These charms introduce huge power creep for the already most powerful builds in the game, except Hammerdins, and do almost nothing for physical builds.
Here’s the easy and simple solution to all of the immunity problems. Nerf all immunities to be <=115 resistance. This will make Infinity break all immunities instead of nearly all lightning, half fire and almost no cold immunes. <=110 resistance to make Lower Resist do the same. This will have about the same effect as these charms, except without the insane power creep of Infinity/Cold Mastery + these charms.
Problem solved. Early game you still need to strategize around immunities (as you should, Hell is supposed to be hard) and once you reach the endgame with Infinity you can spec whichever elemental build you like and play it everywhere in the game. And all that without making the gap between elemental characters and physical characters even bigger than it already is.
edit: oh yeah forgot to add that this solution would work for summons and traps as well, Blizzard should hire me as a dev
There are tons of solutions given by players for immunities but instead they are going modern d3/poe power creep route with new items to make season “interesting to play”.
While I like the immunities, it’s true that if they would be removed there were many ways already brought forward by players.
For immunities to be removed however rebalancing would be needed, which ofcourse they won’t do, at the very least cold mastery would need a rework, why do a decent job when you can just mess everything up right?
Funny thing is, to make the new ladder interesting to play, they had only needed to started it.
Many players have been playing the game for 20 years or more and still enjoyed playing the game, even did it on 800x600 on my 4k monitor having a tiny screen inside a screen.
I loved the idea of getting that game on 4k, few QoL upgrades fine with that, if the dev’s were good at what they do maybe some balance changes along the way, but slowly and don’t rush things or you’ll end up with D3.
These charms are just disgusting and on top of that so horribly balanced that they had no clue what they were doing, yes PTR is for balancing the stuff, but you need to make it near balanced to now how to adjust it, this is so far off its not even in the same state.
Why try to find bandaids to fix it when it’s providing nothing of value in the first place
Just remove it by capping resists at 95%
Give hell monsters a baseline of 40-50 all resist
Compensate that overcapped resist with life% or absorb
Tweak -resist sources since they all now apply
Immunity is not the problem. Immunity is what makes D2 D2. Immunities force you to strategize around them until you get powerful enough gear that you no longer have to. No longer having to deal with immunities is a reward, it’s the final goal.
This is also one of the reasons why Hammerdins are so overpowered, they don’t really have to deal with immunities because magic immunes are so rare. D2 already is an easy game but it’s not a simple game. Quite complex mechanics actually. Taking away immunities makes the game more easy while also making it more simple. It’s gonna take away some of the longevity of the game. If you want a more simple game without immunities, Diablo 3 is sitting right there.
The only fix needed is to bring every non-magic element to the level of lightning, where Infinity can break all immunities instead of just lightning. That’s not a bandaid, it’s a straight up solution to the “every endgame build is a hammerdin or lightning character” problem.
If you don’t understand that, you have no clue how Diablo 2 works.
Unless you focus on the word “introduce” because then your right, powercreep has already been in the game, 1.10 was a big example of that and the dev’s cleary focus on buffing to bring to lesser builds up to OP level instead of nerfing OP builds.
Nerfs are reserved for the less worthy builds like melee.
Every decent elemental build simply needs such a charm and add some facet/infinity or other lower resistance effect (a few points in Cold Mastery for example is a dirt cheap way) and they will blow away all content, because they already cold unless stopped by immunes.
The 1/5th ratio is also gone as it starts at 95%, thus level 36 Cold Mastery will make sure that Blizzard deals double damage on every monster you fight.
Blizzard can thus now do near 50k dps in an AoE and no monster in the game will get reduced or no damage.
The drawsback are not really worth mentioning, it’s quite easy to circumvent and sometimes you don’t even need to (Flickering Flame for example is already the strongest option for most fire builds and causes most to have an overkill to fire resistance while Sorc’s can simply throw energy shield into the mix and need no longer about resistances).
So yes most of the already strong builds will become a lot stronger, this is not a buff to the lesser builds that will bring them more on par, it’s raising the overall power of most builds by removing their weaknesses.
Imagine you are a light sorc and you are farming chaos. You go to kill Grand Vizier, who is naturally lightning immune, but not to worry, because your mercenary has Infinity and will break his lightning immunity. Grand Vizier has 83% lightning resistance after Infinity takes effect. Because you are 1337 you also have a perfect Griffon with a perfect facet, granting an additional -25% resistance. Effectively Grand Vizier has 58% resistance to your lightning attacks.
Because you are 1337 you are wearing Hoto and have 9 skillers and all that. Your Lightning does 6-42k damage. Grand Vizier will take only 42% of that damage, 3-18k. You have the 120% FCR breakpoint which means that you can cast Lightning 2.08 times per second, coming to an average damage per second of 18k.
2.5 hits. Because you are 1337 you can now replace one of your skillers with an awesome sundering charm. Your Lightning now does 6-40k damage. Grand Vizier now has 95% lightning resistance. After Infinity he has 10% resistance, and after factoring in your Griffon’s with facet he now has -15% resistance. Your Lightning will effectively do 8-46k damage, which means with 2.08 casts per second your Lightning will effectively do 48k damage per second.
Versus monsters who are not immune to lightning, nothing changes. For monsters who are immune to lightning, you are going to be killing them about 3 times as quickly. This goes for fire and cold too of course, lightning just makes a very nice comparison because it already breaks immunity with Infinity.
So charms are bad but infinity’s good for the same purpose, the same goal . Instead of having 8 different ways of breaking the immunity’s 7 of those single it should only be one that breaks all because the game breaks if people don’t need infinity anymore for any elemental build.
Read my post just above yours to see why these charms are a bad solution. It’s not hard to understand why these charms are a real stupid idea with infinity existing in the game.
These charms would be fine IF things like infinity and lower resist didn’t exist. Infinity and LR etc. are fine BECAUSE these charms don’t exist. The combination of these charms with infinity/lower resist/cold mastery/… is massive powercreep.
My understanding is cold mastery already effects all but immunes and -res is capped at double damage. So blizzard is OP in cold skill line but even with double damage still don’t touch fire or lit damage potential because of their masteries, synergy’s and cast rate. So what would be the point of running infinity on a cold sorc if -RES is capped so cold sorc gets double damage at the cost of being the lowest DPS build a sorc can have because of the -res cap.
Fire and lit need to use items to make up the - res difference because they get a buff to damage with their masteries so in a sense I see some semblance of balance.
We are talking end game here and end game should be powerful that’s the reward for time invested I just don’t feel it should take 1000s of hours to get end game everyone competing for one item that’s my opinion. Some builds are going to be OP yes I agree but a small cost to have 20 builds instead of 3. With more builds available nerfs on the OP 3 might not hurt so much.
I read the above like you asked and still feel the same only one item breaks the economy
These charms add ZERO damage to builds. In fact, it can be argued that they lower overall damage as the charm takes the space of a +skiller…
What they do acomplish, unevenly across builds, is allow allow every version of damage type to engage every monster in the game just like one is able to do for 2/3 of the game currently (unless you are hammerdin, than it’s 95%+)…
My suggestion (nerfing immunities so they can all be broken by infinity/lower resist) doesn’t trivialize the game. As a fire sorc you’re still gonna have to be scared of Infector’s pack because you’ll have to take like 5-6 seconds to kill them. As a lightning sorc you can’t just say “hey, let me quickly one-shot that pack of souls”, just like it is now. Because souls are dangerous and if you don’t kill them quickly they will kill you. And as a cold sorc you would still be limited because your damage output in full endgame gear is not as obscene.
With these charms? Hey I see a pack of souls or cursed dark archers as a light sorc/javazon? No biggie, I just one shot them like everything else. Infector with conviction as a Fire sorc? Lol who the f cares I kill them in 2 fireballs! It’s going to take all of the challenge out of the game. You no longer have to stop and think “hey these dangerous monsters might still take me 3-4 seconds to kill, I should make sure that there’s a safe place to escape to or nothing else nasty closeby”. You can just press teleport, press your generic skill X that kills stuff on screen and move to the next pack. No brain required.
Yeah sorry, yes. My math demonstrated that very, very clearly YES there is a huge power creep vs monsters immune to your element.
Go try and kill a boss pack of souls on the PTR with a light sorc and then do it with a light sorc in current and tell me which was easier.
Yes, exactly. And you may have noticed, somehow, if you had your slomo brain turned on while playing, that souls are much less dangerous when you are playing a hammerdin or fire sorc than when playing a light sorc. Because they die a lot faster.
It is literally not access to content you are artificially locked out of. Were light sorcs not able to farm places with souls in them? Oh yeah that’s right, they were! But it was much harder than Chaos Sanctuary for example. It is content that was previously hard made easy. That is the very definition of power creep.
