GGM's Feedback on the Sunder Charms

PTR Feedback
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Hello Guys and gals, I did 8 or so hours of testing on these new charms, and really went over all the variables and I do have some feedback I would like to go over for the Developers.

First off let’s talk about the most important item on the agenda.

DROP CHANCE

Drop chance is so ridiculously key here, if you make these too common they could effectively ruin the game, and if you make them too rare they will be only for the elite characters with unlimited time (or lets be honest Money).

I think the right place for rarity for these Charms is More rare than gheeds, but less rare than Mang Song’s

Where exactly in the middle of those two it needs to be I am not sure but you guys are the devs =)

Also what needs to be taken into account with the drop chance is that there are 6 of them so finding one doesn’t mean you will get the one you want or need.

Second Variables

I think the charms need variables on them to really create some excitement around finding and hunting them.

The simplest variable you could add is just the Negative Resistance. I think a variable between -75% to -125% could make this more interesting to hunt. People would exclaim “Wow I just found a Cold Rupture and it’s -80% Cold Res!! yessss!”

I feel like variables are just so Diablo II, and having items without variables is just not. although Variables are overdone ridiculously on some items, 1-2 variables can be exciting.

now down to specifics

Bone Breaker, I like it for the most part and I do feel it is pretty well balanced, but one of the main issues Physical Fighters have is Attack rating and I would like to see it have maybe -25% targets defense on it. Having a bonus to Attack rating like this would also encourage Melee/Ranged Fighters to have this in their inventory all the time. The Attack rating bonus would also do nothing for physical casters i.e. Druids. Lets be perfectly honest here, all melee and ranged fighters have lots of trouble getting attack rating high enough and that is why so many skills like smite, guided arrow, and Impale end up getting used instead.

Fire, Ice, and Lightning are all fine as is

Black Cleft(Magic)

I find this one to be fine too, the magic resist penalty is a bit harsh at 50% especially considering there is no way to counter that at all. Perhaps bring it down just a bit.

All in all with this charm I find that it reflects just how easy magic damage classes have it in this game as a whole. They have very few immunes to deal with and the fact that this charm is less useful than the others is just a reflection of where those characters stand.

The Poison Charm, Rotting Fissure

It doesn’t break the poison immune doors lol can we get this fixed?

Final Thoughts

I Like the charms because they will enable the use of classes and builds that have gone relatively unused for a long period of time due to Unbreakable or extremely expensive to break Immunities.

I also really like the fact that you didn’t make them overpowered in the sense of lower than 95% resistance. this forces the player to have to work to obtain negative enemy resistance gear and use existing items with in the game to achieve those goals.

What’s Further is that I really enjoy the fact that these charms do less for a character that has no issues with immunes and more for those characters that have the most issues.

I think it’s pretty obvious who had the least issues.

I also think it’s rather ingenious that these charms do nothing for the user vs Non immune monsters. In other words their character will still need to be up to snuff and well built for them to work to their advantage.

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I like the idea of variable negative res. And I like it to be actually much greater than 75%. Countering it should not come easily (like with 3 charms or just Flickering Flame). Physical characters are screwed with -25%DR so much more and there is no way to counter it with charms.

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Plenty of equipment with DR % on it that can be used to counter the 25% it’s really not as big of a deal as people are making it out to be.

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Stormshield? Ber runes? String of Ears? What is this ‘plenty of equipment’ that won’t break your ww barb for example? It’s so much tougher to counter than with a few res charms. Clearly you aren’t physical melee player if you think it’s comparable.

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I literally play physical characters as my main class.

Physical damage reduction equipment is plentiful in the game people just choose not to wear it.

Shako, Stormshield, Spike Thorn, Crown Of Ages, Shaftstop, string of ears, Verdungo’s, Crainte Vomir, Chains of Honor, Engima, Rock stopper, Fade, Treachery, RockFleece, Vampgaze, Spirit Ward, Nats set, ber runes, and I am sure I missed some.

YES I DO THINK IT IS COUNTER ABLE

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The phys charm sucks because phys immunes rarely matter in areas you want to farm, and you can just stack attack rating charms and actually wear desirable gear rather than worrying about stacking dr on junk uniques.

Crainte vomir…. Lol

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I think that it should be about 15% inc dmg taken, with added bonus of 10% defense ignored to aid with higher levels. Otherwise, yes, this charm is too niche to really use for the limited reward outside of certain Terror Zones.

As for drop chance, rarer than gheeds, it would not have the desired affect. As much as I’ve played, I’ve found 2 Gheeds on non ladder, 2 gheeds on ladder, and 2 gheeds on offline before season one started. Seasons are 4 months. Gating these behind trading will not move people from their current metas.

In all honesty, it needs to be moved to a large charm to not dilute the loot pool from gheeds dropping, and to not cause confusion mix ups.

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I think you’re missing my point.
For a non-IK WW barb

  • you are already using String of Ears and Enigma in endgame, which is 23%DR
  • you may choose to already prebuff with Treachery, which increases %DR to 38
  • you may chose to replace Arreat’s with Shako, but for WW is just suboptimal, you’re loosing too much AR

Now, what pieces that currently don’t give you DR% can you swap and not make your character way worse?

  • Stormshield (or any shield is already out of the equation). You don’t need this charm on a Berserk barb in the first place
  • any body armor is already out of the equation as you want to keep the teleport and mf right?
  • COA? how common is that compared to a res charms? and again suboptimal for a ww/frenzy barb in PVM SC
  • stack ber runes? wouldn’t you just not equip the charm in the first place and use Berserk on physical immune monsters?

To me it still doesn’t compare to the ease of countering the negatives of any other sunder charm with just +res charms.

For a full IK barb

  • you can’t really apply anything else than ber runes and Treacher prebuff. Good luck with that.
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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
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Physical never really had immunity problems to begin with… probably as intended by original development.

We can clearly see devs behind these new charms never took the time to understand the needs for each damage type… its just a sloppy idea, and everyone is trying to make it ‘work’

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GAME. TOO. HARD.

(Body unclear)

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Pure Physical has always had immunity problems, they get gated hard by physical immunes.

The main way physical damage characters get around that is by adding a second element.

Your talking about an end game character who chooses the place he farms to avoid the physical immune monsters.

All the other characters could do that at end game too, even the fire sorc which had it the worst could always choose locations with no fire immunes.

So you freely admit that players are using DR Equipment that would counter some of the effects.

Stormshield is a very common gear piece for a lot of builds.

Enigma literally has DR On it

more common than the engima which you have as a staple

2 Ber Runes in a Crown of Ages is actually a thing. It provides a massive bump in DR%

no one is saying it’s “As Easy As” But it’s also 25% not 75% and there are a wide array of items you can use to counter the effects.

Why is every single example you offer revolving around the barbarian?

Zeal Paladins exist, Fury Druids exist, Maul Druids exist, Physical Bow Zons Exist, Corpse Explosion Necromancers Exist, Physical Damage Assassins Exist, Pure Physical Barbs also exist.

Every single example you make revolves around “but my barb can use berserk”

Not every class has an easy magic damage ability like berserk.

Vengeance on the paladin doesn’t work that way, Fire claws on the druid doesn’t work that way, the zone has magic arrow but it’s nowhere near as good as berserk, The assassin has elemental damage attacks but building into them requires heavy investments.

I Disagree

There are a ton of physical immune monsters in the game.

All Ghosts, Maulers in certain zones, Ghouls in Uber Tristram, pretty much any stone skin monster in hell, the swarms in several places in several zones, Several variety of death lords are immune to physical.

What’s worse is any pure physical fighter gets completely stopped by them, and not all physical fighters have an easy skill to use like berserk.

This is patently false

Actually we can clearly see they did, the intention is the same for all charms, but the effect isn’t. They are letting the games original balance handle how each charm is received.

The Magic charm does basically nothing because the magic users had it the easiest in terms of immunities, and the cold has it the best because she had it the hardest in terms of immunities.

Honestly the idea is brilliant because it helps each class exactly as much as they actually needed.

Everyone generally finds 1-2 gheeds in a ladder season, that is potentially hundreds of thousands of the charms floating around the trade economy, that is not bad at all.

And having them be so common as to make it so everyone has entire set in their stash to use as they see fit isn’t very good.

There has to be a balance.

It only drops in Terror zones, gheeds drops outside of terror zones there won’t even be a conflict unless you are in a TZ

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If the idea is to give players an incentive to get off of their meta classes (Infinity Builds/H-Din) to give them a better Terror Zone experience that isn’t gated by immunity in a specified time zone, then players should be able to realistically farm them in a reasonable time. Especially if Terror Zones are an attempt to increase the amount of players participating in the Ladder race to 99, thus greater focus on building one character to 99 before playing a new one. If they are too rare, then there is no incentive for the person that was going to play a Hammerdin anyways, and build Enigma, to play a new class to farm Terror Zones. It should be earned, but it shouldn’t take an entire ladder season to find one that might change your mind on a build either. Also, the fact too that Magic Find plays a role in getting this, is just another major imbalance in Casters (who have easier time stacking MF) vs weapons based damage dealers that have a harder time fitting MF into the build, and with it being limited to elites, promotes tele-sniping to quickly farm for them.

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I would like to second GGM’s positive comments regarding this monster immunity solution addressing disadvantaged builds like fire and cold without adding an excessive amount of power creep to the meta builds. I want to also compliment the devs on using item hunt for this capability vs just changing the monster numbers on the server side.

In regards to drop rate, please remember that since the drop source is limited to specific monsters in Ladder terror zones, the projected shorter ladder seasons may be a serious inhibitor for a large portion of the player base to get the appropriate Sunder Charm for their build. If gheeds becomes the litmus test for drop rates of these Sunder Charms, I would ask the devs to please pull the data on the percentage of players that had a gheeds drop and compare that to what the devs envision for the drop rates of these Sunder Charms. Then come up with an acceptable drop rate that works FOR ALL PLAYERS. Ideally I would prefer the Sunder Charms drop in ALL D2 game modes, to include non-ladder and SP.

Lastly, please extend the effect of Sunder Charms to include player traps, hydras, minions, and follower.

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““The Magic charm does basically nothing because the magic users had it the easiest in terms of immunities, and the cold has it the best because she had it the hardest in terms of immunities.””

Do you really think that was their intention? That’s quite a stretch… or maybe they didn’t think that hard on which elements have gear that can reduce resist. No competent game developer would purposefully add a useless item

How were these charms a well thought out idea… when there’s clearly issues with summons, traps, cold mastery, physical at the onset of the announcement.

Its not because its PTR either, if you had an ounce of game knowledge those issues would have been top of mind before even thinking about introducing to PTR.

There was a million ways they could have acheived the goal that wasn’t this LAZY!

  • Adjust synergies
  • Add a new affix with sunder stacks like crushing blow
  • Adjust monsters.
  • Rework existing unpopular uniques
  • Add runewords

Anything with a modicum of effort. Instead they said: here are the 6 damage types, lets make 6 on/off switches…. Wait its kind of overpowered…. Lets add some minus resist….

Even the execution of that idea was lazy… didn’t even think about stat variables, didn’t think to play with resist type variety or reduce damage on charms.

Even the PTR notes were halfbaked and pushed back and announced all out of schedule. The more I think about it, its probably all hands on deck for D4 at blizzard right now, and they do not care at this point.

They should have done nothing, and atleast half the player population wouldn’t be pissed off right now.

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I guess you missed my point again, or I just failed to articulate it clearly.
Yes, I am using DR equipment without using Sunder charms. Any character stacks elemental resistance, as well as DR, the latter being (1) way more important for melee, (2) way harder to gather.
So, no, I would not be countering the Sunder charm penalty starting from 0 DR, but from what I already have equipped. Does that make sense? The DR cap is 50%.
I’d already have DR from armor, belt, helmet and/or IK full set. By using the physical Sunder charm, it takes 25% from what’s already on the character. Such character would then have to stack more DR to counter the negative effect:

  • IK full set has 20% - the only way to counter the charm is via Ber runes
  • dual weapon barb (ww or frenzy) has Enigma/Forti, SOE, maybe Shako (so total of 8 + 15 + 10 DR, which is still far less than the 50DR cap) - again, the only way to add more DR is via Ber rune in the helmet slot
    I’m not gonna argue with you about the Stormshield. I don’t think it’s a very common gear piece in SC. You may think otherwise and it’s fair enough.

The thing is there is no wide array of items you can use, that would not hinder your already weak melee character. If my examples aren’t good enough, than again, fair enough.
Peace out.

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Can you please explain to me how these charms will add variety to builds?
there is a sorceress with a built-in teleporter (and static) who no longer needs (or needs so much as) any items other than this charm. and there are other classes that don’t have teleport (without enigma). now there is absolutely no need to collect other builds, play for other classes.
any other class would be worse than a sorceress.

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sorry dude but you make no sense at all

can we at least agree that making a change that makes 50% of the population COMPLETLY MAD and adresses a problem in a very drastic way is not the best solution usually

check my other post and check my solution for balances issues, subtle changes that actually directly adress balance instead of literally doing a random action that affects everyone in different ways, in an unprepared and unwise way

sorry to say but only noobies love this change. Or people that didnt actually try the PTR yet with different builds and see how OP some builds are

if youre using stormshield with a melee build youre doing something wrong
if you dont wanna check my other psot my suggestion is jsut switch some fire immunes to magic immunes and add some lightning immunes that cant be broken by light sorc, then make another “cheap” infinity, like plague (which was well thought out)

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It’s amazing to me how some people are so dead set that this will make the game ridiculously easy.

While other people do nothing but endlessly complain that the penalties are too harsh.

The entire idea is to offer a trade off and many of you all would neuter the penalty to the point where it’s meaningless.

I for one would like to see the penalty higher, these charms offer an extremely good advantage to a lot of players. I like the idea of a trade off

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They’re just mad that other people can have fun now. Or are they mad that their precious gg gear now have competition when farming forum gold?

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