I definitely have to give credit where credit is due. The developers changed Conviction and Lower Resist to 1/5 effectiveness even after a Sundering Charm’s applied effects. This is definitely a move in the right direction and now the charms work like every other way to break immunities. Well done. However, before they launch Season 2, they should seriously consider toning down the cold sorc, boost physical characters, and take hammerdin down a notch…
Cold Mastery
Cold Mastery should also be affected by the 1/5 penalty against Sundered Monsters. That 150-200% pierce would become 30-40% pierce. However to be fair, since we would be applying the 1/5 penalty to Cold Mastery, it should function similar to Conviction and Lower Resist whereby breaking immunities. With this change, it would keep cold resistance of monsters relatively high and would require gear that has -% Enemy Cold Resist on it, such as: Doom, Wizendraw, Voice of Reason, Rainbow Facets, etc. This change would add more value to these items. Cold Mastery should not get a free pass.
Physical Charm
The “Bone Break” physical charm still needs improvement as in its current state all it does is make the game harder for physical characters. First, they should consider lowering the added physical damage range to 10-20%. Second, with the introduction of Terror Zones, physical builds struggle more than elemental builds as they rely heavily on attack rating. It would be beneficial for the this charm to have a bonus to attacking rating, a bonus to minus target defense, or a bonus to damage (around +50-100).
Monster Magic Resist
To tone down the hammerdin without nerfing Blessed Hammers outright, the developers should consider setting monster Magic Resistance to match their Physical Resistance. Since most monsters roll with 0 Magic Resistance, it’d be buffing their Magic Resistance by a large margin (0 → 50 in most instances). Then all the developers have to do is make it so hammers only take a monsters Base Magic Resistance into account. This would take the hammerdin down a notch.
The base damage of Sorc Frost skills is significantly lower than all other elemental builds because it was designed with cold mastery in mind.
Generally I agree. Pure physical characters will likely not even bother with Bone Breaker because there are very few physical immunes already (and they already generally have a source of amp/decrep). I like the idea of giving it like +100 Damage given how insanely good Grief is for most physical builds (this would be like 1/3 of a Grief). The only real downside to that is +Damage currently doesn’t work on ranged abilities - So Strafe/Multi shot bowazons and Blade Fury Sins would still be left out.
Hammers is already an 80 point investment, and it feels fine to me. I think the sundering charms addressing balance a bit means that Hammers are in a fine place. Adding Magic resist to mobs also would nerf Bone Necro, which is already low-tier as far as casters go.
Hammers are not in a fine place. Even the developers stated TZ content was to easy for hammerdin players. Adding sundered charms did not address that issue. Hammerdin needs to be taken down a notch.
Easy compared to other builds. One big drawback of TZ is that it kinda killed targeted farming characters. Meaning if you’re building a Hydra Sorc to farm Stoney Tomb, well you can only have that be the TZ for 1 hour every day or so. If you want to farm TZ then Hammerdins are basically the only “early end game” who can do so efficiently (plus some other possible builds like Nox Necro with CE and some physical builds). Sure, full build L-Sorc or Javazons can eventually farm TZ freely.
Sundering Charms address this… kinda. The only real downside is the cutting edge of the ladder will still probably just be Hammerdins because they can farm TZ while Sundering charms haven’t dropped much yet.
Honestly it wont matter, even if they changed cold mastery too. All the classes we keep saying are op we are talking about at ENDGAME. Most builds are op endgame…its how D2 works.
Even if cold mastery were at 1/5 against cold immunes blizzard would still melt the mobs with a pure cold dmg build.
Just like a FoH build with sunder charm and infinity, or a javazon…they are still going to melt hell regardless of the 1/5 change.
Remember, Facets exist. Sure abilities that take down resistance are getting nerfed…but griffins and facets still exist and will crap on the sundered enemy resistances. Facets will be amazing again.
A lightning sunder javazon with griffins and lightning facets is going to completely crap on hell difficulty.
Yeah the physical immune breaking build won’t matter all that much. Basically, it takes physical immunity from 100% to 95% resistance. So, unless you have a consistent either amp damage or decrepify it wouldn’t be worth the tradeoff in increased physical damage. Likewise, 65% of the non boss physical immunes are undead and you could just go with an act 3 or 5 mercenary with lawbringer to completely remove that at a minimal cost of amn, lem, ko in any 3 socketed sword.