OK guys, I know you like my long posts. But I actually have no time now to go into much details. Im writing this 5 minutes before I'm off on my holiday. So brief summary:

Sunder charm drop rates

>Patch notes: Reduced the drop rate of Latent Sunder Charms when using Magic Find. Note the Herald drop rate is unaffected.

Rarity of Gheed Charm increased from 1 to 15. Rarity for each Sunder charm remains the same at value 1. Which means out of all Unique Grand Charms that drop from standard monsters and that are affected by Magic Find, 71.4% will be Gheeds and 28.6% will be Sunder charms. Before, Unique Grand Charm distribution was 14.3% Gheed and 85.7% Sunder charms.

Conclusion: Sunder drops from Magic Find are now 1/3rd of what they use to be in Season 14

Ancient Statues drop rates

>Patch notes: Reduced the drop rate of Ancient Statues.

Blizzard has heavly changed all numbers for Bosses and TZ Bosses. (NoDrop, Item, Junk, Gold, etc). But statue drop number remained the same. This drastically changes the overall Ancient Statue drop chance:

• non-TZ Bosses drop about 3x to 4x less Statues.
• TZ Bosses drop about 1.5x to 2x less Statues.

Here is a table with exact drop chance:

Patch 3.3 - Season 15 - Ancient Statues drop chance

Shard and Heralds changes

>Patch notes: An additional item will now drop alongside a Worldstone Shard. Reduced the drop rate of Worldstone Shards.

Shard drop rates have also changed slightly. But I dont have time to get precise numbers.

>Patch notes: Increased the chance of dropping Rare quality and higher items from Herald Tiers 3+.

Heralds Unique/Set Factors have changed. For Tier3 and Tier4 Heralds new Unique/Set Factors 800->850. For Tier5 Heralds new Unique/Set Factors 800->870. But only for "Extra" drops!! (Heralds have 1 or 2 extra item drops next to their regular 2 item drops). Which means you will see:

• 9.57% more Unique/Set items from Tier3 and TIer4 Herlads
• 22.71% more Unique/Set items from Tier5 Heralds.

Thats all I have for now. Best of luck in the new Season guys. May ascent through the Ladder be swift and violent.

I will start this post by giving you lots of positive energy and by quoting developers note from last Patch 3.2:

>Developer’s Note: Currently, the design team has identified that while the Bind Demon skill has great depth and detail, those nuances can lead to a lack of clarity. Most of the other changes to Bind Demon were put in place to streamline the skill without compromising the uniquely interesting choices it presents to players. Any feedback about where opportunities exist to strike the balance of clarity and preserving the fun of the skill is welcome.

In my personal opinion, there is still some lack of clarity on how Bind Demon skill is actually supposed to work. There are differences between how the Bind Demon works in game and what we can see in game files. I too believe it is important to find a balance between clarity and fun, what is intended behaviour of the skill and what is a bug. This is my attempt at providing feedback.

Thanks to u/daanno2 for helping me with the testing and thanks to u/Kabryxis and u/Necrolis

Bugs in Bind Demon skill

Before the Cursed Demo Amplify Damage bug, let's briefly mention Bind Demon bugs. In D2R, file named skills.txt is the main data spreadsheet that controls skills, skill formulas, skill damage scaling and other skill mechanics. Passive columnsIdentifies whether the skill has a passive bonus. If you open skills.txt file and go to Bind Demon skill ID=382, you can go column by column and see what kind of properties and stats your Bind Demon gets. Demons passive stat name is assigned by column passivestat1 and the value of the stat is assigned by column passivecalc1. The value of the stat is usually assigned by short format formula (value is not static since it depends on your skill level and synergies). The short format formula is transformed to a full formula that loads up formula parameters from Param1-Param20 columns. Each Param column has a description about what that parameter means and what it is supposed to be used for. 

I checked Bind Demon skill and this is what I could find:

https://preview.redd.it/x1btu95oqg9h1.jpg?width=1327&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6299853f699026c59ffbd4e5fc1d63a49d56e349

• Item_normaldamage (flat damage bonus)  - the biggest problem here. The flat damage bonus formula uses parameters intended for bind chance: Param3Description=”Growthrate/start for % capture referenced in monpet.txt” Param4Description=”Cap for % capture  referenced in monpet.txt”. Those parameters are indeed used for bind chance calculations, but they are also used here for flat damage bonus to bound demons. This results in a much much higher flat damage bonus than what it is “intended”. Intended in quotation marks because we don’t know what is intended. This stat has been bugged since RoTW came out. It is only now more noticeable in Patch 3.2 because they changed the bind chance values and thus unintentionally changed/increased the flat damage bonus. My guess is that Param1 and Param2 were meant for flat damage bonus, but those parameters are empty. Level 40 Bind Demon gives 2508 flat damage bonus. For comparison, level 45 Goatman gets 79 flat damage bonus
• Armorclass (defence bonus) - The defence bonus formula uses parameters intended for flat life bonus: Param9Description=”Baseline health percent Increase” Param10Description2=”Heatlh per level increase”. The Bind Demon does not have a flat life bonus passivestat but for some reason it has parameters for that stat. It is possible that developers experimented with a flat life bonus to bound demons during the RoTW development, but that idea was later scrapped. It is again unknown if this is the intended Defence bonus for bounded demons. Level 40 Bind Demon gives 295 Defence bonus. For comparison, level 40 Goatman gets 880 Defence bonus and level 40 Tainted gets 855 Defence bonus.
• Passive_summon_resist (resistance bonus) - simply does not work on Bind Demon. It works fine on Goatman and Tainted but it does not work on Bind Demon. They do not get any resistance bonus.
• Tohit (attack rating bonus) - Attack Rating from Demonic Mastery works fine. But looking at the formula, bounded demons should get Attack Rating per Bind Demon level from parameters Param7 and Param8. Param7 is empty and Param8 is fixed value 100 that is intended for bind chance Death Mark synergy: Param8Description=”Synergy Chance to Bind w/ Death Mark  referenced in monpet.txt”. This stat has also been “bugged" since the release of RoTW.  The values and intentions of the developers are unknown. Should demons get bonus Attack Rating per Bind Demon level?
• Calc1 (HP % Modifier) - while Blood Oath tooltip says it increases the Life of your demons by X%, this does not apply to Bind Demon. Both Goatman and Tainted have this formula for HP % Modifier:((par1 * (lvl - 1))+skill('Blood Oath'.ln56)), which means they get HP % bonus based on Summon Gotman/Tainted level and based on Blood Oath level. For Bind Demon, HP % Modifier “formula” is simply 0. Which means they do not get any HP % Modifier bonus.
• Attackrate (attack speed) - this may be intentional and not a bug. This stat was added in the latest patch. For Goatman and Tainted, Attack Speed bonus depends both on Summon Gotman/Tainted level and on Demonic Mastery level but Bind Demon only gets Attack Speed bonus from Demonic Mastery.

As you can see, there are a lot of unknowns on how Bind Demon is supposed to work and what bonuses it should receive. In addition to this, there is also item_pierce_damage_immunity stat. This stat just adds the Sunder effect from your character to your Summons. All three Warlock Summons and Bind Demon have item_pierce_damage_immunity is listed twice for some reason. It does not have any gameplay effects as fast I can see, but it is interesting to note that is listed twice.

If we look at the skills.txt file and if we take both Summon Goatman passivestats and Bind Demon passivestats and but them next to each other we can notice something interesting:

All passivestats are in the same order with the same formula values and use the same parameter numbers. For Summon Goatman, everything works fine. But as you can see above, Bind Demon skill behavior is unclear. Most likely, when they created the Bind Demon skill, they copied and pasted the Summon Goatman skill, changed the parameter values, but forgot to update the actual formula values. This is probably the reason we see inconsistencies mentioned above.

https://preview.redd.it/3t7tcb4rqg9h1.jpg?width=649&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7254b8ddf87d165efd32be56c70411fe4d6e03a9

It would be great if the next patch would clarify how Bind Demon is actually supposed to work and whether its current behavior is intentional or simply the result of an overlooked implementation mistake.

Amplify Damage proc from Cursed Demons and its interaction with Sunder charm

Now, the main part of the post. I’ll get straight to the point. We all know the standard Necro curse Amplify Damage reduces physical resistances of monsters by -100. It is applied at 1/5th effectiveness against Physical Immune monsters. When Physical Immune monsters are Sundered, Necro Amp Damage is applied at full effectiveness.

On other hand, some of you might know: Amplify Damage proc from Cursed Demon is applied at full effectiveness against Physical Immune monsters. It does not have a 1/5th penalty. It doesn’t matter if you have Sunder charm or not. Well… Not only does Cursed Demon Amp Damage apply at full effectiveness against Physical Immune monsters, it applies twice if you have a physical Sunder charm!

Yes, twice. It’s not a typo or misspeak. Simply put, if you have a Bone Break Physical Sunder charm and a Cursed Demon, the Cursed Demon Amp Damage will reduce the physical resistances of a monster by -100 twice over, for a total of -200 physical res reduction.

If you are playing Warlock with a Physical Sunder charm and your Cursed Demon procs Amp Damage, all Physical Immune monsters will bottom out at -100 physical resistance. In fact, If you have a Sunder charm, you will be doing more damage to Physical Immune monsters than to non-Physical Immune monsters. If you don't have a Physical Sunder Charm, Cursed Demon Amp Damage only applies once at full effectiveness for a total of -100 physical res reduction. 

Amplify Damage proc from Cursed monsters applying at full effectiveness is a known bug from old D2 LoD. It's been in the game code for many years. You can check the code for Cursed Amp Damage here: 

Cursed Amp Damage checks for Amp damage skill level, applies the negative res stat to the target and applies the duration. Nowhere does it check if the target is Physical immune or not so it can apply 1/5 penalty. Which is clearly different than Necro Amp Damage spell: 

This explains why Cursed Amp Damage applies at full effectiveness against Physical Immune monsters. Why does it apply twice if you have Sunder charm? I don’t really know and I can only speculate. My uneducated guess is, it is because of the sunderfull and sunder-res-reduce columns. From Game File Guide, it states:

>sunderfull - If equals 1, then this state will reapply any negative resistance stats at full potential when calculating pierce immunity if the immunity was broken. If equals 0, then reapply at the normal reduced efficiency (currently 1/5).

>sunder-res-reduce – If equals 1, then this state will apply pierce resistance at reduced effectiveness (currently 1/5) when calculating pierce resistance if an immunity was broken. If equals 0, then apply pierce resistance at normal effectiveness. For Amp damage, values for these fields are: sunderfull=1, and sunder-res-reduce=0

Notice the key words reapply and if the immunity was broken. Since Amp Damage sunder-res-reduce=0, the game applies -100 negative Physical resistance at normal effectiveness (As per the 2nd sentence in sunder-res-reduce). But, since sunderfull=1 reapplies any negative resistance stats at full potential. (As per 1st sentence in sunderfull). This is only my guess. 

This bug only applies for Cursed Demon Amp Damage proc. It does not apply to Succubus Witch Amplify Damage! That skill works as intended (it has 1/5 penalty against Physical Immune monsters and it only applies once. And of course, it does not apply to Necro's curse Amplify Damage. Necro skill works as expected. 

You only need to have Sunder charm in your inventory when you start the game in order for this bug to apply on your Cursed Demon. Because Bound Demon is “resummoned” on every game startup. Demon inherits physical sunder effects from your character. After starting the game, you can swap out Sunder charm if you don’t need it. Cursed Demon Amp Damage will still apply twice vs Physical Immune monsters. 

This is our testing setup if you want to test it yourself and replicate the results: Test monster is Specter ghost from Arcane Sanctuary. It has 100 physical resistance and its Physical Immune monster. I edited Specter life so it has a fixed 10050 Life. I added a bunch of small charms with +x to minimum damage. When your minimum damage becomes higher than your maximum damage, your new maximum damage becomes mindmg+1. My Warlock was doing a very narrow range of 5005-5006 damage with Normal Attack. Just shy of two hits. I then changed Specter's physical resistance to various values and observed how much damage Warlock was doing. These are the results: 

https://preview.redd.it/200sytssqg9h1.jpg?width=758&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=207ad075f7ba0ad851f511f52d4b7585f1b44e8d

Sunder charms have a stat called pierce-immunity-physical. The value of pierce-immunity-physical is set at 300. Pierce-immunity-physical works by reducing the monster's physical resistance by -300, until it reaches a floor of 95 physical res. Sunder charms can break the immunity of monsters that have up to 399 resistance. Monsters with 400 or more resistance are unbreakable by one Sunder charm. If you want to break those immunities you have to stack Sunder charms.

The only logical explanation for these results is that Amplify Damage proc from Cursed Demon is applied twice for Sundered immune monsters. 

• If a monster's resistance is between 100 and 399, Sunder effect of -300 physical res is applied first after which Amplify Damage is applied twice, resulting in a final physical resistance of -100.
• If a monster's resistance is between 400 and 499, Sunder effect of -300 physical res is again applied first. But, the monster is not considered “Sundered” since it still has more than 100 res. The monster is still a Physical Immune. Amplify Damage is applied once at its full effectiveness, leaving the monster with a final resistance between 0 and 99.
• If a monster's resistance is 500 or higher, no damage can be dealt. Even after the Sunder effect of -300 physical res reduction and the full effectiveness of one Amplify Damage, the monster still has more than 100 physical resistance and therefore remains Physical Immune.

Lucky, there are no monsters with 500 or higher Physical resistance. Highest naturally physical immune monsters have 100 Physical resistance and 1st case is most relevant.

Final Thoughts

I expected this post to be very controversial. Players usually don’t like it when someone calls their build “broken”. To be very clear, I am not saying Bind Demon is broken. I am just looking for clarification on what is intended behaviour of the skill and what are bugs and unintended interactions. If the community thinks Bind Demon should get huge amounts of flat damage and have Amp Damage proc at full effectiveness vs Physical Immune monsters because it's fun, that is fine by me. Share your opinion and let the Devs know so they can fix the game backend.

On another note, my final wild thought: Some Players would say that in last Patch 3.1, Physical Echoing Strike was really OP. But what is that OP-ness was in some part because Cursed Demon was applying Amp Damage at full effectiveness vs Physical Immune monsters? What if Echoing Strike was over-nerfed because of this Curased Demon Amp Damage interaction with Physical Immune monsters?