The immunities problem: Shouldn't be fixed. Blizzard has lost the plot to multiplayer

General Discussion
21

They not only doubled the mob health, it was nearly a 400% buff. They also added damage and made them faster. And yeah I agree with most of what you wrote here, but the team left during the development of 1.10, so poor choices were made and the ideas weren’t finished.
From the patch notes:

Specific changes/improvements
Increased difficulty for high-level players to reduce future exploitation of the game system.
Made monsters tougher
Beefed up monster difficulty in Act V, Nightmare, and Hell difficulties. This was accomplished by improving monster stats (hp, ac, etc.) and by boosting their AI/behavior in Nightmare and Hell difficulties (that is, by making decisions more often and by simply moving faster). In Nightmare and Hell difficulties monster damages have generally been increased – dramatically in some cases.
Reduced the effectiveness of Experience runs, power-leveling, and leeching.
Added randomized (especially ranged-attack) monsters to Nightmare and Hell Act V - e.g., Burning Dead, Demon Imps, etc.
Increased the Experience attached to most Act V monsters in Normal, Nightmare, and Hell difficulties.
Reduced the HP of (Act V) Barbarian soldiers in Nightmare and Hell difficulties.
Increased the rate of occurrence of Unique monsters in Hell difficulty.
Reduced the party member Experience sharing to 0 beyond a maximum distance of about 2 screens from the monster death. This prevents low-level characters from joining a party and then staying completely out of harm’s way while still getting Experience.
Increased the Experience penalty for Character level 70+ as follows: Character level 1 - 69: 100% Experience Character level 70 - 99: 85% - 0.8% Experience (approximately exponential decaying)
Encouraged players to play in more of the Diablo II areas/locations/levels.
Reduced drops from the most-run Super Unique monsters, Thresh Socket and Pindleskin.
Cut Experience and reduced drops in the Cow Level.
Randomized the monster populations more thoroughly throughout Act V in Nightmare and Hell difficulties, including the addition of ‘guest monsters’ from other Acts.
Increased the number of Unique Monsters in each area and difficulty.
Improved various Items
Improved the attributes for newly dropped Rare Armor, Helms, and most Weapons.
Added over 100 new Unique Items, of which 29 can be found only in Ladder games.

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22

I must explain some history behind Immunities, and apologize in a way.

I am the one who suggested this concept of Breaking Immunities to the Diablo teams. I started to talk about 95% resisting monsters back in 2019. I pushed this idea (among other ones) in various threads right after the D:Immortal announcement and push back.

However, I did and solely mentioned this idea on d4 feedback thread (d3 forums), and it was clear it was not suggested for any d2 classic or Remastered (D2R was not announced at that time).
I have tried to influence as much as I could the development of d4 with d2 mechanics and art style btw. Applying 5% of total damage type would have been a way to introduce d3 players to immunities for d4, without entirely turning them off. (The same way d2 players slowly get introduced to resistances in Nightmare, before hell).

The main idea behind this suggestion for d4 is to bring more diversity than what was offered in d3 : where basically all damage types are the same. Because they are just visual skins.

Unfortunately, Sunder charms precisely go against the idea of more diversity in d2. It simplifies, it standardises. Not only the resistance can go much lower with conviction and other tricks, it makes people play in their bubble, playing solo, while killing Hybrid builds. The social aspect of d2 is further damaged (there are other reasons too though). Diablo is much more than character stats facing a pool of life.

I feel like they consider some concepts can be implemented among Blizzard games, especially under the Diablo “umbrella”. But I think D2 should be the source of inspiration, not the other way around.
Unfortunately I was not expecting d2 teams to implement this idea, especially with such low draw back, ease and drop rate.

I am one of those who played the game in 2000 who understands the need of class balance (which have been elegantly addressed imo), BUT as long as core mechanics remain intact. SunderC + TZ-easy99 + Easy-monsterlvl-gear harm core mechanics, and broke the promise in my opinion.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/for-diablo-4-please-make-resistances-relevent-again/9000/7
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/this-companys-obsession-with-cooldowns/6859/346
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/diablo-4-make-elemental-damage-matter/9675/17

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23

bruh, we all did. they didn’t take anything from you.

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24

Forced build diversity thought requiring 2 weaker skills is unappealing as well.

You should be able to build whatever you want. When you do you should be limited in what that narrow aspect allows you to do. If you’re diverse sure you can sludge along slower and solo or excel where you belong it is your choice. You should not be hard stopped, but yet super inefficient where you don’t belong. And through gear and leveling should be able to weaken that resistance against your narrow focus.

2 Likes
25

It’s like one WoW designer is involved in all the “endgame activities” over at Blizzard HQ where “terror zones” are prominent features in every Diablo and Warcraft online game.

The game does need more end game content but this was always underwhelming to me. Terror Zones aren’t terrorizing. They’re just leveled up zones to do the same boring farm in.

Pinnacle content is what makes the boring farm relevant. Having a reason to grind runes to topple an end game boss is good. That’s how Path of Exile does it. Decades ago it was the PvP. The PvP is dead though. Much better PvP experiences exist in other titles so people go there.

Basically they can add valuable end game content like ubers but TZs aren’t doing much to improve the state of the game. A full Act 6 would be welcome.

26

The TZ’s weren’t really put in the game directly as end game content though, it was just a way to speed up one of the end game concepts that is all. Nothing about TZs was new, just monsters that are a tiny bit harder to kill and granted a bunch more XP. IMO they weren’t a good way to alleviate the lvl 99 grind and sunders aren’t a good way to deal with immunities. But the DEV team was made up of the weakest possible team they could build so it isn’t like conceptually they were going to come up with great ideas. They simply could have drastically lessened the XP decay after level 93 or even eliminated it all together and kept everyone in the same baal run games. And for immunities I think most should have eventually had the same option or similar like a light sorc had, and other classes had. Level up gear up, grind where your character is good at, keep improving gear, get infinity to bypass the immunity and then get -res gear to weaken the enemy.

27

So the direction of the game will be to eventually have to increase the strength of the mobs.

Everything that has been said is the purest truth, but we need to look even further back.

In version 1.09 the sorceress was completely dominant. Everyone put 20 points in frozen orb, 20 in Nova, 20 in thunder storm, there is no enigma, infinity or anything like that.

Version 1.10 changed the game completely with synergies, immunities, and increased mob health. And it created all the mess, Paladin hammer stood out since it had an absurdly powerful build, with no problems with immunities, since nothing in the game was designed to remove magic resistance and only 12 has immunity to magic damage.

6 sunders charms were designed, but only 3 were useful in any way and the cold charm is so much stronger by the cold master that it makes the fire and lightning charms seem like a joke.

To make matters worse comes the mess (not to mention the correct word) of the mosaic, turning the dominant and still strong hammer paladin into a child, at a ridiculous cost in runes.

What will the staff do? Are you going to take a step back, nerf the mosaic, or are you going to put your foot down and reform 210 skills from the 7 classes again and change the mechanics of the mobs again?

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28

Honestly immunities are dumb just like teleport. Best way to beat Hell is to skip most of mobs. Characters are not viable for it, they just abuse game mechanics with speedrun tactics. Unless you’re a Hammerdin but then you need to push Baal wave 2 outside room to progress. If character can’t kill every mob in Hell it shouldn’t be able to beat it.

Also D2 isn’t mmo. Solo players are punished. Need to make hybrid sorc with worse damage but multiplayer can go single element type and nuke easy.

I’d like immunities removed from normal mobs and keep them only on elite packs as random. And no I don’t want game easier so I also propose to nerf top builds. Melee is a joke and Shapeshift Druid can’t even tp. One guy clearing p8 while others afk is bs.

3 Likes
29

Offline solo. Hybrid → Beat the Game → Farm gear where your character is good at → get gear that lets you be versatile → farm everywhere.

Online solo. Hybrid → Beat the Game → Farm gear where your character is good at → get gear that lets you be versatile → farm everywhere.

Nothing changes unless you’re adding in other players.

30

There’s a big problem with that argument: Diablo II isn’t online-only.

Say, you’re playing offline. You’re having fun with your Lightning Fury Amazon tearing through Nightmare.

You reach Hell difficulty. Suddenly there are enemies everywhere that can’t get damaged by LF (and the Poison skills that were required barely do anything). What are you going to do to get past them? Call friends?

31

Easy: just don’t copypaste an equipment depending build, optimised for a specific multiplayer usecase from your favourite Youtuber / build Database / anywhere else.

Increase physical damage. Get a might merc. Go hybrid with physical bow. Go hybrid with ice bow.

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32

That’s how immunities were supposed to work in theory. He can go hybrid, make his character very low damage and go broke from buying thousands of mana pots. But best way is to get Lower Resist wand, Teleport staff, skip mobs and beat Hell a lot faster that way. Then farming no lightning immune monsters so no reason to go hybrid anymore.

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33

Jab for melee damage? Poison them which does work. Go hybrid? All sorts of options. Then later on respec after you’ve obtained a sunder and/or runes for an infinity.

34

you know they drop on the ground right?

35

True, but the point OP tries to raise is that the immunities are okay because you can always group up to bypass them. But if that’s true, then it means they are balancing a game that is NOT online-only around the online feature, which always hurts the offline part (Command & Conquer 3 suffered from the same issue).

It happened to me as a kid. I was having a lot of fun with a Cold Sorceress offline. Then I hit Hell. This was after synergies were added but before respecs were a thing BTW.

And, talking about respects, they also keep the enablerespec option hidden from the common player’s sight, which does not help.

36

The active balance out immunities isn’t based off group play. Because any semi diverse group can beat the game. In fact the sunder charms speak to that even further that only the individual gets to bypass the immunities of their choice for their own gameplay.

As for your scenario even the worst of characters can beat the game even way back then. You might need to have your merc chuggging potions or to switch gear. We’ve all seen those ancient games where 8 cold sorcs who don’t have mercs are being slayed by ancients. But none of them have a mercenary or went hybrid.

And there was never a point in where you were full cold, that you couldn’t drop back to normal and level up the fire tree and work on gearing up a mercenary.

37

Immunities were a terrible design choice, imo.

Sure, you can play multiplayer… but being able to play multiplayer and being forced to play multiplayer are different things.

I love to run a full lightning sorc, bonemancer (or whatever) and be able to face anything, instead of “oh crap, an immortal enemy, skip”. Also, sundering charms have huge trade-offs lowering your own resistances, so i guess its fair. If you play with friends, you can take off the sundering and have full resist, but if you play solo you can trade your own resistance and be able to kill immunes. Maybe sundering charms are not the most elegant solution, but ok enough for me.

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38

I like the concept of until you’re at end game that certain areas are a struggle if you’re a certain focus that is very narrow. The issue with it was before nobody other than hammerdins and light based characters with perhaps honestly I think physical characters were pretty universal at different times and the rest were sort of stuck. The sunder charm was just a weak way to deal with adjusting that progression for the rest. They should have just greatly increased the amount of magic immune monsters, and created more and better ways for people to lower resist without some magic charm. Make conviction break all immunities and give way to more -res griffon or cmoon type runewords or uniques or even sets. Perhaps even change most all +fire dmg that spawns to -res and added ways for physical/magic players to do the same.

39

Sunders should be removed. My cold sorc steamrolls all content now. Whereas before, I had a reason to roll a zon too. I couldn’t farm hell countess without doing so, etc. It made seasons last longer, and increased the demand on items in general.

3 Likes
40

No, they shouldn’t. They aren’t even that great in the first place, particularly since the nerfs that made cold mastery stupid.

It most certainly did not make seasons last longer- It doesn’t impact item diversity, and collecting loot is basically the biggest part of the game.

If your cold sorc steamrolls everything and is boring for you then… just play more builds and different classes? You aren’t required to do something just because you think it’s the best.

There’s a reason why immunites don’t exist like this in many games today. They aren’t fun unless you have - some - way of dealing with them. They don’t present a challenge, instead they present a literal wall.

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