Top 5 New Ladder Season 2 Builds with Sunder Charms in Diablo 2 Resurrected

Top 5 New Ladder Season 2 Builds with Sunder Charms in Diablo 2 Resurrected | D2R 2.5 Best Sunder Charm Builds

9/30/2022 3:31:27 PM

With the 2.5 patch of Diablo 2 Resurrected, the addition of Sunder Charms makes many previously overlooked character skills very playable in Ladder Season 2. So here we round up the best new D2R 2.5 builds under the Sunder Charm for you that will be meta both for the starter and the endgame in the new season!

D2R 2.5 LADDER SEASON 2 SUNDER CHARM BUILDS

Top 5 D2R 2.5 Best New Ladder Season 2 Sunder Charm Builds

D2R Ladder Season 2 is live, here we want to break down the top 5 sleeper builds introduced into patch 2.5 because of the addition of Sunder Charms. So this guide will not cover builds like the f FoH Paladin, Blizzard Sorceress, Lightning Sorceress, Nova Sorceress, Hammerdin, Etc, standard meta boxes that you are aware of will not be discussed here, instead, we want to focus on some of the new sleeper builds that will change some of the end game content and sort of shift some of the meta.

They're not necessarily the strongest in every scenario that'll be breaking down, but they're either relatively cheap to build have fantastic crowd control is great on players who want difficulty, or are very sort of AFK-like fun to play, they're not like piano string type builds.

Top 5 - Holy Fire Dragon Paladin

This build was originally sort of classified as being too OP when patch 2.4 was first introduced and was initially scaled back, but then they ended up reverting the changes. In Patch 2.4, it was really good at cow farming or other areas where there weren't firemen monsters, but it would really hit a hard wall in areas like Chaos Sanctuary with Venom Lords, but Sunder charms have changed that. Now you can self-wield a very high level conviction and then have the Sunder charm to sunder monsters to remove the fire immunity, this build absolutely rips, you can farm everywhere you can charge everywhere. It has great mobility and can Farm every single Terror location. What's more, it's not too expensive if you compare it relatively to like a high-end javasan or lighting sorceress, Infinity comparison to dual dragon addresses really isn't too bad.

Gear Setup Tips - In terms of the gear, there are a lot of possibilities outside of there are three fundamental runewords that you need to use on this build - the Hand of Justice weapon, Dragon armor, and Dragon shield. As that you can use almost any other gear combination you want for your inventory you could go max damage attack rating plus life charms to sort of boost your zealing damage, go all seven MF charms because you're basically almost one-shotting stuff when you're charging around, run really any mercenary setup as well.
Skill Point Setup Tips - In terms of how to invest your skill points for this build, it's relatively straightforward, make sure that you invest 20 points into Resist Fire and 20 points into Salvation that's because these two skills will passively boost the Holy Fire Synergy from the Diablo 2 rune words Hand of Justice and the Dual dragons on your armor and shield. Then make sure that you have 24 points into Conviction exactly because it will be granted to you from Battle orders buff that will give you the maximum negative conviction resistance, that you can get anything past that is just a waste of extra skill points.

Really beyond that the build completely melts everywhere every monster in the game, so definitely highly recommend you check out the Holy Fire Dragon Paladin.

Top 4 - Fire Claw Werewolf

This build with the introduction of fire Sunder Charms in very good gear absolutely decimates you have very high-level fire damage as well as very high-level physical damage, But the biggest drawback to this build prior to the induction of Sunder charms was it would basically one-shot anything that wasn't farming, but then when you ran into a fire res monster, you were entirely relying on your physical portion of your damage. You could work around this and have decent clear speed, but now again with the introduction of Sunder Charms, you can apply full physical and fire damage to every hit. On top of that this build has great movement speed from feral rage as well as depending on how you spec the tree, fantastic AOE from a much improved Armageddon. So this build actually does everything good Elemental damage, good physical damage has AOE and movement speed, and it doesn't require Enigma, so it's actually a fantastic build.

Gear Setup Tips - As far as the gear goes, it is a little bit expensive we're talking if you want to really achieve the best possible result with this build, the three pieces of gear that we recommend are Ravenlore for the helmet, Phoenix for shield and Grief for your main weapon. The complement of physical damage and negative Fire Res from Phoenix with the raw hard-hitting damage from Grief and as well as the negative fires from Ravenlore, just makes for a fantastic build combination.
Mercenary Setup Tips - As far as your mercenary goes, typically we would recommend an Infinity mercenary. Although with that being said, you could use an ACT 5 Plague mercenary variant for a little bit more of a somewhat budget approach, it won't work quite as effectively because you'll be waiting on that Lawbringer but it will go off frequently and be a solid build.
Skill Point Setup Tips - In terms of the skill tree, there are definitely sort of two main approaches to this build and we actually prefer the second but we will cover both. But as far as summoning those, we only recommend putting 1 point to Oak Sage and 1 point to Heart of Wolverine, you can use either one so depending on if you want more plus life - obviously go with Oak Sage if you want more damage, go with Heart of Wolverine. Now as far as Shape Shifting goes, we recommend just putting one hardpoint into all the prerequisites for Fire Claw, and then completely max Fire Claws and move to your Elemental tree: max out Firestorm and Molten Boulder because there are synergies to fire claw, and then sync the rest of your points into Fissure and Armageddon to boost armageddon's damage and overall duration of length. You could go the route of ignoring Armageddon altogether and just putting more points into Werewolf and possibly a fury combination.

The Fire Claw Werewolf is now going to be a huge sleeper build in Ladder Seaon 2 with fantastic physical damage, great fire damage as well as AOE and movement speed, so it's definitely a great build and a hard recommendation you check it out.

Top 3 - Frost Nova Sorceress

Now for those that are tired of Blizzard Sorc, if you're completely bored of that skill, you don't like frozen orb and the cooldown, frost Nova might be the new skill for you. And out of all the builds in this guide, Frost Nova Sorceress is probably the best budget oriented build, it doesn't require Infinity and Enigma. Cold Mastery is very powerful, you just need a Sunder Charm. Now there are a couple of drawbacks with this build in general, it's definitely not a players they build, so you can't go rip through Chaos and Baal runs, and players have a difficulty similar to Hammerdin. But at Players one up to players three difficulty Frost Nova completely wrecks, it will obliterate everything you get crowd control so it's basically a Nova variant but you get Cc or crowd control. You're just going to completely freeze everything, do very good damage and you're not tied to again Enigma for teleport or Infinity mercenary for conviction.

Gear Setup Tips - As far as the gear goes, if you want to completely maximize your damage, obviously Nightwing's Veil and Death's Fathom will be the two best options, but this build will work completely fine with a spirit Crystal Sword Spirit Shield even a Hodo variant is completely fine. The only thing that we would definitely recommend is looking into investing extra points in Energy as well as using the boots Silkwaves that man after the kill is going to really help you sustain your mana.
Mercenary Setup Tips - You can also obviously support that with an Insight mercenary although once you have a very high-level mana pool, you could use other variants like in ACT 5 high damage mercenary could go Reaper's Troll, etc. There are a lot of possibilities when it comes to specking out your mercenary for the setup.
Skill Point Setup Tips - When it comes to the skill tree, the fire tree is relatively straightforward, put 20 points into Warmth, go the optional Road of adding points into Enchant if you want to buff the mercenaries' attack rating although we wouldn't recommend it. When it comes to the lighting scale tray your 1.1 or so Static Field, Telekinesis, and Teleport. There is also the option of using Energy Shield as a supplement because of Frost Nova and its prerequisites. There is definitely leftover skills, so if you want to take advantage of Energy Shield to counteract the negative cold res from a sunder charm that is definitely a good option. When it comes to the cold skill tree, just put one point in all your prerequisites and then 20 points into Frost Nova, 20 points in a Blizzard, then 20 points in Frozen Orb. And typically we would recommend now that it's changed with Sunder charms having 36 points in a Cold Mastery if you can get there that will ensure that every single sundered monster will have a perfect negative 100% cold resist which is going to maximize your damage. Anything above that is going to be a waste of skill points, so if you can get it we would recommend 36 points.

Overall we highly recommend this build, there are definitely different ways you can optimize the skill tree, and different mercenary setups and it is definitely one of the cheapest meta builds with sunder charms, and it's a very fun one-shot difficulty farming build if you are tired of Blizzard and Frozen orb.

Top 2 - Freezing Arrow Bowazon

This build has the very best crowd control in the game. We're talking about using freezing arrow and everything that's not a champion or boss pack literally freezing the monsters in place for multiple sec at a time. On top of that, if you're using the runeword Ice, you're granted a holy freeze Aura, so anything that's a champion or boss back will significantly be slowed down, it's a very powerful setup and definitely a high-end expensive build. But with the introduction of Sunder charms that the freezing elbows might actually be ahead of the physical boson variant multi-shot and strafe. This is definitely a build that you don't want to sleep on, if you're tired of multi-shot or strafe, why not give the Freezing Arrow Bowazon a shot?

Gear Setup Tips - In terms of gear definitely high-end variants like runeword Ice in a bow and Nightwing's Veil for helmet are definitely going to be your top tier setup, as well as an Infinity mercenary. But there are definitely cheaper bows you can use early on to make this build shine with a sunder charm, so you could Rock an Insight mercenary, rock inside in a bow, rock Harmony in a bow, or rock melody in a bow, there's a multitude of budget options. Again, there are high-end expensive options like Ice or Mist, but you can play everything in between, you're still going to get that insane crowd control it's just your damage will be a little bit less. There are definitely two important pieces of gear that you need to have on this build - the first is Razortail, it's going to help you get 100% Pierce that is very important for chaining together freezing explosions; and the second is Silkweave boots, even though Freezing Arrow has been reduced in terms of Mana cost from patch 2.3 to patch 2.4, it's still a very man intensive build, so it's not a bad idea to have some extra man after kill.
Skill Point Setup Tips - When it comes to the skill tree, we definitely think Sunder Charms has changed to what we would typically expect if freezing Arrow bow is on. So starting off with Javelin Spear skills, do not invest a single point. When it comes to the Bow skill tree, put 20 points into Cold Arrow, Ice Arrow, and Freezing Arrow. Typically you wouldn't invest 20 points into Frost Arrow because you don't really need the extra freeze length for sunder charms, but now that Sunder Charms have been introduced and you can freeze every single monster, so why not take advantage of some extra duration of freezing you can alternatively invest points into the fire tree if you want to, but it's definitely an option that we necessarily wouldn't recommend. When it comes to the passive and magic skill tree, put 1 point into Critical Strike, 1 point into Penetrate, 1 point to Pierce, and then split the remaining points between Dodge avoid and Evade. Now you could definitely invest extra points into Valkyrie that's totally up to you.

We definitely highly recommend you try out this build, it is just so satisfying to completely freeze monsters in their tracks and just see them shattering ice cubes, this is a very fun build and Sunder Charms has made it stronger.

Top 1 - Fire Druid

This build you need to give it a shot in the Diablo 2 Resurrected 2.5 patch, Sunder Charms have made it so much stronger, and the addition of removing the global cooldown from patch 2.3 to patch 2.4 made the fire Druid a lot better. You can now cast Volcano, Fissure, and Armageddon, all independently of each other, and you're not tied down to this huge cooldown which made the build a lot more fun to play, and of course, they did add a lot more physical damage, so you could cover the entire screen with damage. But unfortunately, there were a lot of fire-resist monsters, so you're kind of relegated to farming-specific locations. Obviously, Sunder charms have removed that. With very powerful runewords like Flickering Flame, Phoenix, and then expensive Uniques like Ravenlore, you can now bring the majority of sundered fire monsters down to almost a negative 100% Fire Res.

Gear Setup Tips - In terms of gear, there is a multitude of different options but some of the more common expensive setup options are Phoenix in a shield, Ravenlore for a helmet, and Flickering Flame is also a great helmet to use as well. If you can roll a very desirable base, but don't sleep on fire-faceted Crystal swords and a Plague sword as well. Different combinations of cleansing Aura, lower res procs and just negative Fire Res or plus fire damage will make your build very powerful.
Mercenary Setup Tips - With of course an Infinity mercenary, so you can turn your like 6K Fissure, 12K Armageddon plus the 10K physical damage, it just absolutely destroys monsters.
Skill Point Setup Tips - In terms of the skill tree, it's relatively straightforward, put 1 point at Oak Sage and then 1 point into Summon Grizzly, those are the only two summons that we use. We don't really recommend investing points into the Wolves, you just don't have enough skill points with a fire set up to really make them survive now. In terms of the elemental skill tree, you basically max Armageddon, Volcano, Fissure, Firestorm, and Molten Boulder. Don't recommend using Cyclone Armor, this build is different with the wind Druid, when you have a lot of different synergies you can have a very powerful Cyclone Armor, with a fire Druid it's not synergized so it just evaporates instantly. For the Shape Shifting skill, you don't invest a single point.

With this build, you can play it aggressively cast a Molten Boulder, Fissure, or you can just kind of AFK teleport around having Armageddon rain down and just plop a Fissure here or there, it's a very fun build to play AFK, it's very powerful definitely recommend taking up for a Chaos Sanctuary or Baal runs once you get a fire Sunder charm.