Remove the chaos res penalty.

Everyone please let the game run for at least a few months before you complain about difficulty. We are all getting more powerful by the day (better gear). It shouldn't be instantly easy.

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FluffyMeowington wrote:

Yesterday I played through the end of act 2 on merciless with a group. The group consisted of me (duelist), 2 rangers and 2 witches. I was able to make several interesting observations, the first of which was that non-CI witches don't need chaos resistance due to their heavy CC. These witches were sitting at -60% and breezed through the entirety of Pools and Streams without taking any damage. I'm sitting at -17% chaos res, took some damage but was manageable with that kind of crazy DPS coming from my group.
Inside the pyramid, one of the rangers went "how are melees even supposed to do anything here", and all I could say was "I don't know either", because even with 75% lightning resist and +2 levels (the witches/rangers were on equal level to the dungeon I believe), I can't tank a room filled with 15 casters and an "allies can't die" totem. The solution? I went into /follow-mode and just waited until my party cleared everything with Rain of Arrows and Spork/Totems.
At Vaal, my group insta-CC'ed and subsequently killed the adds without any problems, then ranged the boss to death. 2 of the ranged players died to rocks a few times, I died to his slow-ass overhead-attack twice due to EU-gateway-lag. Advantage: no one.

TL;DR:
Playing a melee in this is retarded AF. Oh wait, I think the point was that chaos is too strong? Yeah, I changed my mind on that, but it does seem like a nerf to melee mostly.

an wear chaos resist gear. Use an amethyst flask.

Btw anyone actually use +Armor passive node and is doing well. I think Chaos is making them reduntant, why not just remove them?

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SL4Y3R wrote:

an wear chaos resist gear. Use an amethyst flask.

TBH at -17% resist, I don't need any more. Chaos is not the problem for me now.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

an wear chaos resist gear. Use an amethyst flask.

TBH at -17% resist, I don't need any more. Chaos is not the problem for me now.

"

iamstryker wrote:

We are all getting more powerful by the day (better gear).

Speak for yourself, my drops have completely cockblocked me from progressing and trading didn't help one bit. That aside, yeah, this issue that will resolve over time, will resolve over time, you're right on that.

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zetiss wrote:

you also have to take into account that chaos damage was nerfed in OB.

so saying that "getting -60% resistance is harder" is actually in a vacuum without knowing the exact amount of base damage nerf it has sustained when we moved in OB.

in CB the only was to protect yourself from chaos damage was CI and high avoidance/life regen
in OB they have also added chaos resistance and scaled the damage*

Well as you just stated, the Chaos Damage was only made lower in normal. Cruel/Merciless is a different story

I'm currently at beginning of Act 3 Merciless as melee mara (heavy strike, leap slam, sweep, warlord's mark, enduring cry and determination aura, 2k hp, -20 chaos res (2 items with +20 chaos res). So here is my feedback:

Cruel -20 chaos res penalty was fine for me, but I had item with about +14 chaos res, so I had only -6 chaos res. As for Merciless... mostly it's fine with -20 chaos res, except:
1) Western forest. There are already strong packs of mobs, and if someone shoots poison arrow while I am fighting packs it's almost certain death. Packs of arrow poison shooters = unreally hard to handle.
2) Pools and Streams. Just pack of poison snakes is ok. But if there is nearby cold elementals with their cold snap - i'm done in a few seconds. And it's even worse if cold elementals' or snakes' packs are magic or contain bosses.
3) Alchemists in sewers of act 3. Even 2 of normal can quickly finish me, not talking about magic or rare ones.

There are other very hard zones, with some hard multiple projectile elemental skeleton mages for example, but these chaos damage zones just stand out too much.

Level 74 point blank bowrauder here, so basically you can consider me a melee character.
I have 4079 life, max resistances, 14447 armor with my granite.
I am also running 5 endurance charges and have several curses that i am using, including temporal chains, enfeeble and projectile weakness, depending on which curse i need for a certain situation.
I have -60 chaos resistance.

Playing maps solo is impossible because i just run the danger of encountering chaos damage enemies, which will use something like viper strike on me and immediately burn down my whole life in mere seconds. Yes mere seconds.
I encountered several champions that could instagib me in just 1-2 seconds using something like viper strike and im not even talking about getting hit by several at once.
Who am i kidding, even white skeleton archers that use poison arrow can kill me in mere seconds.

If i were to start stacking chaos resistance, this would have to come at an expense of other resistances and since the game is incredibly hard if you try to solo content with melee characters, lowering your other resistances is not an option because you would just die to those elements instead.
However, for arguments sake, lets say i traded some of my other resistances in order to increase my chaos resistance.
For every % of chaos resistance i gain, i lose the same amount of resistance of another type because there are only so many mod slots on items.

Currently some viper strike hits can instantly burn down my whole life in just 1-2 seconds, considering i have -60 chaos resistance, that means that the viper strike deals 2500 damage in 1-2 seconds.
If i were to get 60 chaos resistance on gear, i would still die in 3-4 seconds instead of 1-2 seconds, against a single enemy.
Against several enemies, i would still melt instantly.
Getting 60 chaos resistance on gear is already excessive considering how rare the mod is and how low the values roll and that you would have to trade another resistance in order to actually get chaos resistance.

Remove this ridiculous stat already, it breaks the game beyond belief.
There are only 6 possible modslots on items, implementing more resistance types that we have to worry about basically makes it impossible to max all resistances and also get proper defenses/life.

If you want to have max resistances, getting double rolls on items is preferrable, so thats already 2 modslots for resistances.
Life is essential to most builds, so preferrably you want to have life on every gearslot.
If you want to have any significant amount of defense from your gear (energy shield/evasion/armor) you preferrably want to have a double roll.
Add chaos resistance and you basically need a perfect 6 mod item on every gear slot to actually be able to max out on defenses, life and all resistances.
Where does this leave space for any of the other modifiers the game is offering?
It doesnt.

Ranged classes dont have to worry about chaos damage for the most part because all of the chaos damage is avoidable at range (and rather easily aswell).
I have seen several ranged classes that have a lot less life than me and are breezing through chaos damage enemies because they will just avoid their projectiles and therefore completely avoid chaos damage alltogether.

Adding chaos resistance at this point is a punch in the face for melee characters, which are already underpowered compared to ranged classes.

One could consider running an amethyst flask on a melee, but considering that GGG removed phase run and added quicksilver flasks instead, every melee is forced to use one quicksilver flask, otherwise it is impossible to get away from situations that would lead to surrounds.
This leaves only 4 flasks. Another must flask on a melee character is a granite, otherwise you are instagib anyways.
For life characters atleast 1 lifeflask (if not 2) is also preferrable.
This leaves 1 flask for mana if you are not running either eldritch battery or bloodmagic.
Zero flask slots left for resistance flasks.
This is exactly why i said that removing phase run in favor of quicksilver flasks would actually be more detrimental to skillbuild diversity because phase run was fittable into every build, thus it didnt actively limit your active skill choices.
Quicksilver flasks actively limit your flask slots to 4, thus actively reducing the diversity of flask combinations you can use.

I am also on the same boat as the OP and other in this thread.

-Chaos resistance penalty on last difficulty is too much.
-Carrying a +chaos resistance flask is a must if you dont want to get one-shoted.
-I just have to avoid all areas with known chaos damage mobs. (just run through the whole map to go to the next)
-It is IMPOSSIBLE to get even to 0% resistance on merc diff because chaos resistance on items is rare, ALWAYS has low values (such are +10%) while other res have +30% or more on 1 item. Using 1 or 2 nodes in the passive tree is literally no change.

-I like the fact that chaos damage stands apart from elemental, but the -60% resistance penalty has to go away. (That would mostly fix the issue).

Well... my problem with Chaos-Damage is that although Ranged Chars and Marauders can work around it Melee-Shadows or Rangers who normally don't have that much HP are hit even harder.

My solution would be to simply implement a Chaos-Resist Ring. I have no problem with sacrificing Resistances to get Chaos-Resistance, but I haven't even found a single Item with Chaos-Resistance on it with my Shadow and he soon reaches Merciless.

If such a ring would exist it would be a possibility to switch them for certain situations. I already carry a lot of rings with me and switch them depending on the situation. But without even having someting to switch to it is a bit weird to work around Chaos-Damage, although it is doable with a ranged Char (by just not getting hit).