Whatever they did, they used to have an intended difficulty, that being tear you a new butthole, and now they hit like pool noodles or wild inflatable guy at a car dealership arms. And it’s gone now. It’s not right, and it’s just plain sad. If it was bugged in some way for D2R specifically, okay, fix it. But they’re nothing like their LoD counterpart anymore
The new bug was just how the cloud ticks and got fixed with all attack speed, and assorted timing issues. The crushing blow thing was a bug from way back and they left it because one dev wanted too. It has always been controversial. But they should IMO at least increase the poison damage a moderate amount and just leave out the crushing blow as that is for their physical attacks. They still do them too.
its good that some monsters need to be respected a bit more imo.
worst case scenario you switch to gloom armor to stop them from spamming freely. theyll be a joke then.
theyre only really spooky on the first hell playthrough of the season imo.
Somehow I always assumed that Dev was just lazy and didn’t want to fix the bug, so he said “working as intended”
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Yes, let’s just make the game a cake walk for any character regardless of skill level or equipment.
Monsters on the very last level of the game should be hard and should be some that you go in with a plan and appropriate gear, not just waltz through as you did the rest of the game. Max res doesn’t mean much if you have pitiful life.
Plan accordingly and you will handle them fine. Just goes to show your group is not ready for that level. Doesn’t mean to just nerf the monsters, it should mean go get better gear in earlier levels.
Yep.
Also important to remember how lightning damage works. The range is always 1 to X, with X being a pretty high number in A5 Hell, so lightning damage is a lot more variable than the other elements. That’s completely as intended.
So, even with full res and some absorb, sometimes the whole pack is going to high roll on you and you’re going to get dead. That’s why you have to be careful about aggroing a whole room at once if Souls are present.
I think +to absorb is > than %absorb in situations like vs souls. T-God’s is +to absorb, and also bumps your max to 85%. I never get bothered by them with this on. I joined a baal run one day and the TP was super HOT with mass souls. Everyone around me was dropping like flies. Didn’t bother me one bit. Barb life.
Unfortunately yes… it is… I have to put on Tgods + wisp projector and a few extra lighting resist charms I keep in my stash just for World Stone 2 and Throne of Destruction, which I promptly which out once I’ve cleared the throne to kill Baals minions.
Stygian Dolls also fall into this terrible category of being truly Hell worthy monsters that require endgame gear or careful consideration… Worse when they appear at the same time as burning souls! I just remake the game and abort the Baal run when that happens hahaha
75+ resist lighting is the first line, then tanking the remain <25% remaining damage. If you are already resisting the majority of the damage then +to absorb would be superior where as %to absorb would more helpful for the large hits(uber mephisto).
2000 damage(after resist), 15% absorb = 300 damage healed(600 soaked) = 1400 damage taken
2000 damage(after resist), +20 absorb = 20 damage healed(40 soaked) = 1960 damage taken
% is better
20 damage(after resist), 15% absorb = 3 damage healed(6 soaked) = 14 damage taken
20 damage(after resist), +20 absorb = 20 damage healed(40 soaked) = -20 damage taken
- is better
Maximum percent absorb is 40% meaning you can only negate 80% damage at most for a large hit but potentially be healed by +absorb on smaller hits.
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“…and the entire party dies…” all this proves is that 8 noobs can still get into one game.
TiamatFix - As single items, I’ve used wisp projector 20%, Lightsaber 25% and T-God’s.
T-God’s always fairs much better, by a lot (Act4/5 Hell). Based on the body counts, I’d say that souls damage is not exactly on the low side. I apologize if I’m missing something here, but there is no amount of math that is going to get me to swap back to something that doesn’t work as well as T-God’s. Perhaps it the 85% res all to their damage first that makes the +20 sorb so effective?
I believe as Burning Soul lighting damage passes through you, you get hit with tics/sec of damage instead of a single burst like you would from a meteor/fireball so for + absorb lighting would be superior since it’s low fast hitting damage. But if Uber meph hits you with that fat lightning ball you are better off with the % absorb.
Yes, higher % resistance would likely be more effective with + absorb where as % absorb would likely be much more effective if you had terrible/negative resist.
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Just trying to be helpful here. But if you have enough resistance and lightning absorb gear you literally get healed from lightning damage. I have a few characters that are able to get to 85-90 lightning resist and all I have to do is wear a t-gods belt or Wisp Projector ring and the lightning attacks from the Souls literally does no damage and replenishes my characters life as well.
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Exactly. I’m just making up numbers but imagine Burning Souls do 50 damage per tic @24tics/second meaning with -70% lightning resist you would take 85 lightning damage per tic or 2040 lightning damage per second.
Now you have 85% lightning resist and only take 7.5 damage per tic or 180 damage per second. This is already a huge damage reduction but maybe you get hit by 5 burning souls at the same time doing 900 damage/sec, still ouch…
Let’s put on a perfect Wisp Protector @20% absorb which will now reduce the 7.5 damage to 6 per tic and then apply the 1.5 absorbed as life healed making the total damage 4.5 per tic. Now we are at 108 lightning damage per second or 540 if you are getting hit by 5 lightings at once.
One step further with Tgods at +20 absorb. I’m not sure which applies first, % or + but lets assume + applies first which is worse case. 7.5 damage a tic becomes 7.5 damage absorbed resulting in 0 damage and 7.5 damage per tic healed. Now % doesn’t even matter… with Tgods alone you are now healing at 180 damage per second… Super healing potions heal Barbarians @640 life in ~5 seconds or 128 damage per second… That lightning is now litterally healing you faster than a super healing potion on a Barbarian… and if you didn’t know the super healing potion is less effective on every other class.
Edit: did some research and burning souls lightning attack can hit you 5x per bolt for a total of 1065-2335 lightning damage. So my prior numbers are wrong but the logic still mostly applies.
2335 damage reduced to 231 damage with 90 resist. 231 then reduced by 20% for 184.8 + 46 healing to taking the damage to 138 and then another +20 absorb for 108 + 20 healing for 88 damage IF all 5 lightning tics did their max damage… which isn’t much compared to 2335 damage, less than 4% of the original damage.
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Yeah that edit sounds pretty spot on. I’m still taking damage (not healing/full sorb), but not enough to fear death, especially with 4-5k barb life. (did know about the potion healing - nice!)
This kind of reminds me of +Physical Damage Reduction vs %Physical Damage Reduction when the Nilithak vipers were bugged. At the time, I had an IK set with 3 Sol runes and a nature’s peace ring. The set had some %PDR, but the +PDR really helped a TON against that “tic” damage so I could farm keys and not die.
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Gotta love a game where players will defend this concept of “all you need is these 3 hard to find uniques and maybe enigma to dodge the bolts and absorb damage”.
That said, I am totally in favour of more endgame extrahard content, just maybe doesn’t have to be the 2-3 monsters and everything else a cakewalk.
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was just in a baal run. souls in the throne. paladin hopping around with enigma. javazon with eternity. sork with tals set. all dead. dead on the ground. 5 purple blotches. i enter the throne and clear with my 93 zon. it takes awhile. next game more souls. only 2 die this time. i have yet to get a ber rune or a jah rune in this game. never got a shako. never got tals armor. 23 runs. never died once. merc never died once.
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Marshall, I get what you are saying there. I remember when I first started playing his game people would say, just get this or that, and I was like- oh sure, that’s easy for you! I hated it. But that was when I was a single player, so some things were practically impossible to get.
Online and trading gets it done, but getting from point a-b isn’t that easy, and takes some know how. Unfortunately , most guides are all based on BiS gear, not so much the before game.
I admit I’m a little surprised that more people aren’t asking questions specifically about getting through the game in a playable solo fashion. It seems split between a bunch of people either searching for BiS items/builds and people that just crab that things are broken.
Example: If you’re a starter barb and want to deal with souls - taunt and kill one at a time - (warcry - skill). And make sure your resistance is high (natural resistance - skill). Max Mastery for your best weapon, double swing early on, and max bo (first). Most people don’t want to hear that- they just wanna rush all the way to hell without understanding anything- then crab, crab, crab.
Tankjr, I agree and I think part of the fun is solving the puzzle. However we also want to have new players so that the game continues to get supported. So there’s a balance between brutal difficulty and fair difficulty.
Some of it is just pure damage and makes some builds viable (usually casters that can edge souls) and others like melee struggle without BiS.
Hopefully with the new changes we’ll see more diversity that lets some kind of barb do baal runs at some semblance of speed haha
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Sure new players are always welcome. That doesn’t mean they have to dumb the game down to accommodate them. D2 requires a bit of small problem solving – run into really tough you die fast monsters? Do a little research, figure out why (ALL the information has been out on the web for YEARS now), and adjust your gear accordingly.
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I say leave it. The game needs a few crazy frustrating enemies. It’s always been a part of d2
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