Originally Posted by Flameseeker

Actually 55 and 600 monks were light years away from the perma sin in term of invincibility.

If we analyze 55 the yearly ones had a limited number of zones due to their low hp. No enchant removal, no places with lots of dgen.
Without the scatter update i would guess no 55 would bring SB on their bar since SoJ was the main damage dealer.
It couldn't tank an infinite number of foes 11 attacks in short time would kill you, and its not needed a lot of monsters for that to happen.
Now with SoA/SH we can get 55 that take 0 dmg but they'll either lack damage, because of the scattering nerf SoJ isn't viable, or you need to resort to some tweaks in very exclusive areas. (highligh the risky DoA city farm for example)
Dgen is still a problem be it spirit bond or healing breeze the way it's used to heal.

The 600 isn't invulnerable either. Spell Break wasn't maintainable so you actually were harmed by spells for quite a while and the poor guy is dead if he over-agro.
The Spirit Bond/SoA combo has a down time, even if low, it's enough to get you killed by a slight mistake on the number of foes you take on.
The problem was on the smiter's holy wrath that should break at 0 energy like protective bond (would be a useless skill i know but holy wrath concept was broken from day 1).
At least now even though that the 600/smite team is still functional the smiter won't just stand there waiting for the 600 to do all the work.

So with 600/smite team you can get a decent amount of offense and defense but the drops are divided by both players, and with 55 you will lack one of those but you can solo.

With SF there was no drawback since you weren't targetable by attacks and spells this, even though it wasn't 100% invincible.
SF can be taken down by aoe, sigs, touch skills the problem is that to everything else it was completely invincible, unless you screw up the timing.
For an SF sin it was as easy to agro 2 groups as the whole map, if the timing of GoS->DP->SF is done right there's no problem. To that just add sliver armor or some aoe dgen (CoP/Radiation Field) and we get god mode enabled.

Before the update each of them had it's uses:
-55 could quickly farm some elite tomes, crappy greens, few groups around the world, can manage parts of elite areas but low efficiency
-600/smite teams we're good for some dungeon runs, FFF, some elite area farms (i would say foundry trio was one of the most significant one)
-SF was the hardcore uw farmer, basic need for FoW Sc and VSF, run areas of DoA, one of the fastest SoO/Bogroot runners (BDS/Froggy staffs)

Don't think i added anything new but i just think that even though the builds were and still are, in a different way now, great farming ways, SF's invincibility was incomparable to 55 or 600/smite to the point it's efficiency was much better in most areas.

I do think that the nerf should have affected all the major farming builds but what was done seems like a cheap trick from a 2nd class magician.
We get an SF that it's the same as SB with lower energy, faster recharge, longer duration (humm... doesn't this feel weird).
But now, leaving the poor forgotten 55 to the side, we get sins that finally take damage from attacks (but reduced) and immunity from spells (not bad i guess at least they'll have to think how to tweak their skill bar before the farm fest beggins).
I just wonder what will be the next elite used by the new 600/smite teams. /sarcasm