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11 replies   7910 views

Sunders - your take?

Poll ended at 2 years ago

- Love 'em! (25%)
10
- Like what they're trying to solve but not how they're going about it. (50%)
20
- F 'em! I like immunities! Just balance out the ratio across different elements! (10%)
4
- No idea, haven't bothered with ladder. (15%)
6
Total votes: 40
Total votes: 40
2

Description

Alright, now that those of us who bothered with ladder for them have had ample time to test and play around, I'm curious..what's your take on them?

Personally, I still think they're kind of a dumb solution to an entirely homemade problem and they create a whole new problem at the same time: performance gaps got even bigger. Soooo much bigger...

Using it on ladder, with a spec that truly does make full use of it felt..weird. On the one hand, the fact that it opens up entire builds and far, far more area variability is awesome. On the other hand, it kinda just felt 'too strong' to blow up everything as quickly as you normally do non-immunes. Though for the latter issue, I dare say immunities have never been a good solution but that instead, the game difficulty overall should be adjusted to match (make
Terror
zones actually terrifying perhaps?..).

What really got me was being done with my ladder goals though and going back to non-ladder. Moving back from sunders to "skip this, skip that, don't even bother with that
Terror
zone for that build" simply because every other mob/pack is immune again...suddenly, what was normal before is now genuinely painful. The difference between my NL sorc (or any NL char for that matter) and my L sorc is absolutely insane with L feeling stronger by a factor of like 10, despite the NL being far better geared, with a theoretically superior spec and far more tailored towards what she should be doing buuuut...she gets slowed down by immunes. It really is ridiculous just how massive that performance gap really is, simply because of one bloody charm/mechanic.

Now..for the sorc, that isn't too much of a problem because come S3, she'll get her sunder from ladder moved down and go back to being far, far superior to the L one as she should be. But for builds that don't have that luxury...a Bone necro for whom a sunder won't change jack...a trapsin for whom sunders apparently still simply don't work (though I've heard conflicting reports about that recently...haven't tested myself on live)...that gap is here to stay. And that gap is utterly ridiculous.

Personally, at the end of the day, I still feel sunders are a dumbass idea to fix a problem that they actively introduced themselves ages ago and it does so in a way too biased approach, widening gaps between builds now more than ever before. Just get rid of the damn things again, remove immunities (or balance them out, either way) and make things significantly harder overall. Done.

Or at the very least make magic and phys sunders drop things down to far less than 95% to shrink that gap again. Alternatively introduce phys and magic facets and make
Conviction
/lower res work on magic. Though sunders dropping magic immunes to say 50% would be a far better approach, seeing how -res for magic would make hammers even stronger than they used to be and necros even stronger in pvp, neither of which is necessary or desirable. Lowering the sunder target res for them however allows for closing the gap again on immunes (which should've been the point) while not adding more performance anywhere else, meaning they won't pull ahead any further.
Description by Schnorki
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7
User avatar

Schnorki 3822Moderator

PC
Alright, now that those of us who bothered with ladder for them have had ample time to test and play around, I'm curious..what's your take on them?

Personally, I still think they're kind of a dumb solution to an entirely homemade problem and they create a whole new problem at the same time: performance gaps got even bigger. Soooo much bigger...

Using it on ladder, with a spec that truly does make full use of it felt..weird. On the one hand, the fact that it opens up entire builds and far, far more area variability is awesome. On the other hand, it kinda just felt 'too strong' to blow up everything as quickly as you normally do non-immunes. Though for the latter issue, I dare say immunities have never been a good solution but that instead, the game difficulty overall should be adjusted to match (make
Terror
zones actually terrifying perhaps?..).

What really got me was being done with my ladder goals though and going back to non-ladder. Moving back from sunders to "skip this, skip that, don't even bother with that
Terror
zone for that build" simply because every other mob/pack is immune again...suddenly, what was normal before is now genuinely painful. The difference between my NL sorc (or any NL char for that matter) and my L sorc is absolutely insane with L feeling stronger by a factor of like 10, despite the NL being far better geared, with a theoretically superior spec and far more tailored towards what she should be doing buuuut...she gets slowed down by immunes. It really is ridiculous just how massive that performance gap really is, simply because of one bloody charm/mechanic.

Now..for the sorc, that isn't too much of a problem because come S3, she'll get her sunder from ladder moved down and go back to being far, far superior to the L one as she should be. But for builds that don't have that luxury...a Bone necro for whom a sunder won't change jack...a trapsin for whom sunders apparently still simply don't work (though I've heard conflicting reports about that recently...haven't tested myself on live)...that gap is here to stay. And that gap is utterly ridiculous.

Personally, at the end of the day, I still feel sunders are a dumbass idea to fix a problem that they actively introduced themselves ages ago and it does so in a way too biased approach, widening gaps between builds now more than ever before. Just get rid of the damn things again, remove immunities (or balance them out, either way) and make things significantly harder overall. Done.

Or at the very least make magic and phys sunders drop things down to far less than 95% to shrink that gap again. Alternatively introduce phys and magic facets and make
Conviction
/lower res work on magic. Though sunders dropping magic immunes to say 50% would be a far better approach, seeing how -res for magic would make hammers even stronger than they used to be and necros even stronger in pvp, neither of which is necessary or desirable. Lowering the sunder target res for them however allows for closing the gap again on immunes (which should've been the point) while not adding more performance anywhere else, meaning they won't pull ahead any further.
7
The only gripe I have about them is that sorceress
Cold Mastery
should have had the same 1/5 effectiveness treatment as
Conviction
and
Lower Resist
.

That said immunities have always been shit, there's a reason why you rarely see them in other games, even other ARPGs, they are not fun. Is this the best solution? no, you could just remove them entirely, job done. But then they would have to actually balance the game to make melee not awful.
7
I hated immunities from the beginning but I don't think this is the best way to solve this issue. Still, it's better than before.

I agree with your take on the Bone Necro. One of the great things about Bone was that you could solo all content because of magic damage/CE but sunders are an indirect nerf to Bone because now everyone can solo all content with sunders.

Melee falling further behind in p8 PvM is even more painful.

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Lem
for trades, with the exception of
Ral
.

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7
Thanks for the write-up. I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and make a ladder char so I can grab a couple of them myself.. Gonna try for at least a Physical one for my Barb and a Lightning one for my Javazon.

Any recommendations for class/area for farming sunders? Trav horker? I get a ton of Gheeds using him, and guessing same/similar drop chance (assuming terrorized).. Maybe I'll try a pure
Berserk
build for a change..

When I'm not slaying demons, I'm usually out hiking mountains.
7
OP
User avatar

Schnorki 3822Moderator

PC
Zero187 wrote: 2 years ago
Thanks for the write-up. I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and make a ladder char so I can grab a couple of them myself.. Gonna try for at least a Physical one for my Barb and a Lightning one for my Javazon.

Any recommendations for class/area for farming sunders? Trav horker? I get a ton of Gheeds using him, and guessing same/similar drop chance (assuming terrorized).. Maybe I'll try a pure
Berserk
build for a change..
They only drop in
Terror
zones so get to hell and farm whatever the current
Terror
zone is. Boss packs at that, normal mobs don't drop them. If that's all you wanna do, sorc is bound to be your best bet for the sake of cheap startup cost + instant
Teleport
.

Or just buy them off someone for NL pay. ;)
7
The magic and physical sunders are just idiotic. Anyone with more than two brain cells can see that those sunders are almost completely useless. The physical and magic sunders should
Cap
monster physical and magic resistance at like 50%, not 95%.

While we're at it, I think all sunders should
Cap
enemy resistances at no higher than 75% or so. 95% is still effectively immune.

So basically the resistance caps should be more carefully considered for each element, for what classes and abilities use that element, and for what gear choices exist within those builds. For example, the cold resistance
Cap
of the cold sunder should be drastically lowered from 95% to maybe 75% because very few cold resistance piercing items exist, and because Wind druids exist.

Also, while we're at it, they should undo the
Conviction
nerf, at least cold sorc would become less comparatively OP that way.

Finally,
Terror
zones are still very easy solo, and I think there does need to be a raised difficulty mode of some kind. Just how that is implemented needs to be very careful, because you don't want to make it drop a ton more items and upset the economy. Perhaps harder
Terror
zones that drop *slightly* more items, or some kind of item you can't get otherwise. I think straight-up P8 mode on Battlenet would be a big mistake.
7
lol I haven't even beat Hell yet, it's only been 2.5 weeks! I look forward to finding and testing some. My plan is mostly to use them for various fire builds, not bothered about the rest really.

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7
Not THAT big a fan in a vacuum, but they needed to add something like that along with
Terror
zones, or it would've been a painful experience (other than the few builds that can kill everything no matter what immunities they have).

The reason I don't like them this much is because I thought it was fine that characters were good at different things... But the way the game was, some characters are good at 1 or 2 things while others are good at everything.

The Sunder charms addressed the immunity issues so everyone can farm
Terror
zones, but it didn't do anything for the rest. The strong classes are still strong and the weak classes are still weak.

So what's the point of Sunder charms (vs just removing immunities)? Make people spend a few pgems to buy one? They're already dirt cheap, and apparently there was a bug that didn't help for this, but they're not that rare so they would've been worthless quickly anyway. And they don't have much of a range, so other than people who want perfect gear there really isn't much between a perfect one and an OK one.

The feel of having the charms is that the game is more enjoyable I guess, but it'd be the same if immunities were out. The sunder charms don't make the game more fun in themselves, just the (loss of a) mechanic.

Final verdict: Good (not great) intentions, poor execution.
7
My gripe is that lowering only one resist (for the character as a punishment) is kinda meh. This is especially true with blizz sorc as most main farming areas and the game in general doesn't have too much cold (compared to fire or lightning) so it feels a bit silly. I love that I can farm anywhere and overall I like that they did something to make the game newer (anything) and I don't have an answer myself so I'll just enjoy it.
7
User avatar

rikus 141

Assassin Americas PC
tatarjj wrote: 2 years ago
enemy resistances at no higher than 75% or so. 95% is still effectively immune.
wait, i thought sunder charms means they sunder immunes whatever their immune is. and then lower it according to the %?

is this verified?

goodluck, and may the RNG god be with you.
7
OP
User avatar

Schnorki 3822Moderator

PC
rikus wrote: 2 years ago
tatarjj wrote: 2 years ago
enemy resistances at no higher than 75% or so. 95% is still effectively immune.
wait, i thought sunder charms means they sunder immunes whatever their immune is. and then lower it according to the %?

is this verified?
No. Sunder charms take the immunes down to 95% res left, no matter what the number on the charm says.

The number is the resistance that YOU lose as a penalty for using the charm. I.e. the lower, the better.
7
Unfortunately I think Blizz can't put the cat back in the bag with regard to sunders. I agree Infinity should be un-nerfed, but that's a half-fix for equalizing things to cold-sorc. Top end fire and lightning builids are just as good, Infinity or not, with Enigma. It's the early endgame where you're lacking. Lightning has Crescent Moon at least -35 to lightning for
Um
is pretty good. Flickering Flame is good, but
Vex
is still a pretty high rune. That's more mid-endgame in my opinion. You have things like Phoenix and Hand of Justice that are late end-game too. I guess my super lazy fix would be make Obedience usable in a
Flail
or
Mace
, at least that way you have something reasonable to farm to. I agree that phys immune charm needs to drop them down to like 75 instead of 95 and magic something similar. That or we need a runeword that gives amp damage on hit to even things out. Unfortunately I think the power creep dam might be busted.

As for
Terror
zones I do think lvl 85+ areas or at least 90+ areas need to have both increased monster health and damage relative to now. You hit a point where you're killing things so fast there's almost no health tension anymore.
9

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