(07-15-2012, 06:58 AM)ErickTheRed Wrote: I'm confused. I just did a quick Act I tornado farming run and I paid attention to the damage I took due to plague and desecration, and it didn't seem out of line. My resists should account for around a factor of 3 damage reduction, and I haven't noticed suddenly taking 3 times as much damage from those effects. If I'm supposed to be taking 3 times less damage than I am they they would be pretty trivial. In practice, I worry about arcane and fire chains more than the mentioned effects.
Is the claim that only sometimes you don't get the damage reduction? I've looked at some of the forums posts complaining about this, but I found them unclear and contradictory.
No one really knows, there is just a whole bunch of speculation around what could be the cause for this.
Someone should really do some extensive systematized testing regarding this, any volunteers?
The problem with the issue is that no one has any hard facts, just saying "I could farm here before but now I'm dying!" isn't sufficient, since that is simply met with "just your imagination", "learn to play better", "nothing has changed it's you", etc.
If only just to prove the trolls/overly biased Blizzard defenders wrong, or that Blizzard representative who guaranteed that "absolutely no Diablo III game data even changed with 1.0.3b", since it's simply irritating that these people keep posting these aforementioned comments just to rile people up without any logical argumentation.
Note that the Blizzard rep specifically said 1.0.3b, but these issues surfaced after the hotfix on June 28th, which was between 1.0.3a and b.
He also mentions "we've been checking these numbers since 1.0.3 vanilla launched and nothing has changed patch to patch".
This is either simply an outright lie or he's not aware of the issues, because something has definitely changed (again, no proof).
It is an extremely obvious change to those who were farming in Inferno regularly before and after the hotfix.
As for my own experience, I used to do 1 to 3 runs of 15-20 minutes each in act 2 during weekdays before the hotfix, and more on weekends.
I would rarely die, one death every few days was the norm, and this generally happened due to some extraordinary situation, such as getting frozen again right after I used Serenity, or getting walled in completely with multiple Arcane Sentries spinning around.
Of course, I still needed to move out of elemental pools and Sentries and the like, but I could stand in them for a while, and I simply had more leeway in making errors.
Since the hotfix, I had significantly upgraded my resistances and HP by acquiring a few new armour pieces, while my damage/armor were about the same, and I noticed I was taking extreme amounts of damage from some sources.
For example, I could barely stand in any pools without seeing my HP total vanish, and often I didn't even have time to use Serenity, as my HP goes from 100% to 15%> within 1 second, and there seems to be a small delay before it actually activates even with low latency, so I often end up dead while pressing the hotkey for it with 15%> HP remaining.
Such a scenario has never happened before the hotfix, and now it seems to be the standard for elites with molten/desecrator, etc.
In short, my deaths went from:
Surrounded, Serenity already used and slowly dying because my damage/LoH was insufficient compared to the damage taken.
To:
Dying almost instantly without even a chance to use Serenity.
That's how I personally felt that something has definitely changed, and I find it insulting on some level that the Blizzard rep says "absolutely nothing has changed".
My own solution to this was to focus my equipment to DPS items rather than defensive ones.
I went from around 40k HP, 900 RA, 6000 armour, 18k DPS and 1800 LoH to 30k HP, 500 RA, 7000 armour, 41k DPS and 900 LoH as a monk.
My plan of action is to try to kill elites with the increased damage in the window of opportunity my 4 second Serenity and my Blind provides, and take pot shots on them while running around dodging things if 1 cycle of these skills isn't enough.
I actually kill faster than before because of the higher DPS, and I feel my character is better overall compared to the old build, but deaths always occur in the same scenario: immobilization coupled with some sort of elemental damage followed by instant death.
Dying like that two times in a row racks up a 9000 gold repair bill, and usually means I'm done for the day, as it makes me feel cheated and completely kills my mood for the loot hunt.