The game as it was before was clearly designed for elemental absorbtion. Partially because of all the ways to get resistance high. There's potions that gives +100% resistance.
To be entirely fair, those huge potions will still take you over the 80% cap. It's only "permanent" modifiers (ie, from gear and talents) that cap out at 80%. I validated that the Absorb the Elements spell takes me to 130% elemental resistance for 3 turns. I imagine that elemental shield spells will also do so.
I still think this change is wrong-headed, given that entire strategies and choice selections are rendered worthless, and thus a deep and wide game is rendered more shallow and restrictive.
To elucidate slightly: every choice that allows you to buff resistance for X is a choice NOT to do Y. So all the choices you make are, necessarily, compromises. I can have a HP/Armour tank, but then he/she is slow as molasses. I can have an uber-shield, but then that's a ruby that could have gone on my mages, etc, etc.
But now I have very vulnerable mages AND more vulnerable tanks, when I could have had more widespread risk mitigation. The choice I made was for tanks which could protect the mages if needed. That choice, for me, is now declared retrospectively unwise, yet was within the rules of the game when I started.
