Torment gearing for sorcerers - reduce target resistances?

[Lanthanide]

I've got a clvl 42 Sorcerer that I've gotten into Torment. I've cleared dlvl 1 and have done the butcher and poisoned well quests on dlvl 2.

Just now I thought I'd have another go, probably just get down to dlvl 3, find Leoric and finish that quest off. So I took the waypoint to dlvl 2. I was immediately met by a Poison Enhanted, Cold Enchanted, Lightning Enchanted skeleton captain (immune magic). It seems only fire spells did any damage against him (-15% fire resist, -9% lightning resist, -18% cold resist on my staff). I did the usual job of golem and teleporting around, with elemental drain to do damage. Even with my elemental drain at something like -47% resistances, he was still immune to bone spirit, so I had to do it the long way.

I got him down to about 10% HP and then died, due to close quarters lightning and poison bolts. To get that far I spent about 20 full mana potions. On the first boss I encountered (+ a few trash mobs). This just seems like an obscene amount of resources to spend on a single enemy that I couldn't actually kill. So once I died I just quit in disgust.

It just seems to me like this game is really unbalanced when it comes to sorcs in Torment, since there are very few items that actually reduce elemental resistances in the game, and staves generally cap out at -20%. Having elemental drain always on a 2 minute cooldown, with such a short active duration, is really a drag too.

What actual gearing options work for sorcs in Torment? Are any of the sets actually torment capable, since it seems like Tal Rasha only gives -10% resistance which doesn't seem like enough? Does the entire game revolve around waiting for the elemental drain cooldown to wear off so you can actually damage enemies?

I think I'm probably going to give up at this point because the game is not actually fun, it's just a stupid chore.

[2330]

Unfortunately, Sorcerers are underpowered in torment. Meteor cluster is your best bet since it deals physical damage. Honestly though, its best to just avoid troublesome enemies that are not necessary for quest completion. Just kite annoying enemies to another room and teleport away.

I theorycrafted a frozen orb sorcerer with a ridiculous level 41 Frozen orb and -55 cold resist which should theoretically be capable of soloing torment without much trouble. I'd like to try it out by I have yet to encounter a deaths fathom.

Helm: Belial's visage
Armor: Vizerei wisdom with +3 frozen orb.
Weapon: Death's fathom
Shield: Nice crafted shield
belt: snow clash
Ring: 2x spellweavers with +3 orb
Amulet: Mara's with +2 frozen orb.

[Lanthanide]

I was toying with modding the game to make all of the 'reduce target resistance' affixes 5-15 and 15-25 instead of 1-10 and 10-20.

Then allow the 5-15 one to spawn on belts (since belts are pretty crap for sorcs at the moment).

Another approach would be to implement a new "reduces all target resistances" affix and make it 1-10. Then staves could spawn with "all -10" as well as "fire -20", to give you -30 on a well-rolled staff. I kinda don't like that approach since it makes it even more RNGesus than it is now. This would also be beyond my abilities to actually do.

Also cooldown for elemental drain should be 120 seconds - clvl.

[carpediem86]

I agree that it is too difficult now with so many of the mobs immune to all magic. But you can get down to - 30 % resistance on a staff. Just normal yellow staves. I found this for example:
http://imgur.com/a/55utz

Got one more staff with -29 % and also one that is uniqe that's got more than -20 %.

[Lanthanide]

Yeah, I saw that in the game code when I was looking at it. I was going on the prefix/suffix thread here which doesn't mention it - that list was created by shopping however. I think the 21-30% range may only be findable from monsters, not bought in shops.

Anyway I wasn't able to permanently mod the .exe, because in 1.04 the author introduced both memory and .exe encryption. I have tools that let me decrypt and edit the running program, but not the .exe itself.

I hacked the gambling and generated a +32% spell power, +2 to all spells, +3 to apocalypse, -20% target fire/lightning/magic staff, which is permanent and persists over games. I tried briefly playing worth this on dlvl 1, it still took about 15 apocs to kill everything on the screen, and at 220 mana each on my 880 supply it was still a stupid number of mana pots.

So I've basically just given up. This game isn't balanced and isn't fun.

[carpediem86]

Well in the first 3 difficulties the Sorceress is overpowered, so it's kinda fair that it's hard in one difficulty. Try to play with Rogue (best in Torment). It's a lot of fun to start with a new one and use some of the good gear you've already found.

Also see some tips here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPV1TIx2Y3s

A lvl 46 Sorceress beating diablo on Torment without much problem. It's still possible, but it's easier with Rogue on Torment.

[Lanthanide]

I'n not saying it's not possible, I'm saying it's not fun.

Also dlvl 16 isn't really the same as the others, since it has a set bunch of enemies. Diablo himself is easier than others, since he's not immune to bone spirit.

[carpediem86]

I agree, it's not that much fun and I also stopped playing with my sorceress in Torment. I would need a lot better gear to do what he does in the video here in the thread. For me it's even going slow on dungeon lvl 1.

[Slayer]

Its torment, its not supposed to be easy, really enjoy the bullshit. If you complete it, well Jesus fucking Christ congrats to you. I'm going to do with a warrior / mage hybrid. Its probably not going to work and ill start getting into trouble when I get into trouble. but ill just adapt

[Diabolic]

The immunity nonsense ruined both Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 for me in the last difficulties.

It's bad design plain and simple, it's not how to make harder enemies hard, it's how you make them annoying. Being to lazy and unimaginative to implement something challenging rather than just ridiculous or outright silly.

It's the equivalent of throwing your hands up, admitting a lack of ideas, and just slapping on immunities onto enemies. Like games where they can't make a decent boss/fight so they just slap on a billion hitpoints and call it a day.

Many games, even in the same genre, have handled end game difficulty just fine. Making things challenging without such lazy nonsense.