I mean the set was underwhelming before especially compared to Valor, is another 500% really going to do it? Doesn’t seem like it, disappointed they didn’t rework the bonuses a bit more.
With A6I2 being one of the top builds they really can’t do much to the set. Unless they find a way to decouple the I2 bonus from the build, Akkhan is going to stay as it is.
The damage buff can’t also be limited to certain skills since that would take away the only general purpose set from crusader.
Right and I like that it is an all purpose set, it just feels like SOMETHING needs to change to make it more viable.
What;s A6I2 ? Sorry not familiar with every D3 slang I really just play early seasons these days, finish the conquests and check out.
Seriously? That’s the most powerful crusder build at the moment and one of the most powerful in the game. Combines full Akkhan bonuses, 2 piece bonus from Invoker, Captain Crimson and Norvald’s Fervor. It just crushes everything.
Just look at these clears:
Yes, seriously. What part of I only play seasons casually didn’t you get?
Thanks for the links.
What has you playing casually to do with my point? If one of the most powerful builds in the entire game already uses the set, it means the set is viable enough.
Akkhan can’t be buffed without doing some serious changes to other sets and legendaries.
One option might be to tie the 6p to crusader skills specifically. It’ll eliminate the value of some offensive legendary gems (the gems that deal weapon damage specifically, though those gems have long had problems), but it would completely disconnect Akkhan from Invoker, once and for all.
A6 isn’t really a set. It’s a damage multiplier. All it does is buff damage for other items/sets and give you champion.
Akkhan’s is sad really, it’s barely better than Dawn Crossbow. The problem is they went past the point of no return with all the item bonuses. They could buff the set in other ways so it’s not just about damage.
It’s supposed to be a ‘what you want to use, you can use’ set. But it’s not strong enough to support that, and really can’t be. For one, the only skills that are strong enough to get used are better supported by other sets. And the skills that aren’t supported by other sets have no useful items to buff them, so they’re still too weak to be used anyway. Buffing Akkhan to the point where the unsupported skills are useful just makes all those OTHER sets irrelevant. Akkhan would do all of those better…and the skills that don’t have supporting legendary items are still just as inferior as before. This dynamic is on full display with Invokers, which…well, is kind of a lousy set. A ‘thorns’ set that makes no real use of thorns itself, so it’s no surprise that Akkhan does a better job of ‘thorns but not-thorns’ than Invoker.
Countless suggestions have been made over the years to give Invoker its own unique feel (that doesn’t feed into Akkhan or doesn’t do so as strongly). To date, the only answer given has been repeated buffs to the 6p Invoker bonus that is the whole reason why the set sucks – a single-target-only attack in a game built around mass destruction is stupid. But they just keep doubling down on that problematic mechanic.
I’m not so sure that this set can’t be tweaked as others have been so negative about.
I am playing the A6I2 build myself currently this season and I do agree it’s rather silly, and pushing it further would probably be bad but I’m sure if the devs really tried they could rework Akkhan to be more interesting without further power creeping this build (if anything it probably needs a small nerf).
A stacking bonus for spending more and more Wrath while it’s active for example is one thing they could try. I do think it the cooldown bonus should be increased as well, just to make it a little easier to maintain 100% uptime (you basically have to have a high CDR roll on every item that can to keep it up with dependable frequency I’m sitting at around 58% ish I think and I have barely a second to renew it before it wears off which can be fatal if I’m not paying attention and frankly that’s a bit too micro intensive to be fun)
What it really comes down to is if the devs can be bothered to take another hard look at it or not, and adjust accordingly to make it stand out more while not pushing A6I2 into the stratosphere.
Also as a side plug, for real can we either get an item or update Hold Your Ground to allow 100% block rate on Crusader? 75% made sense in Diablo 2 because it completely negated damage but it doesn’t do that in 3 and this would enable a lot of cool build options.
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Well, a stacking bonus for spending more wrath does sound interesting, but there are some real issues with that.
You’d have to change both how blessed shield works (one item causing it to not spend any wrath) and the 2 piece works, also akkhan favors both cc3 and laws of valor, reducing the wrath spending by quite a bit.
If we want to fix it, it can be something boring like changing from universal damage to specific skill damage (condemn, blessed shield, phalanx), all those builds have their own interesting mechanics so we can have something simple for the set.
Hard NO. That’s literally the worst thing they could do.
They could make more favorable interactions for certain skills while still staying generic. For instance, stacking damage for spending resource is good and Blessed Shield could be fixed by it’s own itemization.
What might be better is non-damage related items or some combination:
- Reduces the Wrath cost of all abilities by 50% when Akarat’s Champion is active and doubles the duration of Iron Skin. (2 pieces)
- Reduces the cooldown of Akarat’s Champion by 65% and your Primary and Secondary attacks deal 200% more damage. (4 pieces)
- While Akarat’s Champion is active, the Crusader deals 2000% increased damage and receives 50% less damage (6 pieces)
Something like this for Akkhan maybe?
2p: While Akarat’s Champion is active, all abilities cost 50% less wrath and all wrath generation is increased by 100%.
4p: Reduce the cooldown of Akarat’s Champion and all damage taken by 50%. Blocking an attack reduces the cooldown of Akarat’s Champion by 1 second.
6p: While Akarat’s Champion is active, dealing damage with a primary skill increases the damage dealt by primary skills by 750%, and dealing damage with secondary or wrath-spending skills increases the damage of those skills by 200%. Each effect stacks up to 50 times and lasts 15 seconds.
Note: the huge boost to primary skills is reflective of the fact that Saders have NO legendary items that boost the power of their primary skills. Additional effects, yes. But not how strong they are. At most, they have Depth Diggers, which barely boosts them to the baseline performance of a spender without any legendary items.
That literally does nothing to change the thorns dynamic at play. It has to be addressed before Akkhan can see real improvements.
I have no problem with the current thorns setup being very good…It’s probably the worst setup to gear for besides Legacy Thorns.
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I do in the sense that the class has a thorns set – it’s just completely fubar and needs an overhaul just as badly as Akkhans. Leave thorns to Invoker (or LoD/LoN). Akkhans should be something else entirely.
It’s not really thorns, it’s bombardment, that uses thorns as a damage boost.
Invoker really just needs an AOE proc on it that actually matters. Something like :
- The attack speed of Punish and Slash are increased by 100%, and these skills deal 67,500% of effective Thorns damage to the first enemy hit and explode in a 10 yard radius on every 7th attack.(6 pieces)
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That’s exactly my point. The only useful thorns attack is bombardment, and Akkhans does that better than Invoker. Invoker just…sucks.
Even that suggestion leaves it open for a akkhan+invoker interaction, that’s the big issue, invoker suffers because the interaction exist.
Adding to that, buffing secondary attacks only affects blessed shield, condemn and phalanx is still left out.
Having a generic set isn’t needed today, since we already have enough sets to cover the skills. Primary attacks are the ones left out, but I believe they are satisfied with invoker being sort of one. For everything else, LoD and LoN covers most of the generic damage needs.
It’s not Invokers the suffers because of Akkhan. Invokers is just badly designed all around. Akkhan suffers because it does the thornbomber better than Invoker ever will, especially since it can be combined with 2p invoker. Which, frankly if invoker 2p and 4p swapped, that’d solve one issue at least. Then Invoker 4p could be stronger without spillover. Also, I think Akkhan would be fine picking up that 2p bonus for added durability.
And invoker gets nothing from 2p Akkhan, so there’s that, too.
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