No. Before this change, cold was far superior to other elements, as CM could strip all the resistance to -100%. And even after this nerf, unlike other sorcs and most other build, who need expensive endgame gear like Infinity to reduce enemy res, cold sorcs still need only to level up a skill. It is still unfair, but to a lesser degree.
For removing immunity in the first place, no other mastery does it, they only increase damage against already non-immune targets, so why should CM be different? Use the god-damned Sunder charm. They are common; everyone uses them.
First of all…cm reduce resistance is just another form of increase damage. All it does is to provide consistance damage to target, and it has a hard cap itself. No matter if you leave it at lv 20 or lv 40, it eould increase increase cold spell’s damage by 100% due to the max of -100 resist, unlike fire and lightning, the damage increase will always increase.
Secondly. The reason Cold sorc doesn’t use infinity in the past because cold immune monster have much higher cold resist than other element such as lightning. Majority of lightning immune have lightning resist below 117, which inifinity can break, average cold resist for cold immune is 160+. You can’t break them even with lv25 conviction+ lv 20 lr. With CM breaking immunity at 1/5 effectiveness, you still requiring a high level investment of CM just to bring mobs down to 99.
This suggestion isnt making CM op as you may think, it is simply requesting dev to keep their goal by giving what other skill base reduce resist spells do in the first place.
True, - enemy res ultimately increases damage. But there is still a difference. Take a sundered enemy with 95% res as a base. You do 1-95% = 5% damage to it. Fire and lightning mastery increase you damage dramatically (lvl 40 FM ≈ +300%, lvl 40 LM ≈ +500%), that is, 4× and 6× respectively. But it still gets multiplied by the resistance! So after all those calculations you do only 20% or 30% of your original damage, which means the 4× or 6× increase over the base 5% with no mastery.
Cold mastery does not increase our damage, but only reduces enemy res. So after removing enemy res down to -100%, we do 200% of our original damage. This is 40× as much as without CM against sundered enemy.
Also true, but since Sunder charms were introduced (BTW, I do not support this at all), it doesn’t matter how much res the immune enemy has. All is reduced to 95% (and the results are as above).
And even if there were no Sunder charms, but CM worked against immunes, even with 1/5 penalty many enemies would lose their immunity (those with at most 140% res, even 150% with BiS gear). And all of that for “free”, that is, just with + cold skills gear, which you’d equip anyway. Other sorc builds cannot remove immunities without endgame gear, which in practice means only Infinity.
Anyway, immunes are in the game for a reason. You either focus on a single element, but struggle against immunes or make a hybrid build with all its compromises. At least in theory. Infinity and later Sunders broke this balance.
I think balancing it back, so the game is not trivial, would require deeper changes. For example removing Sunders and Infinity (or at least Conviction from it, or just reducing its level - -55% enemy light res is still massive even without the aura), but allowing -res gear to work against immunities. That’d bring some interesting choices, such as Phoenix/Doom/Crescent Moon as a main weapon with -enemy res or a standard caster weapon with +skills and FCR, such as Oculus, Spirit or HotO.
Lv27 CM gives -150% resist, 1/5 of 150 os 30, thats not even enough to break most of the 140%. If you need to break 140% cold immune, you do need endgame gear that brings CM to 200% (1/5 of 200 is 40), plus lv 3 lr wand or infinity to bring them down. Which means items like doom or cold facet 's reduce resist is finally useful.
This is no way the case. If u take a sunder charm all it does is break immunity and bring it down to 95% res. Now lets say u play a fire build and u apply a hit for 1000 damage the monster will take 50 damage with 95% res. If u take the same hit with a 200% enhanced fire damage from fire mastery this monster will take 150 damage. Now cold mastery works much different . With a cold sunder the monster goes to 95% cold res now with a 1000 damage cold hit this monster will take 50 damage without cold mastery. However with a 200%- cold res from cold mastery applied on 1/5 of value this same monster wil go to 55% cold res and take 450 damage. Even a midschool kid can see the difference here its basically 3 times more than the fire version and same goes for lightning
False Premise 1: The base damage of the sorceress’s fire skills and cold skills are the same. The sorceress’s fire skills have higher base damage than cold skills.
False Premise 2: +200% Fire Mastery and -200% Cold Mastery are equivalent. -200% Cold Mastery is equivalent to +282% Fire Mastery, but also Cold Mastery is effectively “capped” at that point, while Fire Mastery can continue to increase with more +skills.
Then there is also a framing issue: this comparison only matters for broken immunities. Most enemies have 50% or less resistance in Hell. Cold Mastery is less of a buff against all of these enemies.
It was an example and i used the same value for nothing else. Vs immunes cold sorc will be far stronger than her fire and lightning counterparts with a sunder charm so what if fire mastery goes to 282% at the same lvl the - cold res will still do more damage wich is why the cold sorc is a much better ladder starter and have a lot better clear. Later in ladder lightning will outclass it when u get enough facets and - res gear.
Not the point and it really doesnt matter. like i said i only used the same value to make it easier as an example. besides even with the 282% the monster will only take 191 damage vs the 450 from cold mastery. There is a reason why people always choose cold sorc for ladder start u know. Later other elements get better but they are more gear dependent
its not in any way a fabrication its an example which is why i used the same value just to show how much of a difference -res means compared to increased damage when it comes to sundered immune monsters. basically u can have twice the fire damage and cold will still come out on top on sundered immunes with cold mastery if u have no other means of - res
But you are using that hypothetical “example” (which has no relation to an actual in-game case) to draw a conclusion about balance of the class.
The class’s fire skills and cold skills do not deal the same base damage, and as noted for the same skill level their masteries do not behave as you first described.
As a result, if you plug in any actual skills instead of your fictional 1000 damage fire skill and 1000 damage cold skill, the result is not “three times the damage” in favor of cold.
So to pretend it is and say the actual Cold Mastery skill in the actual game where actual skills exist - and not some hypothetical skills - is busted on that basis is incredibly disingenuous.
Im sorry for ur lack of intelligence and im sorry that ur favorit build got nerfed to a more reasonable state. 90% of ladder start probably still gonna be cold sorc cause they at least know that its still far better than the other elements early ladder. Anyway im done feeding the troll so ill just leave u to ur misery.
Ok lets calculate this. But I am going to tell ya there is a reason why everyone starts with cold sorc
So everything depends on monster resistance.
-Lvl 80 cold sorc will have around 1995-2166 blizzard damage and -100 enemy cold res (no gear)
-Lvl 80 fire sorc will have around 6856-7314 meteor (with delay, no gear)
So lets say monster has 0% res for cold and fire:
-For cold sorc damage doubles and its now 3990 - 4332
-For fire sorc nothing changes and it wins
But lets be real - most monsters in hell difficulty have some kind of resistances lets get a big number :60%
-For cold sorc it is now -40 enemy cold rest so 2793 - 3032
-For fire sorc her skill is now 40% effective so 2742 - 2925
Considering blizzard works almost instant and hits multiple times, and meteor has a delay and hits once(800dmg per second of ground fire is small amount that doesnt change much) : blizzard wins against most hell difficulty monsters due to their resistances.
Also blizzard sorc can still level up and put more points into synergies. Fire sorc is already maxed out.
