Deimunized imunes!

[LucianDK]

Ive recently tested out several characters in the 1.10 beta, using the library of SP test chars for 1.10 available at diabloii.net. And ive made some quite interesting notices.

Amplify damage deimunizes physical imunes!
thats right, phys imunes loose the physical imune tag when hit by amp.

conviction and lower resists nulls elemental imunes, plus poison imunes for lower resists!
When under the effect, the monsters loose their imunity tag.

Cold mastery does not null cold imunes! Ive tested that. I speculate that since an imune basically counts as 100% resistant, and therefore you are unable to hit the monsters with a cold spell. Because the cold mastery is a passive, and likely applied after the hit is taking place. But that never happens because you cant damage someone with 100% cold resistance. Compared to lower resists and conviction that is applied before hits, and therefore negates imunity. And i suspect this is the same for items that reduces resistances like the rainbow facets. In order to circumvent imunity, you need to have resistance reduction taking place before you fire your barrages. But if you manage it, then your other resistance reduction items should kick in, and amplify the damage to staggering highs.

I wonder if this is a bug or feature of the 1.10 patch, as ive heard things about that in early versions of lod this was possible too, but was fixed because they said it was a bug. But if its something that is going to stay, then everyone would scream for necros and pallies to join their parties! heheheh

[Guest]

Yeah, those unique jewels don't help; -% resists on other items (i.e. Ormus' Robe, 1.10 Tal's) don't work etither.

I am afraid everyone is going to start screaming how imbalanced conviction and LR are. :ph34r:

[LucianDK]

Sigh, people FORGET that 1.10 is intended for team play, you were never supposed to be able to solo hell alone.

[Ruvanal]

Cold mastery does not null cold imunes!  Ive tested that.    I speculate that since an imune basically counts as 100% resistant, and therefore you are unable to hit the monsters with a cold spell.    Because the cold mastery is a passive, and likely applied after the hit is taking place. But that never happens because you cant damage someone with 100% cold resistance.    Compared to lower resists and conviction that is applied before hits, and therefore negates imunity.    And i suspect this is the same for items that reduces resistances like the rainbow facets.    In order to circumvent imunity, you need to have resistance reduction taking place before you fire your barrages.  But if you manage it, then your other resistance reduction items should kick in, and amplify the damage to staggering highs.

Pump some skill levels into Cold Mastery (level 9+ should be enough) and use a cold only attack against one of the Cold Immunes that you see around. While their overhead text should still list them as CI, you should still be able to hurt them with a strong cold attack. The CM lowering of the resistance happens at the damage application step and therefore would not necessarily show up when you look at them. You will need the higher CM because some of the CI in hell have their cold resistance as high as 210% and it takes a lot to cut that down to level to allow you to noticeable damage.

[LucianDK]

i tried maxed up blizzard and lvl 20 cold mastery in act 1 hell, i could simply not touch the zombies shuffling around there

[kandrathe]

Yes. My "Ice Princess" sorc has maxed CM, FO, and Ice Blast, and then +skills gear. Most of her points are in the Cold tree offering alot of synergies, with a handful in the Lightning tree. BTW, Ice Blast is HUGE, and spammable! I was able to do damage, even to cold immunes.

[niomosy]

I just don't really understand that line of thought. Solo 1 should be possible in hell simply because of the fact that there is a single player game. If there wasn't one, I'd say fine, make it really need teaming up. However, single player exists. It gets those same three difficulty levels as multi player does. Why, then, are you suggesting that SP gamers should only get 2/3 of the game with only those that play multi player being allowed to do Hell?

[--Pete]

Hi,

There are two solutions: make the single player game easier than multiplayer or make it nearly impossible for the single (or solo) player to complete hell. Anything else kills the incentive to actually party (except for the folk that play as much for the social interaction).

You know, the old tetris had an infinite number of levels. But only an idiot would claim that, since they were there, everyone should be able to play all of them. I guess what was clear to all about tetris is too difficult for many to understand about Diablo.

--Pete

[niomosy]

Apples and oranges, though. You're talking about games with no actual endings vs. a game with a defined end point and items that require you to be at or above a certain point in the game.

Sure, a load of games in the 80's were basically infinite with no actual end point. We're not talking about such a game, however. We're talking about a game with a defined end point, defeat of Baal in Hell difficulty. If the defined end point is too far from attainable, what's the point in playing?

[kandrathe]

From my cursory play tests in Hell difficulty, it can be done. But, it might take much longer than before. It might be that in Hell difficulty, you will be satisfied getting to another waypoint in an evenings play. I was used to doing full level clears in v1.09, but now I simply have to park some bad guys. I'm finding I am running away, red ball gone, pants loaded much more often. And, humiliations! My favorite SP uber sorceress died to Achmel and ice mages in the WS throne room, and it took me 3 attempts to retreive my corpse. It was brutal, but fun! :) She used to be able to do Hell Baal runs in less than 3 minutes. One Baal run took an hour and 45 minutes, and I even then I had to park Lister.

[--Pete]

Hi,

We're talking about a game with a defined end point, defeat of Baal in Hell difficulty.

The game has *no* end point. If it did, your character would disappear after reaching it -- there would be no reason to play further. Like solitaire once you've turned the last card -- you don't get to go on. The fact that the character continues to be playable indicates that there might be a different goal -- to generate a level 99 character. The fact that, except for difficulty, nightmare and hell just reproduce the normal game says that you've seen it all already. So, an equally valid argument is that completing the game at any difficulty is just that *completing the game*. That there are greater DIFFICULTIES indicates that maybe not everyone under every circumstance should be able to get there.

Your argument is senseless. A person playing single player should be able to get through hell? What person? A clueless newbie? A skill less player? An unlucky player with all crap gear? Saying that the single and multiple playing fields should be leveled to each other implies that no skill, no gear, no luck should matter either. A good attitude to take if all you want is a few hours of mental masturbation out of a game. Not such a good attitude if you actually want some challenge. For to make the game playable at all levels for all people, it makes it pointless to play at any level for most people. Solitaire tic-tac-toe would be better.

--Pete

[Kevin]

Don't forget that without Hellfire or some other tricks (like starting a multiplayer game on a higher difficulty and then without restarting the app playing single or playing a multi char solo), single player D1 was only one difficulty though in multi you could play in 3 different difficulties. If you want apples to apples that is about as close as you can get I think. D1 cut out 2/3 rds of the game from single player players.

I really don't think Blizzard ever really intended Hell to be playable in single player. At the release of the game Hell was intended to be party only or single player suicide. They failed at that, but that has always been a stated goal from Blizzard. So, if they finally reach that goal, you aren't losing anything that you were intended to have.

Sure making Hell not really single player viable cuts out an audience, but D2 was designed as a multiplayer game (even single player uses a client and a server) and single player was an after thought, an add on, I don't think Blizzard really cares that much about that audience. I have no problem with Blizzard "screwing over" single player chars in Hell. Of course from history and my current experience, a really good player can still do Hell 1 so it isn't an issue anyway.

[Hammerskjold]

>You know, the old tetris had an infinite number of levels. But only an idiot would claim that, since they were there, everyone should be able to play all of them. I guess what was clear to all about tetris is too difficult for many to understand about Diablo.

I'm guessing the problem (or joy of complaining) about the Diablo series is the item, item inflation, and some sense of (sometimes justified, sometimes ridicilous) entitlement.

Someone at the b.net forum mentioned the way Doom handled difficulty modes, and I think they have something there. Unless my memory is completely shot, Doom also had a couple of modes similar to Diablo. However in Doom, the shotgun or the plasma rifle I find in Normal mode is the exact same weapon I would find in Nightmare or Hell mode.

But in the highest difficulty setting, the demons are stronger, and would respawn at random, so there is no such thing as Rambo time. Since there is no such thing as demon death, you will not be "pwning" anything there. The only goal is to survive long enough to find the nearest exit. I believe my best time was 2 minutes in Hell, in the first level in the first episode. :) (That's 2 minutes running around, without actually accomplishing anything but dying.)

However I never complained, and I never saw anyone else either. Perhaps it's because there is no chance of finding a super dooper mega weapon that is only available in Hell mode. Hell is truly Hell, with no new toys given in Hell to compensate for tougher situations.

But I'm guessing what made the players fine with this is they could play with all the toys at normal mode, without having to feel like a "noob". The choice of challenge was always there, but the only reward for it was challenge, and nothing else. Well pride too of course, but there is no Mega weapon of Equalizing waiting for you in Nightmare\Hell, only true nightmares and hell and a bunch of imps lobbing fireballs. ;)

[WarBlade]

i tried maxed up blizzard and lvl 20 cold mastery in act 1 hell, i could simply not touch the zombies shuffling around there

Yeah I've playing around with this on Lower Resist since day two, although it took a little longer before I spotted something that Conviction took out. A good place to try is the Frigid Highlands WP. Just keep creating games until some crows come up from the stairs and try them out for size. I found with Conviction I could would wipe their Cold Immunity, but not the Cold Immunity of the of the boss pack just up around the corner.

[Kevin]

oooooo, I like that one.

Take the way back machine to June of 2000, and D2 Classic. There were no new toys in Hell. There were new toys in NM, and it wasn't that hard to play single either, but Hell had no new toys. People didn't really complain about it that badly either.

I also remember the experience penalty for parties, because parties made the game easier. Being in Hell Act 2 at L38 and not really having an issue with it thanks to party members was fun. Of course this killed random parties because of the open ended individual goals the game provides (I want all the items, I want L99, I want this...) you got people "claiming" areas and soloing in 8 player games to maximize what they wanted to do. Blizzard didn't like that so things were changed.

But again, this does play back into your analogy. The game was designed to work through the end of NM, Hell was extra and intended to be a party only place where you got more challenge but not more rewards.

Eh, just some random thoughts. I have to get back to cleaning the basement now....

[LucianDK]

please, this isnt a rant about singleplayer versus multi and ability to complete hell solo. Please add comments about imunes and deimunization.

And i have a comment there, conviction seems to a lot more consistently remove imunity than lower resists, which i suspect is because it have such a high resistance reduction. I noted several monsters didnt get their imunities removed with lower resists, where others did. I am suspecting that beside being imune 100% resistance, they have inate cold resistance which is tacked on it. And thats why lower resists couldnt pierce their imunity, because it didnt get under 100% resistance. And that may be why the sorc's coldmastery for me wasnt able to hit the zombies in the hell blood moor because they have uber innate cold resists, beside their imunity. With the arreat summit no longer listing detailed monster stats, i cant confirm it. But if my suspicions is true. Then decrepify may not null the physical imunity of ghosts in hell, since they already have innate 50% physical resistance, and with 100% tacked on from the imunity tag. And so decrep would only remove the first 50%. Same scenario if we have a monster with no resists, but spawning with stone skin and physical imunity, resulting in a net 150% physical resistance

[WarBlade]

That's about the same conclusion we drew when it was discussed in the big thread.

[LucianDK]

the necromancer may be the only char able to achieve 100% resistance reduction from items alone!

death's web wand, 40-50% possible
trang oul shield, 25% (here its a bit tricky, since it says 3 items to achieve this bonus, but beneath it says 2 items to attain the next bonus, so i wonder if they were swapped around. Can anyone confirm that you need 3 trang items to gain the 25% poison resistance redux?)
Trang gloves (adds 25% poison skill damage
bramble runeworded armor for +100% poison skill damage
trang belt
2xsojs
silkweave boots
ammy with 3 to p&b skills
a 3socket helmet where you put 3x rainbow facets in, with preferably +5%poison skill damage/5% poison resistance reduction.
And you socket a poison facet into the death's web wand, and one into the trang shield

This setup will leave you with 150% enchanced poison skill damage, AND 100% poison resistance reduction! Can you say ouch! :) And this is before casting lower resists! And you have +2 to all skills and +3 to pb skills. And add in 5 pb skill charms to reach +10 to pb skills. Not too shabby, eh? ^^

The only problem with this idea is resists.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Turn on threaded view and get a clue as to who is talking to whom. Just because you start a thread doesn't mean you own it. If the discussion branches, then so be it. That's why the linear view is almost useless.

--Pete

[Swarmalicious]

That there are greater DIFFICULTIES indicates that maybe not everyone under every circumstance should be able to get there.

                    Your argument is senseless.

Hee hee ha ha ho ho :)

Rules, Pete does.