The change to Sunder has made this into a twitch game which has destroyed its enjoyment for me.
I have over 3,000 hours in the game and completed 95% of achievements. It is my favourite game of all time.
Having returned to the game after a break to get ready for the new Expansion I am finding the Sunder mechanic impossible to deal with. It is OK during the main campaign as you can build tankiness to deal with it, but once you get to end game it is a game breaker for me. It means I cannot engage with most of the endgame content any more.
I don’t have twitch reflexes. I am 61 - I am never going to “get good” - theorycrafting and well designed builds is my only way to tackle the game.
Basically the Sunder mechanic has killed my favourite game of all time for me. That is really sad.
Not everyone likes using Evade, I don’t. I’m a 2 active skills player and Evade takes up the RMB when I could have something else on that. I turned Evade off because I will never use it. I’m not into those type of movement skills; I don’t use any movement runes in the game either, only ones like Vire’s or Shadow Strike if I’m playing a build that uses those on the RMB.
what tqFan said is true, naturally this isnt’ the only thread that has popped up since sunder inclusion and devs have stated several times it’s here for good.
That leaves you using a modification to remove it, or as tqFan also said you can still build to eat sunder; including the most powerful sunders from Ravager and Calla
it might not form your ideal build anymore/lend itself to a bit of different slow/“overly tank” builds, but it is still technically a possibility atm
How does it make it worse? The game was fine without it. Luckily I rarely get into higher difficulties so not having Evade doesn’t really hurt my characters (altoholism is strong in this one ).
Which endgame content are you no longer able to engage with, and on what difficulty?
At the same time that we added the Sunder mechanic, we also made the game scale to level 100 on all difficulties, meaning you can comfortably farm endgame loot on lower difficulties if you so choose. Apart from a few legendary items and secret superbosses that are exclusive to Ultimate difficulty, everything is available on lower difficulties. Consequently, Sunder is also much weaker on lower difficulties.
It is also worth mentioning that Sunder itself does not kill you. If you take a Sunder hit, you still have time to adjust and react to the attacks that come after, whether you choose to take advantage of the new evade skill or not.
Incidentally, we also made v1.1.9.8, the pre Sunder/Evade version of the game, permanently available under Steam betas. So that pristine version of the game is immortalized, from before we, uh, killed it.
Without sunder you could rather easily make every build able to facetank all celestials without much of a problem. I like it since it gives the player a reason to go overboard on defenses. If you dont have sunder there is a certain threshold of sustain that allows you to facetank everything and gives you no incentive to make your build any tankier.
now you basically have 3 different types of builds:
The boss I was having trouble with was Lokarr on Ultimate that I wanted to farm for his set (as I did a full reset game to zero for this start). So it is proper endgame. It was with a solid tanky built Blitz Warlord, and I eventually did beat him but it was so frenetic and twitchy that it was not enjoyable, just really stressful.
I get it that you can’t build a game around 60 year old reflexes, and I will continue to play, I’ll just have to get used to not being able to do all the content I used to.
In defense of sunder, I can say that it replaced enemies’ RR. Means you no longer need to gain a stable overcap of resistances and replace components/augments by shifting the focus to other layers of protection or damage
My build is quite similar to that, except I went AoM instead of RF as AoM is my favourite skill. I am also SSF. The biggest problem I had when I actually did manage to farm him was OA, as I was running Oleron’s Rage at first, but was getting shredded, so switched to Menhirs and lost all my OA.
I wasn’t a fan of sunder initially, but it’s a very good change imo. Adds a level of immersion, makes ya pay more attention in some fights.
And it’s easy enough to hit spacebar and point the cursor in the desired direction. I don’t think sunder made any builds unplayable at endgame; or any stage of the game for that matter; game feels more balanced and QOL than it ever has.
i don’t think age is the issue there tbh, but partial build approach and likely fight approach; you’re basically a kiting capable build, Lokarr shouldnt’ really bother you much regardless of sunder
So, even if we ignore the OA part, just play into what your build allows, and don’t try to facetank him 24/7
That was how I eventually defeated him. It clearly isn’t impossible as I did it. My main point is that it was no longer enjoyable.
I think you underestimate the effect aging has on your ability to react. Your brain is a lot slower and your reflexes gone.
Anyway, I have my Lokarr set, so the pain is over.
Maybe Lokarr could be changed so that it is possible on Elite for the more mobility challenged of us that are also altaholics. It’s not like the drops affect endgame.
i’m not dismissing age having an impact on evade
what i’m saying is, you’re playing a particular build that doesn’t have to rely on evade
*the way i view this build lineup, “however not optimally minmaxed”, is just looking at the skills, is it’s basically the perfect/accidental “braindead” Lokarr sunder counter, you blitz in, and casually walk away, cast aegis, rinse repeat
^this will obviously no doubt not be fast, but the skill utilization in the build means it has a very large wiggleroom for “low skill”/reaction and timing based twitch reflex stuff
only thing more “casually comfy” would be a ranged cooldown caster/dot build
-you deciding to take aegis over RF actually made this build “simpler” in that regard, since you don’t have to contend with enemy attacks the same, or atleast have the option to ignore them for kiting/aegis casting at a distance
If it’s any consolation, I have never been able to kill Lokarr with my characters. So what you consider “taken away from you” I never even had and I don’t complain about it. This fight should be difficult.
I like Sunder and especiallty evade but there are times I notice some situations exacerbate survivability.
A few builds have so much area visual effects sometimes you miss seeing the Sunder; this is an issue I am having with my current piano skill build against Ravager and compounded by humanoid size enemies.
A more general situation is when suffering a lag-glitch and “input lag” to keyboard; I see the input lag or more likely keyboard-mouse skill queuing at times even when not associated with frame response time drop; strarted awhile back after a specific GD update.
Sometimes you can find lag that just means you take the Sunder and the follow-up hit before you can react, had that against Ravager.
These are just observations but I can put up with them as Sunder-Evade adds an interesting dynamic to the GD game.
Although the queue keyboard-mouse delay and waiting to move can be annoying, I think it relates to something awhile back update wise because Evade has much less of this issue compared to an movement skill.
Would be nice if there was an option setting to have even greater visual warning Sunder skill is about to happen, such as a column of light over the enemy or something comparable beyond the current warning.
Also while in intense combat I find I mistake the Sunder taken visual with that of being taken to near death flash.
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