The synergy changes to Charged Strike (CS) were a massive nerf for any hybrid zon that wanted to use Lightning Fury (LF), CS and another skill. These hybrid builds were less common but they provided some diversity to the class. My absolute favorite Diablo 2 build to play for fun was a hybrid zon that used Freezing Arrow & LF to take out mobs and then CS to take out bosses and physically large monsters. This wont work anymore because we will no longer have the skill points necessary to invest in all 3 skills.
I was really looking forward to testing more hybrid options with Immolation Arrow, LF and CS but since LF no longer provides damage to CS, hybrid zons now have to choose between LF and CS and they essentially lose their 3rd damage option. If they wanted to pull a synergy from a skill, they should have pulled it from Powerstrike because that skill will never be used in conjunction with Charged Strike as Charged Strike outperforms it in every way. Charged Strike and Lightning Fury were perfect compliments to each other. Now, only pure javazons will be able to take advantage of both, essentially crippling build diversity.
These balance changes were supposed to improve lesser used skills without nerfing builds that were already in the game. This is a huge nerf to my favorite build and a huge disappointment in a patch that I was so excited for. Lame…
As someone who wanna play lightning strike spearzon, this make 100% sense.
Investing into lightning fury just for the synergy has always been rubbing me the wrong way because spearzon would never use lightning fury under any circumstances.
I actually love the idea of taking synergy away from lightning fury because now I am not requiring to use as many skill points on a skill that I will never use.
Tengaku - I understand your point completely! You should be able to run Charged Strike and Lightning Strike (or whatever other spear skills you want) and I should be able to run Charged Strike and Lightning Fury. Easy solution to this. Remove the synergy from Lightning Bolt instead… Hybrid Zons will not be harmed by this because they can still spec into LF and CS and pure spear zons will still get their buff.
Removing lightning bolt still require a lightning strikezon to invest into lightning fury tho. That isn’t helping lightning strike from any point of view.
Removing lightning fury from synergy is basically the only solution from lightning strike point of view
For you at the very least you still have charged bolt, don’t forget you are at melee range when using charged bolt so your boss would eat at least 3 charge bolt from a hit and that’s 3x tooltip dmg
But you aren’t required to. You have multiple options for synergies with lightning strike, just like lightning fury.
If you are playing a hybrid spearzon using lightning strike, you don’t need to put points into lightning fury at all. You can put your synergy points into say charged strike.
If your spearzon is only using lightning, then you can max lightning fury out. What’s the problem?
Ancalagon: Here is the problem for Hybrid Zons
Freezing Arrow: 20 Points
Cold Arrow: 20 Points
Lightning Fury: 20 Points
Charged Strike: 20 Points
Remaining Points Into some passive and magic (1 point wonders) and the rest of your points into a charged strike synergy.
Now that Lightning Fury is no longer a synergy for Charged Strike, you have to choose between charged strike and lightning fury as there are not enough remaining points for both to be good. This is a huge nerf to the build as you either have to choose between your boss killer (Charged Strike) or your cow running / Cold immune mob killer in Lightning Fury.
This could be easily resolved by continuing to have Lightning Fury and Charged Strike synergize off of each other and have Lightning Bolt no longer be a synergy for Charged Strike instead.
Tengaku: If lightning bolt is no longer a synergy for Charged Strike or Lightning Strike and they switch it to Lightning Fury, your build only loses two points of effectiveness. If they keep lightning bolt as the synergy, it removes 20 points worth of Charged Strike synergies from Hybrid builds… This is hardly even a comparison. Not to mention that Hybrid Zons have functioned in the game and they were not supposed to be nerfing builds that already existed. Also, the two points of lost skills by switching the synergy to Lightning Fury is more than made up for by the 4% increase to each synergy. Your build will still be getting a massive buff and the existing hybrid builds will not be getting a 20 skill point nerf…
Ubeogesh… Come on man. Let’s not act like Lightning Strike is a replacement for Lightning Fury… The skills are not even remotely close in power level. If Hyrbids (already an underpowered build) spec into Lightning Strike instead of Lightning Fury, they completely lose out on their ability to run cows effectively and severly cripple their ability to handle cold immune mobs. The point is that there is a way for them to achieve the exact same goals for pure spearazons without crippling hybrids. They weren’t going to nerf existing builds but they didn’t realize that the synergy change would nerf them so I’m trying to expose it as there is a fix.
Tengaku… You are investing 20 points into Lightning Bolt already… Lol… Are you telling me that you use lightning bolt??? I’m saying switch the synergy from lightning bold to lightning fury…
Ubeogesh… Read my other comments about how they can make both skills viable by just switching the synergy from LF to Lightning Bolt.
Also… Yes I have tried it and no, it comes nowhere close to killing cows as efficiently as Lightning Fury. Lighting Fury is arguably the strongest skill in the game against cows. Also, try to use Lightning Strike in players 8 difficulty with only 55 skills invested into it and its synergies combined. Remember, I’m talking about the nerf to HYRBID builds who are not investing 80 points into Lightning Stike and its synergies. With 55 skills points invested into (20 into LF & CS) and 15 into any of their shared synergies, I can clear cows on players 8 difficulty no problem with the right gear (not even using infinity). Not only is Lightning Strike worse, but I would argue that with only 55 points, it isn’t doable on players 8.
Ubeogesh… I feel like you are changing your points every time I bring up a valid counter argument lol… It isn’t an interesting change. It will make all Hybrid characters just build pure Javazon as it is even more powerful than it was before. And it nerfs pre-existing builds like they were trying not to do. A fringe, fun, underpowered build at that. Pure javazon was and always will be stronger than hybrids because of infinity.
Hey, that’s a good thing. I am eager to change my opinion as I learn more about the issue.
How is this an uninteresting change that we get to play Lightning Strike now? I actually never had a character that used this skill. I have never used it before!
Because you can still play Lightning Strike. The solution I proposed does not take away from anyone’s ability to play Lightning Strike.
What I find uninteresting about it is that the changes promotes pure lighting Javazon even more than before (which was a lot). You might have one person out of 200 that chooses hybrids over pure javazons right now. In the past, I could create a hybrid and have it still be a very good character even if it wasn’t as good as pure javazon. Now, these changes buff pure javazon and nerf hyrbid and the incentive for me to build hybrid has gotten even worse!!
My proposed change does not impact your ability to build a pure Lightning Strike amazon. You can still do that if Lightning Fury is a synergy instead of Lightning Bolt. Sure, you have to spend 2 extra skills, but that loss is nothing in comparison to hybrids that will lose out on an entire skill.
Lighting Bolt It is a skill that with one point is enough. If it goes up to 20 it is to make synergies and that’s it.
It is used on specific occasions against immune to the physical. (very useful if you are Bowazon and have %ED equipment). But as a main skill is a chestnut.
Blizz should Bring back Cs&Lf synergie¡¡¡