You can find the patch notes on PTR forums. They added cluster arrow damage (150-200) on rucksack. Much needed buff, thanks blizz! Exploits are all “fixed”.
The Chemical burn rune now working with S6 bonus is rather neat, giving some single target priorities again. Not sure how effective this will actually be in practice though.
In my short time on the new PTR patch, I was still able to clear GR 150 with my no-gen MS M6 setup. I messed around with CA, but find that while on paper CA is now roughly 1 GR stronger, I’ve found it a bit harder to clear the 150. I’ll play with it more tonight, maybe some ody setups etc, but atm I find myself probably staying with MS.
With that said, CA is now viable, and may fix some issues with running this for speeds.
Have you tried the new reworked Dregs of Lies with the pet buffs? Also, how fast does “quickly reset back to 0” reset the stacks? Based on the stack rate and decay rate once at 100, that could be a strong modifier for pet builds.
DiEoxidE can help you farm a new one; he speed runs the Rucksack level when playing Primal QuiverQuest™. He’s never gotten past the Ninth boss in that game though.
LOL, so Blizzard fixed a bug with chemical burn rune for s6 impale, but didn’t listen to any of the community feedback regarding, the imho, RUBBISH shadow set changes. Right…
Why even publish a PTR? They want our feedback but don’t listen to it…
Oh well, back to my original plan for s25 - season journey only and then move onto better things.
I might be the only person annoyed by this change to the Rucksack from the look of things.
I’d have preferred that Manticore get a big damage buff to its CA multiplier than them adding another variable multiplier to Rucksack.
It’s gonna be annoying to get a good Rucksack with a high sentry damage affix and CA damage multiplier.
Again, Manticore should have had its damage multiplier increased, and Rucksack should have instead gotten additional utility that either reduces the sentry cooldown further or gets rid of it.
While Cluster Arrow IS the best build for M6, there are other decently viable builds. However, giving an addition 200% modifier outright makes Cluster Arrow the best build by FAR for Sentry build.
I would have much prefered if they moved the damage bonus from the M4 to Rucksack, instead of just outright removing it from the 4 piece and completely killing any build diversity M6/M4 builds had.
Blizzard, please stop killing build diversity like this, it’s already bad enough as is!
It stacks based on your pet attack rate and falls fairly very fast.
I don’t have a seasonal DH on PTR but I was testing it a bit with Typhon’s Hydras.
It gives one stack per pet attack. Multi-hitting attacks seem to give multiple stacks, e.g. a 5-headed hydra gives one stack per each head attack, not one stack per hydra. It scaled with hydra attack speed.
With 1x 5-headed hydra at 42 fpa, it stacked to 100 in about 13-14 seconds.
With 2x 5-headed hydras at 42 fpa, it stacked to 100 in 7 seconds.
With 2x 5-headed hydras at 30 fpa (this is the standard breakpoint you would play Typhon’s at), it stacked to 100 in 5 seconds.
Once it hits 100, it decays to 0 over 5 seconds. It loses stacks in increments of 2 every 6 frames.
Once it gets to zero, it seems there’s a short ~1 second cooldown before it will start stacking again. I never saw stacks start accumulating again until at least 60 frames had passed since it hit 0, even if hydra attacks landed during that window.
EDIT: Oh, it also buffed hydra damage dynamically as the stack count increased and then fell off.
So with Typhon’s, it seems it will stack up over 5 seconds, then fall over 5 seconds, then have a 1 second cooldown. At that rate, it averages to about a ~45% damage boost for Typhon’s, and then it has the 50% pet damage from the base effect on top of that as well. Seems quite strong for pet builds.
This bit is worrisome. It means solo 150 time attacks most of the season, a scenario I earnestly want to avoid.
It also shows that the gems are still overtuned, not just Sliver of Terror (which carries the additional drawback of changing a well-established playstyle), but the new pet gem, which should probably have its number of stacks reduced.
Loving the buff to CA though. Perhaps I’ll finally try that over MS.
EDIT: Overall, I wish I could just enjoy these balance changes without having to deal with those gems. Is it time for me to sit out a season and push NS?
All hope isn’t lost. Cluster Arrow AND Multishot are in great shape. They totally are in a good position to upgrade the EA and Chakram skills in their own way too…
I get this feeling…
Chakram is going to fall under the Shadow Set.
Elemental Arrow is going to be something exclusive to UE via Molten Arrow. (clueso’s wish)
DH will be occupied playing 3 revamped skills:
M6 Cluster Arrow
M6 Multishot
S6 Impale
GoD6 is still there for speeding around doing other DH things.
It seems they intentionally did not want to fix a “bug” with Impale - Grievous Wounds Rune.
If you think Chemical burn was bugged then they should also fix Grievous Wounds. Damage bonus from the rune is disabled when we are using Shadow’s Mantle 6-piece bonus.
Cluster Arrow buff on the Rucksack is really nice for the CA variant. CA needed a bit more oomph and it finally happened. Though, having a CA-specific buff on an item that is basically non-negotiable for any Marauder build doesn’t feel good with every other variant. Sure, other skills get their buffs plenty elsewhere, but from a strictly psychological point of view, not using CA with Marauder feels like we are “wasting” a slot despite the fact that nothing actually is lost.
Separating the CA buff to a different item (like the CA-specific Manticore or some random bracer…) would ameliorate the not-nice feeling. Giving Manticore a bigger CA multiplier would make sense. A DH-specific bracer with a CA buff might make CA more appealing for non-Marauder builds.
Yet another alternative might be making Rucksack’s bonus apply to grenades and rockets instead. It would basically buff all CA runes while allowing other skills to benefit somewhat.
If the devs are saving these for future patches, then I won’t mind the wait. I just wish they’d show D3 some love again at Blizzcon/line by showing some of the ideas they’re throwing around for each class.
I still really wish that the Manticore was buffed and they didn’t have to throw the CA buff on Rucksack… I have this idea to make a Nats Grenade/Cluster Bomb/Anathema build but would require dual wielding Nats Slayer with Dawn so Manticore would be cubed. Not gonna feel desirable to make it knowing that I’m missing a CA buff.
Not really. As i mentioned on my previous post, i find it pretty weird that they implemented the CA buff on the quiver.
Me too. Since Rucksack is essential for every M6 build, it would make more sense if they buffed Manticore, and not only that. It would be also nice if they added a dmg multiplier on Kridershot. Thus we would have a great competitive diversity for M6.
