Manajuma’s Way : Angry Chicken explosion damage increased from 400% to 2000%.
Spirit of Arachyr : Buff 6 piece bonus damage from 9000% to 17,500%.
Helltooth Harness : Buff 6 piece bonus damage from 9000% to 17,500%.
Scrimshaw : Reduces the Mana cost of Zombie Charger by 75% and increases its damage by 6-7 times.
For Arachyr: the above damage buff, plus the changes to the Ring of Emptiness in Patch 2.6.9 (only Haunt or Locust Swarm are needed to proc the rings’ bonus; before both were required), could make the set an interesting and viable choice for doing high level G-Rifts without having a zillion Paragon points. I do wish the changes weren’t so minimalist in nature, but I guess we can’t expect too much in the way of updates for a game that is getting long in the tooth.
Those changes are so minimal because the WD is in a good shape with them. Just compare it to the current Wizard Status. There are changes, still many problems.
Just going to copy what I said elsewhere (because I’m lazy): My first thought was that this is great news for WDs, and my second was that the changes, welcome as they are, do absolutely nothing at all to address what I see as the biggest problem with the WD class - the ubiquity of the Lakumba’s Ornament bracers and the Sacred Harvester in just about every WD build. The current “best” Arachyr and Helltooth builds (as far as I recall) both require these two items for the damage reduction they provide when used together, but the changes these sets will be getting in this patch address only damage output, not damage reduction.
Will be interesting to see what the changes to the Helltooth Zombie Charger build shake out as in real terms though, and anything that makes the Chicken build a wee bit stronger is okay with me
You are right on point with these comments. I hope to use the PTR to argue that more damage reduction is needed in the Arachyr build.
They did make a slight improvement to the DR in the Mundunugu set during PTR testing, so it’s not impossible that Arachyr could get more changes if people make enough noise.
I will also argue for the following during the PTR:
o The 2-piece bonus for Arachyr is practically useless, and needs to be updated. An idea: anything slowed by the set’s Spider Queen (SQ) also suffers 20% damage reduction; and the radius of the SQ’s webs are doubled. That would not require a lot of coding effort, I think.
o The Coils of First Spider bracer should be updated. It should do 40-60% damage reduction; and damage reduction should persist for 10 seconds after channeling has ended.
o The Spider Queen’s Grasp AND Rhen’ho Flayer ceremonial knives need to be updated. They are useless for and unused by the vast majority of players. They should be improved to allow for some benefit/synergy with the Arachyr set that is competitive with Sacred Harvester.
While this is possible, mostly it will give us a very reliable (and somewhat mindless) stronger speedfarming now, with Angry chicken useable with both Helltooth and Arachyr sets.
Mundunugu will still be the strongest GR push set (by far) and its also being buffed by the 4th cube slot. S22 we’ll be able to wear both Voo’s juicer while still cubing Sacred Harvester, and still have other cube slots available.
If they’re not ready, willing (or able) to address the Lakumba’s/Sacred Harvester issue right now, baking some damage reduction into either the Arachyr/Helltooth set bonuses, or into supporting legendaries (as per your suggestion) would be a nice compromise.
I’ve seen Wudijo build, and I agree that for now it’s what we have.
But my suggestion was to eliminate the need for lakumba’s + Sacred harvester and give WD some diversity for a change.
I’m tired of using this combo for toughness. It seems like whenever the devs add some item specific for a build, they end up screwing the entire class with a mandatory item.
