I honestly thought there would be a “Might” armor would be introduced, so Act 1 mercs could get Might and Fanaticism and be better than act 2 hireling holding Pride and Might. I don’t get why this wasn’t a thing. Adding a might armor is just pure win, as long as there is no might stacking for A2 or a Last Wish A5.
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i love that idea! It would make A1 merc more relevant
I think quite few people here dont play Bowa 
. When Onadroig said that Hustle makes Faith obsolete he was right. Issue is that Faith while price wise comparable to Eni, it doesnt have its versatility. Only reason to make Faith is because it is BiS for Bowa. Once Hustle + WF takes DPS crown, there is literally no reason to ever build Faith. It is not like Eni which you can pass between your Hammerdin and Fishy, or Grief which you can pass between Smiter and Zerker.
It is like if Devs announced new midgame armor runeword El Sol Ko which grants +20 Tele, + 3 skills, 200 FCR, 800 MF, 175 All res, 50% DR and lvl 30 Conviction and then arguing that it doesnt make Enigma obsolete.
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Not gonna lie, this would be so much fun for a day before deleting every instance of it from the game because it’s obviously broken.
From my testing Ice Bowazons have mana issues and also need AR to hit the target in order to proc pierce. Pierce needs to pass hit check or all subsequent pierces (which are up to 5) are auto-fail. Freezing arrow will explode the first time regardless of hit. Insight solves mana for cheap and Infinity adds a ton dmg and solves AR. I can’t see Faith competing for either option on the high or low end. Not to mention the A2 merc having his own aura as well.
It’s an ancillary point but I wanted to address it. So no, Faith becomes useful only to chars that still want fana like Tesladin or Bear, aka no meta zon wants faith if this goes through
OR people who elect not to use (or Prebuff) Hustle. But I think it’s good for the game that one bow no longer trumps them all, so to speak, for a bowazon. No denying Faith’s value will drop off a cliff, however. Hence, I think, a majority of the opposition. Prebuff is a little annoying, but at least amazons have it as ridiculously easy as it gets with Strafe.
It’ll see be best in slot for a Act 1 merc bow, but Act 1 still won’t compare to Act 2 without a “Might” armor. Maybe, someday, it may prove the way for different bows to be more accessible, if rares are ever made competitive or different runewords are introduced.
yeah, wanted to add that I didn’t check in details for ice bowazons, I should have phrased it differently, so I’m happy to stand corrected.
Also, what lacks in my above calculations (all done with d2planner, easily replicable by anyone) is magic find and mitigation. Some people also like to MF sometimes, not only look at their character stats. Faith + BOS opens up some more magic find opportunities, at the cost (as seen above) of some DPS.
What’s more, I used guided arrow, which doesn’t care about AR, and certainly faith is better on that regards. I did the calculations again and it didn’t change the ranking of the options.
In any case, if the cost of having all these new builds is that faith becomes obsolete, it’s arguably not too big a price to pay. Whether that’s the intended use of Hustle by the developers is another story, and, in my opinion, irrelevant.
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Agreed.
The intended “use” was always a joke. No one would even use it for that.
Looks like they will be making significant changes to the new runewords, based on feedback. I suspect chief among them will be Mosiac and “Hustle” armor. I would probably tweak “Hustle” weapon to 15% chance (or so) to cast BoS on striking, maybe not level 9 BoS, however. But apparantly as long as it stays above at or above level 3, that’s pretty much all that matters.
I hope they throw CBF on Hearth, 50% on Mosiac, Allow spells while shapeshifted for Metamorph. No idea what they will do for “Hustle” armor. Vigor would be the obvious thing for the stated purpose, but they can change it to Burst of Speed, teleport charges, even the barb skill “increased speed”. Clearly the 50% movement speed is not enticing enough. I’d probably throw on Burst of speed charges and be done with it; the people who hate prebuff don’t have to give up their weapon switch in exchange for giving up their armor. Seems like a fair trade. If BoS charges are too good, the armor can always cast Burst of Speed on being struck, which would shift them firmly away from bowazons to melee - the stated purpose. We’ll see what Blizzard decided next week, I guess.
Indeed I think the feedback has been taken in. Looking forward to the changes they made! My next char will be determined by their decision, here’s to hoping new playstyles become relevant!
Was nice theorycrafting and discussing options even with diverging opinions (I came late to the party).
Have a nice one
Exactly. With BoS wereforms can use ebotd thundermauls, melee have a solid option in death ettin axes over grief (because 5os eth berserkers are absolutely mythical items and make death an incredibly cost prohibitive item to make over grief).
Many TC87 uniques become useable like cranium basher, executioner’s justice, eth earthshifters, etc. even a simple early bonesnap can legitimately carry a barb to endgame with upping it.
Even though bos creates a dozen more options, grief is still BiS for melee (and actually is buffed in certain builds by completely negating decrepify).
Blizz nerfed barbs and druids in 2.4 and there’s no way that simple +damage will fix those problems that they made.
Thanks Blizzard for listening. This is a good change 
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Darn. Very unfortunate BOS hustle nerf. Kind of a pointless prebuff now.
Guess it’s still Faith meta.
/yawn
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Windforce is practically equal in DPS to Faith now but sacrifices some movement speed to achieve this. I will be going Windforce as my end game option this ladder.