The new hydra set looks good but all players will use frost hydra due to its area damage, as it is impracticable to attack one monster at a time in GRs.
So that the other runes can compete with Frost Hydra, I propose the creation of 3 new legendary items with the following effects:
Item 1: lightning hydra now fires Electrocute with the Chain Lightning rune and benefits from Electrocute related items.
Item 2: Blazing Hydra now fires Magic Missile with the Conflagrate rune and benefits from items related to the Magic Missile.
Item 3: Arcane Hydra now fires Magic Missile with the Split + Charged Blast rune and benefits from items related to the Magic Missile.
Aren’t we expecting high aps lightning hydra, manald heal to win here? Especially if the third hydra cast by clones (fracture/ vaxxo) counts towards the set bonus?
Hydras released by clones do not affect set damage or damage reduction. 15 heads multiplied by 8% damage reduction is equal to 120% damage reduction which equals immortality. Clones will not affect hydras, forget it.
Frost Nova does no damage, it is only a group control, to deal area damage needs of Frost Hydra. The item you mentioned increases the damage of Hydras, does not cause Frost Nova to do damage.
Novody uses Frost as it disrupts and places CC which casues resistances to rise. In fact player will use Mammoth as it has the highest damage potential since it can hit multiple targets and hit the same target multiple times as their Fire Wall stacks.
There are bo clones, you can summon 2 Hydras and that is it. That is a total of 10 heads og you wonder, which grants 80% DR and 10,000% damage.
No reason to make it this complicated. There is 3 options for a simple affix that would change it a lot. Either make Hydra projectiles do a small explosion upon impact, or allow it to pierce through enemies. The last option is to create a targeting system, but this should be part of the set for mechanical reasons.
Depends on if the set bonus and hydra multipliers apply to Manald Heal damage instances or not. If they don’t, Manald Heal won’t deal any appreciable amount of damage since it won’t really have any multipliers (except Deathwish).
If they do, yes, Manald Heal will almost certainly be the way to go, because if it benefits from all the hydra multipliers it’s going to deal way more damage than the actual hydras themselves.
We’ll have to wait for PTR to see if Manald Heal benefits from the hydra multipliers. My guess is it won’t, but we just don’t know right now.
Mirror Image can summon a single hydra (doesn’t matter if you have Serpent’s Sparker equipped, you still just get one from Mirror Image). So you can actually get 3 hydras, for a potential total of 15 heads.
If they count towards the set bonus, that would give over 100% DR, i.e. you’d be immune to all damage. So I’m assuming the Mirror Image hydra won’t count. It’s either that or it’s a glaring oversight they’ll fix on PTR, anyway.
In the immortal words of Jaetch (former wizard MVP from old forums) from 2015:
Arcane Hydra isn’t a Hydra. There’s only one Hydra in the game and that’s Mammoth Hydra. The rest are inferior relatives of snakes destined for the poop-end of natural selection. That is, unless Blizzard decides to do some selective breeding and make these poopy non-single-headed-orange creatures as desirable as the Mammoth Hydra.
Looks like they finally decided to do some selective breeding and make the poopy non-singled-headed-orange-creatures as desirable as the Mammoth Hydra.
Haha! If selective breeding has come to fruition, Mammoth will still be highly appealing to LoN and Vyr. I assume this is your meaning.
The more I think on this, it could be an exciting change.
Now if we could only achieve similar balance with MH and lightning Hydras…
Arcane has attunement and Frost is well, just a general decent choice for AoE. Blazing could be the odd rune out if MH ends up filling the role of STDPS.
Spells casted by Mirror Image casts doesn’t affect your casts, the same applies to DMO set and Firebird where the spells cast by those doesn’t work towards either set bonuses nor item effects.
If selective breeding has come to fruition, Mammoth will still be highly appealing to LoN and Vyr. I assume this is your meaning.