Every since some guy at Blizzard North came up with synergies in a patch, the game began spiralling down, from a playing game to the tele one shot madness we have today.
When he added synergies, he invented the 1 skill build. Before that, people complained, that they had put points into ice bolt, and then they got orb, and never used ice bolt again. We modern and smart people know of course how to solve that. It is called a respec, but that hadn’t been invented yet.
So he added synergies, and now players oogled at the damage numbers coming from just useing 1 skill and put all points into synergies.
But it’s even worse than that. Where we know about diminishing returns, and how at the endgame, you pay much for little advancement, the patcher didn’t know about that. So for example, I put 20 points in Lightning, and 20 points into Lightning Mastery, the official synergy from the game developers who made the game. And my damage is around 6500.
Now If I continue putting points into synergies, my damage ends around 15000-20000!
So suddenly after the first 40 points invested, the damage completely takes of. This destroys anyone who would like a dual elemental sorcerer, who can fight all mobs in hell.
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I’ve done just fine with fireball+meteor/Frozen Orb. Currently running firewall/Frozen orb and she’s doing just fine. I know the firewall damage is bugged right now.
I’ve always thought firewall was a bit weak when maxed anyway… Definitely a breath of fresh air from running Blizzard all of the time. 
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Don’t forget that that 15000-20000 is max damage, with a minimum damage of like 10.
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While I understand where this is coming from, the game has been balanced around the synergies. To remove them would be to rebalance the game from scratch.
Let us not forget how the game was before the synergies. You had less builds that could make it through hell mode. Synergies made it more possible
Don’t forget synergies also allow you to “specialize” your character if you so choose to so you can deal tons of dmg even in an 8 player game. The downfall is that you cannot play the game solo as effectively due to immunities. The reverse is true for those who choose to spec in more than one type of skill; less effective with multiple ppl games but you’re very effective solo and able to clear the entire game.
Ehhh… even back in the “old days” you had a work around for it - not spending points. Back in the dark days for Necro I’d basically level-up without spending any points before 30 except Bone Armor, heh
Except two of the three most popular Sorc builds, for example, are dual element. The issue for single element build (Blizzard) becomes the same as my main - Summomancer. After 60ish skill points you start running out of places to put points. So dual can still be a strong contender but does take a bit longer to build.
The problem really isn’t the synergies themselves… My problem is really that there’s not enough useful synergies for all classes.
For example, not all classes have Masteries available to them. Why doesn’t the Amazon have specific Masteries for bows and javelins? Then there’s the case of the Assassin, which has Claw Mastery right up front, and the Barbarian which has weapon Masteries upfront, yet the Sorceress has to wait until level 30 in order to spec into Mastery.
The whole system is completely nonsensical. Either it should be based on Masteries toward the end or toward the beginning giving bonuses for each class that enhance their greatest strengths.
just wish more synergies existed.
Back in the day it was exciting to finally figure out how to stack your skills for max damage. but after you play for a while you can “see” that options are sort of limited on what skills will carry you into hell and beyond.
But that’s why they give you (3) skill resets, one for each difficulty. So you can choose skills to get you through that area. would be nice to just stick with one build tho.
Although it’s a drastic change to the current skill/synergy system, I think it would be interesting to rework the synergies as well as eliminating the prerequisites for skills.
The synergy rework idea would be along the lines of +damage% per hard skill point invested in other skills of the same tree, which starts out at a base +damage% amount, but diminishes the more points you invest. Each skill having its own +damage% being tested and balanced for each skill. Other non-damaging skills would have their own specialized synergies, or none at all.
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Synergies were also more added to promote putting points into early skills while leveling as well. Pre-synergy, it was basically ONLY put 1 point in Pre-Req and suffer until you get to the main skill level. Synergies I feel were a great change when they added them.
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well no, you won’t “run out of places to put points” in a pure blizzard build until lvl 95
I could be wrong - Sorc is literally my least played class - but doesn’t the return start drastically decreasing there and thus why hybrid builds do well? For instance, sure, I can put points in Revive but… ehhh… the DR there gets severe after awhile because each additional Revive tends to not add that much effective damage even under optimal conditions
nah. blizzard build has the most comprehensively overpowered synergies in the game, and cold mastery is wickedly OP against anything that isn’t immune. blizzard gets synergies from all four cold attacks. ice bolt, ice blast, glacial spike, and frozen orb. at 20 points, cold mastery reduces enemy cold resistance by 115%. i’m not sure how the math works out in the background but percentages are a funky thing to calculate. if it’s not cold immune, and it’s resistance is lowered to negative 115%, it’s way more than 115% more damage.
it’s like how raising your maximum fire resist from 75% to 80% fire resist is a lot more than an extra 5% damage reduction, but in reverse. it’s what makes blizz sorc the most efficient farming and magic find build in the game due to sheer speed, as long as you dont run into immunes. a dual cold/fire or cold/lightning sorc isn’t anywhere close to as fast at killing packs as a bliz sorc.
that’s assuming basic gear of course. there are builds that are as fast, but they rely on way more expensive gear and rare runeswords. a blizz sorc can do it naked.
edit: i take it back, blizzard doesn’t get synergies from frozen orb. you basically choose which nuke you wanna use, blizz, or orb
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That’s because of monster resists. The more cold resist a monster has, the higher the percentage damage cold mastery grants you. As an extreme example, if a monster has 99% cold resist and you have a 100 damage ice bolt, it would ordinarily take just 1 damage. But if you have -99% cold resist piercing from mastery, i.e. lvl 17, it would now take 100 damage, effectively amplifying your damage by 10000%. Neither fire nor lightning mastery can achieve this level of effectiveness despite their higher numbers for damage increase (compared to cold mastery’s piercing). If there wasn’t a hard cap at -100% resists, cold mastery would be utterly broken. Just about every monster in hell has increased resistances too, so cold mastery is particularly effective there while fire and lightning need insanely high numbers, or Infinity, to compete.
We used to level our friends to 30+ so they didn’t mess up their builds by actually playing the game.
That being said, most people don’t even play the game anyway. Glitch rush + chaos runs + baal runs = lvl 85+ by the time the guy playing the actual game reaches lvl 30
Youre not supposed to clear everything. Got to balance it.
Its easily possible to make any kind of character, and have a backup skill for immunes, every character does. no, it doesnt wipe like your main skill obviously, but thats the point.
Plus you have a mercenary, who is always a savior in some cases.
Synergies were the answer to people being used to playing with hacked items and having things like occy rings and over inflated damage.
They however broke the game which is why they added new runewords with it to make some characters be viable still which wasn’t bad in a heavily duped economy but in this game… its kinda sad.
you can still make just as powerful of a sorc without synergies as you could before 1.10
Sorceress
Cold Spells
Ice Bolt - Increased Cold Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
Frozen Armor - Added skill synergy bonuses.
Frost Nova - Increased Cold Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
Ice Blast - Increased Cold Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
Shiver Armor - Increased Cold Damage. Increased Cold Duration. Added skill synergy bonuses.
Glacial Spike - Increased Cold Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
Blizzard - Increased Cold Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
Chilling Armor - Increased Cold Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
Frozen Orb - Added skill synergy bonus.
Lightning Spells
Charged Bolt - Added skill synergy bonuses.
Energy Shield - Added skill synergy bonuses.
Nova - Rebalanced Lightning Damage.
Lightning - Added skill synergy bonuses.
Chain Lightning - Added skill synergy bonuses.
Fire Spells
Fire Bolt - Increased Fire Damage at higher levels. Added skill synergy bonuses.
Inferno - Increased Fire Damage at higher levels. Added skill synergy bonuses
Fire Ball - Increased Fire Damage at higher levels. Slightly increased Mana cost. Added skill synergy bonuses.
Enchant - Rebalanced Fire Damage. Added Attack Rating bonus. Reduced Mana cost. Added Skill Synergy Bonus.
Meteor - Added skill synergy bonuses.
Hydra - Rebalanced Fire Damage. Added skill synergy bonuses.
with the exception of nova, hydra and enchant all skill damage either stayed the same or got buffed not including synergies.
also you can still make dual element builds with a ton of damage
https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/qj01066r
just a quick and dirty non optimized build that would melt just about every mob in hell.
No it doesn’t you can still beat enemies in hell without having all that high damage. Players think that they have to do that much damage to just be able to clear hell and they are wrong.
it is the same problem with players thinking that they must have their character with the best gear in the game in every slot to clear hell when you can do it with far less than best gear.
Im actually suprised after i respecced my sorc today.
I just wanted to optimize her a little bit in terms of orb/firewall/masteries and putting points into warmth and fire mastery (each level one point in the opposite skill) the damage suddenly skyrocketed.
Allmost 10k per second now
Only 6k-7k before.