Frozen Orb Damage.....specifics needed

[the Langolier]

From what I understand, piercing with Cold Mastery will bring your resistances down based on your *total* resistances, not the capped value (75-95% possible range). By "total" I mean the sum of all resistances given by items/quests/skills. This is really stupid. Essentially, the thinking behind the max resists is saying "no matter what, you can never resist elemental damage more than a certain percantage." So why would it pierce the phantom value of resistances before you cap it? If you get +150% all resistances, it is capped at 75% (assuming no mods to max resistance values). In damage calculations without pierce, the game will use 75% for resists. So:

Why then does a piercing skill base itself off of your total resistances ignoring this cap? It doesn't make any sense - in fact, it negates the whole idea of a cap in the first place*. What would happen if it were based on the cap? For instance, say we have 150% resistances (75% max) and 50% pierce. With how it is currently handled, the pierced resistance will be 75%. There was no effect! Basing it off of the cap however, would calculate to be 75% - (75% * 50%) = 37.5%. The effect is not large, but it exists. Granted, this is a special case, but let us continue.

*note: Look at this example to see how the piercing effect ignores the cap in many cases:

150% resistance - (150% * 90% piercing) = 15% resistances, which is the final resistance.

No where here does the cap of 75% appear. If instead you choose 75% as the amount to pierce:

75% resistance - (75% * 90%) = 7.5% final resistance.


Piercing should be based on the final resistances of a character, which is displayed in the character screen, defined by total resistances - penalty. If the final resistance is 0 or negative, there is no effect of piercing, otherwise the piercing is based off the net positive value. Let's look at an example with a character with resist all 200% and 90% piercing effect:

How it is now:
200% - (200% * 90%) - 100% = -80% final resistances

How I propose:
(190%-100%) - ((190%-100%) * 90%) = 9% final resistances

Although the differences between the two are large, I feel 9% is much less extreme than -80%. 190% resist all with 90% max is not a very easy thing to acquire to begin with. With how it works now, the piercing effect is too overpowered in that it decreases the actual value of resistance by -170% resist all. In contrast, lowering the resistance by -81% to 9% is much more balanced.

Take a look at the following graphs. Total resistance (x-axis) is the resistance displayed in the character screen, and Pierced resistance (y-axis) is the effective resistance when accounting for the piercing effect (also, please excuse picture size, I wanted them to be clear). The graphs are for 85% piercing and 95% max resistance.

Normal Mode:
Current way: -edit- click

Proposed Way: -edit- click

In normal difficulty, the two methods give you the same pierced resistance. The only difference is that my proposed method will level off at 14.25% resistance, whereas it will currently reach up to 60% pierced at 400% total resistances.

Nightmare Mode:
Current way: -edit- click

Proposed Way: -edit- click

The difference is becoming much more clear. Currently, it takes a whoping 265% resistance just to have an effective pierced resistance of zero. Note the second graph your resistance will equal to zero with 40% resistance. This means that piercing has no effect with negative final resistance. After that, the pierced resistance will slowly rise until it reaches a maximum of at a total resistance of 140%.

Hell Mode:
Current way:


Proposed Way:


What a difference. With the current way, it is impossible to even get a pierced resistance equal to zero. Even 400% resistance only yeilds an effective resistace of -40%. Ouch.

As you can see, the piercing is highly dependant upon difficulty level. The effect is not so pronounced in normal mode, but in hell mode it is drastically cut. The other way of piercing is much more balanced over difficulty levels. Positive pierced resistances can be reached even in hell, but it still takes a good effort. The max resistance would only be 14.25%, plus it would take a total of 195% to get there

Conclusion:

Pros:

• Makes more sense
  <>
  
• More balanced between difficulties
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• More balanced with respect to total resistances
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• No effect on PvM<>
  [st]
  Cons:
  • Piercing has no effect for negative resistances<>
    [st]
    Of course, it makes sense that it has no effect for negative resistances. The character would have no final resistance to pierce, and the negative value just amplifies the damage.
    
    Piercing should be based on the final resistances of the character (taking into account difficulty penalties), and not the total resistances from items/quests/skills. It is given by the formula, where final resistances = total resistances - penalty:
    
    If <final resistance> <= 0; then <pierce resistance> = <final resistance> (no effect)
    
    If <final resistance> > 0; then <pierce resistance> = <final resistance> * (1-<pierce>), which is equal to <total resistance - penalty> * (1-<pierce>).
    
    P.S. Mods: would it be possible to post all the images, they are only about 9 Kb each.