Generic resistance clusters should be buffed

By "generic resistance clusters" I mean the ones which look like this:

These clusters aren't really OP. They're rarely used by players at the top of the "good gear" ladder; with good gear, you can hit your resistance caps without relying on passives, so these clusters represent a waste of skill points from that perspective. However, these clusters can be vital to the self-found experience, where diverting a few skill points temporarily can be the difference between capping resists or not. And in Merciless and maps, uncapped resists usually equal death.

More than any other nodes on the tree, these clusters are self-found clusters. They help enable a trade-free experience for those who are willing to spend the (eventual) respec point cost to avoid trading; it's not a cost-free thing. It's a shame they're so weak. At one time (was it OB? CB?) they were stronger, and I cannot fathom the reason why they were nerfed since.

Please buff these to something more generous, like 8% all Elemental, and 20% specific elemental.

As I understand it, rich players use them on specialised MF characters. Resists on passive tree -> fewer gear requirements -> can go crazy with item-hunting uniques.

You might need to use them even with optimal gear if that gear includes Lightning Coil (or a lot of obligatory uniques that happen to have bad resists), or if you want greatly overcapped resists in order to run certain maps.

Still, a small buff wouldn't go amiss in a game where +135% resist all elements is considered a minimum requirement for Merciless.

The divide between the haves and the have nots is even more noticeable with chaos resist. It's such a rare mod that self-found players have no hope of really stacking it up on gear, but most of the chaos resist passives are also lacklustre, even if they happen to be easily accessible for your build. I suppose it has to be this way so that players are still tempted to go CI (never mind that CI builds are even more dependent on well-rolled gear).

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

<...> these clusters are self-found clusters. They help enable a trade-free experience <...>

Reason enough for GGG to nerf them and never buff them.
/thread.

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Incompetent wrote:

The divide between the haves and the have nots is even more noticeable with chaos resist. It's such a rare mod that self-found players have no hope of really stacking it up on gear, but most of the chaos resist passives are also lacklustre, even if they happen to be easily accessible for your build.

On the one hand, yeah. On the other hand, chaos resist generally isn't something you need in huge quantities to survive, even in high maps. Two decent affixes and you're pretty safe. It's not like elemental resistances where failure to cap equals death.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

However, these clusters can be vital to the self-found experience, where diverting a few skill points temporarily can be the difference between capping resists or not. And in Merciless and maps, uncapped resists usually equal death. Please buff these to something more generous, like 8% all Elemental, and 20% specific elemental.

Absolutely agree.

Edit: perhaps buff Kratyn's Bandit reward to 10% All Resists, from 8%.

+1 on this. builds generally only take these in emergency cases and i doubt that's by design. but then again maybe the point is to weaken unique-only builds, idk.