Blessed Hammer should not be enhanced by Concentration

i dont really get what you are trying to say, can you explain it a bit more?

Magic skills should not be enhanced by any aura

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I think heā€™s a non- english speaker trying to reply to my idea that Sanctuary increases damage of magical attacks. I did neglect to mention I was thinking specifically of Sanctuary increasing the damage of Holy Bolt, FoH, and Blessed Hammer, not all magical attacks (obviously broken!).

According to the patch notes for 1.05, it looks like concentration enhancing the damage of hammers was intentional and not a bug.

You better read that again. :wink:

Peter Hu, who did most the work on diablo 2 in its current state, and was the mastermind behind the big changes that happened in 1.10, said that his biggest regret was leaving the hammerdin as powerful as it was.

That said if you completely removed concentration ed then now not only would blessed hammers be hot garbage, no one would use concentration ever either.

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besides your points, the hammerdin build needs level 77 to be complete. If you completely wipe concentration from the build, it would be done at level 57. thats just too early. lets say you want to cut the damage a fully geared hammerdin does (14520-14624) in half. concentration makes for a factor of 4x. you get rid of that and double the hammers base damage from 3630-3656 to 7260-7312. you could max out 2 auras without any drawbacks. ofc everyone would max out conviction. meaning you had a full hammerdin with full conviction and an aura of you choice. even the argument that conviction paladins at ladder reset go for meditation+conviction at ladder reset anyways is void here, because on top of that they get a full hammerdin damage. atm they would have to sacrifice damage for conviction.
the way to go would be like lower the efficacy from concentration from 50% to 25% AND lower the base damage for hammers (or in this case NOT buffing the base damage by the factor of 2x), sothat it reaches that 7k damage (if you want his enddamage to be at that mark). that way concentration would ā€œonlyā€ double your hammer damage, so you might consider sacrificing that for another aura. but its still significant enough to use it.

This is the setup i used for the numbers:

If you are referring to me, and I am not sure you are, I proposed shifting vigor, blessed aim and concentration to cleansing, holy bolt and Sanctuary, meaning it works out exactly the same but you actually get a better build in the trade-off, because holy Bolt gives you a weapon to kill Undead who are immune to Magic.

i wasnt. but tbh im not a fan of that idea. immunities are there for a reason. the hammerdin having holy bolt in his built maxed out basically is like the sorc having conviction in her build (ignoring the + to damage it does, just for breaking immunities). there are already very little immunities for magic in the game. and if the pala wants to be able to deal with them he can sacrifice some damage to max out holy bolt or just use the lvl 27 one he already has through his items.

And you think Blessed Aim and Vigor are offering more? Think it through.

those 2 no, thats why i havent commented on them. but holy bolt im against. i would have to look into cleansing and sanctuary first in detail before i can comment on that.

So again, your position is Blessed Aim and Vigor offer something to the build, and Holy Bolt does not? Think. it. through. There is something very important youā€™ve overlooked. Iā€™ve basically given you the answer. at this point, itā€™s probably better if you follow my thought through. Why am I fixtated on giving Holy Bolt to deal with a certain magic immunity?

And what else could Holy Bolt be used for? I think you can figure this out, Milox. Iā€™ve read your posts. What are you missing?

if you want immunities not to be a thing, not gonna happen. if you want a healer, not at the cost of immunities broken. if immunities were unaffected by that, i would be fine with it.
besides that, having cleansing at that level (lvl 37) would basically mean that curses donā€™t affect you anymore. we want to nerf the hammerdin, not buff him even further. lvl 37 cleansing reduces curses by 86%, the healing is neglectable i guess.
for sanctuary im split: atm the magic damage does not apply (would be 436-525 at lvl 37) and its just knckback of undead, which i would find interesting and not too much overpowered (i could see a use in him teleporting into a mob and switching shortly to sanctuary to get them away a bit, then spamming hammers)

Edit: overlook the slightly hostile tone, thought this was a break immunities thing again.

What I proposed was Sanctuary is a stand in for Concentration, shifting the damage buff from Concentration to Sanctuary, thus removing Concentration from the build (and nerfing their mercenary DPS output and group utility). But the overall damage would have to remain the same (or be lowered, probably) necessitating a revamp of Sanctuary from itā€™s currently useless state from adding +magic damage to increasing the damage done by Blessed Hammer, Holy Bolt and Fist of Heavens.

So Iā€™m shifting damage around to solve Blessed Aim/Vigor being basically useless synergies, nerfing their merc DPS by a ton/, removing their passive group damage buff (and dramatically increases the value of Mist) while still giving them a way to deal with Achamael the Cursed. They could also shift points into Fist of the Heavens (Holy bolt is a shared synergy) to give them a partially synergized FOH if they choose to dump their last bit of points there instead of Holy Shield (which lowers their survivability).

Basically, a small nerf, a nerf to group synergy, and a few choices in how they want to build and a choice between survivability and a way to deal with the rare magic immunity, including a very notorious one.

hmmmmm. that actually seems reasonable. but a problem i see is the knockbak would be on all the time then. would be a bit hard for the hammers to hit then :thinking:
i would need to test it to see if it functions.

So Iā€™m shifting damage around to solve Blessed Aim/Vigor being basically useless synergies, nerfing their merc DPS by a ton/, removing their passive group damage buff (and dramatically increases the value of Mist) while still giving them a way to deal with Achamael the Cursed.

hmmmmmmm. i would need to think a bit more about that. that actually makes sense at the first hearing :thinking:

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I have thought it through carefully, trying to fix the infamous test case of a Hammerdin. I donā€™t know how Sanctuary KB would affect Hammers hitting. My first thought was byā€¦not much. It might. I have never been particularly interested in a Hammerdin.

Iā€™ve read some of your theory and testing, and I was reasonably sure you would see the advantages if you thought it through. I just want to fix dead skills and polish the game.

not so much a fan of cleansing, because getting rid of curses is strong, but the 2 other things might sound reasonable. maybe i will try to make a mod this weekend to test it.

I think we just need to hope that after patch 2.4 (designed to balance the weaker classes a bit better) blizzard will focus on new contentā€¦

If Blizzard can finish Patch 2.4 and forget about character balance, they can add some new content, like Act 6, or a new difficulty level (harder than Hell)ā€¦

If Blizzard getā€™s time and money to do this, they can make much larger balance changes by introducing new maps, monsters and different immunitiesā€¦ If Act 6 had many magic immunes, Hammerdins might be less powerfulā€¦

I think this would be the best way to balance the game - use new maps and difficulty modes to make the game harderā€¦

Otherwise they are affecting the ā€œclassicā€ content too much and will likely break itā€¦ Better to create new mapsā€¦

This is how the StarCraft community balanced the game, by making maps that favored each race more equallyā€¦ If you play the wrong maps in starcraft, some builds/races are just totally broken (siege tanks on cliffs)ā€¦

Same concept for Diablo I think :+1:

Thatā€™s the trouble with making all skills useful, is that all skills eventually tend to beā€¦useful

Donā€™t forget Sanctuary has two aura granting weapons; Lawbringer and Azurewrath. Might be prudent to check a straight FoH build as well. It could have Holy Bolt, FoH, Holy shock, and max Conviction, with a level 18 Sanctuary Aura.

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Why not? As much as I hate hammering, they do require ultra concentration to release a magic hammer and guide the hammer into the cycling around him right?

Donā€™t forget concentration aura has the ability to reduce chance of interuppted

Otherwise it wouldnā€™t be glasses hammer it would be throwing hammer where it just go straight in line