Gears of the Dreadlands feels like a struggle

PTR Feedback
1

I really loved the idea behind this set. Strafe is my favorite DH skill, and having a set built around it, finally, made me really excited for this season.

One of the biggest focuses of the game is your TTK. Killing faster means you progress and can work on getting better gear to push greater rifts, etc. However, with the way GotD works, killing faster makes it way harder to use the set. Fast kills = less stacks = no movement speed from Strafe. It also means you’re not firing your pumped up Primary attacks. As it is, the constant alternating between primary attack and strafe feels awful, too. It also makes the Mantle of Channeling - an item MADE for skills like Strafe - useless.

Strafe only firing your primary skill while you have momentum feels clunky. It should fire whatever your equipped Primary skill is, regardless. Ideally, these shots should also build Momentum, but if not, Momentum’s timer needs to be changed to 10 seconds. The ridiculous stop-and-go of the build, currently, slows it down and holds it back by a lot.

Another major issue is that the set wants you to use Strafe, while making it almost feel like a punishment for doing so. You don’t build stacks while Strafing, so you must constantly stop Strafing to build them. The set does not increase Strafe damage in any way, nor reduce its high cost. You only get the speed buff via stacks - which, again, you have to stop Strafing to get and the speed buff is dependent on the amount you have. This feels AWFUL

The 6 piece is terrible. 10000% to primary skills is very, very little. They are, by virtue, the weakest attacks in the game and generally only cover a tiny area. Every other class set in the game provides a larger buff to far stronger abilities. The fact that this set wants you to use Strafe so often while not giving it any form of damage buff is baffling.

My buffs to the set would be as follows:
2-piece: Your Primary Attacks generate a stack of momentum that increases the damage of Primary attacks by 100% for 10 seconds, up to a maximum of 10 stacks.
4-piece: While using Strafe you will fire off your equipped Primary Attack and move X% faster. Strafe also reduces your damage taken by 60% and for 5 seconds after ending Strafe. (I’d reccommend that these Primary attacks build Momentum.)
6-piece: All damage you deal is increased by 7500% and Strafe has its cost reduced by 5% per stack of Momentum.

All in all, I like the idea of this set and I really want to see it polished up so that it can really shine, and give me a reason to play one of my favorite classes. The use of Strafe should feel seamless and fun, not clunky and something to struggle with. The biggest draw to me, here, is that with the reliance on Primary skills, this opens the set up to a variety of builds, working with the various legendaries that coincide with each primary skill. But as it is currently implemented, the set falls flat and needs serious work.

Thank you for all that you do, and I look forward to seeing how things play out in the new season.

6 Likes
2

D3 devs team meeting:

  • Dev 1: so what ideas do we have for the new DH set?
  • Dev 2: well, we recent had success getting a primary skill set to work for the Barb and people love WW Barbs. Those playstyles are missing on the DH so why don’t we make that the new set?
  • Dev 1: I like it! Two playstyles in one… that’ll make the wait worth it.

After release…

  • DH Community: Are we meant to be strafing or attacking with primary skills here? It feels so un-natural!
8 Likes
3

This honestly hits the nail on the head, I think.

It’s like they forgot that the player-base actively refused to use Rend, because it screwed with the flow of Whirlwind. It took them years to finally fix that and add a legendary that actually made it work together like they wanted.

I have confidence that they’ll make some kind of change to the set before release, I just hope it’s a good one.

3 Likes
4

UE out performs it not sure what they were shooting for it needs a damage increase and momentum should never drop off entirely . its weak and squishy

1 Like
5

I’m not sure what you mean by finally. Natalya has been around for awhile now and it strafes quite a bit (at least more than GoD lol…)

6

It’s really not built around strafe, as currently designed. It’s built around primaries, with strafe replacing vault as a secondary effect.

3 Likes
7

it’s honestly a lil disgusting that at no point did the devs think “wait, we have this set called UE that does exactly what GoD does AND more…”

Oh nvm this one strafes instead of vaults… my bad…

1 Like
8

I mean, yea, Natalya’s exists, but it’s built for Strafe in so much as it’s built for any skill. It’s not themed or centered around Strafe, like WotW is for Barbs and WW. I wanted something like that for DH.

9

If we were designing a set around Strafe, I personally would want something that adds to the spin to win experience and not conflict with it.

A while back I had made a suggestion for a set where:

  • 2pc grants all caltrops skills, automatically drops caltrops every second or two and when enemies are affected by caltrops, you get hatred and discipline regen.
  • 4pc grants Chakram the Shuriken Cloud rune and when that is active, we receive 60% DR
  • 6pc gives a flat damage buff to caltrops, chakram, strafe, and elemental arrow

This would have made chakram, strafe and EA fans all happy and added a unique mechanic where we’re encouraged to get close range with enemies in order to sustain our resources.

If we were to make this set more interesting, I’d have added to the 6pc that enemies hit by Chakram, Strafe or EA would take 30,000% more damage from Sentries for something else to do.

2 Likes
10

Going along with this, I think Fan of Knives would also work really well with the set and given similar treatment to Barbs Might of the Earth set. Give it (and enhance) the Bladed Armor trait for a large source of defense, while also making it supplemental damage to Strafe/Caltrops/etc.

1 Like
11

Agree, FoK seems to be a skill that would synergise with Strafe but trying to fit in Lord Greenstone’s Fan would be an absolute pain on top of requiring a bow so Strafe can be used and all the damage multiplying legendary weapons/offhands we need already.

Also, Dawn is ridiculously essential to use unless they just make vengeance a 10min buff… freeing up the weapon cube slot on DH builds. The latter I’m hoping they do that one day and then rework Dawn to be something else.

1 Like
12

HA is the best G6 skill so far and it would work well with FoK, but then it’s almost a clone of Nats. Dawn and NCS then cube knife, it just doesn’t get the damage bonuses since it’s not a Primary skill and there is no way they’ll change that at this point (maybe the 6 piece…but will it be enough?)

13

Agree that with HA, one could equip Dawn and then LGF can be cubed. Assuming there is a damage buff to FoK on the 6pc too, I’m curious if that’ll be better than cubing Dawn and equipping Fortress Ballista and Squirts for basically perma double damage on the primaries?