My thoughts on Typhon

Wizard
1

I was very happy at first to notice a new wizard set has been added to the game. Since i play Diablo 3 for the joy of build craft (coming up with builds, testing and improving them), that news excited me.

But after getting my hands on the set and testing some things, i was left saddened and disappointed. For 3 major reasons.

As a disclaimer, i’m a pretty casual player, below 800 paragon, gems around lvl 75 and subpar gear.

First of all, the set has no set dungeon, as far as i know.

Second of all, while i absolutely love Hydra as a spell and love to be able to create builds around it, this set only boosts Hydra. Nothing else. Meanwhile, Firebird, Delsere, Tal’Rasha and most other sets in the game buff many things (with a couple exceptions, like Vyr, but Archon is like the Wizard’s godmode, makes sense for an entire set to be designed around it and it even buffs your damage outside Archon).

Last but not least, the thing which saddened me the most, is that there is only one viable build with the set. At first, i tried out attack speed lightning hydras with manald heal, broken promises…then i switched to arcane hydras and for some reason dealt more significant and consisted damage despite dropping both rings and not adding anything new damage wise, but whatever, there’s lots of complex math i don’t get in this game. And then, after arcane hydras, which dealt around 50B damage and fired like a machine gun, i tried a channeled build.

And was left speechless at how stupidly “broken” that combo is. It probably isn’t, but i mean compared to any other combination i tried. Just by using the channel package of items, my damage was boosted from aprox 50B to aprox 500B. Still in crappy gear, crappy paragon and crappy gems mind you.

So in the end, there are no builds to create for Typhon Hydra. There’s only channeled. It’s ironic, that the channeled package makes for a better set than Typhon, since it can buff many different things.

Also, Mirror Images should have gotten a set instead, you can’t change my mind, that spell seriously needs love.

2

The issue here is that the devs went nuts on Deathwish. Etched Sigil is more or less okay, it needs a global buff so that autocasts get a damage boost, but Deathwish also grants that kind of a global buff and multiplicative to them all at that. Now guess what happens when you are offered two simple, foolproof damage multipliers totaling to nearly 10 times your damage, One that only requires you to channel while Hydras spit their attacks? Yeah, right…

I’d say Deathwish in its current form is a misdead to the class as a whole, nearly as annoying as Aetherwalker - or another perversion allowed by Swami/Fazula which is reverse Archon.

Regarding Mirror Images… yeah, well, nice and all but you’d see that something with Mirror Images would most likely still use DW/ES… unless they add it as a weapon/offhand set.

The Hydra set is underpowered and both support items have been overnerfed on the PTR. Let’s face it, that set is more or less done for, unless they fix those underlying issues for good - and that will likely not happen before all new class sets have been released and they go for a big balance operation.