How Exactly Do Sunder Charms Work?

General Discussion
1

I am new to D2R, and I rolled a Summoner Druid as my first Ladder Char.
I have tested Cold Sunder, and Phys Sunder, against the respective immunes, and I am not sure I perceive any difference at all in my minions damage output against the monsters.

I seek to understand exactly how the effect work.

I was initially thinking that the -% resistance simply applied directly to the monsters, just as it applies to your Char, but now after reading the Patch Notes and the brief description there, combined with my experience testing them in game, it seems as though the Sunder effect simply breaks the immunity, placing the monster resistance to 95%, and the % of -resistance listed is only applied to your Char. is this correct?
The sunder does not lower the enemy resistance under 95% only? It simply breaks the immunity? Then you would need other effects to lower it further? Such as items with mods as -25% Lightning resistance? Making the monsters go down to 70%?

I did a search for sunder and didn’t find any thread asking this question, so I hope it’s not repetitive, and I don’t see any good websites like Arreat Summit which have all the information that I reference constantly when playing DII. (I’m still using it now to this day with D2R)

My initial impression would have meant the charms function like Conviction, afaik, and would have been much more powerful.
But my new theory means that they are much less powerful, but probably a lot more balanced this way, which is good. We don’t need no easymode freebies in this great game.

This would explain why I am not noticing any difference with my tests, since it’s really only a 5% damage allowance, at 95%.

Can anyone explain with certainty?

Thank you.

My first modern day post in these forums. I am loving this game, and find it so far to be a masterpiece. I am so happy you guys made it this way. It really IS DII, just updated and improved with many of the changes us lifelong players have longed for.

2 Likes
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yup.

Enemy monster have 110 % cold res so you do no cold damage. Even if you have -50 % to
-cold res it does nothing. So you have to break the immunity. For example with infinity, which lowers enemy res by 17 % (1/5 of 85 % if the enemy is immune) or with sunder charm.

So with sunder charm the enemy has 95 % res and now your -cold res will work for 100 %. If you have an additional infinity it still works only for 1/5 (17 %).
→ 110 % cold res + sunder = 95 % cold res - 50 % (from -cold res items) - 17 % (from infintiy) = 28 % cold res for that monster

But sunder works only for you and your minions. Not for other players and - if im right not for your mercanery.

1 Like
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All your assumptions are correct.

A Sunder charm only impacts an immune mob and brings their resistance from 100%+ down to 95%. You have to use other effects and spells to reduce this further, like your example.

Sunder has no effect on a mob that is not immune to the element.

The % on the sunder is the trade off and lowers your personal resistance by that %. Lower number on the charm is better.

Note the websites you use to understand immunity mechanics still apply, i.e 1/5 rule, etc.

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How Exactly Do Sunder Charms Work?

They don’t

They should remove them and fix the mechanic itself rather than adding a mandatory bandaid

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5

What mechanic are you taking about? Immunities? Why there is nothing wrong with them it prevents one dementional builds and playstyles and actually makes narrative sense

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Appreciate your confirmation.

So it’s not just a easy 1 shot fix, which is great. It simply opens up other build possiblities aside from Affinity, very good.

2 Likes
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https://strawpoll.com/voywe9bdr/r

Nothing wrong except that 40% of the playerbase despise it

18% dislike it

And only 20% truly enjoy it

Can’t say there’s nothing wrong when the majority don’t like it lol

Also the existence of sunder charms prove that there’s a problem with it lol

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No there is nothing wrong with the mechanic people but liking something doesn’t Make it bad. The average gamer is lazy and wants to not have to think when playing this game. The game was designed with immunities in mind to prevent one hit wonders

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your strawpoll link is biased information and therefor invalid. This does not represent everyone who plays D2, not even in the slightest. Immunities only affect PvM players, and have only impacted economy for PvP players who need top notch gear. Without Immunities, anyone can farm anything and then conviction and curses and cold mastery are all losing their shine. Anyone who’s played D2 and isn’t insane, will make a character for PvM based on where they intend to mf. For the insane, they will take a purely one damage type character into mf’ing and get mad at immunities. They’re there to stop this, so that way you cant take your PvP char off to go mf lol. That would be so broken, but Sunder charms are the compromise between the insane and the sane. That way people can finally take their bvc and mf the whole game, instead of being unable to kill phys immunes quickly(BvC does not add to zerk, for obvious reasons). before sunder charms, mf barbs needed a point in zerk. my zeal/smite paly had points in hammer to deal with phys immunes. my sumnecro has amp dmg. my sorc is cold/light(never do cold/fire if you want to maximize mf, always use lightning skills with fire or cold).

So immunities serve the purpose of keeping PvP and PvM seperate, and keeping the economy from spiraling out of control.

without immunites, anyone can farm anywhere, and values will drop dramatically. Everyone would use cold sorcs and Hdins to mf, and it would become so bland. ce necro would probably not be affected much, since it’s strictly for cows(it falls behind on everything else pretty fast, especially against every act boss besides andy).

1 Like
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(Un)holy necro Batman! Might as well explain how sunders work now that it’s been brought up though.

The way sunders work is they have a stat called “pierce-immunity-x” (x being the specified immunity) set at 300, as seen in uniqueitems.txt. “pierce-immunity-x” works by reducing a monsters resistance until it reaches a floor of 95, so sunder charms can break the immunity of any monster up to 399 resistance (399 - 300 = 99), 400+ is unbreakable.

The only “monsters” that have 400+ resistance are constructs like the Gargoyle Traps in the Catacombs with 1000 cold resistance on Hell difficulty, Lightning Spires in the Arcane Sanctuary and the Catapults/Barricades in Act 5 with 1000 poison resistance, and a couple other ones.

4 Likes
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Thank you, I actually wanted to know how they worked but couldnt find that info lol

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What do people mean when they say they “rolled a sorceress”?
Are they letting RNG pick their character or is it just DND lingo that carried over into this game?

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“How I roll” is an informal phrase that means “how I generally like to do things”.

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D&D is probably where it got started, and it’s more appropriate in a lot of video games where characters are more randomly generated than here. It makes some sense here too though since there is a lot of rng on what items you get for a given class and build. It’s just become a general term.

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and thats the beauty of it

im so glad devs created Scharms

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Maybe if there was only 1 immunity, you may have a point. Many mobs have two immunities. For many people, that is just stupid.

Nothing like having 100% the damage of your fully geared and leveled character negated and having to rely on your merc to kill or hope you can teleport past them.

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as mnay people have likely stated… sunder charms… lower the enemy resistance to that element, from your damage… to 95% if they are above that value

and other than amp and decripify ( and possibly grim ward but i dont know for sure), if they monster was previously immune the 1/5th pentaly still applies after the sunder.

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Grim Ward is not penalized against sundered monsters, I’ve used it to good effect on a singer barb in Arcane Sanctuary. :slightly_smiling_face:

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cool, so its just wolf druid getting screwed over yet again

seriously they need to rework spirit of barbs to be -physical resist conviction like aura. ( maye add - poison as well)

its pathetic this hasn’t already been done.

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Strawpole is not really valid with only 582 responding. I LIKE monsters having 2 immunities in Hell. I like the game being challenging and not just 3 left clicks and move the next screen.