Resistance Penalties (and a league to test them!)

I'm afraid we will see that people max the resists anyway (with more or less gear switch hassle), except that now they have to give up more of the other stats. Mostly because resistnaces are really important and very rewarding; they don't have any 'diminishing return' mechanics built in. Seems like it is a mandatory skill point sink and limits gear choices in current state.

Before the penalties this was hidden problem because it was rather easy to keep resists at cap and we simply thought about them as if 75% was the normal state (in engame) with a possibility to get above this value for people who would like to specialise in them.

I hope we will see another resistance change before OB.

Edit: as always.

Edit2: It is silly to have the resistances in the skill tree like this. It adds nothing. The good skill is the one that raises cap, it is specialization. We need skills that modify our stats we get from gear, not just add to them - skills should be a way to specialize (they are, with this exception). Make a skill that adjusts all our resists to an average value (with some penalty perhaps), or another one that adds chaos resistance but lowers the cap of resistances.
I know this is not exactly a solution to the problem I indicated in the first paragraph. But it would be a step in the right direction imo.
Or you can add more diamond skins to the tree (but seriously, introduce penalties and put easily reachable generic resistance nodes to tree? Why don't you simply remove some passive skill point rewards :)

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Chris wrote:

I see the broken resistances situation as being a really big problem that we need to solve before Open Beta. I'd love to properly balance the higher difficulty levels around elemental damage from monsters being impactful, and in turn creating more interesting player choices. Ideally, when it comes to resistances, players would choose between:

• Building a set of gear that offers high resistances. This isn't that hard - the higher mods are common and generous. Rings can have both implicit and explicit resist mods.
• Using unique items that have generous resistances to shore up deficiencies at the opportunity cost of that item slot.
• Speccing more into resists in the passive tree.
• Using specific resist gear as needed for certain encounters.
• Having a set of resistance gear on the alternate weapon swap.
• Choosing to side with Kraityn in some of the bandit quests.
• Using the resist flasks (or aura) during combat.
• Choosing to not have maxed resistances, just as some characters choose to not max their armour or evasion, and instead focus on hitting harder.

My feedback after trying out the league as a result against your list of desired outcomes:
1. This is now a requirement rather than a choice. I should be able to choose to run average resistance, or try for max resistances.
2. This is also a must, especially at low levels as it takes time to get enough equip with enough resists (which you almost can't do). IMO, passives should be what you choose if you want to tray and max your resistances (ie get above average).
3. alternate weapon swap doesn't swap all your equip. This also is counterproductive for people who swap out skillsets with the item swap.
4. Again, almost a requirement to negate the penalty. IMO should be a way to increase resistance BEYOND average.
5. Resist flasks are 2s duration and therefore useless against ele mobs (assuming you want to KILL the mob, which is kinda the point isn;t it? yes sometimes you o need to run away, but that should be from rares etc)).
6.You don't get to choose this at the moment. If you haven't got resist on ALL gear and chosen passives and Kraitin it is very hard to have max resists.

In summary, I think this penalty has been brought in to fix a problem, but the problem, being as stated above that everyone from early on is running max resists. A better solution would be to tier resistance mods, so that you cannot get above 50-60% using ilevel 60 gear unless you choose passives, Kraiyten or a mixture. A breaif demo of what I am talking about is outlined in (much) more detail here:

Hi

Im pretty new around here, but i thinkk i read most of the comments.
My opinion. Its a beta. There will never be a better time to test it than now.
Even though im aware many ppl have put a lot of effort to perfectionize gear for the game as it is now, it doesent change my opinion.


The only question i still have is:

How will mineons be affected by this?
And if they are affected as well, will they benefit from my resistances?

regards
Parc

PS Great game as far as i can see. Hope we get a paymentalternative to credit card and paypal soon for europe. I´d love to support this great game!

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Parcelsus wrote:

The only question i still have is:

How will mineons be affected by this?
And if they are affected as well, will they benefit from my resistances?

I'm pretty new too but if I'm not wrong, minions are not affected by the difficulty penalties. I read a post by Chris about this, but can't find it now.

Also, I don't think player resists don't apply to minions other than through the Necromantic Aegis passive skill.

Edit: Found the post. Here.

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Chris wrote:

I am pretty sure that it doesn't affect minions. I will check.

Edit: Does not currently affect minions. I look forward to another similar thread if we ever change that :P

Thank you Singakiwi.