Better ways to help circumvent Immunities

PTR Feedback
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You said the problem was that Terror Zones are too easy for Hammerdins… so did you make Terror Zones harder for Hammerdins? You did not. You made it easier for other builds, but not most builds. You basically gave us another “I win” item to chase after, but only for certain builds, mostly Sorceress.

There were so many fun ways to approach this and make things more fun. Ways to allow players to overcome or circumvent immunities, some of them easy to do.

But you didn’t do any of them. Instead, you did the laziest, most boring, and least fun way of all, and doesn’t even help half the player base.

Look if you want to buff the Sorceress why didn’t you do it any of the fun ways?

Currently the dominant builds are the Lightning Sorceress, the Nova Sorceress, and the Blizzard Sorceress. With the Nova Sorceress being decidedly weaker than the alternatives.

Meteor Sorceress is held back by the immense number of Fire immunes. Add Physical damage to Meteor ala Armageddon. Change the synergy to Firebolt from Meteor to adding physical damage instead of fire damage. There, now the Firebolt/Fireball/Meteor Sorceress is a viable build. (I’d probably also make the Meteor hit faster than it does currently but hey I’m aiming for the least work for you here).

Change Frost Nova to have only 1 synergy from Shiver Amor with 20% damage increase (ie the same end damage as currently). There, now a Nova/Frost Nova build is possible, and you’d have a fun dual element build.

Remove the Fireball synergy from Hydra, double the synergy effect of Firebolt. Remove the synergy to Charged Bolt and increase its native damage/damage increase by 6% (ie the same damage without synergies as it currently has with). Remove the synergies to Glacial Spike and increase its native damage by 15% (ie the same damage without synergies as it currently has with). There, now a Hydra/Charged Bolt or a Hydra/Glacial Spike hybrid build is possible.

There, a few easy changes and you’ve made the Sorceress be able to laugh in the face of Immunities, but in a fun way. Players would be having the time of their lives playing all the new variants.

Want to help melee classes? Heck, just give Superior Weapons +100 to +300 Attack Rating instead of the laughable current +1 to +3. It’s nowhere near all that needs to be done for melee classes, but at least it’d help. More substantial benefits need to allow hitting higher frame per a second attacks (especially for Crossbows), granting higher damage to two handed weapons, and giving physical skills low key AofE damage (or equivalent). Think the changes to Leap Attack, or the way Fend or Zeal work), but those are all a lot of work, so I’m okay with you doing just a little this patch, but gives us something.

Assassin fixes for Martial Arts and Blade Traps will take more detailed effort, but want something easy and completely new for the Assassin?

Psychic Hammer does pathetic damage. Triple the damage increase (for both Magic and Physical) per a point in Psychic Hammer. That would result in Level 56 Psychic Hammer doing approximately 520-640 damage (half physical and half magic). Compare this to level 54 Holy Bolt that does 838-956 magic damage (also piercing but limited to Undead and Demons). Then also give Psychic Hammer a synergy of +50% damage per a point in Mind Blast (comparable to the +50% damage increase Holy Bolt gets from Fist of the Heavens).

At level 50 Mind Blast does 336-346 Physical Damage. Give Mind Blast a synergy of +10% damage per a point in Psychic Hammer. That should result in a level 50 Mind Blast doing 1008-1038 Physical Damage with max synergies.

These changes would create a caster Assassin, using Mind Blast against groups and Psychic Hammer against single targets. It would not be overpowered, with a clear speed well below that of a FofH Paladin. However, it would be a lot safer due to the Stun and Knockback effects and might be attractive to Hardcore players. More importantly it would create an entirely new build type for the Assassin class.

All of these changes would be more fun than what you have done, and most of them require very little effort to change.

Do you just not care anymore? Or do you really not understand the game?

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Or do you really not understand the game?

This

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Man, I really like the concept of your proposed changes and i think its the better philosophy. Open up hybrid element options to deal with immunes rather than pigeon hole specialization.

You get better theory crafting too, trying to balance efficiency and element types.

Makes me sad thinking about what could have been.

Also, like the ways to buff melee too, sorely needed.

Imo melee needs a niche to fill that casters cant or they need to come out on top in some way, given the best in slot gear.

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Why can’t OP be in charge of D2R development? Or literally almost anyone here. What is going on in this company where they make a super conservative patch re balance, then roll out a meta nuke as an afterthought in the next?

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I agree with the contents of the above article. However, FHR modification and rollback must be performed concurrently.

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Your post is very good and describes exactly what is wrong with 2.5. We need a synergy rework to bring more build diversity and more ways to deal with immunities (not breaking them but deal with them with another element) . They just realized terror zones are a bad idea because they are not accessible for majority of players. But instead of reworking synergies or rework immunities in this zones they gave us this little dhitty charm…

I mean you could literally just implement the following:

1 hour the zones have no light immunities. Next hour another element is picked.

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Sunder Charms are WRONG. They are literally WRONG. A crime against D2.

Your changes actually sound amazing and well thought out. F these Charms. Literal smooth brain idea

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Some things take more effort and time. For example, how to improve melee and physical damage classes will probably take several iterations, so I’m willing to wait.

Necromancer is going to take a major rework because the curse tree needs to have fewer one point wonders and more interesting like the previous patch changes to Weaken. So I’m willing to wait a bit.

Sorceress is the one that could really easily be made better by unleashing the hybrids, but I wasn’t pushing it because the Sorceress is already powerful. But if they are willing to do these Sunder charms, then please, please, just fix the synergy issues for the Sorceress. It’d be so much more fun and interesting.

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Completely agree with OP. The ironic thing is that the Physical Sunder Charm already exists in aura form: Sanctuary aura. The problem is Sanctuary only works on Undead and therefore is largely ignored in lieu of Curses that break PI. Awhile back I was going to suggest adding Demon to Sanctuary which would put 90% of the game into easy mode(like it is now for FoHdins using FoH/Holy Bolt) but opted against it because it’d break the game. Now these Sunder Charms have effectively made me reconsider my position.

I mean if they’re going to blatantly break the game and disregard game mechanics that have existed for years, then I might as well break the game further by putting Melee on par with Elemental builds. Granted Animal/Beast are still PI or unaffected so a new attribute of %Beast can be added to apply solely to Animal/Beast Class Monsters and Sanctuary basically affects all 3. The Physical Charm grants level 20 Sanctuary aura and now all enemies will get %Undead/Demon/Beast Modifier and ignore Physical Resistance.

Paladins natively roll with it so let’s have a Sanctuary Paladin steamroll the game… sighs… Diablo 3 within a year? Who’d have thought it…

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My thought on Sanctuary Aura is that you ought to expand it to include Demons as well as Undead but change it so the pulse that has knockback and magic damage triggers on striking/attack. (On Attack would be the option if you want to make it not work with ranged attacks like Blade Fury).

This makes it so Sanctuary aura is not a good fit for Zeal, because the knockback prevents the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th blows from striking. It can still be used by Zealots as a way to deal with PI, but not for normal game play.

You know who would benefit from it though? Charge Paladins. Knockback actually helps Charge Paladins allowing a repeated charge on the same monster, and the magic damage on the pulse would give the Charge Paladin a bit of area of effect damage too.

It would also work decently well with Sacrifice.

There is a lot of room for improvements in the game to make it fun and interesting if you are willing to be clever and not just create a charm to act as a bandaid.

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An issue with focusing on making dual-element builds work better is that you do eventually run into mobs that are immune to exactly those two elements (for the sake of argument, consider “physical” and “magic” damage elements here). So the Sunder Charms do solve it altogether, even if some rebalancing of skills may be a good idea if the new charms are implemented.

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Your post is very well written and exactly my thoughts as well.

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what’s sad is that they do what is lazy, and then all of us vets give them awesome ideas, and they don’t even read them…

such a waste. who’s going back to LoD ? i’ll probably be on useast if this is as bad as imagined.

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They could have taken really fun ways to improve the game as you mentioned, but sadly they took the most boring way.