One-week "Resistance Penalty Testing" Hardcore Ladder Race

The current map system doesnt seem all that bad to me, its fair on everyone & seemingly easier (or just as hard) to get the highest level maps than when IIQ was involved.

In the 2 week race with IIQ my highest level map was level 68, but in the 1 week race I did a level 69 map. In my mind, less than 1 week (because I had to spend time levelling to 60+, endgame) to get to the highest tier maps isnt TOO hard.

Died at merciless Brutus at lvl 54. Was running around a pillar in the room and suddenly went from full HP to dead instantly (I could take 1 hit from Brutus). I keep losing my race chars to shit like this all the time even though I got a stable connection.

Anyways, I like the resistance penalties for this race, I had 2 of them maxed out when I died in merciless without any big problems.

GL to the rest of you!

RIP Kem. I was trying to keep up with you and...

OHKO to Ruthless Vaal while pushing for a top 20 place, that punch hurts a lot D:

Having to mind my resistances was fun and reduced gear choice no-brainers, and we all know that reducing no-brainers is always good. But it was also made a lot easier by playing a marauder, who has extremely easy access to +45% to every resist (no-brainer!), and if I needed, there were a couple of the new nodes nearby, plus the 18% cluster in the center, which I think could be moved over to the other side of the central area, so it'd be a litte easier to reach for some of the more resist-starved classes.

I'd also support moving some of the marauder resist nodes elsewhere - getting high resists for Ruthless and Merciless is probably a nightmare for the witch/shadow/ranger trees, and due to the nature of the genre, people will bore themselves grinding for resists instead of having fun and making progress, because it's absurdly optimal to do a boring grind. No need to plonk another "+45% to everything" cluster to every corner, just spread out a bunch of single resist +15% nodes in the outmost areas of the tree (since it's possible that if your build doesn't take you naturally to the "sides" of your starting zone or to the center, you either won't hit more than a couple resist nodes until way too late, or will need an extremely costly detour). That would give people the choice to make minor changes to their builds in exchange for not having to grind as much - giving away a bit of dps/non-elemental defenses/general utility nodes for resists, instead of giving away time and sanity for resists, so to speak. The choice to minmax a build and just grind for resists would still be there, but anyone inclined to *gasp* make a more balanced char would have a slight detour as a more sensible option than it currently is.

Also, I agree with what others have said, skills need some serious balance (had never played a ground slam marauder before - boy is it easy mode), but that's a subject for another thread.



(edited for grammar)

hey ebrl, maybe I misunderstood you, but....

you said that having the resist penalty removed no-brainer choices in equipment.
then you also said you need to grind to get the right resist gear (or take up passives).

Would that not infer that there is only no-brainer equipment left (ie high resist equipment) to get because resistances are sorely needed (Hence the grind to get the resist gear) ??

just curious :)

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ebrl wrote:

reduced gear choice no-brainers

But did it really? You simply choose the best resist gear now, don't you? It sounds like no-brainer to me. Before resistance penalties I was deciding between more evasion, more life, more armor, more resists... Now I simply pick the resists, because I have to.

I had an interesting time playing Shadow-archer, I knew it would be a challenge with resists, RNG and whatnot, luckily temp chainz had dropped and I paired it with iceshot+LMP+IAS+ICS and went EB, ruthless I only managed to max one resist and partial if not minus on others, but that is why I sticked with iceshot+tempchainz as a defence, also as defence I had zombies+life+dmg+lightlningDmg and stay quite close to es them and shield-tank for me. There were times when I took off EB to fight bosses and just have discipline, I should have done that going up ruth ancient pyramid.. .-_-

So at the end, what I have to say about the resists play,
is that I don't think I would have been compelled to go through with this sort of build type, I felt before using a previous build, but change mind to something new. And that is what this test/race is about ya?

Also, ATM, Psyk 'DontTryThisAtHome' is 1st Shadow, I'm very interested with what he has going on and hope he doesn't pass out from lack of sleep pulling 24hr+ marathons.
GG fellow Shadows.

"

wiggin wrote:

"

ebrl wrote:

reduced gear choice no-brainers

But did it really? You simply choose the best resist gear now, don't you? It sounds like no-brainer to me. Before resistance penalties I was deciding between more evasion, more life, more armor, more resists... Now I simply pick the resists, because I have to.

Yes, it's more of a balancing act and with it means that stacking one thing more than others is going to hurt but getting resist/life/armor(eva) isn't too hard. I'm running 82 AR and only 30-35% DR which isn't fun but I've made adjustments in play style to cope. While most people might hate places like sin and the pyramid right now, they do nothing to me and I rather run them. Shit like weaver's and western aren't friendly because of the physical damage but I'm in no way coming close to death every time I enter.

Again, I'll state that I really enjoy this change even though I was terrified of it. The only complaint I have is other classes need access to the resists that temp/mara have. Once I get some better gear that allows me to respec out of resist passive I'll be virtually unkillable (I've already been able to respec out of a fire node while keeping 82 resist)

still enjoying this marace, despite the ricidulous balance issues. I would love psyk to give some info on his build at the end of the race, also feel that class-specific awards should be given out given the marked increase in difficulty some face. This would level the prizepool and encourage more participants and therefore better/more statistical and opinionated feedback.

Very interesting race. Unfortunately I am out of town this weekend so I couldn't try for my 3rd straight no life Demigod.

Its so interesting for that I went to bed last night rank 19 and woke up rank 16. I'm rank 14 without leveling very hard since I knew I was going away. I feel for the other players who don't play like I do, a veteran of one too many D2 leveling parties where 2-3 people die at one time I guess.

I am however going to use my downtime tomorrow to type up my feedback in aggregate for any and all topics I feel pertinent hitherto fore unseen. Marauders, Groundslam, Templars, leveling, the works.

And no, I am not taking the SATs soon.

I do want to note how fascinating it is to me that Orbs of Alchemy seem to follow the Giffen Good principle (which doesnt exist in real life), and might not apply since the Orb itself is a price, but I have lots to say about the increase in rarity of Alchs and their relation to the new maps system.



Look to the coming of my post on the light of the 4th day... of the week (tomorrow).