I really like the idea behind Hustle with the big FRW and some IAS and FHR, like Stealth for physical characters. However, I think the Ko rune is too high of a rune in terms of level requirement and rarity.
I think Hustle would be best suited as an early Nightmare armor to be like a stepping stone between what you’ve found in Normal and what you might find or make in mid/late Nightmare/early Hell.
That’s why I think the Ko rune should be switched to Dol, it’s a significantly more common rune (can be dropped in normal A5 onwards and from Nightmare Countess) that doesn’t have many popular usages, so this would hopefully give it some more usage while reducing the level requirement and “rarity” of Hustle.
Note that this feedback is for the armor specifically, I think the Ko is fine for the weapon because the Burst of Speed proc is quite powerful (perhaps even too powerful) and shouldn’t be available too quickly. I’m not sure how I feel about the Hustle weapon as a whole, it feels it’ll see more usage as a pre-buff stick than anything which I’m not a fan of.
Before anyone says that it would be impossible to make a runeword cost different runes based on the equipment slot it’s in, you’d be right. In the PTR files (runes.txt specifically) Hustle weapon and armor are two separate runewords so this wouldn’t be an issue.
Changing the Ko to Fal I’m not sure about, while the strength bonus is nice it bumps up the level requirement to 41 and increases the rarity, pretty much restricting it to late Nightmare + Hell Countess at which point you start thinking about making Treachery since you can get a Lem rune from Countess (or cubing 3 Fal runes).
It goes against the idea of Hustle being an early/mid game runeword and makes it more of a later mid game runeword which isn’t a bad thing, but I think it’d be better suited for the former given that physical characters don’t really have a Stealth or Vmagi-like option available currently.
Eld to Eth is a minor change, I wouldn’t mind either way. The mana regen would be marginally more useful but I do like that they give Eld another use case.
Increased Speed oskill is an interesting proposition, that’d be 25% effective FRW that also scales up a bit with +all skills. I like it.
Enhanced defense makes sense for physical/melee characters, sounds good.
The Amp Damage proc is a bit overtuned I think, Amp is a very powerful effect because at minimum it always doubles your physical damage, sometimes even tripling it. Melee does need help but I’m not sure this is the best way to go about it, this effect alone would make it more powerful than Fortitude for a lot of characters even if you just put it on a merc.
I think it’d be better suited for another runeword or ideally one of the many useless sets/uniques, but those don’t seem to be a focus for this patch (or maybe ever) unfortunately.
Indestructible would be nice for more defense and to give ethereal armor more usage outside of mercs.
NM countess caps out at Io. Hellforge has equal 9.1% chance of dropping either rune.
Ko is a much more desirable rune than Fal in early Ladder due to Harmony, HOTO, Lawbringer, Sanctuary, and Wealth all utilizing Ko.
I suppose Dol would be the logical replacement to get the armor down to farmable off NM Countess.
It’s more for the weapon side of things TBH. -25% Target Defense is a major boon.
The alternative is decrep which already exists on merc weapons including Lawbringer. Every physical build runs either decrep or amp to be remotely viable.
Ah I meant late Nightmare as in monster/container drops, not Nightmare Countess. I phrased that poorly.
Fair point regarding the Ko rune, it is much more popular than Fal.
Yeah, I’d quite like if the armor needed Dol instead of Ko.
Fair enough, in my mind I’m sort of separating Hustle weapon and armor as two separate runewords so I wasn’t thinking of the weapon side when proposing the armor changes. That’s why I wouldn’t want the weapon to use Dol is because Makes Target Flee would suck for melee.
Fair point, those do have their tradeoffs though.
Lawbringer is a weak merc weapon outside of undead, forces you to use an A5 merc which has their annoyances with Battle Cry or Taunt overriding Decrep, and no aura from an A2 merc. Reaper’s is a fairly uncommon drop that you probably won’t see until you reach Hell Meph where it can be farmed somewhat quickly.
Since my suggestion aims at making the armor an early Nightmare option I don’t think Amp/Decrep would be needed in that case, I feel those only become essential once you reach late NM/Hell.
I just feel that Amp would be too powerful on this armor given its cost and availability.
Aha, same thing for me as earlier of not associating the weapon and armor together.
Interesting thoughts. I love the idea to replace the Ko by Dol. Anyway as already mentioned, Dol is horrible in weapons and even if these are technically different RWs, I guess they shall stay the same conceptually. I personally would split them in real two runeswords. Dol also actually feels underrepresented in runewords that are actually build.
The best fix to make this change possible would be changing the RW to Shael Dol Eld and additionaly change the weapon effect of Dol Rune. I mean yes, it’s a quite impacting change, but let’s be honest… The Weapon effect of a Dol Rune is in (almost?) 100% of the cases a downgrade for the weapon. So lieteraly no one will complain, as long as the replacement effect will not be overpowered.
I think Hustle would be better if designed for early Nightmare as a stepping stone and the Ko rune should be switched to something lower, maybe to Tir, Eth, Ith?
In the PTR files (runes.txt specifically) Hustle weapon and armor are two separate runewords so this wouldn’t be an issue.
