You may want to mention that you’re specifically talking about HC, as reading this in context to someone playing SC makes a bit less sense. Anyways, to dissect your post a bit.
- N6/G4 doesn’t have any innate advantages over traditional GoD6.
The loss of F&R is 125% damage, which equates to roughly 5 to 6 GR’s of damage loss. Since you’re playing HC, elusive ring is popular to slot in cube, thus losing CoE. The 6pc bonus of nats is 40% stronger than the 6pc bonus of GoD, and being able to slot CoE allows for another 50% on average, bringing close to the damage potential of traditional GoD6. In terms of damage (excluding weapons, more on that later), traditional GoD6 is about 1 GR stronger than N6/G4 in HC, which one isn’t likely to notice vs all of the rift and seasonal buff RNG.
In terms of toughness, Nat’s gives you an additional 60% DR, whereas slotting Elusive ring gives you the same DR. Due to having to remove shadow power gloom (your call) for RoV, your N6/G4 loses an additional 35% DR and massive life on hit, making GoD6 a bit more durable than your N6/G4 combination.
- You lose out on weapon combinations.
You can’t use vallas (10 - 20% more dps, and extra stat), can’t use fortress (additional toughness and dps bump if used strategically with squirts), can’t use a 2hxbow (33% more damage output per HA), Can’t use Etrayu and so on. Not having access to a weapon with a suitable legendary affix or a weapon that just puts out more damage gives GoD6 a further ahead.
All in all, with N6/G4, you’re losing about 3 GR’s worth out potential damage output and 8+ GR’s worth of DR, while having to juggle an additional skill to proc the 6pc bonus of nats. If the user in HC decided to opt for CoE instead of elusive with traditional GoD6, N6/G4 doesn’t come close in DPS, but does lose out a little on DR. Next season, with the addition of the 4th cube slot, GoD6 pulls even further ahead of N6/G4.
This isn’t to say N6/G4 is bad, but it doesn’t really offer no tangible benefits that GoD6 already can’t provide more efficiently. I did a whole stream segment on this build highlighting all the points you made, including thorns and other proc mechanics. If you want something different, that’s a bit tankier, you can give this a shot next season.
It’s literally perfect for HC.