes, not needing things like staves, paladin shields, barbarian helms, druid helms, orbs, wands, scepters, heads, amazon weapons to have any particular benefit on “white” variants. Sadly that would hurt non-rws builds but could reinforce the usage of more blue/yellow variants of those.

Still would mean a huge amount of changes, some gamebreaking ones tbh. That’s why I tried to be more conservative on gear itself, because balance rws it’s a nightmare. Make sets/uniques to compete with the tier of certain rws it’s just insane to even address.

Folks try to gauge the difficulty to achieve the rw and the value by it, but the problem with that concept it ignores the fact that needs a parameter and that parameter itself it’s broken already. CtA removes the need of a barbarian, enigma removes the need of sorc, spirit and insight mostly reduces the need of mana potions and enables spam of skills without much care, infinity makes one tricks work. You have too many layers and issues that emerge. By example what’s the purpose of have a paladin with meditation/conviction aura, barbarian to boo or sorc to tp, necro for lower resist, if one character can do all of it without them? There’s not teamwork or teamplay, just solo each stuff on easy mode.

Rws were interesting concept, but got broken on 1.10. Either folks like or not, previously and 1.11 had rws that can’t even reach or grasp the amount of power of some at 1.10 has. While stealth, peace and treachery are overperforming rws it’s easier to have a alternative to it comparatively with spirit, enigma, grief, hoto, CtA by example.

I’m not focusing on rune cost wise, because it’s purely bs. Most of runes has almost the same chances, most of the time better, than certain set/uniques. Make rws which are a sum of runes beat uniques it’s a joke, even if comparated to sets. That’s why I don’t see any way soon for them to fix it. Unless they rework how items behave from the ground, because nerf stuff they will not, I tried to focus on things they can tweak.

Absorption on foes it’s easy to implement and the result would be near instant. Pair it with hp reduction from foes and you got some stuff start to work while others become less opressive than before. That also could be use to close the gap between difficulties and even make them increase overall difficulty of the game without breaking much stuff.

Absorb could be resistance agnostic or not, if they link to resist could be interesting concept in terms of scalability, but would be tricky to decide when the resistance drops from lower resist, conviction aura or ice mastery or some elemental piercing. Making it working as standalone could be better solution, I suggested using the base of the foe but it’s debateable and tweakable.

The point was, it’s a PTR, it’s time to them try it out stuff and if they ever plan to improve poison, thorns and iron maiden they need to think ways to increase the damage from foes or/and reduce the gap between their HP and damage. The damage increase wouldn’t help much those 3, the hp reduction will benefit a lot all 3.

Absorb can help to achieve that, on itemization side. Unles each rw get a template and excel at that template, folks would still use those jack-all-trades rws forever. Doesn’t matter how much you improve uniques/sets if their strength can’t beat the amount of benefits on all “scenarios” that most of those rws do.

So, first on the “item” side of things they should address what kind of scale and what kind of planned goal certain items should have. Some blue/yellow gloves are great to have, because there’s no rws on those slots. Boots mostly either unique or set, Belt same as boots, rings and amulets can be a bit mix. Shields not much choices, weapons mostly the same as shields, armors some decent uniques/sets but eventually replaced by rws, helms the same as armors.

The question is: “how to make rws less attractive comparativelly with sets/uniques on those shared slots?”
My answer: make the bases weaker, most runewords gives a ton of stuff, so make unique/sets give better values on less overall amount of stats, if a runeword gives 8 bonuses, then unique gives 5-7 but better values comparativelly, like what happens between blues and yellows already.

UnluckyMan-1494 · February 6, 2022, 1:19am

about tactics, I not saying a complex game. Just if you hit something and doesn’t work, you can try other stuff.

Before, I think patch 1.13c, oblivion knights could cast iron maiden on player, that generate a challenge for physical melee builds. They had to play differently in that zone, either slower pace or change the skill used(beserk in barbarian case), bow in druid’s case, vengeance on paladin’s case and so on.

Without CtA, most sorcs wouldn’t blindly tp to certain blind spots they would do shorter tps with less risks of having foes on the spot, checking the ambient illumination and patterns where foes would be “positioned”.

I’m not talking about make the game be crazy amount of difficulty, just make folks “think” not robots doing the same endless grind. Guest monsters tried to fill that kind of perk, but with the huge amount of buffs, mostly GP on player’s side, they shot themselves on the foot.

Folks playing more smartly, would mean folks exploring and reacting along the road to reach their farm goal, that way folks could stop skipping stuff and actually play the game.

Because teleport simulator and only stop to kill elites it’s pretty much what folks do on d3 with a bit more flexibility than d2. D3 has cheat death, D2 has potion til death. The major difference it’s one embraced too much multipliers and have foes with insane hp and insane drops, the other just stopped in the middle when foes didn’t got enough buffs.

Bleed on d3 it’s at same niche as poison on d2,

Folks tries to make both games be more distant than they’re, because they just didn’t liked the result. But in the end both are pretty much similar. In that regard d1 was trully a different game from both d2 and d3.

D1 was a complex game comparated to D2 and D3. In terms of scale: D1>D3>D2 are the proper gauge of difficulty.

I know several folks, til this day, that didn’t managed to beat D1. Play easily D2 (any class and build) and can play some builds on D3 but some can’t even make it work.

I suggested for a friend of mine play D2R(non-expansion) he said: “dude it’s a totally different mindset” I can’t do what I could on LoD, stash hinders a lot and I need to plan a bit better than LoD, because my power isn’t as much as I think I could.

That was him playing with synergy system on D2R(classic), he could grasp the idea and combinations with skills, but his goals on gear was totally different. How he could manage to beat certain foes and so on.

I want that “think” aspect of the game, that was on the concept of the game. Because when you have a game that even a starter can beat it out without effort just having the right gear and the right set of skills, what’s the real difference between a robot doing a simple task all over again and a person playing a supposedly aRPG game.

Diablo lore it’s rich, most folks doesn’t even know some “named monsters” in the game. Some even not know how to react of certain stuff because the “character” got too strong for the content without much effort.

I want that kind of thing, not to make some crazy rocket science or abuse to some hidden mechannic that folks will never know if was intended or not because the game was a mess on development stage and folks got used to those kind of tricks. I want a game that I could play today, go out more 20 years later and say for somebody: “check this amazing game that was done 40 years ago was a mess on code, they done a incredible project to ressurect that amazing game and even today it’s awesome”. Then hear for that person: “it’s fun, it’s great, I hope more games could be like it”

Because Diablo franchise, made several games be better on genre. The idea and concept it’s amazing but the execution got lost through those years. It’s time to ressurect and improve this game that most folks who loves the genre love in some way. Stick with what the game already have and improve it instead of reinvent the fire, reuse stuff to fuel it.

EnTaro-21982 · February 6, 2022, 10:51am

Sorry I didn’t read that first reply… way too long.

I know 50% absorb is basically immunity to element.
I wanted to say, that monsters that are currently Fire immune would have some 33% absorb + 50% fireres or so… numbers really doesnt matter now, its base logic we debate about.

So Fire sorc can actually damage and kill them if she takes few minutes to do so on playthrough.
In endgame with Infinity, she would kill them much quickly, but still not in 1-click thanks to % absorb. So there will be balance - not a scenario that just Infinity breaks everything, hoaaa kill everything with 1 click. But open POSSIBILITY TO CLEAR EVERYTHING for every elemental build. Still maintaining idea that some areas would be better to farm and some not.
Non-fire immune monster would have 0% absorb.

I agree that some active using of tactics sounds more fun.
For new player without reading and watching youtube videos about D2 and learning on its way, I am sure he starts to think a lot how to do this and that.
Its just about us old players that know everything about the game, that makes you feel like there is 1% brain activity involved and 99% automation.
This is not reactive game at its core like some DotA or whatever else.

UnluckyMan-1494 · February 6, 2022, 6:36pm

I see, well the post got longer because I tried to explain you and another fellow, sorry about that I get passionate when I type. Old players should also have some kind of challenge. The absorb could open the path.

I mentioned low absorb for every foe and enchanted receiving another value on top of it, paired with maybe absorb by difficulty also. Help the overall monster hp reduction. As a guide, not a set on stone, has potential without a doubt.

Like this example of scalability in 3 aspects.

With that system the max absorb would be 45% or 50% and would be tied with the aspect of the game. For safety I would take only the 2 initial modifiers (base and unique). Link absorb with resist can be problematic to deal, because there’s a ton of perks who affects resistance in weird ways, maybe every foe with slightly adjustment like 5,10,20 and unique as 5,10,20 could do the trick and resist adjusted accordingly on base monsters and enchanted receive a bit less maintaining the current value in that regard. Could help to an overall hp reduction by at least 50%

Slomo4shO-1943 · February 6, 2022, 6:49pm

Or… You can just have -resistance from gear break resistances.

Or skills for that matter. If you are dumping 100+ points into a tree, the least one of those synergies could do is allow you to break immunities.

You are going the long way around the problem when the solutions are relatively simple.

UnluckyMan-1494 · February 6, 2022, 7:29pm

First I think you misreaded my posts, I not trying to make less foes immune, just reduce the overall damage they receive to help them have less hp and enable different ways to play which got forgotten by the huge hp foes got.

Your concept could be useful if foes had a ton of resistances like 300-1k which only happens on static objects. Right now the game has at least 7 types of way to mess with foes resistance, what the game needs, actually it’s less of it not more of this mess.
Lower resist
Decrepify
Amplify
Conviction
Sanctuary
Cold mastery
Pierce from gear

All of them are messed up or behave weirdly enough.

Absorb it’s easy to implement, easy to escalate and wouldn’t hurt players at lvl1 or lvl99. Making gear do -x resist would be the same a the current situation, which doesn’t solve a thing, only make things worst. By 3 factors:

Would break any form of scalability, because resistance only increases in AP the player’s strength on GP. Absorb could introduce a GP progression because it’s standalone modifier.
Would change the concept of entire items and wouldn’t address the problem itself that’s the huge hp pool because if you use certain element you would have to focus your entire build to beat that element
Stats are just flat ou bad, change a skill system to put it in there it’s just bad as stat.

You quoted doing long way around but your solution it’s way more complicated than roughly 10 lines of code if the code itself it’s scalable would be roughly similar to this.

If (non-player or minion or hireling):
Set Normal monster modifier +5% absorb magic, fire, cold and lightning;
Set Normal unique/champion/superunique modifier +10% absorb magic, fire, cold and lightning;
Set Nightmare monster modifier +10% absorb magic, fire, cold and lightning;
Set Nightmare unique/champion/superunique modifier +20% absorb magic, fire, cold, lightning;
Set Hell monster modifier +20% absorb magic, fire, cold and lightning;
Set Hell unique/champion/superunique +40% absorb magic, fire, cold and lightning;
Add monster health multiplier 0.5;
Add monster damage multiplier 1.1; //because why not?
Remove boss bonus damage multiplier on minions and add chance of killing blow of 5-10% on them; //because could be fun
End;

Absorb isn’t tied to resistance and neither should, while resistance can mitigate the damage can be breakable on most scenarios, absorb on the other hand if you have 50% you don’t get any damage at end of the math, you actually get healing out of it if passes 50%.

The goal it’s damage mitigation to help escalate down monsters hp. Not reduce the overall monster resistance. My goal in fact was just maintain the current numbers just move some benefits of monster modifiers to the base monster itself. Like enchanted instead of 75% give 50% because the 25% would be already on the foe itself.

That’s how you make foes more resistant overall without breaking those breakpoints. Absorb just contribute to a raw damage reduction without any outside parameter

2k dmg on a 50% resist would be 1000, on a 25% would be 1500. But both scenarios if a foe had 50% absorb the damage would be 0 at end of the math, while 25% absorb would make the first scenario be 500 and the second 750.

So, I don’t know how you conceptualized your idea because you pretty much said the inverse of what I tried to achieve. Just the fact of having 25% absorb already could contribute to an overall 50% hp reduction, my goal was about 30-40 range to actually make foes harder and reduce the hp of them about 50% maybe around 60%.

Slomo4shO-1943 · February 6, 2022, 7:45pm

Your argument regarding means of reducing resistance is moot.

Only 3 of those can actually break immunities. Lower resistance, Conviction, or Amplify/Decrepify. Only Conviction and Lower Resistance can be stacked and even then there are instances of where they still can’t break resistances.

As it currently stands:

Fire has 105 total monster types that have fire immunity of which only 9 can’t be broken with Conviction. Of those 9, only Act 5 Pit Lords fire immunity can’t be broken even if Conviction and Lower Resistance curse are combined.

On the other hand, there are only 65 cold immune types in the game but of those 42 can’t be broken with Conviction. Furthermore, of the 42, 20 can never be broken even with Conviction and LR stacked.

There are 74 monster types which are immune to lightning of which only one, Horror Lightning Mage found in Act 5, that can’t be broken with Conviction aura.

I suppose I can go further and discuss level 12 Conviction(Infinity) as well. Immunities that can’t be broken by level 12 Conviction jump to 29 for Fire, 53 for Cold, and 6 for Lightning.

On your absorb workaround, you are also completely ignoring the healing aspect of absorb.

UnluckyMan-1494 · February 6, 2022, 8:07pm

Actually i’m not. That’s why I capped up 50%, because at 50% would be 0 damage. After that would effectively heal. Below to it will ending reducing.

2k dmg 50% resistance = 1000 dmg. Absorb by 25% equals 750, 250 heal, meaning 500 dmg in the end.

That already cut the damage by 1/4. Meaning possible to reduce foe’s hp by 1/2. Pretty much straightforward solution.

You forgot sanctuary, works the same but instead of reduce just ignore it. Also gear and cold mastery just doesn’t break immunity but behaves the same as lower resistance while conviction also reduces target defense.

Doesn’t mean that all of them behave the same, just some doesn’t break immunity while others can. On d2r we had a temporary period of cold mastery breaking immunity even if the foe had a label saying “immune”. If it’s not messed up, well… We have different definitions of it and we would agree on disagreeing.

Create gear to deal with resistance it’s more perky mechannics without parameters, instead of direct approach. Even if you have the amount of foes that are immune to those forms of immunity breaks, doesn’t address problems of overall damage from player’s side neither the negative impact of huge hp pools

I’m talking about apples, you’re about oranges. You want pierce and mess with resistance, that empowers players not foes. I’m empowering foe’s because player’s doesn’t need any additional buffs they’re strong enough already and will got even stronger because they’re planning buffing underperforming builds.

The absorption could also show if physical builds would overperform, so in that regard they could adjust physical damage reduction(integer not percentile) if needed to slightly higher numbers(percentile) or introduce flat base bonuses to counter the likes of decrepify and amplify.

Foe’s needs to be tougher without rely on HP, otherwise some skills simply would underperform forever or become broken on normal to be useful on hell. Absorb can handle that, resist not much.

Their run on thorns and holy fire already proven that.

Slomo4shO-1943 · February 6, 2022, 10:24pm

Sanctuary is Magic Damage and there are very few magic immunes in the game.

As for your point about Developer success rate on their current attempts at balance, yea I am not counting on it. Nevertheless, my original stance of reducing total investment requirements for skills to allow hybrid builds or going back to 1.09 version of the game in regards to immunity. Up until Synergies patch, single damage type of setups were viable with the exception of Melees in CS. Iron Maiden was eventually removed to allow melees to finally clear CS without the risk of killing themselves instantly. Your path to a solution is more complex to impletement and we already know that the developers have no understanding of core game mechanics. Also, what is more practical? Redoing how resistances works or reverting back to when the game already worked without the immunities? Recall that synergies patch also added massive boost to monster HPs.

Also, this topic was about runewords, I am unsure why we are having a debate on immunities in this topic.