Or, perhaps the other 2 builds are OP AF and should be nerfed? Just sayin’.
The power creep is definitely real in D3.
I have an amazing idea - let’s nerf all other sets & builds to the lowly performance of the DH class. Oh, and remove the ability for all other sets & builds to enjoy group play too (builds only do solo, and don’t perform at all in group play). There you go.
Now stop whining.
Hi MasterJay, I took another look at the Missing items and skills from the rough calc I’ve been tending.
Trapped multiplier favoring Typhon’s Veil would about equal the gains that LoD would have from Elemental Exposure and extra Elemental % on gear. There would likely be some amount in favor of Typhon’s though, especially if you’re only hitting 3/4 stacks EE and only 20% elemental gain instead of 40%.
Alternately, you could run the extra 50% CHD from the Witching Hour on LoD with the 24 FPA BP. That’s 25% increase for the frame, and about 9.2% for the extra CHD with not using EE (defensive passive would be recommended there to make up toughness). While this may seem like the better setup on paper, you also have to lose a lot of AD or ring affixes to AS to hit the 24 FPA BP, so there are other trade-offs.
Worst case, it’s 1.33GR in favor of Typhon’s Veil there. Hence the recommended range being on the lower side, starting at 1550% per head.
Toughness could make a big difference also. LoD can fit in more if desired, whereas TV likely cannot, and would therefore be more vulnerable to Squirt’s breakage, which in turn reduces damage output.
This could again tip the scales in favor of LoD, hence the higher end of 1650% still being a decent suggestion as well.
The lower toughness could actually account for a good chunk of Squirt’s downtime. This is probably the largest point in favor of arguing for more than 1650% per head, and why perhaps we are seeing suggestions of 2000%.
How to measure the amount of breakage though, and downtime, I am not sure how to do that. If we could, we’d be able to better estimate the upper range. I know the build has x% less toughness as compared to LoD, but even with LoD you drop Stone gauntlets (non-seasonal) or drop OID (seasonal) sometimes, you drop Aquila on rare occasion, so toughness is largely variable, especially if you’re running APDs on the Typhon’s build.
Say, 25% downtime at 0 or 1 stack though, you’d need around 2000% on the 6 piece required to equal out LoD at near 100% squirt’s uptime.
So, I guess I can see the reason for this suggestion, I’m just not sure if I’m keen to agree with it yet, given the potential for players to still avoid damage and get milder mobsets that still provide high progression (and therefore allow Typhon’s to keep higher Squirt’s uptime even with lower average toughness overall).
Also consider: the only critically important uptime is during CoE damage phases, and both builds could still do most of their damage within those windows, even if Squirt’s breaks after that phase.
Hey Cratic, thank you for your response and feedback! I hadn’t even considered the gem advantage for Typhon’s, that would indeed point the 6pc more in the direction of late teen 00’s instead of 20 00’s per head. Either way the 1300% is certainly not cutting it. But correct, I definitely see the LoD LB highest clears right now being inline with where a maxed TV would be because of the Squirts downtime factor.
I also believe that’s not their intent, seeing the last two updates they definitely want TV to be the clear winner, but that doesn’t mean Mammoth needed to take such a drastic hit either.
Looking forward to more of your tests with Typhon set up.
ok guys i typed to about hydra and i felt it s…ks. i made wd yesterday and did 4pl run, me dd 1 monk heal 1monk heal learning(low par) and 1 zbarb. 125 was a walk in the park so if oyu wanna do higher gr id say switch to wd. They really have to buff hydra and best thing hydra would target what you target as wizz. Lets hope devs see the feedback from ptr you dont draw that conclusion
Most welcome! I agree with the overall sentiment.
As a side note I have added the video of my low key investment GR122 clear to the post above as an example. If I had better gear, could have ran EE instead of Evocation.
However I really enjoyed having the increased CDR (~28%). This reduced the internal cool down in regards to ES procs, and provided higher uptime of Spellsteal, Safe passage (if required) and more regular pulls.
Having teleport to more readily reposition also helps out in this regard.
As a result of this, I’ve edited also my initial take on the interest the build provides as this does fill the space where offensively, interest was very lacking.
I wouldn’t say that this completely fills that void, but it at least makes me moderately interested to play the non seasonal LoD Hydra build now.
I’ve completed my non-seasonal testing of Typhon’s Veil in solo push.
Managed a GR123, 2 minutes ahead, and was about 45s behind on a GR124.
This is at 2k paragon simulated (used my extra paragon as simulated augments and ancients. I was wearing a lot of non-ancient gear). ~30 keys used in testing.
https://ptr.d3planner.com/345101315
With higher effort fishing, perhaps 200 or more keys, I can see a GR125 possible for Typhon’s @ 2kp, especially with a power pylon on the RG.
Gearwise, I was missing about 40% possible area damage, and 20% cold, but made up for the last with an extra 1k INT, in the very least. So some minor extra potential there (less than about half a GR). Going higher in GR though would most certainly challenge toughness even more, and possibly result in more Squirt’s downtime, which is of course, a pretty significant loss of multiplier, so in all, the extra INT wasn’t so bad at this paragon, given that Absolute Zero was there to supplement Cold%.
Karini worn with Tri affix is a possibility, but there is also the chance at 2k paragon that you’d be stuck like in this test, with an ancient RoRG instead. Maybe 4% damage increase there.
Very similar to LoD with Black hole, but this build can opt to manually cast Black hole more often, since there is no constraint on resource. Absolute zero also has a longer duration. This actually made it a little more easygoing to play, and easier to gear for item affix-wise. Because of the channeling changes though, felt bad to have to cast manually, at the cost of some amount of channel, but was good the option was there if CC was required.
Similarly, Frost Hydra as a choice is more easygoing. While I chose Audacity for my push, I could easily see players opting for Power Hungry and the build would still work fairly well. This is because Frost Hydra chills before damage, and therefore can apply Trapped at range. Generally I preferred Audacity as this was the better option for synergy with the black hole in density. The attack from Frost Hydra is also fairly short range, similar to Mammoth Hydra.
However, because so many item slots are tied up with multipliers (looking at you magistrate), the toughness is still an issue. Often, if my Karini fell I’d get oneshot. Elite affixes were noticeably more damaging, and Squirt’s uptime was more in contention.
Similarly frustrating is respawning or level transitions. You have to resummon the Hydras to get the 4pc DR. Takes a full 2-2.5s to cast two hydras, Storm armor, and MW:D to get all of your toughness active. Forgetting to cast Hydra after transitioning levels is also really painful and punishing.
Taeguk was one of the biggest upsides to this playstyle. The toughness from this item was actually nice to have, and though it was a Stricken-less push build, it felt good to destroy the rift, and have the extra ramp up damage there. It’s especially nice to have Taeguk in the additive pool, because Absolute zero is boosting our Cold%, not additive like Spellsteal.
While it felt bad to have to channel to keep up Taeguk when I didn’t have the increased damage from channeling multipliers at times, the gem itself still made the gameplay more interesting. It makes you feel like you’re doing something with your channel other than only using it for the rune and DW + ES multipliers.
Toughness was more in contention (by this measure you could say that more attention was paid to not taking damage). This lent the feeling that I was babysitting the Squirt’s more than I had to at times, especially when engaging bad or unfavorable mob types (means more fishing). However, it felt all the more rewarding to keep up Squirt’s in time for CoE Cold.
The inclusion of Illusionist made mobility less problematic, and also felt great for moving into Oculus ring spawns quickly or dodging elite affixes.
Knockbacks, fear, CC, Frozen, still an issue with this build, same as with LoD, however, it feels even more like with TV you have less option for immunity items. Best bet is just go as high as possible on CC% reductions. I can see potentially placing Invigorating gemstone as the best alternate option, at the cost of quite a lot of multiplier or additive damage.
TV is at about the same clear potential as my 2kp test for LoD. Difference here was I spent more keys getting the GR123 down with TV as compared to LoD, with TV I used about 30 keys trying to get a rift with adequate elites and decent mobtype, pylons.
I have adjusted my estimate in the larger post about LoD above for both the SS and Magistrate values and TV 6pc.
Now recommended:
At 6x, 1500% this is:
Compared to current 4x, 1300%.
For the 6.5x down to 6x adjustment, I reason that LoD had slightly more potential than I explored in it.
The reasoning behind the decrease in my TV 6pc recommendation is twofold. While the toughness issues did come into effect (my Squirt’s multiplier was down a significant amount of time with the TV build in testing), managing the toughness and avoiding damage properly results in higher uptime, and I can see how TV could provide more damage than we originally thought.
Even still, I have the feeling it could still use a little more separation from LoD via the 6 piece.
That’s about it for Typhon’s at the moment. If I think of other things, I’ll add them in later.
Very nice, thank you Cratic great run and you opened my eyes to Teaguk, definitely the gem of choice for this.
Btw the 4pc actually does have base toughness now, casting hydras you gain more toughness. I’m not entirely sure if this is what you meant though by that but that’s something that wasn’t working in PTR.
I respect your recommended modification, but I also feel that giving tame buffs to the 6pc whilst increasing the hydra items by a sizeable amount will leave TV largely ignored for LoD Mammoth like it was on PTR, besides maybe group play. I really feel that they had it right with 450% and again no idea why they decided to change it.
Like right now you’re saying they’re pretty even solo with maybe Mammoth having the advantage with gearing, well if you buff them by 300 > 500 LoD will just be much better while 6pc getting a poultry 1300 > 1500 won’t really do much good. See what I mean? Also LoD Mammoth can reverse archon in NS where TV cannot…that’s going to make a gigantic difference as well.
That’s why 2k mod 6pc would IMO make more sense here, while of course rebuffing SS/Magistrate.
Either way, we’re all in agreement a change must be made, so that’s a good thing. Now just pray they listen.
Aye, Taeguk definitely fills a lot of gaps, even with dropping Stricken. I had thought about Pain Enhancer, but with TnT in the mix, the multiplier items and Taeguk are just more consistent in solo with how massive Hydra’s breakpoints are.
The base toughness mention was in reference to some method of passive DR, regardless of if a Hydra is summoned or not. Perhaps if half the bonus DR were provided in this manner it might not make deaths and transitions so jarring. The values from the separate sources of toughness would have to be adjusted to equate to 80% DR though…
Thank you for the review! At this low of paragon, I felt the stone gauntlets were necessary for Squirt’s uptime with LoD. The 24 FPA BP would be nice to have offensively, and as the leaderboards show, it can most certainly make a difference in favor of LoD.
Typhon’s Veil felt surprisingly strong in comparison to the 30 FPA LoD NS Hydra. Offensively, it feels between the two (30 FPA BP NS LoD and 24 FPA LoD NS LoD). The set should be less difficult to gear for also.
Squirt’s downtime is really what is holding back the damage potential of TV on most rifts. It’s close enough though that shielding will hold in many engagements. This makes, say, placement of additional toughness via Esoteric or UW (30-54% multiplier tradeoff) feel less required.
My thought was we could increase the damage of both LoD and TV, while still giving Typhon’s about a 1 GR increase relative to LoD.
LoD Mammoth Hydra would still be end game for those higher pushing, higher paragon players, but Typhon’s would have enough damage and ease of configuration for lower paragon players to prefer for this purpose, as well as give those players something else to work towards.
LoD Mammoth at 30 FPA would still be appealing for lower paragon players due to it’s configurable / tanky nature, but perhaps not quite as powerful offensively as Typhon’s Veil after the suggested change.
Honestly, I’m over it at this point. Either Blizzard will admit they screwed the pooch and buff Hydra for S20 start, or Hydra set will never be buffed. I don’t think there is any in-between anymore.
Firebird’s has been non-viable for like…4 years or something. DMO is a steaming pile, and Tal’s just needs a 5 minute change of a larger multiplier. Hasn’t happened.
I bought R.O.S. despite my misgivings because developers promised every legendary would be exciting. 6 years later, 90% of them are still useless.Why use frost hydra? Arcane shoots several projectiles each with a chance to proc AD or be a crit, it does AoE in 10 yards, and it’s much better at dealing with nasty affixes or highly mobile RG. Also it has much larger aggro range than frost hydra, so you can more safely find an object to hide behind and channel unninterupted.
Am running taeguk BoTrapped and enforcer and I can’t say I miss stricken so far for RG, my 110 RG kills (irrelevant of boss spawn) are all under 1m (no power or haste pylon in effect).
They really need to either up 6pc to 2k, or make it 1500-1600 and add a 2nd arcane spender to the bonus (like tornado or arcane orb or heck even one of the channel spells).
If they buff Magistrate and SS, then LoD will pull even further ahead in S20 (because you have so much more room to choose what to cube and what to wear), so we will need an even higher multiplier for 6pc to be at least on same level of LoD (and LoD toughness gets insane compared to static of the set).
Meanwhile I enjoy TV for speeds, normal build with aether scepter and arcane presence and I can keep up with 6-7k para monks / UE DH / WD etc and even get ahead without any worries of something breaking my shields, and stuff just dies when you drop 2 hydras, for RG can channel a bit to kill it in under 5s. Also amazing for bounties! 
To me my dear fellow wizards, it all comes down in S20 to being worth to get the set instead of going LoD (personally hate Vyr playstyle). If they are adjusted to be similar, then I 100% get the set and roll with it to perfect it during S20 as I already have tons of items and mats to make a LoD at any time NS.
Cheers <3
Oh nvm the whole thing. Just saw some 3k paragon WD doing 120 in half the time (no main stat from paragon to emulate lower para since they had some augs) and pretty much instantly killing trash packs and elites.
So we are really far behind WD… It felt like a LoD meteor shower vs a Vyr’s in both speed of traversing the map, and killing speed / power as well.
@Blizzard we need serious buffs to TV 6pc (and / or supporting legendaries). Cheers!
PS: Diablo 3 NS WD Spirit Barrage Mundunugu's Regalia GR Solo Build 2.6.8 - YouTube Anthony Evans, known D3 streamer (and he’s not even using the CC version, but a more tanky one).
Frost has a higher base rune damage, wider spread of attack, instant damage as opposed to having to wait for projectiles to explode, and can chill before the damage instance. Unless you’re using attunement, Arcane is out, and in a solo scenario, you simply don’t have the average density for attunement to function at it’s peak, even on dense maps (learned that one the hard way).
Arcane does have a slightly easier time hitting the 30 frame FPA BP, since Frost Hydra breakpoints are still different, so in that sense, gear affix wise, you save one affix, or alternatively, with a WH or Lacuni, could hit the 24 FPA BP, but then you’d be overextending offensively, and would drop Squirt’s more often.
So, in solo, Arcane has longer range, and that’s about the best thing going for it.
Group play is different, and Arcane has more potential to shine there.
I’m looking forward to running TV in low GR speed and nephalems too. That sort of laid back playstyle might be nice once in awhile.
Yeah but you’re blackholing and casting hydras in middle of the gang, am only using their range vs the annoying packs that keep teleporting / flying and vs RG, so the travel time for the orbs is basically 0.
Yep, easier to gear for Arcane Hydra aps. Plus dropping squirts only happens if you get CCed (Terror or repeated pulls or get frozen etc) normally past 105 you can teleport every second for more DR and reposition while channeling.
Now about the orb themselves am not sure if each orb does the damage on rune tooltip or if it’s split among all the orbs, comparing the numbers of Arcane with Frost (no arcane / cold on gear and no blackhole or other buffs, just drop the pair and compare numbers on same enemy type) I’d say they are very close.
Am not using attunement. You can’t channel to use signature spells and viceversa so it would be a larger dps loss (DW+ES+Taeguk).
If we weren’t so stretched thin on legendaries / cube I would have highly considered dropping Squirts all together and picking traveler’s pledge. Which is my next question: how much dmg would I lose by dropping CoE for travelers? As I need to keep karini and cube RoRG, there’s no but’s about it, Tasker’s mandatory and karini is the largest DR outside of set 4pc we have.
I saw a 5k para PS4 TV clear 130 using Traveler’s and CoE, so I have no idea if he either ain’t using Tasker’s or karini (but still that clear is so slow compared to WD one). Nvm he’s not using Tasker’s which puzzles me (he also hit the 48s timer when engaged the RG but had a power pylon to activate and got a circle of power). Not worth it 100% IMHO.
In a perfect hydra world it would be -
Frost - solo
Arcane - group trash killer
Lightning - group RGK (with a proper manald heal)
Unfortunately we probably won’t get this, if ever, till the big rebalance patch they’re talking about after all new sets have arrived
Then just add to 2pc bonus: Your hydra also gains the effect of every rune.
With this we could become a viable trash killer in 4p and still have good solo potential don’t you think?
And yeah your hydras will spit all attacks with all their effects & dots etc - all at once not in a rotation, like each head is of a different type and deals it’s damage exactly as the rune describes it. Then I can see it staying at 1300% head and current legendaries.
Yay / nay?
Nay. Picking what you want your hydra to be best at is actually good gameplay. The problem is the damage, 100% the damage. We just need competitive damage.
Nah, this is best for diversity. It’s not like the gearing is any different (well you can make a case for one more AS gearing due to Frost hydras different FPA BP) it’s only the skills and maybe passives that differ.
Actually am doing well better with arcane solo than with frost. Cleared 115, no gear improvements since yesterday.
With frost 114 is very very challenging, most of the times timing out on the RG due to poor frost hydra attack range and need to ressumon constantly when RG moves out of their cone attack range. Btw the gear setup is identical, I only swap non-ancient blood bracers with same ChC int / vit 20% cold or 20% arcane that’s about it (and obv using cold BH instead of spellsteal one for frost hydra).
Am thinking with full augs I could probably do 118 on a good map but doubt it.
Well, originally I would have preferred to see multiheaded Hydras spit out your Arcane Power spenders and generators, like for example Hydras channeling at your target while you do, detonating an Explosive Blast on hit/impact or hurling Arcane Orbs… would have been nice, but I guess that’s not gonna fly anytime soon.
So, sticking to Hydra alone… how about something like this:
(2) Doubles the duration of Hydras and increases the number of heads on multi-headed Hydras by two. Hydras now attack 50% faster.
(4) Damage taken is reduced by 8% for each Hydra head alive. Each time you take damage, a head dies. A head cannot die more than once every 2 seconds. You and your Hydras release Frost Nova whenever a Hydra head dies.
(6) Multi-headed Hydras now also attack with a corresponding elemental effect of the Mammoth Hydra and deal 1XXX% increased damage for each Hydra head alive.
Damage % of 6 piece bonus depends on how strong Sparker and Magistrate are.
Nice, I’ll have to try that out.