Detailed Feedback on Sunder Charms

PTR Feedback
1

First off, I wanted to say the new Sundered Charms looks like an interesting new feature. With that said, I do have some feedback for the developers…

Variable Stats
The new Sundered Charms should have a variable negative resistance range, spanning from -75% to -125%. This creates an exciting item hunt trying to find the perfect charm and makes trading them alot more interesting. If the charms stay fixed, gear progession stops with obtaining only one. Plus, variable stats is a cornerstone for D2.

Charm Size
The developers should consider making the new Sundered Charms as Large Charms as the game is already dominated by Grand Charms and Small Charms.

Drop Chance
For the power of these new charms eliminating immunities, I really hope the developers set an appropiate drop rate. In my opinion, the drop rate should be similar to Ohm rarity.

Cold Mastery
Cold Mastery should be affected by 1/5 penalty against Sundered Monsters. That 150-200% pierce would become 30-50% pierce and not be overpowered in the current state. An alternate solution would be to change Cold Mastery to +skill damage, which would alleviate this issue. This change also has the added benefit of putting more value in the Doom Runeword with -40-60% To Enemy Cold Resistance.

Conviction/Lower Resist
Conviction and Lower Resist working at 100% efficiency is too much. They should be subject to 1/5 penalty against Sundered Monsters. With this change, Infinity would offer great help, but would reinforce idea of gear progression with finding -Enemy Resistance% on items.

Decrepify/Amplify Damage
Decrepify and Amplify Damage should work at 100% efficiency against Sundered Monsters as physical characters have no other means of doing more physical damage.

Hydras, Traps & Pets
Allow the new Sundered Charms to benefit Hydras, Traps and Pets. Otherwise, the Hydra Sorc, Trap Assassin, Zoo Druid, and Summon Necro will fade into the night for Season 2.

Charm Specifics
Fire, Ice, Lightning, and Poison are fine as is.

The “Black Cleft” magic charm is utter garbage. There is only one use for it to take it out of your cube for wave 2 Baal. That’s it. The developers should seriously consider adding more Magic Immune monsters to Terror Zones to give this charm more purpose. Otherwise, it’s pointless.

The “Bone Break” physical charm needs rework. There are few Physical Immune monsters in the game and this charm simply becomes more of a liability with 25% more damage from physical attacks. With the introduction of Terror Zones, physical builds struggle more as they rely on attack rating. It would be beneficial for this new charm to have minus target defense on it, which fits the theme. In my opinion, the charm needs a rework as follows:

Bone Break

  • Monster Physical Immunity is Sundered
  • Target Defense -25%
  • Physical Damage Increased by 10% (down from 25%)

Charm Models
The charm models could be improved and would be pretty epic if they had unique models, similar to the Hellfire Torch or Annihilus. The current color shift feels super rushed and out of place with the rest of the charms.

Charm Names
With the goal of not straying too far from the original names, the developers should consider better names as follows…

Bone Fracture

  • Current: Bone Break

Frozen Fissure

  • Current: Cold Rupture

Storm Shard

  • Current: Crack of the Heavens

Infernal Rift

  • Current: Flame Rift

Decaying Burst

  • Current: Rotting Fissure

Dark Cleft

  • Current: Black Cleft
2

We can hamstring the charms with variability and reduced effect lower resist etc, that would be a good thing.

The righr thing to do is delete them.

4 Likes
3

I don’t think Blizzard will delete them, so the variability of finding a good one while adding 1/5 penalty to Cold Mastery, Conviction, etc. would mitigate some of the concerns.

4

People seem to think this will be easy to drop, but that is not really true. Even with gheeds chance of dropping, will be really low drop chance in fact, because it can only drop from elites, uniques and super-uniques. It cannot drop from anything else, including the minions of those groups, because it does not says unique packs.

A good density terrorized zone will have around 5 groups, 2 elites, 2 unique and 1 super unique, lets say.

Calculating 3 mins per run you have the following with 0% MF:

Gheeds chance to drop fromIlvl 87+ Elites/uniques/superuniques:

Elites = 1 in 49606 (the pit elites)
Medium number of elites in a good density map = 7 (one pack of 3 and another of 4)
Total chance = 0,0141%

Uniques = 1 in 22994 (the pit uniques)
Medium Number of Uniques = 2
Total chance = 0,0087%

Super Uniques = 1 in 49450 (throne of destruction Super Uniques)
Medium Number od Super Uniques = 1
Total chance = 0,0020%

Total run % chance = 0,0248% = 1 every 4000 runs

Assuming 3 mins per run you get 1 unique charm (including gheeds) every 200 hours of play from those sources (not counting gheeds from whites, act bosses and so on, because these cannot drop sundering charms)

Now, assuming gheeds will be 1 roll on 7 possible unique charms, you are looking to 1 sundering charm every 230 hours of play (wich can be any of the 6, including magic and phys charm).

You can also assume the game treat gheeds as 50% gheeds 50% sundering, wich would give you 300 hours of uninterrupted gameplay with great speed and density zones for one RANDOM sundering charm.

2 extra things to put here:

1 - 175 MF will divide the time in half, 400 MF in a third, in theory
2 - Magic and phys are so bad that you basically have to multiply the time for a good charm for 1,33.

If you make the resistances random with so much space as 75 - 125, that would be probably the worst and most rare item in the game for a good one, as you divide it be 50 types of each charm after you decide its a sundering charm and wich one you get.

1 Like
5

I’m perfectly ok with that. Finding a close to perfect Sundered Charm should be exceptionally rare.

6

Isnt that kinda elitist to want things that developers mean to help reduce the gap between hammerdins and other builds to be like 5-10 bers?

Arent you basically sending ppl the hammerdin way again?

7

it being as rare as gheeds makes it rare enough. and level 75 is typically when you start hell and would need one anyway. so it makes perfect sense for it to be level 75.

1 Like
8

All I’m saying is the new Sundered Charms should have a variable range of negative resistance. If the span from -75% to -125% is too much, they could make it from -75% to -100%. Finding a close to perfect charm should be hard to find. That’s not elitist, but good itemization by design.

9

if they stay this way with such huge negative resists apply to enemies they should have a lvl req of 95-96…way too powerfull for fire,light and for b-hammers

i would rather see them change to set immune enemies resists down to 99 then apply -15% resist to them…that way its not completly bunker vs non-immunes…in such case i think lvl 92 would be more okay than 95-96 if its change to not apply such massive negative resist

rarity wise Lo to Jah rune drop rate would be better than current rarity cause its rly powerfull

1 Like
10

What is the current Drop if noone knows that, the game literally cant drop ATM in PTR. My assumption shows a drop 20% worse then Cham form cow level for a RANDOM charm including Gheeds, its even worse excluding gheeds.

1 Like
11

ppl reported it to be as rare as an Ohm rune…they also only drop from terrorized zones…so they wont ever be found outside of those

1 Like
12

ppl didnt report anything, they are suposing it and asking for it, you CANNOT drop at PTR and noone knows the number, its gossip. If it was as rare as ohm with my calculations you wouild get around 4 tyraels might before getting one of these because of how you can drop it.
To be “as rare as an Ohm” it needs to be much less rare than Gheeds.

1 Like
13

Agreed. It’s probably better to say charms should be roughly Ohm rarity as you mentioned.

1 Like
14

New Sunder Charm will ruin D2 and turn D2 into another D3. Please resist it! The right way to improve the game is the following:

We need to nerf paladin and lightning casters. With sunder charm, D2 is another D3. If your build focuses on solo element damage, it is unfair you can solo farm the whole map. With this patch, every character will become the same. No difference between a fire Sor and lightning Amazon. The only difference is animation, just like D3. BTW no one would play physical damage characters. They are already very weak, you are widening the gap.

Please petition Blizzard to optimize the terror zone: 1. Monsters need to be significantly enhanced, not only level and experience but damage life defense AR resistance. The late game experience is so dull because of the weak monsters. 2. Must add more magic resistance monsters and increase the monster’s lighting resistance. Lighting immune can be easily broken making everyone play lighting characters and lighting casters too more powerful. 3. It is a good idea to give every unique boss in the terror zone abilities to cast a curse and an aura. Unique bosses are too weak.

2 Likes
15

Agreed. But I think this could be easily resolved by adding melee splash to all sundered charms. This change would not only bring up physical melee characters closer to casters, but would also bring up elemental melee characters as well, such as: Fire Claw Druid, Enchantress, Avenger, Auradin, etc. But, I doubt Blizzard would make that bold of a move for melee characters.

On a side note, I’m curious how we would determine the rarity of these charms if they could ONLY be dropped by champion, unique or superunique monsters in TZ’s?