Sunder Charms

I'm assuming with the new ladder season starting tomorrow, and the sunder charms that were introduced in the last ladder season, that the market will be flooded with charms for sale to the NL folks?

I mostly play barb build (WW and/or Frenzy), but some necro as well (summoner). Couple of questions regarding the charms:

1) Would Bone Break be good for either build?

2) Would Bone Break extend to the skeletons/golem/merc?

3) Is there a stat for physical resistance on a character? Is it dependent on your gear? When I play IK WW barb, I do come across PI but use Berserk to deal with them, would Bone Break eliminate the need for Berserk?

For #3, the answer is basically no. Sunder Charms reduce resistance from immune to 95%. For most elemental resistances, there are many sources of -enemy resistance that are used to lower that 95% to more manageable numbers.

However, in terms of physical damage, there's only 2 ways to reduce enemy physical resistance: Amplify Damage and Decrepify. Neither of these are easily accessible to a barbarian without significant opportunity cost. Decrepify is best accessed through The Reaper's Toll, which the Barb himself is unlikely to use, and a merc using it can shatter corpses, ruining horks.

As for amplify, your sources are even less reliable, since most of them would require switching from an Act 2 merc and losing his aura.

Well, without being able to reduce enemy resistance, 95% resistance is so high, you might as well use Berserk anyway. At which point, why endure the extra damage taken from the charm?

I don't understand what sunder charms are good for if you can do it already in your low res Wand?

speaking of course if you don't have a natural Lower Resist on your gear.

without lower res on your gear, sunder charms are pretty much useless(because of lower res Wand)?

rikus wrote: 3 years ago

I don't understand what sunder charms are good for if you can do it already in your low res Wand?

speaking of course if you don't have a natural Lower Resist on your gear.

without lower res on your gear, sunder charms are pretty much useless(because of lower res Wand)?

Lower Resist doesn't always break monsters immunity.
Lower Resist doesn't work with Physical or Magical.
People want CTA as swap weapon, not a lower res Wand.

If you are talking about -XX% To Enemy YY Resistance on gear, it doesn't break monsters immunity.

Regarding magic and phys. Yes - then that is good for that.

But
If the monster has “unbreakable” immunity with the Wand already. Then your damage would be very slow anyhow.
Unless you use it combined with sunder.

The point is that it’s not that amazing unless you have -YY to enemy resistance gear.

If you do. And have a Wand it’s very powerful.

But without that your damage is very low. Even with a Wand.

That's right. Sunders basically allow you to take advantage of -res gear in a way that you previously couldn't.

Winterkill wrote: 3 years ago

However, in terms of physical damage, there's only 2 ways to reduce enemy physical resistance: Amplify Damage and Decrepify. Neither of these are easily accessible to a barbarian without significant opportunity cost. Decrepify is best accessed through The Reaper's Toll, which the Barb himself is unlikely to use, and a merc using it can shatter corpses, ruining horks.

As for amplify, your sources are even less reliable, since most of them would require switching from an Act 2 merc and losing his aura.

Well, without being able to reduce enemy resistance, 95% resistance is so high, you might as well use Berserk anyway. At which point, why endure the extra damage taken from the charm?

There is a third skill, Grim Ward, available for barbarian. Fully synergized by Find Potion it reduces physical res by 120%, even more than Amplify Damage. It requires a corpse, though, and also scares the monsters away, which is annoying for melee builds.

Bone Break is a bit better than it sounds by itself as most mobs on hell start with 30-50 phys res to begin with. So the 5% Bone Break gives you on immunes is really closer to 10% relatively speaking.

It isn't great and on a barb, I for one wouldn't use it. But I do for example have one for my bowzon (sufficient to replace Magic Arrow) and my pally (perfectly sufficient for PI uber adds).

As for the availability, it should be even more than that. You get all of the ladder ones coming in (at likely massively inflated day 1 prices) but you also have them now dropping on NL per the final patch notes so you will find new ones, taking pricing down again over time.