I lost interest in D2R because of Sunder charms

manu151186 wrote: 2 years ago

I have a other Problem with this new Charms. I always wanted a char with a "all-destroying-fire-hot-build". Now i can finally build my fire sorc, fire druid, fire pala etc. or maybe i could try to play a sumon necro again in the hope he is now faster in killspeed. But i have not enough char slots left to play all the chars i want

Nice, but you understand that being able to play more builds effectively is not the issue, it's all about how they "solved" it? Another issue is there are no arguments for Sunder Charms other than "I can now just do anything" without considering players that took enjoyment from the parts of the game that were just taken away. The point is, there were other ways to empower those builds without resorting to that band-aid charm that would still keep the game more interesting.

Also in general am also sick of hearing things "just go play LoD", "nobody plays HC anyway", "most people don't do PvP", "just don't use Sunder Charms" etc instead of just discussing some alternative solutions that will keep all the players happy and just ignoring the thing.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Hydras do not act as minions. Traps do.

That's why traps never got any benefit from -res on gear (e.g. griffon's). That's also why sunder can be expected to not work for them. Can't confirm that one due to a lack of assassins on the PTR to test with but it'd make sense (in terms of mechanics, not logically of course).

Hydras on the other hand have always been a bit special in that they're kind of pets but not really and do not follow the same limitations as "real" minions. That's why hydras actually do fully benefit from gear and things like -res on Flickering Flame. Because of that, one should've expected that sunder work with

Hydra because everything else does as well. And yet, for some odd reason, they seem to have added an exception for it, explicitly making sunder not work with hydras.

Traps not getting it would match with prior design (albeit dumb). But hydras not getting it is a deviation from everything else and really just feels like a bug/silly oversight in this here rushed implementation.

This man is correct - basically a passive benefit on why Hydras get - see below: Maybe they modify this, but if they did for

Hydra's one would think they would potentially do it as well for Traps if the aim here was "balancing"

"Another issue is there are no arguments for Sunder Charms other than "I can now just do anything" without considering players that took enjoyment from the parts of the game that were just taken away."

What do you mean, 'took' away??

Djinnaz_007 wrote: 2 years ago

"Another issue is there are no arguments for Sunder Charms other than "I can now just do anything" without considering players that took enjoyment from the parts of the game that were just taken away."

What do you mean, 'took' away??

I explained that a few times, up to now, no builds (with few exceptions) were able to clear the entire game out of the box without some specific gear. IMO this was limited just to a few builds because skills and gear were generally unbalanced and they gave no way to overcome that. There are also many underused mechanics that are vastly underpowered (like crafting weapons, armors, safety crafts, unique items, some runewords, some usless item mods like +light radius, very low stackable MDR, too little possible ED on weapons etc). Some synergies disallow to make some more interesting builds (like you can pack all points into

Bone Spear and it's synergies and still have mediocre build - unless it's PvP), physical builds have issues, PvP got really unbalanced in 2.4 (bowazon is in a weird place - underpowered in PvM, kind of overpowered in PvP), etc.

Now, with Sunder Charms all those issues are ignored (also PvP and HC are ignored) an on top of them you have just one single charm that buffs just elemental builds and poison necro (which were already powerful, now it's just enough to keep a few antidote potions in inventory in case you are poisoned - done, countered ). So instead of solving the core problems with the game we have a workaround. What it takes away? Pretty much leaves even less choices as optimal options (now it's Enigma + Infinity + Sunder Charm) and all those items and skills that have great potential to be better are just left broken (or even more useless). Will it shift the meta? It will only make items that have some sort of 'minus to enemy res' like Crescent Moon or with res more popular and pure DPS items less popular, that's all. I really hoped they will actually fix the issues that the game has instead of ignoring them and just adding some band-aid on top of them. I think this is short-sighted and automatically made the game boring (because having OP char is almost brainless to achieve now) and even more unbalanced. The game was easy already, now it's just too easy and unbalanced to give any challenge and to stay interesting.

louner wrote: 2 years ago

Djinnaz_007 wrote: 2 years ago

"Another issue is there are no arguments for Sunder Charms other than "I can now just do anything" without considering players that took enjoyment from the parts of the game that were just taken away."

What do you mean, 'took' away??

I explained that a few times, up to now, no builds (with few exceptions) were able to clear the entire game out of the box without some specific gear. IMO this was limited just to a few builds because skills and gear were generally unbalanced and they gave no way to overcome that. There are also many underused mechanics that are vastly underpowered (like crafting weapons, armors, safety crafts, unique items, some runewords, some usless item mods like +light radius, very low stackable MDR, too little possible ED on weapons etc). Some synergies disallow to make some more interesting builds (like you can pack all points into

Bone Spear and it's synergies and still have mediocre build - unless it's PvP), physical builds have issues, PvP got really unbalanced in 2.4 (bowazon is in a weird place - underpowered in PvM, kind of overpowered in PvP), etc.

Now, with Sunder Charms all those issues are ignored (also PvP and HC are ignored) an on top of them you have just one single charm that buffs just elemental builds and poison necro (which were already powerful, now it's just enough to keep a few antidote potions in inventory in case you are poisoned - done, countered ). So instead of solving the core problems with the game we have a workaround. What it takes away? Pretty much leaves even less choices as optimal options (now it's Enigma + Infinity + Sunder Charm) and all those items and skills that have great potential to be better are just left broken (or even more useless). Will it shift the meta? It will only make items that have some sort of 'minus to enemy res' like Crescent Moon or with res more popular and pure DPS items less popular, that's all. I really hoped they will actually fix the issues that the game has instead of ignoring them and just adding some band-aid on top of them. I think this is short-sighted and automatically made the game boring (because having OP char is almost brainless to achieve now) and even more unbalanced. The game was easy already, now it's just too easy and unbalanced to give any challenge and to stay interesting.

did you just say Bone necros don't do damage?

louner wrote: 2 years ago

Djinnaz_007 wrote: 2 years ago

"Another issue is there are no arguments for Sunder Charms other than "I can now just do anything" without considering players that took enjoyment from the parts of the game that were just taken away."

What do you mean, 'took' away??

I explained that a few times, up to now, no builds (with few exceptions) were able to clear the entire game out of the box without some specific gear. IMO this was limited just to a few builds because skills and gear were generally unbalanced and they gave no way to overcome that. There are also many underused mechanics that are vastly underpowered (like crafting weapons, armors, safety crafts, unique items, some runewords, some usless item mods like +light radius, very low stackable MDR, too little possible ED on weapons etc). Some synergies disallow to make some more interesting builds (like you can pack all points into

Bone Spear and it's synergies and still have mediocre build - unless it's PvP), physical builds have issues, PvP got really unbalanced in 2.4 (bowazon is in a weird place - underpowered in PvM, kind of overpowered in PvP), etc.

Now, with Sunder Charms all those issues are ignored (also PvP and HC are ignored) an on top of them you have just one single charm that buffs just elemental builds and poison necro (which were already powerful, now it's just enough to keep a few antidote potions in inventory in case you are poisoned - done, countered ). So instead of solving the core problems with the game we have a workaround. What it takes away? Pretty much leaves even less choices as optimal options (now it's Enigma + Infinity + Sunder Charm) and all those items and skills that have great potential to be better are just left broken (or even more useless). Will it shift the meta? It will only make items that have some sort of 'minus to enemy res' like Crescent Moon or with res more popular and pure DPS items less popular, that's all. I really hoped they will actually fix the issues that the game has instead of ignoring them and just adding some band-aid on top of them. I think this is short-sighted and automatically made the game boring (because having OP char is almost brainless to achieve now) and even more unbalanced. The game was easy already, now it's just too easy and unbalanced to give any challenge and to stay interesting.

So your mad because most builds came beat the game easier now?

I'm sorry but that sounds extremely petty and childish. poopooing cuz others can don't have to struggle as hard as you did. I fail to see how this affects 'you' in anyway.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

You did list the source, you also misread it though it seems. Even if you took their "breaks with C" as "breaks with Infinity" (which is incorrect as it refers to breaking with a capped

Conviction, not the one on Infinity) then you'd still have 2 non-breaking for light and not your 1. Basically, to figure out the ones not breaking with Infinity, all you have to do is look at how many have res > 116.

Equally, the lower res part refers to a capped lower res of -70 (=14 vs immunes). A

Wand caps out at lvl 3 = -41 or -8 respectively. That'd leave 19 unbreakable, rather than the 12 you noted.

Infinity +

Wand as you're noting now (as opposed to specifically noting "just a

Wand" and "only Infinity" in your original post) would still be off as that's -24 total for 2 unbreakable, not 1.

I did indeed assume they meant Infinity when they listed "C". Thanks for the correction.

louner wrote: 2 years ago

..bowazon is in a weird place - underpowered in PvM..

No offense but..you might be playing bowzons wrong.

Clearing an entire screen and most of the screen behind it in a handful of shots on P8 (or 1 shot on lower player counts), with gear that you can fully afford for roughly a single

Jah, while nothing will ever come close enough to touch you, is many things..underpowered is not one of them.

Or rather, if you actually feel that that is "underpowered", you can't seriously be arguing for more of a challenge at the same time because at that point you're kind of implying that everything should be as ridiculously OP as the current top meta builds.

Though I agree with your general points. 'tis a silly bandaid fix, making an easy game even easier. Far from ideal.

I feel like this topic is going in circles. Everyone seems to agree that weaker builds needed some love, louner's contention is (and I really hope I get this right) that the sunder charms are lazy and don't fix the underlying issues, whereas others are simply happy that something has been done to give, e.g. fire builds a chance. I think both positions are valid, I fall slightly more on louner's side but not enough to stop playing, for whatever reason I just can't get enough of this game.

If I could change one thing it would be to make the game harder, not easier, and that's why I'm slightly disappointed because when

Terror Zones were initially announced, I thought it was an elegant way to increase both difficulty and diversity of the end game.

Janet the Java wrote: 2 years ago

for whatever reason I just can't get enough of this game.

Fair warning:
20 years later..that still holds true

Janet the Java wrote: 2 years ago

If I could change one thing it would be to make the game harder, not easier, and that's why I'm slightly disappointed because when

Terror Zones were initially announced, I thought it was an elegant way to increase both difficulty and diversity of the end game.

Agreed whole-heartedly.

Janet the Java wrote: 2 years ago

I feel like this topic is going in circles. Everyone seems to agree that weaker builds needed some love, louner's contention is (and I really hope I get this right) that the sunder charms are lazy and don't fix the underlying issues, whereas others are simply happy that something has been done to give, e.g. fire builds a chance. I think both positions are valid, I fall slightly more on louner's side but not enough to stop playing, for whatever reason I just can't get enough of this game.

If I could change one thing it would be to make the game harder, not easier, and that's why I'm slightly disappointed because when

Terror Zones were initially announced, I thought it was an elegant way to increase both difficulty and diversity of the end game.

I started writing a post earlier about motivation and interest, and ended up posting most of those thoughts in the motivation thread. I also get where louner is coming from. For me though, my interest in this game was always going to wind down over time. Sunder charms really don't do much to change that one way or the other.

The way I see it, even if I don't want anything to do with these charms, there's still another full season on non-ladder without them, but do I really care in the big picture? No. I've already accepted that this game is no longer being maintained by a team that gives a damn and/or has a clue of what they're doing.

Even Terror Zones are lazy to a degree. They never made the game harder or more challenging (except for physical damage characters who need AR). They're just more rewarding. That's not a bad thing! But rather than address the underlying causes of the boring endgame, why slap more feature junk on top of frustrating XP calculation bugs and punishingly low XP multipliers? All these lifehacks (e.g. top 2-4, ≤7 players present for wave 2, etc.) that ultra-high level XP runners employ today are workarounds to bugs that make the playing experience bad in the first place.

I've previously mentioned my almost-contrarian stance for liking D2 classic 1.08 making the game more challenging and party-oriented at a time when it seemed like most people hated it. Patch 2.5 does nothing to move D2R in that direction.

Regardless of whether these devs want to make the game easier or harder, I think more than anything, some of us would like them to put some damned thought and effort into it.

I don't mind, the game getting harder. But immunities are a bad design imo.

The game introduced synergies 19 years ago, which encourages to make specific builds with focus on 1-2 skills which then locks one out of most of the game.

I love making a blizzard sorc, it was always my favourite char, but after a while it gets really boring to just make

Mephisto and ancient tunnel runs over and over.

Make the monsters hit harder, give them more live, better ai etc. to make the game harder. But immunities don't really make the game harder, they are just annoying. They maybe make it harder in the beginning of hell, but at the Endgame, you just pass the immune monsters.

There is nothing "hard" on saying i can't farm xxx because there are immunes i only farm yyy because there are no immunes.