spell nerf?Follow

Last Friday, I started hunting in Grieg's End with my level 52 necro. The mobs were yellow. Over the weekend I leveled up to level 56.
I've noticed that when I was level 52, the darkness spell always worked on the mobs. In fact, of all my spells only my plague spell was resisted occasionally.
Now that I'm a level 56, the very same darkness spell is almost always resisted. This is on the very same mobs. Has there been a nerf to the
necro spells? If not, this doesn't make any sense. If so, how would one find out?
Such a thing should be highly advertised so that players would know it was coming. I try to read all the updates.
Any other classes experiencing this?

Oh yes. I've killed them from 52 through 56. At 56, the mobs are all dark blue. The spells are supposedly good for up to 55.
And since I'm repeatedly clearing several rooms, I'm hitting the exact same mobs over and over. There is something that
has changed whether it is an actual change or a result of my leveling, the resist rate has greatly increased for the same mob
for the same spell.

Trappin is a map guru.

If it was up to me his maps would be the default you get in game.

This. Back in '04 when I started, I noted the behaviour called out by the OP on Luclin. Slow would land fine, then, after getting a level or two, the now DB and even LB mobs would suddenly start resisting with an uncanny consistency.


Edited, Sep 11th 2015 5:25pm by nekokirei

Interesting. I know that at some point they changed the way spell resists are handled (original system couldn't scale past a certain point). It's possible that they back filled it to some degree (so as to make the transition less noticeable at the level range it was actually targeted) and this created an odd effect a some lower point in the range (so change targeted at say level 75 and higher, but scaled back in a way that it has an odd effect somewhere in the mid 50s)? Not sure. I had assumed that they made the changes universally, but it's possible that the existing code just didn't allow it (or it would have been monumentally difficult). It's interesting that this appears to affect a specific level range, not just calculations in specific/older content.

Is it only certain spell types that have the problem, or all spells? Is it dependent on spell level, or your own (so does using an older level spell in the same line produce better resist results)? I recall that back in the day, spell resists were affected by relative spell level to your own (so a spell that was easier to cast had a "higher" success level, and this carried on to affect the resist chances). It was very noticeable when playing a wizard, where your newest spells would not only fizzle more often, but would be resisted more (or do less damage within the listed damage range). It was often more efficient to continue using the older version of the spell for a level or two than to immediately jump to the latest one. They fixed this over time, but and this shouldn't affect the use of the same spell after leveling versus before (in fact, you should get fewer resists under that older system). Again though, it's possible that you just hit the level where you're switching from one resist formula to another, and maybe that is what's causing the problem. So the spell that worked fine under the "low level" resist formula, suddenly does not work as well under the "high level" formula.

Pure speculation on my part though. I haven't leveled a spell caster through that range since like OOW time frame I think.