Sunders are a noob trap outside of sorceresses

General Discussion
52

so i had to redo all math bc i forgot to aply convic -res against non immunes to fire without any Scharm

  • No charm+amp+convic,

    • venom lords will remain immune to fire but their phys res will be at -50% making you deal 75% (0+[50+50%]) of your CE dmg

    • oblivion knights will be sitting at -25% fire res and -67% phys res making you deal 146% ([50+25%]+[50+67%]) of your CE dmg

    • finger mages will be sitting at -85% fire res and -50% phys res making you deal 167.5% (50+[50+50%]) of your CE dmg

      • (75%+146%+167.5%)/3 = +29,5% overall CE dmg

  • FSunder+amp+convic

  • venom lords will sit at 83% fire res and phys res will be at -50% making you deal 83,5% ([50-83%]+[50+50%]) of your CE dmg

  • oblivion knights will be sitting at -15% fire res and -67% phys res making you deal 141% ([50+25%]+[50+67%]) of your CE dmg

  • finger mages will be sitting at -85% fire res and -50% phys res making you deal 167.5% ([50+85]+[50+50%]) of your CE dmg

    • (83.5%+146%+167.5%)/3 = +32% overall CE dmg

thats it, using a FSunder in CS will give you +2,5% overall CE dmg with the penalty of having to compensate the -70% fire res
so the player should ask himself, if its worth

in my opinion its better to dedicate those smc to MF instead of fire res

53

Again physical sunder is VERY strong as long as you have a source of Amp or Decrep (which you should.) Physical sunder against immunes increases your damage against them by over 5x, and removes a bunch of immunities you otherwise couldn’t break. If you are running a physical build, have amp/decrep proc, are farming an area with physical immunes, or somewhere like Trav that fairly regularly has one physical immune target, you’d be a bit silly not to run it.

The magic sunder is basically useless though.

54

Play Nova/ES and you won’t need any resitances besides poison. You only need 105 fcr, so basically Trang/mages 20, arach 20, Viper 30, Spirit 35 and you are already done with budget gear and can use crescent moon as weapon for -lr until you have griffons, infinity and a 2/10 or 3/10 amulet. If you don’t have sojs, you could use 2 fcr + mana rings + frosties to have more mana for ES. Nova sorc is really made more Sunder charms unlike a lightning Vita sorc that has to replace the resistance for just a “little” damage gain.

@Topic
Sunder charms buff any elemental build. Phys builds barely profit from them and magic damage builds got the short end. I don’t like the sunder charms and never will like them, because they are a lazy implementation to fix problems with unbreakable immunities, but Blizzard, just like the OP, have no clue about the game.

55

Phys Sunders are RARELY useful (not ⇾ never ^^)
the two most common phys builds don’t really need them
Smiter never encounters phys immune in UT ^^
Wirwind Barb can put 1 point in Amok ^^

Yes, if you go to the more exotic builds like bow Amazons or throw barb they may play a huge part, but there aren’t many of those builds playing.

Still the main complaint I had was that OP think sunders are useless in 9 out of 10 use cases and this is definitely not true ^^

56

So you say a build that utilizes no synergies with sunders only gets little benefit out of it?
Never would have thought that ^^
now recalculate with a flickering flame and Phoenix shield and the impact is more than 10 times bigger ^^
Obviously Necromancers with already multiple damages types and easy accessibility to buff CE phys compound does not really need a Fire sunder, but this is as useful as arguing against poison sunders since sorcs don’t benefit from them ^^

57

Physical sunders not being good because “people don’t play physical builds” isn’t much of an argument for them not being good on physical builds though. They are good for wind druids/zealots/bowazons/shifters with a merc rocking reapers toll or lawbringer. They are good for throw barbs. They are also good for several more niche builds.

It’s not the items fault that everyone runs Mosiac and Nova sorc. It’s good where it’s good. As any item that’s useful is. The argument that “fire sunder is bad because my sorc is lightning” doesn’t really work either you know. Sure lightning builds are for the most part top of the food chain, but it’s not like many other builds can’t be effective/fun. Hell you can make a Fire Druid that clears every area (including TZ CS on P8) quickly.

OP is arguing that sunders are bad for everyone but sorc, and that’s just laughably wrong. Try building a good fire druid with and without sunder and you’ll VERY quickly see the difference.

Think mine currently rocks Hoto/Phoenix/Nigma/Facetted Ravenlore/Mara’s/2x BK/Aldur’s boots/Arachnids/Magefists/Sunder/Gheed’s/Torch/Anni/Skillers with an eth mancather Infinity on merc. Still need a solid 2/20/20 neck on him though.

There is a hell of a difference between having to kill fire immunes with purely physical, and not being able to kill physical/fire immunes, and dealing 2/3 of your fire damage to immunes.

1 Like
58

and lose the 125fcr?
you also have to remember that 2/3 of CS mobs will be sitting at negative -fire% bc of infinity, making the investiment in futher -fire% being noticeable only against venom lords
and you would lose a total of 4-5 pts to all skills, making your minions hit a lot less and do a lot less dmg, increasing the time to get the first corpse

so to summarize,
you are proposing to lose a fcr bp and to weaken your minions in order to kill venom lords faster

the arguing was that using a FSunder in combination with amp+convic was better than not using it, this with little to no change in gear and skill setup

60

Maybe you missed this part …
To resummarize:
Obviously, Necromancers … not really need a Fire sunder.

But if you actually want to min max →

Not sure who would even consider a Necromancer with less than 125% FCR and this has nothing to do with the fire sunder synergies.

Not sure, in which world, 5 skill points on skeletons would have noticeable impact on your clear speed, especially if you play Infinity ^^ (perfect hitting 12 skeletons on level 30 do 2.8k dps;13 skeletons on level 35 do 4.4k dps ;15 on level 40 do 6.8k all cases irrelevant compared to a mercenary which is also much more likely to actually attack, hit and finish one target)

CS has one guarantied and on average 2.4 fire immune elite packs. What does it help that other monsters die in 2 cast if you need to do 6 casts for the immunes anyway ?!

Never said you need a fire sunder. I only said your calculated benefit of 2.5% is only because your build sucks to utilize a fire sunder.
an optimized SUMON necro for CS would use a fire sunder and a Phoenix shield!
the flickering flame makes only sense if you have enough mf from other sources, otherwise a Shako is worth the louse in clear speed.

61

see the problem is werewolf does not have a reliable way to proc either of those

the only viable option to do that would be via merc or via offhand

merc AI is too stupid to attack the correct targets and i cant make him change target until his target is dead, meaning i need to stop what im doing and kill his target, and im also wolf and cant teleport to make him retarget.

reapers toll is ok as an offhand, and lacerator would work as an offhand… and sure that works but is that the extra inventory space? i cant have both treachery and lacerator in cube

and having the +5 skill on summons prebuff is nice, especially after i lose the +2 from jalals when i equip metamorphosis.

wolf druid just has no reasonable way to apply the curses

62

Excuse me lol. I did and i know others who did too. I played fire sorc for MF runs alot. No infinity.

63

I think it’s arguably one of the best, especially considering PI’s, and even more so paired with Bone Break, and since this thread is about Sunders…

On a WereWolf, my experience has been;
BoneBreak alone is fine for 1-off PI’s… they go down quick enough Amp/Decrep are not needed…
If headed to an area with high concentration/mobs of PI’s I swap my main weapon in town and run Reapers…
Before I had Reapers, Atma’s was working just fine… and Atma’s is still what my Hunter/Summons Druid uses… along with BoneBreak.

Treachery-swap on a WereWolf?
With the massive life pool, insane life steal and access to Cyclone… I don’t see lugging an armor around and standing in fires being required/worth it.
At any rate, my point is, you don’t need to lug a Reapers around in your cube/stash… if headed to an area with high density of PI’s, swap in town and don’t worry about the minuscule loss of DPS…

I feel the same about CTA on a WereWolf… I’d rather the +skills Hoto offers for casting into form, Oak, Heart and Zoo members.
But then, I also find CTA to be a royal PITA.
I’m sure I’m in the minority on that one.

My WereWolfW is lvl93, runs Death in a eDecapitator (eReapers when there will be packs of PI’s), and gets Fanata from Act1 merc… Has over 4000 life without Oak, over 5200 life with Oak, has 75@res (80 lite res), and up to 168% life steal.
My Hunter/Summons guy who is also lvl93, has only 5 hard points into the WereWolf (1 in Rabies), just enough to help the Zoo with Baal and DClone… and still has 5700 life (with Oak), 75@res, and up to 108% life steal.
My point here is Fade does not seem worth the stash space, the hassle of swapping and standing around, (IMO) - when you are stealing life faster than anything can take it, and have a life pool that makes you immune to any 1-shot situation.

Now, I realize we all have different priorities in our builds…

All the above is based on PVM… since I’m guessing BoneBreak does not apply to PvP, which I do not participate.

64

I think generally speaking it can all be summed up as “other than the magic sunder, they all function for their intended purpose if you itemize around them”

The magic sunder is just absolutely donkey though, and if sunders are to be the D2 meta future, either needs reworked, or just removed, it has no real use case. To be useful it would really need to reduce magic immunes to 80% at least to even be usable.

1 Like
65

wow almost like i was making an exaggeration. im sure there’s an inferno sorc out there somewhere too.

66

treachery is for resists, and u dont need to stand in fire, treachery is al;ready the 2nd best armor… when your fade goes away just use it until it comes back up., wolf defense is low and treachery is the 2nd best armor for wolfs, which u wear until you can get fort anyways, wearing and playing normally until it procs isnt an issue

as wolf resists are freaking garbage since we cant use a shield with our 2 handers,
and the +15% phsyical resist from fade is nice to help compensate the bone break

also standing in fire is dumb. if u need to proc it, go to halls of pain… there are a bunch of flayers who spitball you and near instantly trigger fade

i mean sure if u can buy a bunch of 5 all res 20 lifers sure then go ham without fade, but… i prefer having maxed resists

i also use an act 3 fire merc who enchants my wolves/ bear and blow up all the physical immunes with his fireball. ( granted he is a dumb POS who also like to prioritze casting fireball on fire immunes but thats merc AI for you)

i never bothered using bone break, but for some reason it slipped my mind about the 1/5th penaltly when breaking physical without sunder. likely mostly because its damn near impossible to accurately apply… i tried lawbringer and reapers on act 5 and 2 merc and again the ai is just so dumb.

reapers is decent as offhand,but then to prebuff i would need to have space for both hoto and spirit monarch, which didnt seem reasonable, and like i said losing +5 on casting summons is a pretty big hit, which is why im leaning toward lacerator, i just cant fit both my treachery for resist and lacerator in cube.

and its not like i even need to break them. my act 3 merc melts physical immunes just fine.

but it would be nice for those annoying fire physical immunes spawns u sometimes get on rare occasions.

1 Like
67

Hmmm… making sense now… I twinked my guy (non-ladder) and stole an unused Fort from a Zealot build… up to that point I rolled a ViperMagi with 29@res.

i don’t know… needing to stand in fire or go start Halls of Pain to make something work seems like a PITA to me.
I read Metamorph is pretty awesome, but have no desire to make one, if they ever come to non-ladder.
I prefer the Jalal’s for the resist… and, was able to stick an Um in it.
I don’t know if giving up +30FHR and 35@res makes sense for the CNBF and attack bonus’s… for the way I like to play… especially for the cost of a Cham.
I have some 5@res small charms, but they are plain, or have cold res or poison damage on them…
I too prefer having max Res.

What is your main hand? I ask, 'cause Reapers with BoneBreak is pretty formidable… especially in areas that are known to have packs of PI’s… which is the only place I equip it.
And, like I noted earlier, it doesn’t need to be on swap, you know when you are headed to PI-ville and simply swap in town for the entire run.
I wear Hoto and Spirit on my off hand… so I always have the +5 for Summons… as I said I don’t enjoy monitoring/managing/casting CTA , to me it’s a PITA, so, I don’t deal with that interface/mechanic… but do have decent levels of Oak and Heart to apply when/as needed.

Good luck to you.

68

normally its an edeath decapitator

what makes metamorphosis great is the mark of the bear which gives attack speed

this allows u to shave off 4 frames minimum and hit 5/3/3/3/6 with only 40 ias
( lvl 32 werewolf required but thats not asking much)

https://warren1001.github.io/IAS_Calculator/

you can also hit 5/3/3/3/6 with a ebotd thundermaul with only its base 60 ias if u have with mark of the bear.

shaving off 4-5 frames on a fury is worth it IMO.
but the 20% PDR is nothing to scoff at either

it also brings crushing blow to like 90%

1 Like
69

Thanks for your entire response.
If non-ladder ever gets Metamorphosis… I’ll be tempted to make one (still searching for a great bas, have an ok one now), and, hopefully the Superior Bone Visage I put Shael-Io-Tal in magically becomes a Cure for my Merc.

I do not get into the math like yourself, and so many others… so I appreciate you breaking it down.
When I cast WereWolf, I’m at lvl40 (thanks to Hoto/Spirit) in his essential skills… would be more if I cast with Mara’s and Arach’s and SoJ, but… I hate swapping stuff around… so he just rocks HighLords, SoE and RavenFrost full time.
His CrushingBlow is 75%, Deadly Strike is 97%… but IAS only registers 40% in the character screen, even when I shift to Wolf and get Feral spooled up.

70

feral rage gives life leech, not ias.

your character screen will however tell you your actual life leech, the tooltip for feral rage is a lie

if u want the actual numbers, u can see them here

1 Like
71

I play nova\ES, i know that resists don’t affect mana damage. But I do equal life & mana build (around 1700 with BO, 1100 without) because I don’t want to get blood mana’d, so i have a moderate risk of getting my mana burnt and ES knocked off. The risk of then getting killed by some inferno or lightning is not worth it to me.

72

I see, but you basically gimp yourself with that build and your comment sounded like Sunders are generally bad for Nova sorcs.

I don’t share your fear of blood mana, I think it’s overrated as it only spawns in a view areas and doesn’t hurt that much if you pay attention.