2.6.8 PTR wizard changes - thoughts?

Wizard
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2.6.8 notes: https://us.diablo3.com/en/blog/23298649/patch-268-ptr-begins-26-1-31-2020

  • Etched Sigil
    • The bonus granted by this item now occurs 1 second after channeling has begun.
  • Deathwish
    • The bonus granted by this item now occurs 1 second after channeling has begun.
  • Mantle of Channeling
    • The bonus granted by this item now occurs 1 second after channeling has begun

Looks like this is how they are combating Bazooka. Kind of a nerf to all Sigil builds (e.g. regular Meteor Shower) too, but it’s probably worth it for the good of the game.

But it kills non-bazooka Star Pacts too? e.g. Firebird and non-Archon LoD Star Pact? I don’t think there’s enough time to drop a meteor, generate enough AP, and then channel for a full second before the meteor lands? I’m all for killing Bazooka, but killing all Star Pact builds as a side effect just seems unfortunate.

EDIT: Pointed out in GD thread that this also kills interweaving manual cast Meteor Showers. Not sure how I feel about that.

  • New Class Set: The Typhon’s Veil
    • 2-Piece Bonus: Double the duration of Hydras and increase the number of heads on multi-headed Hydras by two.
    • 4-Piece Bonus: Damage taken is reduced by 8% for each Hydra head alive as long as there is one available. Each time you take damage, a Hydra heads dies.
    • 6-Piece Bonus: Hydras deal 1000% increased damage for each Hydra head alive.
  • Serpent’s Sparker
    • You may have one extra Hydra active at a time and they deal 450-600% increased damage.
  • The Magistrate
    • Frost Hydra Your Hydras now periodically casts Frost Nova and deal 450-600% increased damage.

Interesting. I’m assuming the 4p heads dying will work similarly to Squirt’s/Pride’s Fall, i.e. you can keep the heads alive with shields. If not, it’ll be really annoying keeping the heads alive.

Also curious if the 6p bonus + Serpent’s Sparker + Magistrate buffs Manald Heal procs triggered by Lightning Hydra. It shouldn’t, because that would probably be completely broken levels of damage. Unfortunate though, because it seems this set and the new items will basically kill MH Hydra builds. Guess it would be tough to balance regular hydra damage vs. MH Hydra damage, so maybe that’s for the best.

And it looks like another Deathwish + Etched Sigil build? I can’t see any way to set this up that would compete with a Deathwish + Etched Sigil variant, because you should be able to fit Deathwish/Serpent’s Sparker (wear one, cube the other), Etched Sigil (worn), and Magistrate (cubed) with the 6p set without any difficulties. Kinda wish they’d designed it so that we aren’t shoehorned into those items…

  • A new Season Theme has been added for Season 20, the Season of the Forbidden Archives:
    • For the duration of Season 20, all slots in Kanai’s Cube will be able to select Legendary powers from Weapon, Armor, or Jewelry

Well this could be interesting. Not sure what we can really do to leverage it: Crimson’s with Vyr’s? Doesn’t really seem worth the tradeoff. Do we have any other really compelling options outside of farming specs? Other classes may have some more interesting options here.

EDIT: Sigh, it appears I lost my Trust Level 3 sometime in the last week or so. Guess I haven’t been visiting enough lately… :frowning:

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Here:
https://us.diablo3.com/en/blog/23298649/patch-268-ptr-begins-26-1-31-2020

I know this may have been the most ideal method for blizzard to handle bazooka; but side effects like these leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Regarding the new hydra set, it’s a bit of a shame that they didn’t raise the hydra count (2 seems to still be the max); that said I suppose by adding more heads it makes up for it. Just as you said though, if our shields can’t tank damage for the hydras, then this may turn out to be a pretty annoying set to play as using the hydra set would mean constantly summoning hydras to replace lost heads in order to keep the Damage buff and damage reduction from falling.

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Yeah. 2 hydras x 5 heads each is 10 heads, so 80% DR from the 4p. Can stack that with Karini. That’s a decent amount of DR on top of Blood Bracers + Galvanizing Ward + Deflection, but I guess we’ll see if it’s enough in high-level GRs. My worry is that it won’t be.

Could maybe work in Orb of Infinite Depth too? Not sure how you do that without losing damage from Deathwish/Serpent’s Sparker/Etched Sigil, although I guess it would be possible to fit OoID in there too in S20 with the seasonal theme.

The set should play pretty well assuming you are basically immortal with shields. But it’ll play really poorly if you’re borderline and taking damage constantly.

That really doesn’t seem like a good mechanic, to be honest. You either never die and just recast your hydras periodically, which seems like boring gameplay, or you constantly take damage and have a hard time keeping the hydras alive. Which means you take even more damage, since you have less DR. And don’t deal much damage, since your hydra heads keep dying. Guess we’ll have to see how it plays on PTR.

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Might as well post my stuff here to keep it to 1 thread;

Couple of questions on this set. New Class Set: The Typhon’s Veil

* 2-Piece Bonus: Double the duration of Hydras and increase the number of heads on multi-headed Hydras by two.

Does increasing the head count increase the damage as well?

* 4-Piece Bonus: Damage taken is reduced by 8% for each Hydra head alive as long as there is one available. Each time you take damage, a Hydra heads dies.

There has to be a lengthy ICD on this right? Otherwise it completely sucks cause it will be gone in 1 second.

* 6-Piece Bonus: Hydras deal 1000% increased damage for each Hydra head alive.

Again, this seems like it will suck because of the Hydra head dying right?

Onto other points - the 3 weapons we will use are Deathwish, Etched Sigil and Serpent Sparker.

  • [Etched Sigil]
    • The bonus granted by this item now occurs 1 second after channeling has begun.
  • [Deathwish]
    • The bonus granted by this item now occurs 1 second after channeling has begun.

Changes to these 2 already nerfs this Hydra build significantly. /sigh Fix bazooka wizard another way! Don’t nerf other wizard builds.

Finaly, I’ll compare this build in damage to other builds that can use Hydras, but first a couple of notes.

  1. You will rarely have the full damage bonus of 10,000% due to Hydras losing their heads.
  2. Same thing with the damage reduction bonus as above. Rarely will be at 80%
  3. Don’t need increased duration on the 2-piece as you can always have 2 Hydras up with serpents
  4. The set bonus makes Mammoth Hydra rune useless. Where as we can include Mammoth Hydra in other sets for the higher damage.

So by my thoughts. This set will suck compare to Tal Rasha’s and LoN/LoD builds /sigh. I made many posts before on the importance of making a new set change actual mechanics that will increase damage.

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That’s literally how I’m imagining the gameplay for this set; and honestly it’s unappealing imo.

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I don’t see why not.

And if that’s the case… you could run a hybrid build with Tal’s if you really wanted to. 2p Typhon’s + 6p Tal’s should be possible and would get you away from the heads dying mechanic while still giving you a decent damage multiplier (10,000% with full 6-piece Typhon’s vs. 8,000% w/ 2p Typhon’s + 6p Tal’s). Would be a lot squishier though. And then you’d have to deal with the Tal’s 4 element mechanics.

I think it’s designed for us to rely on shields to keep the heads alive? Hooray, another shielding build…

Yeah, pretty much. The build sounds kinda boring to play. You’ll set up and start channelling, and then not stop until everything dies or you start taking too much damage and your hydras start dying and you have to reposition. Repositioning will cost you some DPS because you’ll have to wait a second to get the damage bonus from Deathwish + Etched Sigil back up, so you’d want to reposition as infrequently as possible.

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Replace “Hydra” with “Mirror Image” and adjust the % accordingly and it could be new or fun. Hydra has been used since Hydra+Apoc with firebirds ages ago.

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I’m curious about this as well. I remember the Manald Heal Hydra build working because Hydra damage boosted MH damage. If this is the case still then GG Hydra MH RGK build again.

I believe I remember this being nerfed, but that was years ago so I’d have to do some digging again through Cratics mechanics for MH stuff.

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This set seems like a mechanical nightmare. The only thing I can conclude from this design is that they don’t want builds that drops Hydra and spams something else but rather they want you to keep resummoning the Hydras.

Honestly dropping Hydras has never been compelling gameplay but being forced to constantly resummon is not the answer to that imo. Shielding has to work on it or the build will be useless. And if it does in fact work then the whole design seems rather pointless.

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You wouldn’t resummon; you’d facetank with Etched Sigil + Frost Nova. 6 piece set + Magistrate + Serpent Sparker + Etched with DW, Mantle of Channeling in cube. As long as Deathwish works with Hydra damage. It should.

If Hydras cast Frozen Mist Frost Nova, particularly if they stack, might be really fun. We have to deep into the mechanics.

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You can’t face tank. You lose a Hydra head when taking damage. Meaning you lose damage and damage reduction when you face tank. Meaning you have to move. Meaning you have to re-channel Arcane Torrent, or Disintegrate or w/e. Meaning you lose the damage bonus from DW & ES all the time.

It’s such a junk mechanic.

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Seems like a very disengaging playstyle probably you better hide behind walls or using channeling skill who don’t deal damage on their own to get shields up. If shields count as no damage taken. My guess is that Hydra heads only will die when you take damge. But the damage reduction is huge. 10*8 =80% DR? and 10.000% damage buff. That’s the biggest DR buff on a set? Would loved to Magic Missile, Familiar or Blizzard. Blizzard + Hydras = Love.

But probably that’s the most important note from the patch notes:

“For example, if you’re primarily a Wizard player, consider what changes impact the Wizard specifically. What you like best, what you think may still need adjustment, and what you’d want to see in the future (even if that may be beyond the scope of this patch) are all good questions to ask yourself.”

So what particular skill/items/playstyle do we feel is off and needs adjustment? I think it’s sad that a wizard has almost no powerful rings and amulets.

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The changes to Death Wish, Sigil, and MoC breaks all other Wiz channeling builds which should not be the case. They (the devs) reversed their position on Bazooka so disable Bazooka (and compensate us with appropriate buffs/improvements). Don’t neuter all Wiz channeling builds.

Typhon set most likely needs more than 2 weeks of testing. In addition to the set:

  • are the devs going to remove the nerfs to mirror images (ex: reduced chance to cast hydras)
  • will hydras cast by mirror images count toward the Typhon set bonuses and will those hydras cast by mirror images inherit the Typhon damage bonuses
  • are the devs going to buff mirror images damage and will images take full advantage of the enforcer gem
  • will hydras cast by mirror images gain full advantage of the enforcer gem
  • are the devs going to buff Manald Heal and/or remove the ICD on the ring
  • are the devs going to revise/buff Archmage’s Vicalyke
  • will the change to The Magistrate mean arcane hydra will cast both Frost Nova and arcane orbs
  • are the devs going to revise Rime Heart to make it worth using with hydras

=== additional points added in a revision ============

  • will the Typhon set be accompanied with a UI buff icon for the number of hydra heads active (hydra stack indicator).
  • will the Typhon set be coded such that Mammoth Hydra when cast is counted as 5 heads per active Mammoth hydra and a single hydra stack be removed per hit taken
  • The Typhon set needs amulet (7th piece) for flexibility reasons

Sorry to toss in a monkey wrench with my questions.

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Just gonna throw it out here…

LoD Hydra > Hydra set?
Possible? seems like it, by numbers…
maybe?
Combined with T&T gloves, and all the whoohaas.

Also - what are we supose to do while our Hydras attack? i think this would be a LoD item change buff

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Maybe…

The Typhon’s 2p bonus should be worth about 67% more base weapon damage per hydra (since you’ll have more attacks per hydra from the extra heads). That should bring the effective multiplier easily up over LoD by time you factor in the 6p too.

But… you can run Mammoth Hydra with LoD instead of being forced into a multihead hydra in order to leverage the 4p and 6p Typhon’s bonuses. That alone might make LoD win out.

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Can you elaborate Holy?

Also Vyr/Chantodo buffed?
swami: equipped
cube: weapon, karini, RoRG
jewelry: endless walk + zodiac

I’m pretty user a [ weapon + furnace + other ] is a possible strong combo. Triple weapons in a LoD setup could be strong. Season cube buff for DH is probably going to be nutzo.

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What do you think about:

  • LoD, Archon, Hydras
  • Vyr, Chantodo, Hydras
  • Vyr, Death Wish/Sigil, Sparker, Hydras
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Vyr locks you up for using them, so that’s just relying on Archon downtime for damage output… Has to be tested…

What i’m thinking is that LoD by itself might work… Might?
idk, wizclub never enjoys huge multi-damage on items, let alone 2 items that buff the same skill by that much, LoN\LoD builds for casual farming is an alien concept to us.

Here i was hoping new set messes with electrocute and lightning build mechanics… :frowning:

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Why are they nerfing wiz builds? Didn’t their own testing show wizards being exactly where they wanted them in terms of balance?

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They are going about it this way to nerf the Bazooka Wizard. It’s completely dumb nerfing most Wizard builds just to fix an issue with Bazooka.

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