You know, I've always had this theory throughout the years that there is a tiny, yet extremely dedicated group of online netizens, who are behind D2's issues being fixed in a timely manner and taking YEARS to finally get fixed.

Let me guess: You also believe that, in D2R, items in the cube should NOT get id'd by Cain, right?
That it should stay just the way it is now, rather than simply get fixed?

I care enough about d2r to have an opinion.

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oops, was tired when I wrote that...

In actuality, I of course meant:

You know, I've always had this theory throughout the years that there is a tiny, yet extremely dedicated group of online netizens who are behind THE PREVENTION OF D2's issues being fixed in a timely manner and taking YEARS to finally get fixed.

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oh? And what would it be, regarding the issue of Cain not ID-ing cube items ?

This post was edited by LaughingSkull on Jun 24 2022 07:07pm

Hi!

In 1.00 i can confirm CM does work

Testing with lvl24 IceBalst (171cold damage) on Hell A4 on Grotesque Wyrms on P1
- lvl 0 CM - 8-9 shots
- lvl 5 CM (55 pierce) 5 shots
- lvl 24 CM (89 pierce) 3 shots

Cheers!

P.S. has no effect if the mob has no Cold Resist to pierce (or it is tiny)

A question to OP:

Have you tested CM with other cold skills as well?
For example testing with Ice Blast would be better in my opinion, because GS has min and max damage, while IB does the same damage always.

Meanwhile I searched some old forums from 2000 (Lurker Lounge), but it was not mentioned anywhere that CM did not work properly. In fact, it was revealed that CM mechanics had been poorly communicated on early D2 sites describing it like a simple subtraction. Jarulf discovered that instead of substracting CM reduces the enemy's resist according to the listed percentage. I also found some explanation about how CM works in PvP (reducing the total resitance, then applying the nightmare/hell penalties.

As for 1.00 vs 1.06b:
I played with both patches quite a lot, but I do not remember raining exceptional items in normal. TC system was way more simple before LoD: each monster had its own loot table according to the act and difficulty, for example I mostly found war staves, grim wands and full plates from normal Act4 mobs (great gold source).
Cow King farming in 1.00 was indeed a great exploit and WW was most powerful, but besides that I do not think the game was much easier. For example it was almost impossible to play with amazons in 1.00 due to the ED bug in bows and the non-working pierce with aoe skills like freezing arrow or exploding arrow.

This post was edited by -joey- on Jun 28 2022 02:39am

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I was about to write a long post detailing yet another, new theory on how exactly CM works that included a combination of several factors:
- +skills not counting (i.e. only the hard-points level of CM counted)
- CM behaving BEST on white mobs, slightly WORSE on Bosses, and... here's the kicker: the WORST on unique/superunique mobs (REGARDLESS of whether they have ANY mods that apply extra cold resistance or not). WEIRD, HUH?
- CM's application depending on the level difference between you and the target monster.
- CM's efficiency depending on whether its % reduction exceeded a certain value, when compared to the respective monster's cold resistance. (I already discussed that, actually...)
- CM stopping working if you die in the current game session (similarly to how you "lose" your Anya Scroll Resistances if you die in LoD (pre-D2R), even tho the Character Sheet shows otherwise)
- and others...

However, I gave up on all that and instead kept on playing, because I did want to finish the game on Hell difficulty eventually.

Now that this is done with (yay, level 55 Baroness coldER_bitch !!! ), the above considerations are rendered obsolete (for NOW...) due to the simple fact that... :[

Pre-LoD Diablo 2 is a buggy, buggy, piece of shit MESS of a game! :D

Just a few examples of some absurd things:

- Wells sometimes cure you of curses, other times they don't. How, when and why is UNKNOWN.

- Frozen Orb is just very bugged and unreliable.
Just an example: For the longest time I kept it at level 5, because I wanted to concentrated on levelling Cold Mastery instead.
Finally I levelled it to 6 and suddenly it became SIGNIFICANTLY stronger.
This doesn't have to do with Cold Mastery at all, as even against WHITE monsters with 0 -- ZERO cold resistance, I would observe the following:
level 5 frozen orb would take 4-5 casts to kill them...
...whereas level 6 FO, which deals only 3 (THREE) more average damage would take only 2 casts
Like... what the fuck?? How is that explained??
I certainly don't know, but this also certainly points to the obvious line of reasoning that other cold spells would also behave wildly incoherently and inconsistently.
(again, this is regardless of CM and/or whether the monster is even cold resistant at all !!)

- Fire Eye (superunique Palace Cellar Invader) killed me ONCE in Hell, and I lost a huge chunk of my XP bar... something in the order of 20-25% xp...
...meanwhile I died TWICE to Ancient Kaa the Soulless (again, in Hell), and I lost a total of something like 12% of my XP bar...
How???
A death in Hell is supposed to lose you 10% of your XP bar, yet I became witness to this.
And, no, I'm not imagining things.
NB: Recovering your corpse in pre-LoD doesn't give you ANY xp back.

- Some other dumb shit as well... I forget what it was...


In general, there is one major conclusion to be drawn from all this:

PRE-LOD D2 IS A BUGGY, MESSY PIECE OF SHIT OF A GAME, ONE OF WHOSE MAJOR PROBLEMS IS THAT ITS TOOLTIP-REPRESENTED NUMBERS DO NOT CORRESPOND TO THE ACTUAL MATH VALUES IN THE CODE UNDERNEATH

CASE CLOSED.

---


ANYWAY, TO FINALLY GET TO YOUR COMMENTS:

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The question was never whether CM worked or not;
It was always HOW exactly it worked.

OK, so let's do some math then:

Hell Grotesque Wyrms have 442 HP and 100% Cold res.
According to , this resistance actually gets capped at 75%, meaning that a Sorc with lvl 0 CM would deal 25% damage with her cold spells to a Grotesque Wyrm.
However, if a Sorc does have lvl 1 or higher CM, then the damage reduction calculation is applied to the "true" 100% Cold Res (again, according to )

lvl 0 CM should make their Cold res 75% (according to , that's how MAX RES gets capped in pre-LoD d2...) and thus make Ice Blast deal only 1/4 of its damage, which would be roughly 43 in this case.
Thus, theoretically, you would need 11 Ice Blasts to kill a Wyrm. This is INcompatible with what your experiment showed.

lvl 5 CM should make their Cold res 45% (again, according to , CM gets applied to the monster's TOTAL res, not its CAPPED res), and thus make Ice Blast deal 94 damage.
Thus, theoretically, you would need 5 Ice Blasts to kill a Wyrm. This is compatible with what your experiment showed.

lvl 24 CM should make their Cold res 11% (again, according to , CM gets applied to the monster's TOTAL res, not its CAPPED res), and thus make Ice Blast deal 152 damage.
Thus, theoretically, you would need 3 Ice Blasts to kill a Wyrm. This is compatible with what your experiment showed.

---

Hm, clearly this isn't exactly right... There must be something more...

OK, let's assume that is then incorrect in his assumption that CM gets applied to the 100% CR, and instead gets applied to the capped 75% CR:

with lvl 0 CM, the situation is the same as above.
This is INcompatible with what your experiment showed.

lvl 5 CM should make their Cold res 33.75% (I assume this gets rounded to 34; If it is 33, or doesn't get rounded at all, then please correct me), and thus make Ice Blast deal 113 damage.
Thus, theoretically, you would need 4 Ice Blasts to kill a Wyrm. This is incompatible with what your experiment showed.
*HOWEVER, if we assume that the Grotesque Wyrm managed to regenerate a bit of health in the periods between the separate Ice Blasts, then the math potentially adds up:
4*113 is 452. Compared to the 442 life that the creature has, that would mean that the Wyrm should have regenerated 10 life TOTAL inbetween the Ice Blasts,
thus bringing up the required number of Ice Blasts needed to kill it to 5.
Sounds plausible.
This is POTENTIALLY compatible with what your experiment showed.

lvl 24 CM should make their Cold res 8.25% (rounded down to 8, presumably), and thus make Ice Blast deal 157 damage.
Thus, theoretically, you would need 3 Ice Blasts to kill a Wyrm. This is compatible with what your experiment showed.

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Hm, we seem to be no closer to the truth...

Apparently ^ -joey- 's assumption about CM getting calculated off of the monster's UNcapped resistance is WRONG. (or, at least, not FULLY correct...)
And it is PLAUSIBLE that CM is actually getting calculated off of the monster's CAPPED resistance (at least as far as WHITE monsters (i.e. non-unique / non-bosses) are concerned).

HOWEVER it is still not explained why lvl 0 CM would only take 8 or 9 Ice Blasts to kill a Hell Grotesque Wyrm, rather than the expected 11.

AND THIS IS WHERE I THINK I'VE FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT THANKS TO YOU STUBBORNS' GRUNT WORK, AND MY BRAINS:

If a monster's resistance in Hell exceeds 75%, then it does not get reverted back to 75%... No..

Instead, it gets brought down to its NIGHTMARE value !!

In Grotesque Wyrm's case, this is 70%.

Ok, let's see now:

lvl 0 CM, Ice Blast would deal 30% of its damage, or 51.
Thus, theoretically, you would need 9 Ice Blasts to kill a Wyrm. This is compatible with what your experiment showed.

lvl 5 CM, Ice Blast would pierce 55% of the Wyrm's 70% resistance, which is 38.5, which would bring the Wyrm's resistance down to 31.5%. Thus, Ice Blast would deal 68.5% of its damage, or 117.
Thus, theoretically, you would need 4 Ice Blasts to kill a Wyrm. This is incompatible with what your experiment showed.
*HOWEVER, if we assume that the Grotesque Wyrm managed to regenerate a bit of health in the periods between the separate Ice Blasts, then the math potentially adds up:
4*117 is 468. Compared to the 442 life that the creature has, that would mean that the Wyrm should have regenerated 26 life TOTAL inbetween the Ice Blasts,
thus bringing up the required number of Ice Blasts needed to kill it to 5.
Sounds plausible.
This is POTENTIALLY compatible with what your experiment showed.

lvl 24 CM should make their Cold res 7.7% (rounded up to 8, presumably), and thus make Ice Blast deal 157 damage.
Thus, theoretically, you would need 3 Ice Blasts to kill a Wyrm. This is compatible with what your experiment showed.


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VERDICT: MONSTERS WHOSE RESISTANCE TO AN ELEMENT EXCEEDS 75% IN HELL, GET CAPPED AT THE VALUE OF THEIR NIGHTMARE RESISTANCE


...

For now.

Now do that experiment as well with a monster that has "100%" cold resistance in Hell, but a value OTHER THAN 70% in Nightmare!

And also: use the fastest, FASTEST possible cast rate, and be AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE TO THE MONSTER,
so as to make it so that it regenerates as little life as possible in the process!

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This post was edited by LaughingSkull on Jul 6 2022 07:56pm

Actually the evidence I brought here shows CM works only on mobs with CR and its not integer, its percentage, for me this was the time when I quited on cold sorc and tried something else. For me fire (wall) sorc was the way to go, but also using some side-skills to be even more effective.

(If u r interested on my detailed 1.00 sorc build, pls let me know via PM)

GL on 1.06, im going to follow this topic

Things get even more interesting with this game:

You know how, in LoD, Cold Resistance also reduces endured freeze/cold length, right?
And, thus, Cold Mastery, when reducing enemies' Cold Resistance also increases the freeze/cold length that Cold-Resistant monsters endure.

Well, in pre-LoD D2, it ain't like that:
ALL Monsters, regardless of whether or not they have Cold Resistance at all, endure a FLAT 50% Cold/Freeze length on Nightmare, and 25% on Hell...

HOWEVER,

And this is where it gets crazy:

BOSSES seem to be an exception to this rule !!!

How, why, and/or if it is even related to their cold resistance / cold mastery AT ALL is a mystery to me.

For example, My Frozen Orb is currently at a level where its cold Length lasts "20 seconds".
On Hell, any monster I hit with it stays chilled for 5 seconds.
Hell DIABLO however? Stays chilled for at least a good 8 seconds or so...

Insane!

I have noticed on regular mobs the cold length penalty as u have stated, and on boss -minions or champs I usually experiencing even lesser time to have. Im not sure if the rare occassion with non-regular mobs with CR worth that one hard point into CM with my fire sorc build.

I use frost nova to make mobs walk slower through my 3-5 same spotted fire walls with almost 1k fire Dam/sec and during their walk I use static like mad 🙂

I need like lvl10-15 frost nova to make them slow for 5seconds

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Just a quick chime-in post meant to prove yet again how BROKEN pre-LoD's numbers / maths game is:

See, I am lucky enough to have found (bought) a magic short staff with +2 to sorc skills and +2 to teleport.
That means that I won't have to waste 2 points in telekinesis and teleport respectively to be able to jump around the world.
Basically, this staff spares me 2 skill point allocations, while also granting me a solid +2 boost to sorc skills.

In addition, I am also wearing Tarnhelm (+1 all skills) and a +1 to sorc skills Rare ammy.

That's a +4 to skills total.

HOWEVER, the 2 points of Teleport that come from the item DO NOT benefit from these + skills.
It stays at 2.

I don't know whether that's normal and expected or not, but here's where it gets CRAZY:

When I use a SKILL SHRINE, one of these would happen:

* My Teleport would stay at level 2 (no change)

* My Teleport would become level 4 (expected behaviour, because skill shrines grant precisely +2 to skills)

* My Teleport would become level... 6 (yes... SIX)

Just... WHAT THE FUCK? xDDD

---

Maaaan, this game is crazy !!!

p.s. oh, maybe I can theoretically get a level 8 teleport too, from a skill shrine (with 2 still being the item-granted level)... idk...
I'm just listing the variations I've witnessed; could be there's more I haven't seen yet!

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This post was edited by LaughingSkull on Jul 13 2022 05:44pm