Please remove Next Hit Delay from all spells

PTR Feedback
1

Hi dev, i am not sure if you realized that Next hit delay exist but the existance of them have greatly hinder the performance of many spells. If you really want to make skills more viable, please remove next hit delays.

If you ain’t too sure what NHD is, please refer to the following information based off diablo wiki (sorry link is not allowed to be posted on this forum

NextDelay is a property of missiles (i.e., anything that flies across the screen, including arrows, novas and many skills) that activates a hidden “hit timer” that limits how often any missile with NextDelay can damage a single target. This works similarly to the infamous Casting Delay, which limits how often any spell with Casting Delay can be cast. The difference is that the hit timer doesn’t prevent you from attacking, it just disables collisions between the affected monster and any missiles with NextDelay until the timer runs out.

So, the moment a certain skill from the following list damages a monster, it prevents every other skill on the list from hitting the said monster for the original skill’s NextDelay duration (whether from you or any other character).

Skills affected by NextDelay

25-Frame Delay (1 second)

  • Shock Web

  • Blade Sentinel

  • Twister

  • Tornado

10-Frame Delay (0.4 seconds)

  • Volcano (initial eruption)

6-Frame Delay (0.24 seconds)

  • War Cry

  • Grim Ward

5-Frame Delay (0.2 seconds)

  • Fissure

  • Volcano (small fireball)

4-Frame Delay (0.16 seconds)

  • Multi Shot

  • Strafe

  • Lightning Strike

  • Chain Lightning

  • Nova

  • Frost Nova

  • Poison Nova

  • Shock Wave

  • Fist of Heavens (Holy Bolts)

  • Wake of Fire

  • Claws of Thunder (only 2nd and 3rd charge charges have Next Delay. 1st charge does not trigger Next Delay)

  • Phoenix Strike (only 2nd Chain Lightning and 3rd Chaos Orb charge have Next Delay. 1st charge does not trigger Next Delay)

  • Dragon Flight

  • Battle Cry

  • Battle Command

  • Battle Orders

  • Any other piercing missiles

Examples[Edit]

2 sorcs are questing along and they encounter a monster. They both cast Chain Lightning targeting the same monster, but one player has a slightly faster reaction/casting speed/whatever than the other, so his CL hits the monster first. The first CL to hit starts the NextDelay timer, which lasts for 4 frames (0.16 seconds). The second, slower sorcs, ChainLightning will automatically miss if it “hits” the monster within the 0.16 seconds of the first CL. If the NextDelay from the first CL has already run out when the second CL “hits”, the monster will also receive the damage from the second spell (and reset the NextDelay timer again).

A Wind Druid is spamming Twister at some Frenzytaurs. He is quite well equipped and hits the 11 fpc breakpoint. Thus he can hit a monster at least two times a second. The Frenzytaur in lead gets hit by the first Twister, and even the second Twister cast 11 frames later hits him. Since he is still under the influence of the NextDelay timer from the first Twister, which lasts 25 frames, he will only take damage from the first Twister. The damage from the second one will not be applied.

6 Likes
2

At the very least separate Next Hit Delay for each skill, so that one skill doesn’t create Next Hit Delay for other skills. When you did that for spells and casting delay it opened things up enormously, do the same for Next Hit Delay. Shock Web is particularly hurt by this, as using Shock Web is actually bad because it prevents your other traps from hitting the enemy.

Some skills also have far too high NHD:

Twister and Blade Sentinel are far far too high.

Twister applies a stun for 0.4 seconds, but next hit delay means you can’t keep a Monster in stun lock with Twister because the NHD is 1 second. Twister does decidedly less damage than Tornado, the only reason to use it is for the stun effect. You should drop it to the 6 frame delay at the highest (notice that’s the same as War Cry, the stun effect skill that is actually used). If you did that a Twister would actually become very useful.

Blade Sentinel has many problems, but even if you fixed all the other issues, it can’t ever be useful with a next hit delay of 1 second. Truthfully, I think Next Hit Delay ought to be removed entirely from Blade Sentinel, but if there is some reason you can’t, give it the 4 frame hit delay, or at most the 5 frame hit delay, that would mean at most you can hit an enemy 5 times in a cast of Blade Sentinel. Considering all the other limitations on the skill that’s hardly overpowered.

Volcano has the problem that it has two effects, and so one of the effects (the volcano) can prevent damage taken by the second (the fireball). At the very least those two effects should have separate NHD counters.

Why does Grim Ward have Next Hit Delay? That seems counter intuitive and makes it impossible to use with things like Multishot, Strafe, Dragon Flight, and War Cry. All skills that ought to be able to be used on monsters under the effect of Grim Ward.

Since you can trigger all three of your Martial Arts charges very quickly with Dragon Talon (the first three hits can easily take place in 4 frames), it seems that Claws of Thunder and Phoenix Strike are badly hurt by this. They also won’t work well with Dragon Flight since it has next hit delay. I’m guessing that if you gave each skill separate NHD counters, this would mean each charge level of those skills would also have different NHD counters?

2 Likes
3

NHD is already separate between abilities. Not sure why Dragon Flight would have NHD.

4

Is NHD separate between abilities?

Because everyone else has always said that it is not. If one ability with Next Hit Delay hits, then no other ability with Next Hit Delay can hit until the Hit Delay is over.

And I’ve seen pretty good evidence with my own eyes at least that Next Hit Delay from Shock Web prevents Wake of Fire from hitting.

Why do you think they are separate?

5

oh yeah i wasnt thinking about trapsin, forgot about the interaction, you’re right. i was trying to think of interactions where that happens and couldnt think of any but forgot about trapsin

1 Like
6

Does Teeth have next hit delay?

Wondering if that is why attacking at close range with Teeth doesn’t seem to help.

7

I am against it. Techniques with a certain high dps should reduce spam through delay. Along with Hydra, Blizzard, and Meteor, Amazon’s Charged Strike and Paladin’s smite also need to add delay.

8

Wait… you want to nerf Hydra? Hydra builds are not high dps.

And Meteor has a casting delay on it. You want to add a Next Hit Delay on top of the Casting delay and nerf it below it’s already weak power?

You do know Meteor/Fireball builds often only bother to cast Fireball because Meteor is so difficult to aim?

9

After casting Frost Nova, cast Meteor.

10

Yes, Teeth has a NextDelay of 4 frames which prevents shotgunning like Charged Bolt can do.

As for the OP, NextDelay could definitely use some changes.

Most skills with NextDelay make sense (NHD is in place to prevent nova-type skills from hitting one target with multiple missiles and other skills like Tornado or Fissure would be very powerful if they hit too rapidly), but other skills like Strafe and the massive delays on Blade Sentinel and Twister don’t really make sense.

I also like Sackett’s suggestion to separate NHD based on skill, why should assassins get punished because some of their trap skills have NHD and prevent each other from hitting the target? Or Claws of Thunder, where the 4 frame NHD on Charged Bolt and Nova can prevent the other from hitting?

I checked the game files (missiles.txt) and Dragon Flight doesn’t have NHD of any sort, I’d use the list at Amazon Basin wiki for the most accuracy:
https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php?title=Missile#Next_delay

Class Skill Duration in Frames
Amazon Multiple Shot
Strafe
Lightning Strike		 4
4
4
Assassin Shock Web
Blade Sentinel
Wake of Fire
Claws of Thunder
Phoenix Strike		 25
25
4
4
4
Barbarian Battle Cry
War Cry
Battle Orders
Battle Command
Grim Ward		 4
6
4
4
6
Druid Twister
Tornado
Volcano
Shock Wave		 25
25
10
4
Necromancer Teeth
Poison Nova		 4
4
Paladin None
Sorceress Chain Lightning
Nova
Frost Nova		 4
4
4

Out of this list I think the ones that could be changed is Strafe, Shock Web, Blade Sentinel, Claws of Thunder, Phoenix Strike, Grim Ward, Twister, and maybe Teeth.

The reason I say maybe on Teeth is because it could do an absolute boatload of magic damage if it could shotgun, which should be a consideration for both PvM and PvP.

Say you’ve got a level 40 Teeth with all maxed synergies, that’s 884-1118 magic damager per tooth and with 24 teeth that would shotgun for 21216-26832 magic damage. Yeesh.

The damage might need some tuning if that’s the case, but it would be pretty cool if it could shotgun and it would probably make more sense to newer players.

3 Likes
11

Assassin could see a reduction on the NHD from Phoenix Strike and Claws of Thunder to make more charges hit the enemies when released at once with Dragon Talon or Dragon Claw (2 or 3 frames would be ideal since DT kicks have 3 frames between each).

2 Likes
13

Teeth just hit enemy with one “tooth”, the rest just ignore the given mob. So if you have 12 teeth, hit enemy close, only one tooth will hit and deal damage, the rest are ignored. This is primarily why it’s an ineffective skill

3 Likes