Patch 3.2 Herald spawn mechanics, Sunder drop rates, Shard drop ratio and more

Pavke made a new post on reddit about the Patch 3.2 changes to

Herald spawn mechanics, Sunder drop rates, Shard drop ratio and more:
https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/commen ... cs_sunder/

Literally posted it at the same second as you lol. Deleted my own topic

That

Black Cleft penalty still just makes me cry... :/

This article is insane (in the positive sense).

Some important quotes from Pavke's analysis:

About sunder drop rates from heralds:
"There is only one thing you to remember: Tier 1 and Tier 2 - 1:100, Tier 3 and Tier 4 - 1:67, Tier 5 - 1:50"
"Player Count does not matter."

About sunders dropping from any monster:
"They can now drop from any monster that can drop

Gheed's charm. (...) the game applies the Magic Find formula to see if you got a Magic one or a Unique Grand Charm."
"Sunder charms that drop from standard monsters are all equally likely. There is no preference to Cold/Fire Sunder like in

Herald drops because when Unique Grand Charm is selected, all Unique GC have equal “rarity” value in uniqueitems.txt"

About calculating the drop chances from any monster:
"Both Nishi Drop Finder and Maxroll Drop Calc have been updated."

His conclusion on how to get sunder charms:
"We can now “target” farm Sunder charms in two different ways: By general Magic Finding like we usually did, or by hunting

Herald monsters that are hard to kill but have better and very specific drop odds. What is better depends on your build, your needs, time you can invest in the game session, etc."

About Worldstone shard drop rates:
"If you are farming level 85 areas, ratio of shard drops is still 5-3-2-2-1. If you are farming

Terror Zones, shard drop ratio is even at 1-1-1-1-1"

About flexing Maths terms:
"In mathematics, this process can be described as a finite-horizon discrete-time Markov renewal process with state-dependent Bernoulli hazard rates." (Wait...whaaat?)

About

Herald spawn mechanics
"

Herald spawn chance depends entirely and exclusively on your "zone completion percentage”. (...) The higher your zone completion percentage, the higher your chance of spawning a

Herald."
"If you are playing individual

Terror Zones you are guaranteed Tier 1

Herald. You are unlikely to see Tier 2

Herald. And all others are impossible."
"The expected number of Tier 5 Heralds per full game is 91, if we assume we are starting at Tier 5. The real number is a little smaller, around 87 Tier 5 Heralds since we need 3-4 zones to spawn the first four Tiers."
"The average number of Heralds per full game clear went from 17 to 87 which is wonderful. But there is no initiative to hunt for Heralds when you can get Sunder charm from any monster."


==> My own two-cents, assuming that Pavke's numbers are correct:
If you terrorise all 5 acts and clear like 80% of all monsters (which is doable without lingering in each zone for too long), you should get about 70 heralds (mostly tier 5) and with a drop chance of about 2% per tier 5

Herald you should get about 1.4 sunders per 80% clear of all 5 acts. On average of course, RNG can still give you 0 sunders or maybe 4...

Feels like the real takeaway of that is "don't do Cata or WSK first!".

With the min clearing, the zones not being "per actual zone" and the implicit max limit of heralds per zone at lower tier, you'd want to use smaller zones with less monsters to get T1-4 out of the way so you still have the extended zones available at T5 so as to have more individual monsters "post-threshold" to maximize spawn chances with.

So clear den,

Arachnid Lair and harem 2 and such (lower mob count, fast to reach) first until you pop T4 and then T5 onward it doesn't matter anymore as you just clear through.

Schnorki wrote: 20 hours ago

With the min clearing, the zones not being "per actual zone" and the implicit max limit of heralds per zone at lower tier, you'd want to use smaller zones with less monsters to get T1-4 out of the way so you still have the extended zones available at T5 so as to have more individual monsters "post-threshold" to maximize spawn chances with.

Correct. That's an efficient approach if you terrorize just one act. If you terrorize multiple acts or even all 5, it doesn't matter, I would say.

mikelessar wrote: 19 hours ago

Schnorki wrote: 20 hours ago

With the min clearing, the zones not being "per actual zone" and the implicit max limit of heralds per zone at lower tier, you'd want to use smaller zones with less monsters to get T1-4 out of the way so you still have the extended zones available at T5 so as to have more individual monsters "post-threshold" to maximize spawn chances with.

Correct. That's an efficient approach if you terrorize just one act. If you terrorize multiple acts or even all 5, it doesn't matter, I would say.

Well, the same Principle applies no matter how many acts you're doing. Just gets watered down slightly by total counts I guess.

Yes, that's what I meant. Getting 1 or 2 heralds more when you get 87 for a full game clear, does not matter much.

It's still a good idea to always stick to this approach no matter how many acts you terrorize, so that you internalize it better:
Spawn tier 1 in a small zone. Then immediately leave it after killing the

Herald.
Repeat for tiers 2, 3 and 4 in three other small zones. Then use the big zones for spawning multiple tier 5 heralds.

Use a high efficiency char (

Nova Sorc, Lightning Zon, Mosaic Sin, etc etc ) to spawn all the Heralds in one game, then switch to your power char to kill them all!

And pray that the game won't crash while you are doing so. =)

Sunders can drop in nightmare.....

War The Wise wrote: 14 hours ago

Sunders can drop in nightmare.....

Whaaa??

justinman114 wrote: 2 hours ago

War The Wise wrote: 14 hours ago

Sunders can drop in nightmare.....

Whaaa??

Yup. Been majorly MIA, but now that I am back, and Pavke told me about his analysis that was definitely a crazy part to see.

So we went from S1 (S13) to extreme gating behind Heralds, to even more liberally acquired than standard TZ gating pre-RotW (Hell Only).

And given that Heralds are not longer as lucrative as they once were, and you don't necessarily need to focus their for Sunder acquisition, it is just another unnecessary mechanic of sorts.

They no longer have a pcount or mf influence. Yes, Sunders have a better chance from them, but it no longer is a forcing function that it once was.

Gheeds is 7x more rare now that they nested Sunders there which is why they are eligible to drop in Nightmare. You just need alvl69+ in NM via TZ.

Heralds are what they are now. A different path & mechanic to go hunt if you choose to do so, but there is no strong initiative at this point given you can acquire Sunders now from standard Hell or TZ Andy and everyone else, etc.