aka Spell Damage Modulation via Resists, aka resists = mitigation rather than all-or-nothing
This idea has been floating around for a bit. Put simply, the idea is to remove full resists ("Your target has resisted your Archaic: Moon Comet spell!") and to make nuke (and probably DoT) damage always scale based on the target's resist value instead. The random chance to be fully (and partially) resisted would instead become a non-random multiplier on the spell's damage.
In other words, if a particular nuke you cast would have a 5% chance to be resisted on a particular target with a particular resist value under the current system, it would instead always deal 95% damage on that target as long as its resist value remains at that level, with no chance to be fully resisted and do nothing instead.
Resist adjusts would still help, with a negative resist adjust effectively increasing the minimum resist value the target would need to start mitigating the spell's damage. If the resist adjust is greater than the target's resist value, the spell would simply do 100% damage (no bonus). This would also make the effect of resist debuffs much clearer, directly increasing the damage values of spells.
This change would apply unilaterally to both players and NPCs, changing the way both react to spell damage. Some fights may need to be rebalanced, but I'm hoping the impact will be minimal. On the other hand, we may remove the current non-melee mitigation spells (Relic: Melody of the Shield and Nejax's Dampening Curse) since they will be a bit out of place and have long been problematic, so some amount of balancing will likely be necessary.
Non-damaging spells will still use the old all-or-nothing resist system due to the lack of any one mitigation-style system that would work well for all debuff effects (a 45% slow with its duration reduced by 20% would just be a mild annoyance, whereas a 20% reduction in its effect would be a huge nerf and hard to notice; something like mezz could only have its duration reduced on the other hand, and mitigating that by resists on top of the level-based mitigation would greatly reduce the number of mobs an Enchanter could keep locked down, for instance). Nukes and especially DoTs with debuff effects would be a borderline case that would most likely just stick with the old system, otherwise we'd most likely have to split all debuff effects from damaging ones, which would be a pain.
Just as an afterthought this may alleviate the perennial "low CHA at low levels is horrible" issue and also basically remove the idea of something being "immune" to damaging spells of a certain element, although in both bases the damage may be reduced quite a bit. Unresistable damaging spells like Relic: Lure of the Void will, of course, always deal their full base damage.
Some potential issues:
*Monk FD pulling - not being able to fully resist damaging spells may make some pulls much more difficult. However, since we will still be preserving the old resist system for debuffs anyway, we may be able to direct nukes and DoTs to it whenever the target is currently feigning death to get around that issue, though the inconsistency would be less than ideal.
*Varied damage - much as with spell variance this change may make it difficult to determine when the base damage of your spell has gone up, since the damage may vary from target to target. However, it is non-random, so it should at least be less of an issue; at worst you'll still be able to test a spell against a green con mob, then swap in the new item or what have you and cast it again against the same mob to see if there's a difference.
*That Wizard tome that does something whenever you are fully resisted - would obviously have to change.
This idea has been floating around for a bit. Put simply, the idea is to remove full resists ("Your target has resisted your Archaic: Moon Comet spell!") and to make nuke (and probably DoT) damage always scale based on the target's resist value instead. The random chance to be fully (and partially) resisted would instead become a non-random multiplier on the spell's damage.
In other words, if a particular nuke you cast would have a 5% chance to be resisted on a particular target with a particular resist value under the current system, it would instead always deal 95% damage on that target as long as its resist value remains at that level, with no chance to be fully resisted and do nothing instead.
Resist adjusts would still help, with a negative resist adjust effectively increasing the minimum resist value the target would need to start mitigating the spell's damage. If the resist adjust is greater than the target's resist value, the spell would simply do 100% damage (no bonus). This would also make the effect of resist debuffs much clearer, directly increasing the damage values of spells.
This change would apply unilaterally to both players and NPCs, changing the way both react to spell damage. Some fights may need to be rebalanced, but I'm hoping the impact will be minimal. On the other hand, we may remove the current non-melee mitigation spells (Relic: Melody of the Shield and Nejax's Dampening Curse) since they will be a bit out of place and have long been problematic, so some amount of balancing will likely be necessary.
Non-damaging spells will still use the old all-or-nothing resist system due to the lack of any one mitigation-style system that would work well for all debuff effects (a 45% slow with its duration reduced by 20% would just be a mild annoyance, whereas a 20% reduction in its effect would be a huge nerf and hard to notice; something like mezz could only have its duration reduced on the other hand, and mitigating that by resists on top of the level-based mitigation would greatly reduce the number of mobs an Enchanter could keep locked down, for instance). Nukes and especially DoTs with debuff effects would be a borderline case that would most likely just stick with the old system, otherwise we'd most likely have to split all debuff effects from damaging ones, which would be a pain.
Just as an afterthought this may alleviate the perennial "low CHA at low levels is horrible" issue and also basically remove the idea of something being "immune" to damaging spells of a certain element, although in both bases the damage may be reduced quite a bit. Unresistable damaging spells like Relic: Lure of the Void will, of course, always deal their full base damage.
Some potential issues:
*Monk FD pulling - not being able to fully resist damaging spells may make some pulls much more difficult. However, since we will still be preserving the old resist system for debuffs anyway, we may be able to direct nukes and DoTs to it whenever the target is currently feigning death to get around that issue, though the inconsistency would be less than ideal.
*Varied damage - much as with spell variance this change may make it difficult to determine when the base damage of your spell has gone up, since the damage may vary from target to target. However, it is non-random, so it should at least be less of an issue; at worst you'll still be able to test a spell against a green con mob, then swap in the new item or what have you and cast it again against the same mob to see if there's a difference.
*That Wizard tome that does something whenever you are fully resisted - would obviously have to change.
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