I only play NL, so I hadn’t gotten the pleasure of experiencing the Cold Sorc build with Sunders yet. But had been reading about how strong it was and spent the last couple months finding cold sorc gear and building it up on NL for once my perfect cold sunder carries over (bought it a while back just in case we didnt get sunders on NL). Got a near perfect Death’s Fathom, Nightwings, as well as a 237/15 ETH reapers for her merc.
The reason I was making this build was to finally have a powerful elemental char that doesn’t rely on Infinity to break immunities. But now with recent nerf coming up, it sounds like we’re almost back to square one with wanting Infinity on cold sorc’s merc… Am I correct in this assumption? Several others have agreed Infinity will be needed for cold immunities after the nerf.
Really a shame and not even going to level her up anymore if this is the case. This was my plan for the next few months while waiting for D4, but now I don’t know what to do next. Maybe it’s time for a break from D2… Guess I could give Hogwarts Legacy a try?
But anyways, just wanted to rant and say how I’ve been really excited to try cold sorc for many months, only for Blizzard to nerf it and take away my desire to keep playing. Don’t know why they’d want to mess with it, as everyone was saying how much fun it was… Ugh.
And why no level 99 terror zone? Got level 99 barb who could really use some incentives to keep playing… And the new runewords for 2.6 look pretty junky, even after the recent changes. I thought 2.4 runewords were bad! Man… It’s almost like Blizzard is messing this up on purpose to get us to move on from D2 and switch to a different game.
Sorry for the rant, but I’ve been playing this game every day for 4-5 hours over the last year+ and have been getting a little bored with my level 99 and wanted to try something fresh. Figures the one thing I had planned gets nerfed… So frustrating.
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That’s “live service” for ya.
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Considering how much cold skills depend on piercing for their damage, it is a shame they nerfed CM against sunders as much as they did. While I do agree that no nerf for CM was a bit overpowered, I think a 1/2 to 1/3 CM nerf against sundered monsters would have been more appropriate instead of 1/5.
Feedback along these lines could have been given during the PTR, but it seems they felt that didn’t need to be tested. 
Back to fire/cold hybrid sorc for me. It worked for several years, it can work again.
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People who never played it kept crying about it endlessly. They’re the same people who cry endlessly that teleport exists, or that sorcs exist in general. Every sorc had to start hybrid to farm TZs. If they found any sunder charm for their elements, they immediately swapped to that build, if it was cold, great. If they still haven’t crafted an Infinity and found a Griffon’s by the time a cold sunder dropped, then they went cold spec to keep farming.
Farming for what, you ask? They keep farming for a lit sorc build, because it was still better than everything else. The nerfs to convic and LR with sunders was already idiotic, and exclusively why lit builds were never challenged despite these charms. Lumping in CM, despite an initial comment that the damage was perfectly fine going into season 2, is even stupider. This whole game is being dictated by about 4-5 streamers who play it all day long, nitpicking for things to complain about D2r.
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And not just against sunders. I’ve got a friend who has a Tesladin. So when we play together his Conviction aura can break a good number of immunities (all the 100s, 108s, 110s, 115s, 120s and 125s since it’s -30% after the 1/5 penalty). This also includes notable things like cows with Cold Enchanted (50%+75%=125%). Then my Cold Mastery kicks in and I can deal my full damage. No sunders involved, but in 2.6 my damage that way will plummet.
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Convic and LR were already 1/5 effect even b4 sunder…nothing changed for these 2
both those skills are GROUP Support…not 1 sole player like Cold Mastery
so that make sense these skills were made like that years ago…Cold mastery on the other hand…the nerf went too far(and already suggested on ptr forum that it be adjusted to 1/4(25% effectiveness) or 2/7(29% effectiveness) so it be more inline to lightning dmg…and Necro have Death Web to compensate immunity breaking at 1/5
in pala case case…Conviction dont support any of the Paladin mobbing skills(unless you run 3X Holy Fire gear(HoJ/Dragon)…which at least 1 piece reduce fire enemies resists
which is super expensive end-game gear…Vengeance is also not viable currently…but if it was it run 3 other type of dmg if they come accross an immune
so all in all…Conviction and LR are perfectly balanced and can’t be compare to Cold Mastery recent nerf
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This isn’t even the same argument. Not letting them stack with sunders is a nerf. The previous function was for these 2 skills to work at 1/5 effectiveness on immune targets. Sunders remove immune, and so these effects should be working in full. It’s ridiculous that they don’t. CM never broke immunities, and nerfing it is completely uncalled for. At this point, the sunders may as well not exist in the game. The elemental sunders have almost no support outside of lit builds, which is right back at square one for build diversity, and the magic/physical sunders are actually pointless with those insane debuffs.
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Post nerf cold sorc with sunder charm is still better than LoD blizz sorc or bugged cold sorc at lauch where cold mastery removed immunities.
Sunder drops immunes to 95% ok. Thats free.
After that you can have -195 res to enemies. So thats 39 res down. If you want you can go even further.
With facets thats another -10.
So youre whining about being able to attack enemies who were previously immune to your attacks with merely 46 res to your attacks? Get a doom axe if that matters to you.
This is like paladins whining that they need fanaticism to hit their ias breakpoints. At least yours doesnt cost a jah and an ohm.
Oh no you might have to actually max cold mastery instead of just getting it to -150 with end game gear and 4 hard points.
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This isn’t a problem for a build in endgame gear. The functionality during season 2 smoothed the curve. A build that was well behind lit, and even behind fire, just got nerfed. Try playing it before whining that it was too strong.
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just to say…pre-sunder Infinity would not even break most cold immune enemies cause they were at 200%-400% resists
in other word this doesn’t change anything except for maybe 5-8% of all the cold immunes
at least Sunder work on ALL enemies…better than infinity that only worked on a small amount of cold immunes
edit: although yes Nerf went too far as i posted above
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True. But with the 1/5 CM nerf to sundered monsters, people will go right back to skipping cold immune areas with a pure cold sundering sorc, just as they skipped cold immunes in the OG. Yes sundered cold immunes should be slower to run than non-cold immunes, but not gruelingly slow.
Without the nerf, I could barely tell a difference between cold immunes and non-cold immunes, which to me means it was overpowered. That’s why I think 1/2 to 1/3 CM nerf to sundered cold monsters would be more appropriate.
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So lit went from being the only builds that can free farm the game, to still being the best builds to farm the game, then right back to being the only reasonable investment for farming the game. Optimizing cold around the CM nerf isn’t worth not investing into lit instead.
I don’t much like sunder charms in their design, but it was something the game needed even if ham-fisted. Now Blizzard is back pedaling on this method to break immunities, and ultimately making the few of these charms that weren’t useless, also useless. Lit is the only worthwhile build now. Fire and Cold don’t have enough pierce in the game to make them worth using over lit for the same gear investment.
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Cold is still best early game build…with Sunder it meant Light would be underwanted when cold mastery was un-nerf
Cold has its shine moment…so should light
adjusting CM to not be completly nutz with sunder was the right thing to do(but 1/5 is too far…should been 1/4 or 2/7) so that cold keep its lead spot for early gameplay but without it being completly whack and overtake end-game spot too
wanting Cold to be lead spot even in end-game gear mean to kill off Light build(do u hate the transition that much ?)…its still a good thing that you can now deal with most cold immunes…better than pre-sunder
Early game build just means low gear investment. Early game cold sorcs already don’t have a sunder charm. This is a pointless detail to discussion about the CM nerf. The reality of S2 is that every sorc had to start hybrid to try to farm any sunder charm. Once they got something, they respec’d to that element. If they still had low gear by the time a cold sunder dropped, the swapped to that and farmed up to a lit build. The best sorc build never stopped being lit builds.
Did any of you actually play it or did you just get mad that it existed and demand that it needed nerfs? Now cold sorc is right back to farming tunnels until they can go lit with all the pierce pieces.
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i do play it…in fact i got a 97 blizz sorc on nl…a 95 Lightning on NL and a 92 FB on ladder(which gonna be convert NL soon)…i made her FB cause i started ladder late and i didn’t have much time to solid farm…so i gave most of my farm time to annilus hunt on hammerdin and key farm specifically on that FB sorc
but i dont play Hybrid for farming…Hybrid is just to have fun with OR for skills which dont need mass points invests(Frozen Orb///Nova(Light))…Blaze,Wall,Enchant,)
it never was an issue for mfing with being pure…stick to good areas…simple as it
or resort to an alt with a different element if want to Farm TZ non-stop
for upcoming ladder imma try out FOH build and make the usual Blizz sorc(unique farm) + Fury zon(white base farm)…i stuffed all of my NL char near full inv to clean out 3 mule just for new ladder and discarded items i wanted to keep for some low level dueler(pissed that i was force to let go to even play new lad)
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The point of sunders was to unchain builds from their 2-3 spots that they’re allowed to farm, so that any build can go do TZs.
sunder only set enemies res to 95…it dont open any farming spot for light,poison,fire,physical in start up gear…you still need infinity, Crescent Moon, Pheonix/Flickering, Death Web, Reaper Toll after Sundering…in Magic dmg case…Sunder does nothing…5% of a top end hammerdin(avg of 13k dmg) does 650 dmg only(1/10 of a start up hammerdin dmg) and there is no way to drop enemies magic resist further after being sundered
edit: the single build which massively benefited without end game gear was cold sorc due to the mastery
edit 2: also light sunder = get exploded by Soul(Gloams)…like…big no thx for a begginer light build…that -70-90% light resist = self destruct…your overlooking a lot of things that need to be considered…who care about that 1 single whale who buy all good items on jsp just to be able to have a light build ? 1 out of 10000+ players mean absolutly nothing and dont ruin the game
just a trip down memory lane: Prior to 1.08 it did.
That’s why the immunity value for cold are so incredibly high. To make sure CM couldn’t break all of the immunitites.
Edit: Just learned something. Didn’t play at release of D2R tbh.
honest question: what about fire sorcs?
Actually CM did break immunes shortly after D2:R released, but it was quickly fixed. I was barely able to get through the Claw Viper Temple in Hell…Progression was slooooooooooooooowwww. Sir Pokesalot was doing most of the damage, but Blizzard was chipping away at them slowly.