New absorbtion cap in 1.10?

[Crystalion]

This may actually be a good thing though.

As usual, I probably wasn't clear. I happen to agree it may be a good thing. My definition of "ruin PvP" here is attempting to gauge the historical intent of Blizzard (i.e. the game has designed-in involuntary PvP) vs. the (in my view) probable mistake consequentially in moving the PvP reduction (vis a vis other reductions). That is, I suspect Blizzard is still pro-Involuntary PvP and they will realize, at some point, that they horked it for v1.10.

Whether we will shortly see v1.10++ to fix problems interests me.

[lemekim]

IIRC in beta they had already moved it, since accidentally while doing testing I was unable to damage a character PvP while I had forgotten to remove their -damages items. I recall thinking at the time that this wasn't a good change, as it would ruin PvP on realm (surprisingly I have yet to hear that this is the case, but it seems clear to me that damage reduction, absorption and resists should potentially make it nearly impossible for another player to harm you significantly).

I am not sure if the new sequence would change PVP in any significant way.

If we are talking about physical damage, not only characters are doing at least the same or even more damage now (thanks to BotD runeword, 450% enhanced damage rares and synergies), but their damage is not as reduced, since in 1.09, an attack was reduced 16 times thanks to 75% damage reduce and 1/4 pvp penalty, but now is only reduced ~12 times, 50% for damage reduce cap and 1/6 (I know it's 17% but for simplicity sake) for pvp. A typical 3,600 damage hit will be reduced to 300 damage pvp hit, and that's a lot of -damage required to negate.

As for point absorb and -magic damage items in regards to spells, it all depends on where they are applied in the damage sequence. If they are applied before resists and % absorb, then they really will have little effect when considering 10,000 damage spells. Of course, if they are applied after, then they might be quite significant in that area, but even there I don't see how they would be different from 1.09, where people could get items that would grant them almost complete immunity from cold/fireghtning spells.

This is not to say that I think 1.10 made pvp better, because there are a lot of other problems outside of this issue, such as the new cross-skill items (most notably call to arms and enigma), some insane pvp damage skills (e.g. blessed hammer doing 2,000 irresistible pvp damage), and the change of cold mastery to straight substract instead of % reduction.

[Jarulf]

I think the rest is unchanged as far as order so should be:

PvP
-dam/-mdam
resistance
% absorbtion
absorbtion

There is a cap on %absorbtion on 40%, but you can still get basically immune through straight absorbtion. Together with high -dam/-mdam, you can probably reduce PvP damage alot.

[lemekim]

It would be interesting to see what exactly is the full order of damage calculation, including Energy Shield, Bone Armor, Cyclone Armor and leech (from what I've seen, leech is reduced twice by pvp penalty?). I don't think the -damg/-mdam will really make much difference, seeing that they come before resists and any %absorbtion (a 12,000 damage fireball is still 2,000 damage after pvp), but the +absorb it seems still will be able to make people completely immune (to coldghtning/fire)

[Jarulf]

I think that apart from what allready has been mentioned, the rest should be the same (although not 100% sure). They seem to have changed the implementation of those effects though (Bone Armor, Energy Shield and so on) or I was just not able to spot them easilly. Leech should still be the same as far as the "damage" is concerned. It is set up as a value instead of drain just as before. If there is some downmodification of it in some difficulties, it is part of the "deal damage" code (which handle leeching), but I have not looked much at it. Perhaps the PvP penalty code (which is now quite different and loop through each damage type (including drain, chill times and such) now also modifies the leech/drain values though, then we get the extra effect you mention. You should not get double reduction just from the PvP penalty though. WHen I get more time I will look a bit more in detail at it all. I don't have much time right now though.

[adeyke]

Getting back to The Rising Sun...

I thought the max possible was 10 in 1.09. A level 15 spawned for me the other night. What is the maximum?

I'm sorry for not immediately that revelation the attention it was due. It seems that the formula for the slvls there has changed.

In 1.09, it was slvl = ilvl / 3 - levreq + 1, capped at 1 and 31, where levreq is the level requirement for getting the skill.

In 1.10, it seems to be slvl = (ilvl - levreq) / 4 + 1, capped at 1 and 20. That's the formula I empirically derived, anyways, and it may or may not actually be true (it does match all my current observations, but I might just need to observe more).

The following uniques are affected:
Boneslayer Blade
Hellslayer
Lightsabre
Stormrider
Stormspire
Snowclash
The Rising Sun