Sunder charms are meant to fix a problem: Immunities make it difficult to play certain builds in D2R. I think most people (myself included) are fine with having more ways to bypass monster resistances. Immune mobs create too many problems with class viability for the small benefit they bring to the game.
However the solution blizz seems to be going forward with is bad. As more testing is done and more feedback given it is clear that sunder charms are causing more harm than good to the game. Nothing about them fits into the games original design, as we are seeing with how they interact with things like infinity and cold mastery.
There are already systems in place that deal with immune enemies and breaking resistances. Why not expand on that and give more options for players to use conviction and lower res curses? Why not balance mob res values or resistance lowering skills so everything can be broken? Why do we need a completely new system with all kinds of caveats and un-intuitive interactions with existing game mechanics?
Having an item that breaks enemy immunities, but only while in your inventory and only in certain ways when other resistance lowering skills are present is awful design. Its just asking for endless balance problems and bugs for the future.
10 Likes
Sunder charm is not a bad design. Lack of meaningful end game is. Having immunities and stygian dolls for such vast game like D2 as the only difficulty is beyond joke.
3 Likes
Fixed it for you. 
If players want to go all in on a single damage element (or magic), then the consequence should be that you are less efficient in certain areas. And, of course, nerf hammerdin for this reason.
The focus should have been bridging the gaps with melee and other builds that are so far behind. That doesn’t mean everything has to be the same.
Sunder Charms make Unique Monster bonuses, notably the three that raise FCL Resistance, completely Irrelevant. I mean yeah monsters have absurd Resistance on Hell, notably Fire and Cold(for Cold Mastery reasons…) but that forced you into going hybrid to account for this. Granted Immunity was in response to Power Creep generated by synergies/+Skill gear(Runewords in particular). Address the root cause and the need for Immunity lessens.
Frankly with these Sunder Charms, it’s one skill goes BRRRRRRR game now. Only someone looking to roll Pit Zerker(for extra MF chance via Find Item) or Hammerdin would roll with anything but a Sorceress at ladder start because Sunder Charm drop rates are absurdly plentiful(that could change but even if they were rare, my point stands due to Teleport). Then grab a Cold one, and go wild with the best MF build in the game since the malus can be mitigated by a freaking POTION, aka THAWING POTIONS: +50 Cold Resistance for 30 Seconds per potion. 10 potions = 5 minutes of mitigation. Considering how easy Gold is to acquire… talk about a joke.
Now if they were to update Monster Resistance by making Trash heavily resistant as opposed to immune, making Champions/Uniques/Super Uniques as the only immune encounters(with minions also immune to ensure a challenge) and adding FCL absorption(which Sunder Charms can not bypass) to further force hybridization as opposed to one-trick pony builds and you’d have yourself a challenging game for a change. Then just nerf Hammerdins and your relatively balanced game is complete(IMO).
It is obvious Immunities are a design flaw but Blizzard’s approach is questionable, especially after the nerf to the charms which renders them almost useless.
1 Like
The solution is to roll multiple characters. And by changing that solution, you eliminate reasons to play the game. Immunities are important to the longevity of each ladder and the stability and health of the economy.
This game will not survive if it just becomes a chase after stat sticks on the same character.
2 Likes
Hey I got a better idea, why not lock each character to one specific Act only in Hell! Barbarians shalt only accesth Akt V, Amazons Akt I, etc.! It is good for the longevity of ladder and the very health of the economy in which people get Infinity/ Enigma for whole teams in just 48 hours!
No just no. Forcing people not to play what they want, or having to skip certain areas is just stupid bad design. Watching your merc kill them or again doing something you don’t want like “hybrid” is also stupid.
“Completely irrelevant” is hyperbole.
Well your suggestion would be bad design. Since you can actually farm long enough for any character to farm any area for the most part. It’s just not the most efficient way to go about it. It’s better to roll different characters. You don’t have to play efficiently. But efficient play is something most Diablo 2 players are into – and it’s what fuels the trading market.
But what we know for certain is that chasing after stat sticks equals destruction of longevity in item hunting games. It destroys the trading market as well, something that Diablo 2 is built on, foundationally.
its a nice speech but i personally dont see anything like this in pratice
the only two pratical changes i can see is that, Hlvl GC and SMC will be cheaper and infinity is less necessary
i think its quite the opposite
the market is foundationally build on the game’s loot system, its scarcity to be more precise
In the current state of Sunder, after the nerf, yes. Which is why it was a great move. This is not the case for the previous version.
Extremely scarce items do have a lot of value. But the bulk of the trading market is for items of utility that are also fairly rare. If the utility doesn’t matter anymore the, market gets destroyed. While there still might be carrot hunting for things like Tyreal’s Might, there’s no reason to build other characters so that entire market goes away.
That’s all under the old version of Sunder though.
as i said, i do understand this concept but i still dont see this in pratice, except for the two examples i mentioned above
maybe fun? i mean thats the reason i main necro
i too fail to see how the old version of Scharms was that bad
i do see the problem with CM and i even advocate for a nerf to it but that didnt happened and things seem to be as bad in the diversity sense as they were before the addition of the Scharms
maybe the cold sorce now is there at the top with hdin and lite sorce for endgame?
ofc the first version of Scharms had put more than just the cold sorce there
It’s not Hyperbole, its FACT. If a typical Trash monster has 50 Lightning Resistance and a Unique variant rolls Extra Fast, Magic Resistant and Lightning Enchanted, it’s Lightning Resistance would become 165 or UNBREAKABLE because Magic Resistant raises FCL Resistance 40%(if conditions of being <99 Resistance are met, which it is since it rolled first) and then Lightning Enchanted raises it another 75 to 165 in total. A Sunder Charm would then take that Resistance and effectively set it to 95. Meaning those “bonuses” mean absolutely nothing in the eyes of Sunder Charms from a Defensive perspective. I mean sure those bonuses buff the Monster’s Offenses but that means nothing if they’re dropping before they can even attack you since Sorceress will have Infinity, Griffons, 2xFacets(Griffon+VMagi) and Crescent Moon to drop it back down to ~15 Resistance(on a Lightning Enchanted Unique). Keep in mind before the Conviction nerf, they were far lower resistance wise.
Ditto Frozen Abyss(210 Cold Resistance) with Cold Sunder Charm. Even Frozenstein(Cold Enchanted) and his 285 Cold Resistance mean nothing in the eyes of Sunder Charms. TLDR: Unique Monster bonuses mean absolutely nothing now with these Charms. If you think I’m wrong, prove me wrong.
i think he meant that the “x enchanted” modifier doesnt change only the monster resistence
therefore, its is far from irrelevant even with Scharms
Well for instance, if you roll a cold sorceress and you want to farm hell countess, it’s advantageous to start thinking about rolling a different character. Maybe a good option is javazon. So all of a sudden there’s a market for javazon gear. Since cold sorceress can now farm hell countess without a problem after Sunder, right off the bat, that market is immediately pulled back. You’re going to see this play out for a vast array of situations. So it has a very pronounced cooling effect on the market.
And since this game is based on trade, that is detrimental.
It all comes down to the fact that when a player has everything they need, gearwise, they have no interest in logging back in and playing. Anybody who has bought their gear just to see what it is like has gone through this. It’s fun for maybe a day but then there’s no reason to log in. That’s what Sunder moves us closer to. And there’s no reason for it. So it’s a bad idea.
They should just make all immunities unbreakable, remove all synergies from skills and try to balance the game around that.
Would be far better.
Did you read that sundered enemies onky get 1/5 effectiveness from concentration aura and lower resist.
In tbe past, you skip/avoid monsters whose immunities can not be broken. Now you can damage them.
What is better always running from/ avoiding a fight or actually fighting?
i dont think this is a good example
a hybrid cold/lite sorce already does a better job than a javazon with much less investment
so i dont think javs is losing space and market relevance in this scenario bc she didnt even had any to start with
1 Like
Well it may be the case that somebody decides to do a hybrid. But it’s also the case that many choose to roll the next class at this point. It’s pretty standard actually. You can pretend this away all you want, but it’s a pretty well-known and wide spread strategy.
And all the trading that goes into that would be eliminated.