Hydra has been gutted

General Discussion
1

So - We’ve continued to tilt more of the power for Hydra in favor of the 6-piece set bonus and away from the supplemental Legendary items.
Uh-huh.

Quick look at the math:
Sparker * Magistrate * Set bonus
PTR1: 6 * 6 * 10 = 36 * 10 = 360
PTR2: 4.5 * 4.5 * 12 = 20,25 * 12 = 243
2.6.8: 3 * 3 * 13 = 9 * 13 = 117

So LOD Hydra Damage has been nerfed by factor (4) 3.06 , TV set by (3.1) 2.36 .
The dumb mechanics (channel without direct effect, forcing to stand still, channeling effect takes 1s to even start) has not been touched.

Hydra is dead, TV set is instant salvage.
Lamentation nerf repeated for wizard.
They never learn. - Zoltun Kulle

Edit: corrected the results (doesn’t change the outcome), thanks to Kirottu and TinneOnnMuin !

23 Likes
2

Yeah. I haven’t even played the set at all, but the numbers made no sense to me.

“We’ve continued to tilt more of the power for Hydra in favor of the trash heap, and away from any item you can use.”

3 Likes
3

The math is a bit off. Here’s what I got for multipliers:

PTR1: 101 * 7 * 7 = 4949
PTR2: 121 * 5.5 * 5.5 = 3660.25
Live: 131 * 4 * 4 = 2096

Remember, each damage modifier needs to take the 100% base into account, meaning for example Serpent Sparker bonus is now (100% + 300%) / 100% = 4.

And yes, utterly gutted.

15 Likes
4

Your math is a bit off, you are forgetting the +1s, and an order of magnitude on the set multiplier

PTR1: 7 * 7 * 101 = 4949
PTR2: 5.5 * 5.5 * 121 = 3660.25
2.6.8: 4 * 4 * 131 = 2096

LoD Hydra nerfed by (4*4)/(5.5*5.5) = 0.5289, e.g. about 53% damage compared to second round PTR.
TV nerfed by about (4*4*131)/(5.5*5.5*121) = 0.5726, e.g. about 57% of damage compared to second round PTR.

EDIT: Kirottu just beat me to it!
EDIT 2: Typos and escaping * to avoid italics.

7 Likes
5

Lol oh dear, this is one of the crappiest patches I’ve ever seen in my life.

6 Likes
6

Right now I’m very disappointed. This really doesn’t encourage me to play Hydra wizard.

On top of all this, the patch notes didn’t even mention whether the TV toughness bug was fixed. Many people, myself included, noticed and reported a bug where we were getting oneshotted in fairly low GRs despite having numerous means of mitigation. Different shield effects, Karini buff, TV’s buff, all seemed to do nothing to stop being oneshotted.

3 Likes
7

They fixed it Blizzard-Style. Nerf the damage so hard you can only do much lower content where you can survive without shields.

8 Likes
8

i really wanted to play LoD hydra wiz in season . But after this crap i only run through the season journey for the pet and that’s it. Keep your crap season and your crap nerfs. Must be real quiet on the servers knowing most players will play poe above d3 after this

7 Likes
9

I’ll call it now. Even with these nerfs LoD Hydra will still clear over 140 in non-season

3 Likes
10

So this set has had more than half of its damage taken away since the first iteration. Damn!

11

Yes those 10 k par for sure, people should all decide not playing season. Blizz needs an even bigger hammer after The diablo mobil And wc3 reforge.

12

So, it seems that i have spend my last two weeks (and ~1500 bounty mats) very well 16-18h per day to get my LoD hydra BiS, got every item with good stats (ancient/primal). I was waiting viable hydra build after 2.1.2, and it seems that doesn’t happen. Let’s hope that Wolcen has got some new patches, i will buy that and test… Problem is that they boost (minimal but still) set which is too easy to get, you don’t need to spend thousands of bounty mats etc. It’s now about half that vs ptr 1x5,5x5,5=30,25 damage multiplier vs live and live will be 1x4x4=16 times higher than ptr. It means 4-5 GR lower than before (if i remember right those GR lvls…), that means again archon and i really don’t like it so im out… This was worst idea to even change items to boosts xxx% - xxxxx% skills

Mod Edit: Removed inappropriate language from post.

13

Do you know what the worst thing about that is?

Nerfs are RETROACTIVE, so your BiS items are gonna be automatically nerfed when the patch hits.

BUT

If they change their mind and revert the changes in a later patch…the changes will NOT be retroactive and you have to farm for that crap all over again.

5 Likes
14

Agree.

Also, what about the bug with the 4-piece bonus? I don’t see any notes saying it was fixed. This was not working correctly in PTR:

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. Heads cannot die more than once every 2 seconds

So… DPS was nerfed and damage reduction was not fixed? Looks like this will be unplayable.

There’s literally nothing to look forward to as a Wizard main playing this season.

Devs, please do something about this before the season starts, otherwise you’re going to lose a lot of players.

7 Likes
15

Forgot to say that there was one good thing, leveled already 20x115 and 120 gems (solo player so not “easy” task, its boring with vyr=tested one solo gr 120 on NS (always ns), it is boring and first try rank ~680 EU, paragon +2400) for augments and good thing was i didn’t use those yet, it seems no need…

16

I have been waiting for a great hydra build forever! For me to jump on to the forums and see that they completely nerfed LoD into the ground and the set not getting any kind of real improvements. Huge disappointment and such a let down.

8 Likes
17

Moving power away from LoD toward sets seems to be a mistake in general. No matter how the actual items perform in this particular case.

1 Like
18

This is what they claimed, but not what they have done.
They have nerfed both badly, just LoD a little more than the set.

6 Likes
19

They have objectively buffed the set. The whole package is nerfed though. But yeah, a nerf for both options.

20

Guess we will have to see how it plays out.

I am glad they put more emphasis on the necessity of the set and didn’t make the LoD build superior.