Resistance Penalties (and a league to test them!)

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glutexo wrote:

I want an "Anya-Quest" where iam not allowed to choose between passive skillpoints or resistances ;)

POE is all about decisions ;) But, who of us know what quests the 3rd act will bring...? (even as I dont expect this kind of resist balancing as a reward)

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btw how about passive skills like "-30% fire resistances & +20% cold resistances & +20%lightning resistances" or something?

Cant imagine a situation where I really would choose this as a permanent thing (passive node), maybe as an switchable aura or similar skill?

Question, will minions be affected by this resist penalty? because if so this is a HUGE! nerf to summoners..... HUGE! lol

Well now we have to invest more nodes for survivability this nerf gonna wreck dps,mid-dps melee builds and definitely ruin dual wielders as well. As a duel wielder i must find a gear that contains high armor value, decent +life, decent + all resist etc.
Well let me tell you this when hard to find a decent item which contains half of those above now its gonna be more painfull. You just want us to farm more like bots and invest huge amount of time to compete non-lifers...
You should buff the all and single resist modes on items and add more all resist nodes for all class could reach especially on melee non mara section and higher monster levels for reachin so called 100 lvls -__-

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Chris wrote:

So far in testing, I've personally found that this makes the game a lot more fun.

I understand that any change that makes the game harder (especially one that disrupts existing characters so severely) is initially met with distrust, but this is in line with how we've designed the game. The resistance system until this point was almost meaningless outside of normal difficulty. The choices that are now encouraged are far more interesting.

The monster elemental damage nerfs in 0.9.12k solved problems we identified where characters with less than 75% adjusted resists were getting owned. It's not mandatory to max out your resists in merciless - just a (wise) option.

Great Chris, next time when you make such a silly change like this instead of adding better monster AI and tougher monsters overall, pat yourself on the back and say "We successfully nerfed resists in POE" Stupid... Just fucking stupid

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rflynn74 wrote:

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Chris wrote:

So far in testing, I've personally found that this makes the game a lot more fun.

I understand that any change that makes the game harder (especially one that disrupts existing characters so severely) is initially met with distrust, but this is in line with how we've designed the game. The resistance system until this point was almost meaningless outside of normal difficulty. The choices that are now encouraged are far more interesting.

The monster elemental damage nerfs in 0.9.12k solved problems we identified where characters with less than 75% adjusted resists were getting owned. It's not mandatory to max out your resists in merciless - just a (wise) option.

Great Chris, next time when you make such a silly change like this instead of adding better monster AI and tougher monsters overall, pat yourself on the back and say "We successfully nerfed resists in POE" Stupid... Just fucking stupid

Two points you obviously didn't consider at all:
1) Chris details why this is a good change in the post you quoted, summed up in the statement I bolded. God forbid they actually give purpose to a system that was basically unused, right?
2) Different devs work on different things at the same time. Just because this change was added first doesn't mean that improved AI isn't coming. It's not like all ~20 devs work on the same change all at once. This change is ready now, and it can fit into the game now. Other changes will come as they're ready. It's not up to the players to prioritize GGG's work.

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Chris wrote:

So, as you've probably seen in other games that use a resistance system like ours, higher difficulty levels typically have additive penalties to resistances, requiring players to choose between being vulnerable to elemental damage or building their characters to mitigate this damage.

Yes, BUT, we also saw greater rewards for playing on higher difficulty such as better items, more gold (currency) and overall more good stuff that essentially balance out the hardness to some degree. In PoE this is not the case. Loot sucks on all difficulties. Especially crafting materials. People are practically forced to buy equipment with crafting orbs bcs they almost never have enough to start crafting something good. And we do need better items to withstand harder monsters. Players cannot afford to be hit by endgame bosses on 50%+ Qual maps as it is and I don't see any balancing on that field, what I see is they are going to get even harder. I don't think I am that masochistic, not with 15% xp penalty that is.

PS. resistances are not meaningless outside of normal diff, they are mandatory for non-OP builds, ie. builds that don't have 5000+ HP or ES and are not ranged. Take a melee build with ~2000 hp and bunch of armor but with only (yes only) 50% resistances to lvl 58 vaal pyramid. Have fun.

PPS. Sure, you can make a duelist that does 1000dps and has 5000hp. But you can't make one that has 5000+ dps and 5000hp.

@DualToster
I'm glad to see someone who just doesn't parrot the bullshit about meaningless resistances outside of normal. Recently I brought another character to act2 merciless and I still play the puzzle with resistances trying to have them above 60. Maybe I am just unlucky but when the resist pool will be extended to 150% in merciless...

BTW is the vaal's fire/phys bomb a spell? It hurts and seems to never miss. Playing an evasion melee char is I guess one of those worse tactics in there now. I could protect myself with fire resist before but the physical damage now is quite bad. I don't wanna think about the -75% in the new race. But then again, I'll just roll a marauder for diamond skin, I guess.

My biggest problem with this change is that of juggling gear. This is something that I have found at least somewhat irritating in every game of this type that I've played, and arises from the fact that there are three different resistances, obtained nearly exclusively from magic mods on items. This didn't come up much in diablo 2 because you could always just swap a few charms around, no big deal. It goes like this:

• You have carefully selected you gear to achieve some level of resist that you are happy with
• You get lucky, and find a nice upgrade to one of your items, for instance your belt
• Unfortunately, you current belt has cold resist and fire resist, while the new one has fire and lightning
• Now you have overall more lightning resist than you need and not enough cold
• So in order to use the belt you have to also change one of your other pieces
• But changing that other piece would put something else out of whack, meaning you'd have to change a third piece as well
• The end result is that in order to use the belt you'd have to change around half your gear
• You end up just putting it in your stash

This sort of thing is already worse than in other games due to needing to have correct socket layouts and colours on gear, and the absence of predictable gear customisation like socketables, charms, and crafting. In D2 if your gear needed lightning resist you could just throw a topaz at it. In PoE the closest comparison to that is using an exalted orb and praying.
Having to also agonise over resistances will compound this gear juggling "inter-dependence lock" effect. It's not really a problem at the moment since switching a ring is usually sufficient.

Changing all resist mods to resist all would eliminate this at least where resistances are concerned, although I don't imagine GGG is very fond of that idea.

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Oh Chris, you're making things harder for your self again, making the game harder to balance.

Ostensibly the change attempts to make the end-game more challenging. Instead, it achieves the opposite, actually making the game easier for a sufficiently geared/built character. This is because the 75% resistance cap is still achievable, while the most dangerous monsters receive nerfs. Players at the cap will take less damage than before the change.

Currently I already prioritise life and resistances on gear. The increasing returns from resistances makes them much more beneficial than something like evasion, which instead suffers diminishing returns. Mechanics with increasing returns in my opinion are generally a bad idea, they basically throw balance out the window, or at least make it extremely difficult to achieve and/or tenuous.
Going from 0% to 25% resist reduces damage you take by 25%. Then going from 25% to 50% reduces damage by one third, and going from 50% to 75% halves incoming damage.
Currently, it's reasonable to assume that any character at the end game has max or close to max resists, because the ceiling is low enough that any type of character can achieve it with common gear. The increasing returns problem does not rear its head because that game can be balanced around a known value that everyone is at. This is ideal, as it allows you to adjust monster damage to precisely where you want it to be.
But after the change, it now seems GGG does not expect everyone to be at the cap. This creates problems because being only a small amount, say 25% below the cap will cause a character to take twice as much damage as one that is at the cap.
So you are going from a known static value to a range of values that are pretty close in terms of required gear, but can result in wildly different amounts of damage (double to triple for only a single mod on any one gear piece).


The approach that is used here (and has been used elsewhere) is that firstly, something is identified as being too powerful. It is then "balanced" not by adjusting it's power level to a more appropriate/desirable level, but instead by making it more rare. This doesn't actually solve any problems, it just delays the onset of the problem.


To reach the cap before (225 total resistance points) you would need and average of 28 points on every non-weapon gear slot. After the change that doubles to 56.
It will take longer to reach the cap, and the game will be more difficult than before while doing so. But once you get there, the game will be easier than before. Not sure if intended.

I believe the following set of changes would achieve the same goals as the -75% penalty, but acheive them in a more balanced way:

1. Reduce values of all resistance bonuses by half
2. Lower resistance cap from 75% down to 50%
3. Adjust damage to compensate


This would:
a. still double the amount of resistance points need to reach the cap compared to now

b. Reduce the difference in damage taken between someone at the cap and someone slightly below the cap

c. Reduce the overall range of expected damage characters will take, making things easier to balance

d. Allow the game to become more challenging, the ceiling on monster damage could be higher because of b., meaning less one-shot deaths. And greater freedom in players HP values.

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rflynn74 wrote:

I'd like to remind you, you guys are falling right into the Diablo 3 trap. Where if gear didn't have RESIST ALL, it was considered a piece of shit.

Exactly the way it is going. Failing that you are going to have to have a set of gear per resistance which just does not make sense. Trying to regear with all relevant sockets etc.

I will wait to see how it works before i judge but having it in an HC race is wrong as people will die and it wont be tested enough.