D2R Ladder Season 3 starts in Mid February

Trang Oul wrote: 1 year ago

BillyMaysed wrote: 1 year ago

Janet the Java wrote: 1 year ago

Whereas the physical and magic charms are presumably completely pointless.

i never got around to playing S2, why are the sunder charms for phys and magic useless?

I don't think so, but I'll try to explain:
Physical immunes are rare and have only 100 resistance (I mean natural monster resistances, not boosted by unique modifiers), so can be easily be broken with

Amplify Damage or

Decrepify, which are available as procs on several items. And

Bone Break also decreases your resistance - not good for physical melee builds...
Magic immunes are even rarer, and although cannot be broken, skills dealing magic damage are also rare and are used together with other elements (for example bone necro: CE), ignore that immunity (

Holy Bolt) or are simply not used at all (

Magic Arrow).
Those charms are not useless, but for those two elements offer little benefit and make your character significantly more vulnerable.

I'd add a small addition, if you will.

Physical sunder is amazing for the builds that can use it. The biggest reason is that the

Bone Break +

Decrepify/

Amplify Damage works at 100 % of its potential, unlike

Conviction/

Lower Resist who work at just 1/5 of their maximal percentage against immune and/or sundered enemies.

Any monster immune to physical without additional mods like stone skin was at best 80% resistant with amp dmg or 90% with decrep. With sunder, however, any previously immune monster, stone skin on it or not, will be at 95% which will be lowered to -5% or 45%, resp. with the necro curses.

Case in point, I'm looking forward to using

Bone Break on my Fury druid with

The Reaper's Toll once s2 ends. The -10% phys res is offset by 15%

Verdungo's Hearty Cord. I can see

Corpse Explosion and summoner necromancers getting the same value from them.

The

Black Cleft still utterly awful, no matter how you slice it.

BillyMaysed wrote: 1 year ago

Janet the Java wrote: 1 year ago

Whereas the physical and magic charms are presumably completely pointless.

i never got around to playing S2, why are the sunder charms for phys and magic useless?

Cold/fire/light/poison sunders take target immune's res to 95. From there, you can drop it with lower res,

Conviction (excluding poison), facets and all sorts of -res gear. As a result, you can take any immune not only to 95 but typically down well into the negatives, meaning you do a very solid amount of damage (if not your full normal dmg) to them.
Your penalty is a loss to the same resistance yourself which you can typically easily make up for with a bit of an adjustment in your gear and still

Cap.

Physical sunders also take target immune's res to 95 but you have no facets, no -phys gear none of that. As a result, the only way to move down from those 95 is to wait for amp/decrep procs which makes them infinitely worse than any of the 4 sunders above. What makes them not as useless as expected though is that they are actually closer to a relative 10% than 5. On hell, hardly any mob doesn't have phys res. Base phys dmg tends to be balanced around/tends to hit targets with 40-50 inherent phys res as opposed to 0. Comparing 95% res to 0, you do 5% dmg. Comparing 95% to 50 however, you actually still do 10% of the dmg you'd do to other mobs. As such, even without amp/decrep, while not great, they do still work well enough to handle the occasional phys immune (which there aren't that many off). Well enough anyways for my zon to no longer bother with

Magic Arrow in the future.
Your penalty is a much smaller loss to the same res (i.e. increased phys dmg taken) which you can still make up for with gear, albeit harder than resistances as you don't have phys dmg reduction charms and the like.

Magic sunders are just utterly pointless pieces of trash. Like the others, they take your immune target to 95% res. That's it. No procs. No facets. No -res gear. Nothing. And not counting fully stacked hammerdins for a second, magic damage tends to not exactly be the highest to begin with. 5% damage of already not all too high dmg with 0 ways to improve it from there is just utterly pointless and a complete waste of a charm slot.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, your penalty is a MASSIVE 45-65% increase in magic damage taken which you cannot realistically counter because there basically is no magic resist gear (very few exceptions exist but tend to come at a hefty cost due to being otherwise crap..e.g.

Safety Shield).

BillyMaysed wrote: 1 year ago

Trang Oul wrote: 1 year ago

I hope there will be substantial balance changes. I'm fed up with a cold sorc...

thats sad, even with those sunder charms and all the balance changes the cold sorc is still ahead of every other build? typically whos the best jumps around when blizz starts to actually balance things. Guess they didn't change enough.

Cold sorc (blizz sorc really..not cold in general) is and has always been ahead in early play, solely because they start out with

Teleport and comparatively massive dmg with little to no gear. Sunders haven't changed that, they merely made it work for all areas, rather than target-farming forever.

They still fall behind (hard) once you reach a certain gear lvl due to having a hard

Cap on their kill speed (cast delay + limited area = capped kill speed) while plenty others just keep getting stronger and faster.

Honestly, anyone who at this point in a season claims a cold/blizz sorc is ahead of (or even on par with) other top builds either never tried anything else or is just too lazy (or doesn't have enough playtime) to farm some gear.

They're far from bad, don't get me wrong. But once you get to the point of Enigma/Infinity being available, they are definitely not ahead of other higher tier builds who start to not only be better at general farming but can often times do stuff that a blizz sorc simply can't or at least do it significantly better/faster at the same time (e.g. ubers).

That having been said, blizz does have the inherent advantage of being defaulted to "stable damage" on all mobs as

Cold Mastery + sunder = everything is at -100%. I'd fully support un-un-buffing the interplay between sunders and lower res/

Conviction so that (given fitting gear) applies to all elements. Or make cold res work at 1/5th as well I guess to introduce the same hinderance to cold sorcs though I'd prefer just un-un-buffing conv/lr instead, seeing how the whole point of sunders was to get rid of the immunity hinderance.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Physical sunders also take target immune's res to 95 but you have no facets, no -phys gear none of that. As a result, the only way to move down from those 95 is to wait for amp/decrep procs which makes them infinitely worse than any of the 4 sunders above.

Barbarians have one more way to reduce physical res:

Grim Ward (synergized with

Find Potion, which itself is worth maxing, as it also synergizes

Find Item at a linear rate). In theory it gives you more control than random curse procs, but the monsters fleeing debuff makes it usable only for thrower builds.[/quote]

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Cold sorc (blizz sorc really..not cold in general) is and has always been ahead in early play, solely because they start out with

Teleport and comparatively massive dmg with little to no gear. Sunders haven't changed that, they merely made it work for all areas, rather than target-farming forever.
(...)
Honestly, anyone who at this point in a season claims a cold/blizz sorc is ahead of (or even on par with) other top builds either never tried anything else or is just too lazy (or doesn't have enough playtime) to farm some gear.

They're far from bad, don't get me wrong. But once you get to the point of Enigma/Infinity being available, they are definitely not ahead of other higher tier builds who start to not only be better at general farming but can often times do stuff that a blizz sorc simply can't or at least do it significantly better/faster at the same time (e.g. ubers).

IMO Sunder charms changed it substantially. Cold build is highly preferred over fire and lightning ones, despite all 3 builds having access to

Teleport and high damage. In the early ladder no -res gear is readily available, so fire and light sorcs do little damage against previously immune targets with 95% res now (= only 1/20 of damage). On the other hand, cold sorcs strip their targets of all the remaining resistance with no -res gear. That's a major difference, especially with the addition of

Terror Zones, so you cannot choose a zone with no immunes to your element.
You are right, once we get rich and can afford fancy expensive gear with -res (Phoenix, HoJ, Infinity, Griffon), we're not "restricted" to a cold sorc. But to get rich initially, we need a first MF char, and cold sorc is the best choice. The other sorc builds are simply at disadvantage. And once we're filthy rich, we'd rather have fun with other classes than with another sorc build.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

That having been said, blizz does have the inherent advantage of being defaulted to "stable damage" on all mobs as

Cold Mastery + sunder = everything is at -100%. I'd fully support un-un-buffing the interplay between sunders and lower res/

Conviction so that (given fitting gear) applies to all elements. Or make cold res work at 1/5th as well I guess to introduce the same hinderance to cold sorcs though I'd prefer just un-un-buffing conv/lr instead, seeing how the whole point of sunders was to get rid of the immunity hinderance.

I'd highly prefer the second solution. Don't make the game even easier.

Trang Oul wrote: 1 year ago

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Physical sunders also take target immune's res to 95 but you have no facets, no -phys gear none of that. As a result, the only way to move down from those 95 is to wait for amp/decrep procs which makes them infinitely worse than any of the 4 sunders above.

Barbarians have one more way to reduce physical res:

Grim Ward (synergized with

Find Potion, which itself is worth maxing, as it also synergizes

Find Item at a linear rate). In theory it gives you more control than random curse procs, but the monsters fleeing debuff makes it usable only for thrower builds.

True. I keep forgetting about that one. Mainly because the fleeing debuff makes me default to ignoring it.

Trang Oul wrote: 1 year ago

IMO Sunder charms changed it substantially. Cold build is highly preferred over fire and lightning ones, despite all 3 builds having access to

Teleport and high damage. In the early ladder no -res gear is readily available, so fire and light sorcs do little damage against previously immune targets with 95% res now (= only 1/20 of damage). On the other hand, cold sorcs strip their targets of all the remaining resistance with no -res gear. That's a major difference, especially with the addition of

Terror Zones, so you cannot choose a zone with no immunes to your element.
You are right, once we get rich and can afford fancy expensive gear with -res (Phoenix, HoJ, Infinity, Griffon), we're not "restricted" to a cold sorc. But to get rich initially, we need a first MF char, and cold sorc is the best choice. The other sorc builds are simply at disadvantage. And once we're filthy rich, we'd rather have fun with other classes than with another sorc build.

That was basically my point. They are superior initially due to lack of -res gear. But once you get there, ignorning the 'fun' factor (as that's entirely subjective), light and in some cases even fire will outperform a blizz sorc day and night.

If any balancing is needed here, it should really just be in the flat dmg of blizzard itself. Drop the base dmg, increase synergies to make up for part of that. That way you get a slower ramp-up for blizz as well (abeit in lvls, not in gear) and you don't arbitrarily choose to nuke

Cold Mastery which would not only nerf blizz end-game (unnecessary as already behind by then) but even more so would also take a massive nerf bat to other cold builds which are far from superior or often even close.

Trang Oul wrote: 1 year ago

I'd highly prefer the second solution. Don't make the game even easier.

I'd prefer the first and at the same time making the game actually hard.
I.e. have difficulty based on things being generally difficult and not have it be an arbitrary decision based on "which mob do you happen to do less dmg against?".

An important announcement:

Blizzard wrote:

The new Rune Words are only a portion of the content arriving with Patch 2.6, stay tuned for what else is to come when the Patch officially releases.

I must not get excited. I must not get excited.

Indeed you should not.

The argument was basically that runewords need testing & feedback while the other stuff does not. Hence only RWs hitting the PTR.

That more or less implies that the "other stuff" doesn't involve any noteworthy balancing, new features or any of that but is merely simple adjustments/bugfixes and the adding of S1 RWs/sunders to non-ladder.

PezRadar posted a short update;

Blizzard wrote:

Thanks all for the feedback on PTR. Some pretty significant changes will be coming based off community feedback from the PTR to these new runewords. We expect to have final patch notes up sometime next week.

Likewise, we expect this patch to roll into season fairly quickly so wanted to give you all a heads up that we plan on the S3 start to occur on February 16 with S2 ending the same day.

Direct link to post:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t ... /153770/55

If S3 starts mid Feb, then shouldn't there be the standard 2 week ptr happening pretty much now?

Are we certain Blizzard means play start and not ptr play start?

Just curious. I trade on pc but play on switch. So haven't had the xp.

Darkhold wrote: 1 year ago

If S3 starts mid Feb, then shouldn't there be the standard 2 week ptr happening pretty much now?

Are we certain Blizzard means play start and not ptr play start?

Just curious. I trade on pc but play on switch. So haven't had the xp.

PTR went live on January 24th, so it's already been going on for a week. They said PTR would only be 1 week this time, so it should end today, but who knows if they'll extend it or not.

Trang Oul wrote: 1 year ago

Barbarians have one more way to reduce physical res:

Grim Ward (synergized with

Find Potion, which itself is worth maxing, as it also synergizes

Find Item at a linear rate). In theory it gives you more control than random curse procs, but the monsters fleeing debuff makes it usable only for thrower builds.

Not only thrower builds, i use this skill on a regular base with my

War Cry Horker, having it on switch thru 2x

Heart Carver. It's quiet efficient, as phys immunes get stunned by

War Cry when they still are immune.

live on January 24th, so it's already been going on for a week. They said PTR would only be 1 week this time, so it should end today, but who knows if they'll extend it or not.

Thanks, missed this.

I'd love to know what the main complaint against the sunder charms are. I ran a

Hydra/ball sorc this season and the combination of sunder and Flickering Flame (mostly for the res) was incredibly satisfying, and I can't imagine it's not opening up lots of other builds to be able to have actual power. But given the number of complaints I'm sure there's something here.

I know I'm kind of an old grump so I know it would be silly to assume my opinion is the right way to go. If I had my 'druthers we'd go back to CS being really difficult to solo clear. Harumph harumph kids these days cry too much about balance, just can't be happy with a good game harumph harumph.

It just seems really strange to me that the people asking for more build diversity are usually the same ones who complain about the sunder charms. It seems so contradictory. Am I missing something?

Same for all the expanded stash space people are asking for. How is a collection and trading game improved by being able to horde everything in the game? It honestly smells like game genie to me, and a great way to nerf the challenge and suck some of the fun from the game. I dig it for single player tho if I'm honest.

As for my plans I'm gonna try to put my money where my mouth is and play a slightly suboptimal class for some variety. Maybe it's more optimal than I'm giving it credit for, but I'd like to try a super-budget trapsin and run early ladder keys to try and build a small fortune. I'm hoping nilathak on a lower powered character will be as tricky as I want it to be, and as productive.

crashtopher wrote: 1 year ago

I'd love to know what the main complaint against the sunder charms are. I ran a

Hydra/ball sorc this season and the combination of sunder and Flickering Flame (mostly for the res) was incredibly satisfying, and I can't imagine it's not opening up lots of other builds to be able to have actual power. But given the number of complaints I'm sure there's something here.

I don't believe (too many) people mind the end result of more build diversity and more area diversity per build. The main complaints from what I saw (not necessarily overlapping with my own opinion) were basically..
- Cumbersome half-assed last minute solution, implemented with massive warned-before-hand-by-community bugs
- Removal of challenges in an already relatively easy game
- Perceived advantage to make cold sorcs rule all for Eternity by people who basically never played anything else with any sort of gear
- Actual widening the gap between some builds, rather than closing it (e.g. Bone necros falling further behind)
And so on and so forth.

Some were BS, some were (and partially still are) valid concerns, some are subjective AF.

crashtopher wrote: 1 year ago

As for my plans I'm gonna try to put my money where my mouth is and play a slightly suboptimal class for some variety. Maybe it's more optimal than I'm giving it credit for, but I'd like to try a super-budget trapsin and run early ladder keys to try and build a small fortune. I'm hoping nilathak on a lower powered character will be as tricky as I want it to be, and as productive.

Oh, it is. Maybe not with the "super-budget" addition but generally speaking, trapsins are top knotch. Especially for things like

Key farming actually, at least once you get

Teleport (which is the standard caveat for any non-sorc I guess).

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Oh, it is. Maybe not with the "super-budget" addition but generally speaking, trapsins are top knotch. Especially for things like

Key farming actually, at least once you get

Teleport (which is the standard caveat for any non-sorc I guess).

Yeah yeah. I've heard that. I really should have been more specific I think. I've got the sin in mind really for the very early ladder while things are still really hot. Just trade everything worth trading and keep my junk until prices go down. Trade the

Shako off while it's worth

Vex and keep the 3ptopaz or whatever, go back and pick one up when its down to an

Ist or so. In a world where I've put an Enigma together I'm already looking at other goofy stuff to do.

One way or another, learning a new playstyle and farming strategy should keep things interesting.

Thanks for the input, man. Some of those complaints do make some sense. Still I think I'm staying in the pro-sunder camp. If Enigma didn't break this game beyond playability I don't see sunder charms doing it, ya know?

I'm looking forward to starting S3 in hardcore.

I'm glad to have the sunder ability. Between that and allowing Insight on a bow, I've been able to give suicidal Emilio the pink slip and hire an Act 1 low maintenance babe. Sunders may not be the most elegant solution they could have come up with but I never liked the addition of immunes to the game in the first place. I think that was even more of a ham-fisted design decision that didn't go the way they envisioned.

Sunder charms are like those magic math algebra exercises where you perform a bunch of operations on a number just to end up at X. How about starting with X in the first place and sparing all that useless bloat and complexity to arrive at the same final result?

Charms in general aren't good design, especially when they've unofficially become mandatory components of your build like

Hellfire Torch and

Annihilus. Why add to that when you could just remove the immunities in the first place, which is what the charms seek to achieve?

Personally I like the addition of sunders to the game. Maybe the kind of solution they came up with (charms) is not the best one but enabling builds to farm all areas in the game is a nice addition. Having that restriction of making different builds to farm different areas made it tedious (personal opinion, others may find it actually good but then feel free to just not use sunders

I admit that there is no discussion that sunders for a cold sorc are way better than other elements/phys but also in my opinion cold was one of the most annoying immunities. Especially because other immunities like lightning can be broken by Infinity but cold is basically unbreakable thus making the

Cold Mastery completely useless against those, while other masteries still give you the +dmg and the immunities are breakable.

As for the stash argument pointed out by crashtopher: My argument on this would be to remove the tedious muleing that is currently needed. I mean we don't need like infinite stash but having more character slots for actual builds instead of wasting them on mules would be good, no? Maybe something like 5-10 shared tabs? That way you still can't "horde" items like no good but have a little more room to work with.

Couldn't they have reduced some elemental resistances on enemies to achieve the same affect as sunder charms? Now it's just more inventory space required.

So even on the topic of the Sorceress's elemental masteries, why is cold different than fire and lightning, and why do cold immune monsters have such a drastically higher resistance to their immune element compared to their fire and lightning immune counterparts if

Cold Mastery can't break their immunity in the first place?

Also, what was the motivation to add immunities in 1.07 and how does that relate to the current product team's desire to remove them? Do they not have phones know how to revert changes?

That's where I would have focused my attention rather than inventing sunder charms, but I ask "why" a lot by profession and I care about underlying principles rather than stacking layers of workarounds to circumvent problems.

I wouldn't last a day at ATVI.