Synergies are the problem

General Discussion
1

Everyone is caught up on immunities, but in reality, immunities were never the issue; synergies are.

I see people complaining about this, that, and the other, and a lot of the complaints are:

  1. Hammerdin is too powerful.
  2. Sorceress is too powerful.
  3. Melee sucks.

Before synergies in 1.09, melee was actually more than comparable to casting, as it was very strong in comparison, being able to hit solid damage for the time. Hammerdins were mid at best, and sorceresses were only as strong as they were because of teleport. Bowazons were amazing (with GA pierce), and a lot of issues people have with the game today start with this broken synergy system.

The solutions:

  1. Remove or rework synergies.
    Reworked synergies should never boost the damage of a skill, rather, boost other attributes it provides, such as freeze length, attack rating, etc. If no rework, then the removal of synergies is ideal.

  2. Drop monster health in accordance to the reduced damage from lack of synergies to compensate. This will also improve melee, as their damage won’t be quite as effected as caster’s damage, and monsters having lower health will make them able to clear nearly as fast.

  3. Drop monster resistance in accordance to lower damage. I do not mean remove immunities. I mean dropping non-immune monster’s resistances to a lesser value, and then dropping monsters with higher than 100 resists to be just above 100, and not too much higher, allowing breaking from Infinity/LR more easily.

  4. Scrap this ridiculous charm idea.

EDIT: This will also have the benefit of improving the viability of hybrid builds.

8 Likes
2

Yes please! Sadly sweaty bois will cry rivers of salty, toxic tears of a spoiled entitled brat, if changes like these ever see the light of day.

1 Like
3

Yeah, no skill should have more than 2 synergies honestly.
-1 hard synergy that usually makes sense on most skills.
(Hard dmg)
and a softer secondary synergy.
(Usually duration/defensive boosts)

These new 20% flat dmg boost on multiple synergies is real annoying, making alot of hybrid builds just poop.

3 Likes
4

It is a bit funny people are worried about breaking skill diversity while in current system under one skill it specifically tells you were you have to put your next points.

1 Like
5

To summarize the design problems, and the obvious solutions:

1: At level 2, you get your first skillpoint. Monsters have like 3-5 health. Champions like 8-10.

Your skill can’t deal 100 damage the first 12 levels and thus, by level 12, your level 1 skills can’t be dealing 100 damage.

They opted to have level 6 skills start out at a relative power of a level 1 skill with 6 skillpoints.

Now, obviously, a level 24 skill cannot start at 5-8 damage.
And a level 1 skill cannot max out at 500 damage at skill level 20.

…

Synergies solved this, mainly by giving level 1/6/12 skills bonuses so that they could be used beyond Act 4 normal.

After LoD, monsters got even more health, to make room for characterbuilding.
In late levels of LoD, vanilla monsters have up to 7 000 health.

Now.
To make 50 damage at skill level 20 reach 7 000, at an acceptable pace that doesn’t max out at level 40, something needs to be done.

…

Synergies should be overhauled by someone good at spreadsheeting.
Skill levels above level 20 can be hand-crafted, and damage can be hand-crafted by synergies.

Two other solutions that could have been implemented would be level requirements for higher levels of skills, or skills having their effect tied to both character level and skill level.

Like;
Fire Bolt requires 3 levels per point invested; Requires level 1 for skill level 1, level 4 for skill level 2, level 7 for skill level 3. Easy fix that allows any skill to be paced out and grow powerful in it’s own right, with or without synergies.

And/or:
Sorceress level 1’s skill level 1 Fire Bolt deals 4-5 damage, while Sorceress level 20’s skill level 1 firebolt deals 40-50 damage, and the level 85 sorceress’ skill level 1 Firebolt deals 400-500 damage.

…

And synergies would still have a role – limiting combinations of skills to prevent characters from effortlessly doing any content while invincible, and rewarding dedication to a tree.

1 Like
6

I don’t know if I entirely agree synergies are the problem.

The other thing that LoD and later patches brought are:

  • A lot more +skill gear from anni, torch, spirit, arachs, orbs, +2 ammy, +2 armour, skillers
  • Facets and +elemental skill damage/-enemy resists
  • Infinity and now plague → this and the point above eroded the need to make hybrid builds, and sunder charms are kind of the nail in the coffin
  • A lot more FCR
  • More mana sustain via buying mana pots, mana after each kill, insight

So yes, synergies are a part of this but it’s by far not the only factor.

At least with synergies, they give players the option to either specialise or be more generalised by going hybrid. Having that choice is a good thing.

However for the record, I like the mix up of itemisation that LoD and 1.09 brought to the game. It provides that end game item chase. That’s another good thing.

The problem really boils down to:

  • Casters’ power hasn’t been balanced well enough, it’s too strong
  • The item chase for melee characters is more uphill compared to casters (though this point is unrelated to this thread)

Perhaps with this in mind, the effectiveness of damage synergies need to be brought down to encourage more hybrid builds, but not remove damage synergies entirely.

7

I personally like the concept of synergies.

However it’s mostly the concept I like, not the implementation.
I would also like it to be able to increase the damage, not only other attributes, however it would be more interesting if the damage increase was not so high that you “need” to spend points in the synergy or forgo the skill all together.
I also think all skills should have an equal amount of synergies, whether that be 1,2 or even 5 I really don’t mind as long as the impact is to low to be mandatory.

I also like immunities, but if an actual overhaul is made completely rebalancing how skills work and if this would mean removing most immunities from monsters and lowering many, I could live with that, but personally I would see Infinity reworked or removed as well then (unless -resist gets an overhaul which would be even better), as it being able to break all immunities (like suggested) would only make it even more mandatory and being able to chose between infinity in a mancatcher and infinity in a Giant Thresher is not my idea of diversity.
I do think that if immunities are reduced and cap above 100 lowered, a rework for resistance lowering skills and items is needed aswell, especially skills.
The big issue with these Sunder Charms is not that they place the resistance at 95, it’s that they do it before the -resist is applied, which means that it does not allow to damage the monsters at 5% normal damage, but for many over a 100% or often even at 200% damage (Blizz sorc doesn’t even need go gear to deal double damage to everything in the game).
So change Cold Mastery, Conviction, Lower Resistance and likely Amplify/Decrepify to be more balanced to the new situation.

Don’t think monster HP should be lowered much though, it wasn’t boosted that much in 1.10 and the damage from gear (weapon damage, DS, CB, Facets, +Skills etc etc) was all increased as well their and more over time.
It’s basically why you no longer fight your way through the mobs, but blast through it.
And if people fear for drops getting worse, you can always increase drop chances if you decrease kill speed to compensatie (I personally would prefer drop chances remain the same and thus drops are reduced, not always having everything you want within a few weeks means you need to be more creative and can enjoy a build longer imo).

And yes I think the charm is incredibly stupid and should be removed, but if the -resistance would be rebalanced (including things like the -60% lightning res that is included on infinity) and ofcourse done well, I think I wouldn’t care whether they leave the charm in or not.

1 Like
8

you sound like a screechy fembot sjw. you’re toxic your self.

9

Yeah right. What else would i be? :laughing:

10

Honestly this, immunities are there to force build diversity but it’s only needed because the synergy system shoehorns builds. But if the synergy system is gone we’re left with the original problem that started all this. Crappy skills that no one would ever spec into unless they had to. They need to put in some real thinking if they want to overhaul the whole synergies and immunities system. If they can manage to give utility to weaker skills that you can’t get from stronger skills, that would eliminate the need for synergies in the first place.

11

Christ, can’t you people just wait for Diablo 4?

12

It’s seems more and more likely that d4 will go the p2w model.

1 Like
13

I will have to take your word on that. Throughout every public game I joined in 1.07, 1.08 and 1.09 I saw zero hammerdins being played. None.

That skill is so clunky and awkward to use… even with a ton of damage while ignoring the resistances of demons and undead I only tried it once in 1.10… and will not repeat the experience :face_vomiting:

Even fist of the heavens, with its annoying casting delay (the current 1 second version) feels better, somehow. I saw more of those before synergies: people liked the auto-target for pvp (I never lost to one… so I personally think it was a poor choice, but whatever).

Sorry, on topic:
Yes, synergies should go. I agree with everything you said: problems, symptoms, suggestions, conclusions and all: :100:%

1 Like