So why do we use "Immunity Bypass" instead of Absorption Bypass, anyway?

[Underflow]

A random thought i had earlier today, but Immunity Stripping these days has really boiled down to all or nothing.

Either you have it, and your build's able to function properly in all content... or you don't.

However, isn't immunity just the equivalent of 100% absorption? And healing the equivalent of 200%?

Converting 'immunity stripping' to a percentage amount of Absorption Bypass would allow degrees of stripping to be provided, enabling smoother progression, while not giving out the equivalent of true immunity bypass for nothing.

---

Explaining this theoretical new system:

Non-Racial Player Absorption would be capped at 100% (Using the same multiplicative system we have today). Certain mobs would possibly go higher (I wouldn't be surprised to see 190% absorption mobs running around in legendary with this new system)

Specific Races would add up to a +100% "Racial" bonus to Absorption.

• Undead naturally have a +100% Racial bonus to Negative Absorption, since they heal from negative energy.
• Golems naturally have a +50% Racial bonus to All Energy Type Absorption, since they take 50% less damage from energy sources.

Absorption at or above 200% instead heals the target for the same amount they would've taken. 100-199 are just immunity.

Players in Undead Form would have a 100% + 100% Negative Absorption, so if the devs wanted a boss to have a mechanic that did Negative Energy Damage, they could simply give it a debuff with "Suppress Raical Negative Absorption, then reduce Negative Absorption by 25%" to still grant undead builds some resistance, but still make them deal with the mechanic.

Clay Golems would have 200% "Base" Acid Absorption, plus 50% "Racial" Absorption. It'd take significant effort to hit them with Acid damage, but it still can be done.

Absorption cannot go negative. If it hits 0, it stays at 0.

---

"Pierce Fire/Cold/Acid/Electric Resistance" from Elemental Savants and Stormsinger, as well as "Hellfire" from Acolyte of the Skin could grant 5/10/15% Absorption Bypass. Barely enough to deal some damage to otherwise immune targets, but still rendering them less effective. Things that heal from the damage type are still menaces in heroic, but no longer are you completely walled when you use your main element.

Sources of immunity bypass that are available early could cap at around 75-100% Absorption Reduction. Examples: Tiefling, Chaosmancer. More than enough to allow you to participate, but requiring further investment to go all the way.

Scaling amounts could to cores of Caster trees, to incentivize going further into a class, while still keeping progression smooth.

More sources of Absorption reduction could be added, like a 10-20% Absorption Reduction to the Epic Spell Power feats. Add more to the Epic Destiny trees.

For massive investment sources of immunity bypass, I could see the numbers being high. Sorcerer Elemental Savant needs 20 levels, and Druid needs 17. I see no reason not to set theirs to something like 500% Absorption Bypass, to reward them for their persistence, although I still think they could benefit from piecemeal incremental bonuses.

Obviously, this'd be a lot, but it'd let the devs properly scale player damage as they level, rather than just suddenly granting 100% bypass at level 12. Give it to players piecemeal, so that it's easier to control.

 

[Underflow]

Note, this isn't really a suggestion at this point, it's more... would this even help things at all? I know it'd let them make more dangerous encounters, and prevent people from fully becoming immune to types of damage (EG: Let them have Poison Damage that's in the middle ground between 'utterly walled by undead forms' and 'godslaying terror poison that can't be stopped by anything')

 

[Qrvar]

Blanket immunities are terrible in general, but they're so ingrained in DDO that I don't think we'll ever see them disappear. Same thing like why red and purple names have a blanket immunity to all CC effects rather than a really high DC. Or fortification numbers and expectations over time - all part of uncontrolled power creep that's making the game unnecessarily complicated. 100% fort vs mob with 0 bypass is same as 200% fort vs mob with 100% bypass.

That said, I'm not qualified if your suggestion would make things better or worse. It'd certainly streamline them.

Absorption cannot go negative. If it hits 0, it stays at 0.

Or maybe it should, and just start counting as Vulnerability.

 

[J1NG]

There's two areas involved and you're only looking at one of them.

1. Element/TYPE Absorption.
2. Element/TYPE Heal

If you only remove the Absorption and do not Remove the Heal, you still basically (ultimately in the end) do nothing, because any amount of damage you deal is also healing them at the same time. Effectively 100% Immunity.

So the Immunity Removal in the game right now offered to players removes both the Absoprtion amount (100) AND the Heal by amount also (100). However, these can be increased or lowered beyond these numbers (We saw this with Teal hireling and the Deathsalve on Alchemist), so we saw -200 Negative Absorption for example (because one of the Devs either didn't know how it worked in DDO and though straight -200% would give the 100% Absorb and Healing).

So whilst playing with Absorption levels might sound like it can add progression. The danger is you're also adding complexity that is unnecessary including how much healing you should stop as well. And if you're going to 0 one, you might as well just 0 the other for simplicity (as it works now).

J1NG

 

[GrizzlyOso]

Obviously the immunity and immunity stripping we have now is stupid. OP covered enough of it and it’s been discussed before,

Anything closer to the system OP describes would be much better. Yes it would take some work and yes, it would require ssg to understand their systems.

So no, it probably won’t happen.

 

[Bjond]

So no, it probably won’t happen.

Even worse, if it did happen, they'd only add it going forward. You'd need to be able to deal with both legacy and new at once.

 

[EinarMal]

It would be yet another thing casters would have to try to slot in. Physical damage dealers have to put up with none of this, DR bypass is now super easy to fit in.

Simple fixes for terrible caster DPS at cap.

1. Remove mob healing from damage.
2. Remove R7+ caster penalty
3. Update all heroic spells to have MCL 20
4. I would replace this in Draconic:

From:
Coalescence: You bypass the first 5/10/15 points of Damage Reduction with your spells. Rank 3: +5 Spell Power of your Draconic Bloodline element and +5 Universal Spell Power

To:
Coalescence: You are able to curse an enemy, increasing Draconic bloodline element damage they take by 15%. When cast on a creature that is immune to that Element, it makes them vulnerable to that element for a short period of time. (Activation Cost: 5 Spell Points. Cooldown: 20 seconds.) Rank 3: +5 Spell Power of your Draconic Bloodline element and +5 Universal Spell Power

 

[GrizzlyOso]

It would be yet another thing casters would have to try to slot in. Physical damage dealers have to put up with none of this, DR bypass is now super easy to fit in.

Simple fixes for terrible caster DPS at cap.

1. Remove mob healing from damage.
2. Remove R7+ caster penalty
3. Update all heroic spells to have MCL 20
4. I would replace this in Draconic:

From:
Coalescence: You bypass the first 5/10/15 points of Damage Reduction with your spells. Rank 3: +5 Spell Power of your Draconic Bloodline element and +5 Universal Spell Power

To:
Coalescence: You are able to curse an enemy, increasing Draconic bloodline element damage they take by 15%. When cast on a creature that is immune to that Element, it makes them vulnerable to that element for a short period of time. (Activation Cost: 5 Spell Points. Cooldown: 20 seconds.) Rank 3: +5 Spell Power of your Draconic Bloodline element and +5 Universal Spell Power

Totally. This thread was definitely about those things you talked about.

There’s definitely not stone guard, ethereal, monsters with dodge, etc. high ac mobs are not a thing. Fort and fort bypass, not things. And melee never do anything but physical damage. You’re making good points all around, and this thread was definitely about melee.

Even though you’re right about all of that, it would still be a much more interesting system to have degrees of absorption than the all or nothing system we have now. And stripping immunity one mob at a time ? We already have that. It’s pretty boring.

 

[EinarMal]

Totally. This thread was definitely about those things you talked about.

There’s definitely not stone guard, ethereal, monsters with dodge, etc. high ac mobs are not a thing. Fort and fort bypass, not things. And melee never do anything but physical damage. You’re making good points all around, and this thread was definitely about melee.

Even though you’re right about all of that, it would still be a much more interesting system to have degrees of absorption than the all or nothing system we have now. And stripping immunity one mob at a time ? We already have that. It’s pretty boring.

Show me when melee/ranged heal mobs with their damage, or mobs are completely immune i will wait. It is night and day different.

I would prefer they get rid of immunities and mob healing entirely but neither this suggestion or that will ever happen

 

[GrizzlyOso]

Show me when melee/ranged heal mobs with their damage, or mobs are completely immune i will wait. It is night and day different.

I would prefer they get rid of immunities and mob healing entirely but neither this suggestion or that will ever happen

So you’re trying to argue with me by proposing the very thing I’m proposing? Getting rid of immunities and mob healing ?

I’m glad we agree. I don’t really appreciate how we’ve done it.

 

[EinarMal]

So you’re trying to argue with me by proposing the very thing I’m proposing? Getting rid of immunities and mob healing ?

I’m glad we agree. I don’t really appreciate how we’ve done it.

I am not arguing with you, you are very condescending.

They are not getting rid of immunity so a single target strip in Draconic would help a ton with classes that don’t have it. Even better if it were AOE but even less likely to happen.

 

[GrizzlyOso]

I am not arguing with you, you are very condescending

It’s hard not to be when you are disagreeing with me and then literally summarize my post as if it’s your own idea that somehow disagrees with my post.

Sure, disagreeing, very different than arguing.

 

[EinarMal]

It’s hard not to be when you are disagreeing with me and then literally summarize my post as if it’s your own idea that somehow disagrees with my post.

Sure, disagreeing, very different than arguing.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I never quoted you disagreeing with anything.

 

[The Narc2]

The whole suggest would only create more grind for rare items, therefore catering to the lifers and whales.

Its a bad suggestion that will lead to the exodus if more casual players.

 

[vik]

While your idea makes sense to me, I think ultimately players would respond by focusing only on sonic, force, or light.

 

[Aelastiar]

If casters need to deal with immunities either via gear for strip/bypass or second element, then they really need a dps increase lol.

 

[Roper]

IDC about casters. Melee toons are f23ked if this continues.

 

[droid327]

That was a lot of text just to say something so obvious that everyone who has considered the immunity dilemma has come to the same conclusion lol

Immunity should not be a binary pass/fail for single element casters, but element resistant mobs should still be something you notice.

 

[Lotoc]

as far as I'm grasping how the strips/bypasses are set up it checks if the absorption value is higher than 0% and if it is sets it to 0% as a final modifier.
This is why if say you were a cold druid and applied both Mantle of the Icy Soul and Freezing Spray to a skeleton the skeleton is treated as 0% absorb instead of -25% absorb, and an enemy with say 50% absorb from fire shield would just end up at 0% too.
And yes, currently if an enemy is vulnerable to an element it has negative absorb percent, the easiest way to see this as a player is to enter an undead shroud and see how your light absorb is -100%.

All absorb on enemies shifts seem to be managed by buff/debuff effects, it's questionable if it's possible to set damage to ignore a certain value of absorption as you'd proposed in the change to pierce enhancements as the only damage effect so far I've observed ignoring the absorption category was the bugged release version of Sacred Fist's imbue which just did not interact with absorption or vulnerability at all (but was reduced by resists.)

as far as how things currently work, it seems that if an enemy is at 100% absorb that's hard set and can't really be reduced or increased by an effect to anything but 0% (You can't for example equip poison absorb as an undead and start healing from poison and stacking Ninja spy poison up to 100% vuln doesn't mean you start taking poison damage)

This is a big thing on how damage absorption and healing are working though
If you are tagged to heal from an element things display as 200% absorb
A lifesealed item giving 20% negative absorb actually reduces an undead player's neg absorb to 180% and effects which grant vulnerability to negative energy will in fact increase how much you are healed by them, raising your displayed neg absorb.
For an Acolyte of the Skin entering demon form all your fire absorb and resist actually gets in the way of healing from fire damage.
For healing Absorption's effect reduces it just as it would for damage



To put it quite simply, it seems the game and damage systems simply aren't built for bypassing absorption as much as they are for negation or reduction and immunities/healing need to be hard negated rather than mitigated.


Further point: Death Ward sets your negative absorb display to 100%, other sources of neg absorb or negative vulnerability do not make you take damage or be healed by negative - this was why they had to disable death ward working on undead players.

 

[l_remmie]

A full list of %mitigation is how diablo and some other games work.
-100 to +200 provides weakness, resistance and elemental healing. Its the way rpg should work because slow power scaling is the whole idea.
Its not like its new either. Older games than ddo used it.

The ship has sailed for DDO ages ago though. This would mean rewriting the code and adjusting all monsters and all gear to work with this system.