D2R 2.5 Sunder Grand Charm Guide | How To Use & Where To Farm Sunder Charms in Diablo 2 Resurrected?

D2R 2.5 Sunder Grand Charm Guide | How To Use & Where To Farm Sunder Charms in Diablo 2 Resurrected?

9/16/2022 11:50:55 AM

The Big Change of the Diablo 2 Resurrected 2.5 patch we are going to cover in this guide are probably some of the biggest changes that Diablo 2 Resurrected has ever received period with the exception of maybe the synergy system and runewords, and that is a largely new feature - Sunder Charms which in a nutshell - they break monster's immunities, so they only bring monsters resistance down to 95%, but it's going to sort of shift the meta away from infinity even though that will still be a kingpin runeword.

D2R 2.5 Sunder Charms Guide

Now follow us to break down all details about the new unique sunder charms:

What Is Sunder Charm in Diablo 2 Resurrected 2.5 Patch?

Sunder Grand Charms are unique magical items that have a new keyword called "Sunder" and - it means if a monster has immunity to a specific damage type, their resistance will be reduced to 95% regardless of what their starting resistance percentage was—breaking their immunity and allowing damage of that type to be dealt to them. So having the Sunder Grand Charm in your inventory will allow your build to break specific monster immunity types.

Full List of D2R 2.5 Sunder Charms

There are 6 new Unique Grand Charms that break 6 monster immunity types:

Magic Sunder Charm: The Black Cleft

Monster Magic Immunity if Sundered
Magic Resist –50%

Physical Sunder Charm: The Bone Break

Monster Physical Immunity is Sundered
Physical Damage Received Increased by 25%

Cold Sunder Charm: The Cold Rupture

Monster Cold Immunity is Sundered
Cold Resist –75%

Lightning Sunder Charm: The Crack of the Heavens

Monster Lightning Immunity is Sundered
Lightning Resist –75%

Fire Sunder Charm: The Flame Rift

Monster Fire Immunity is Sundered
Fire Resist –75%

Poison Sunder Charm: The Rotting Fissure

Monster Poison Immunity is Sundered
Poison Resist –75

How Sunder Charms Affect Your Character Build?

They also apply a massive negative resistance depending on the charm that you drop to your character, so it's not just a straight power creep. How do we think certain items to sort of counteract these negative res penalties will just sort of have more value?

1. They only apply the negative resistance penalty to immune monsters, it specifically states that, so if you have a monster that has like negative 35 res and it does not fire moon, you're not applying an additional negative penalty. It's only for monsters that have a different immunity type, so it's cold poison, magic, fire, etc. that's the only time a Sunder charm will apply.
2. They state specifically here that Sunder Grand Charm is applied before other resistance reducing modifiers and only affects non-players, this is very important. So if you have a firearm monster, Sunder Charm will break it down to 95, and then you will apply your negative resistance after from like conviction on Infinity or lower resistance from Plague etc. They don't specifically stay here but we are assuming that it's just going to apply at full effect.

How Do Sunder Charms Affect Physical Builds?

Specifically magic is a negative 50% resistance penalty, you're increasing the physical damage by 25%. One thing that we do want to point out specifically about the physical, is Sunder Grand Charm benefits a physical boson or throw barb a lot more than it does a melee like full-on melee characters like whirlwind or frenzy. It's because increasing the physical damage you receive by 25%, it is very rough for like a whirlwind druid that's like spinning through mobs getting hit, but if you're hanging way back from a distance with multi-shot you're going to just buff bosons like you're buffing ranged melee physical damage, but actual like getting monsters faces melee is in taking a bit of a hit. So for cold, lightning, fire, and poison, it's just a negative 75% resistance penalty, we think that like poison will really complement a poison javazone that's sort of a hybrid with lightning theory.

Who Can Apply Sunder Charms Actually?

the answer is only the character wearing it, it doesn't apply to any of the members in your party, it doesn't apply for your mercenary or your summons, it doesn't apply for assassin traps, it doesn't even apply for sorceress's hydra, this only changes the monster's effective resistance for the person with the charm equipped now.

Does Sunder Charm Work for PvP?

Only affects non-players, so this is not going to affect PvP, this is the best way to compromise both player communities instead of like that argument if we wanted to make the bosom better for PvM but PvP was really upset because this made the BoA like way stronger compared to other PvP characters. This negates that there are going to be no issues between the PvP and PvM communities, so that's really good.

How To Get & Where To Farm Sunder Charms in D2R 2.5?

These unique sunder charms will only drop from terrorized monsters of rare unique or champion difficulty, so again that was something that we really wanted like new content associated with Terror Zones, but the fact that these specific thunder charms only dropped from terrorized monsters.

Sunder Charms Drop Rate

Without knowing anything about the rarity of the sunder charms, even if we just say they're equal to a Gheeds charm in rarity, the fact that you can only get them from elite monsters in terror zones. And on top of that you may not even get the one that you want, there are now seven unique grand charms that can drop in the game, these are going to be pretty rare. While that might sound kinda scary, the cool part is is that since it only drops from elite monsters, you don't need to be able to farm terror zones on a high player count to have a chance of dropping this - elite monsters are always going to drop an item in the game and all you need to worry about is having enough magic find, so that it will roll as unique. So you're actually able to go through and just farm elite packs on players one until you get lucky and hit a charm.

What About Infinity & Lower Resistance Immues in D2R 2.5?

Previously in Diablo 2, if a monster was immune to any source of damage effects it would reduce that is only one-fifth effective. So if you had a monster that was immune to fire and you applied conviction aura here, you wouldn't actually reduce the resistances by 30% like the skill says, and you would actually reduce the resistances by 6 because that's one-fifth of 30. And then even if a monster was now broken meaning they had less than 100% resistance, any other sources like lower resistance would still only be one-fifth effective.

Now with these sunder charms setting the monster to 95% resistance and after we have tested it, effects like conviction aura and low resistance are 100% effective on that target. So if you have a max level conviction minus 150% res and you have a sunder charm reducing the monster's resistance to 95%, they will end up at minus 55% resistance after your conviction aura, whereas previously or if the logic stayed the same, they would have only ended up at 65 resistance. This makes builds that have access to different curses or effects which reduce resistances to become incredibly powerful, in comparison to how they previously were when auras like conviction from infinity or lower res would only barely break those resistances. On top of that things like cold mastery - the sorceress skill which gives minus enemy resistance for your sorceress only, means that with this charm and enough points in that skill every monster will be at the maximum negative cap of -100 cold res for your character, that means you wouldn't even need infinity on her at all to increase the coal damage that you're able to do to a target.

It is the single biggest meta-shifting change, to the game outside of the introduction of the synergy system and runewords, it's going to allow other characters has the ability to magic find other locations and it's going to shift some of the meta away from infinity, not entirely because infinity and like sources of low res like plague or curse necro they still will be like meta runewords, but you can at least now stack like fire facets flickering flame and then farm Chao Sanctuary as a fire druid you're not forced to also make an enemy on top of that. Fire damage-dealing characters now, if you get a fire sunder charm you'll be able to break some immunity, so you won't be stuck with like hard locked immunities like venom lords in the Chaos Sanctuary.

How To Stack Resistances With Sunder Charms?

There is actually a very interesting negative resistance penalty that is also applied to these charms, you can't just stack tons of these charms there is a consequence to using them. So for example, if you wanted to play as a fire boa or slash colboa, stacking both of these charms you would have to overcome negative 75% cold res and negative 75% fire, so you already have a negative 100 penalty moving into hell difficulty which you're almost doubling that penalty. So that's how we think some specific items like alders boots and flickering flame are going to kind of skyrocket in value to sort of counteract the negative penalty. These negative penalties in general just make you shift up your gear and it's not just a power jump or increase for every character.