Those "uber 1337 haxxors" finally get the chop

[Roland]

Wow!
Just a preliminary thing- Is this the thread with the most replies? It seems like the largest one I've seen!

Maybe in the new forums, but certainly not ever. We've had topics that boasted three to four hundred replies. I don't think this one's broken 200 yet.

Anyway,
I think Blizzard made the Sorceress masteries kind of strange. First, it says in some guides that LM (lightning mastery) reduces the mana cost, while in the actual game, it increases damage.
Also, CM (cold mastery) is said to reduce enemies resistance to cold, but doesn't affect anybody in duels (I think).

1) Lightning Mastery, pre-LoD, reduced the mana cost of Lightning spells by a percentage. It worked in much the same way as Cold Mastery, in that as more points were put in, you got less return on it. Useful, but not worth a whole lot. Then again, Lightning skills back then weren't in much favor anyway, shy of Static Field. Still, I liked the old way of reducing mana cost. 'Twas quite helpful, since Lightning spells tended to be the most costly (alongside Cold spells).

2) No. Cold Mastery DOES work in PvP. Always has, to my knowledge. I don't know why you thought otherwise, but it does. The thing about it is that it does NOT work like Lower Resistance. Instead of taking a straight percentage deduction, it reduces the resistance by the percentage. Confused yet? Lower Resist at 70% gives -70% to your resistances. So, if you had 50% resistance, you would now have -20%. Cold Mastery, on the other hand, reduces it by a percentage in a mulitplicative way. Cold Mastery at 70% means you subtract 70% of your resistances, or in other words you only have 30% of your resistances. So, if you had 50% Cold resistance, 70% Cold Mastery would change this to (50% - [70% * 50%]), or 15%. Thus its effectiveness is actually DECREASED when the target has low resistances. And, thus, if your opponent has 0% Cold Resistance, your Cold Mastery has absolutely no effect. However, if they have high resistance, it can be quite beneficial.

The Guided Arrow skill of the zon should be reduced in power and capacity, due to the large amounts of people who hate my friend when he goes to "palapk#" games with his amazon. I suppose a number of things need to be fixed with the patch, but with Blizzard's "Judgement Day", I'm pretty sure that they'll solve most of the problems.  :D

The skill itself is fine. There is no reason to change it, EXCEPT to eliminate the GA piercing bug. Other than that, the skill works as it is intended, and is not in any way overpowered.