The Sunder Charm Playthrough Experience

I've been playing my hardcore offline characters a lot recently, and after the new patch, my first sunder charm was

Cold Rupture. I thought that provided a perfect opportunity to evaluate how it feels to play through Hell difficulty with a Sunder Charm instead of just endgame with it.

So, I started a hardcore sorceress and started carving through the game, clearing all quests and optional dungeons. I abused Nightmare

Terror zones to level to 75 before going to hell that way I would get to enjoy the Sunder Charm for the entire experience of clearing Hell difficulty.

Right out the gate, wow! It was incredible! Even with lowbie leveling gear and a whopping +4 to skills from all sources, I was still able to easily kill cold immunes and essentially ignore Cold Enchantment on enemies. There was nothing I couldn't kill, which was great because my merc was using a trash Insight on a NM level base and couldn't kill anything.

So, even if just for the playthrough experience, the Sunder Charm made a huge difference, to the point that I'm not sure I like it.

However! To a leveling character, the -Cold Resistance is quite significant. To a hardcore, even more so. I farmed Hell Countess until I could make a Hearth and that worked well enough to balance it out.

At least, until the worst possible thing happened: temptation!

I dropped a

Tarnhelm off Hell

Andariel, socketed it, slapped a

Perfect Topaz in there, and told myself I'd be fine. Cold Enchanted explosions are easy enough to

Dodge with

Teleport right? It would be better to find good items than rely on Hearth, right? After all, you can't stay in lowbie leveling gear forever, and sorceresses are uniquely equipped to deal with boss farming at low gear. It'll be fine!

Well, sure. Until I teleported onto the Sewer Grate down to the Kurast Sewers 2 after being totally sure that I killed

Icehawk Riftwing. Just for him to descend from the ceiling with 5hp. And Emilio, my boy Emilio, he decided he was done with my antics. One swing and it was over. I am certain that if I had Hearth on instead of

Tarnhelm, I would still be alive, but who knows how I would have fared in Acts IV and V.

So, the takeaway--other than don't be a silly goose--is that Sunder Charms are very powerful in the playthrough, but the -resistance is too. It makes for quite an interesting experience !

omg... how can you survive the emotional trauma of this?

good story.
I plan on using my only found cold SHaaarmer, also as a cold sorcee, cause she has -cold resistance for enemies..

Winterkill wrote: 2 years ago

(...)
And Emilio, my boy Emilio, he decided he was done with my antics.

Winterkill wrote: 2 years ago

So, even if just for the playthrough experience, the Sunder Charm made a huge difference

dude what was your build?
I'm in NM with

Frozen Orb+

Energy Shield build...it seems like the damage ain't too shabby for max

Frozen Orb...around 1k after -%enemy resistance?
unless you have

Death's Fathom..

or you played blizz...

rikus wrote: 2 years ago

Winterkill wrote: 2 years ago

So, even if just for the playthrough experience, the Sunder Charm made a huge difference

dude what was your build?
I'm in NM with

Frozen Orb+

Energy Shield build...it seems like the damage ain't too shabby for max

Frozen Orb...around 1k after -%enemy resistance?
unless you have

Death's Fathom..

or you played blizz...

I was

Frozen Orb through Nightmare, but yeah, I switched to blizzard for Hell difficulty. I figured that the ability to drop bliz and then focus on dodging attacks was better for Hardcore. I did not have any fancy gear.