Its nice to finally see some support for Hydra, but I think this set could be better.
I personally have a few issues with the set, but my main one would be this:
It looks like the set only buffs Hydra and with the mechanic that you will loose one Hydra Head everytime you take damage, it looks like all you will do (or most of what you will do) is to spam Hydra and nothing else, which imo sounds a bit boring, but also may lead to a very clunky playstyle.
Another issue I have is that although the number of Hydra heads per Hydra increases, you still can only have 2 Hydras in total active when you have chosen the Serpent’s Sparker.
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Here are my personal thoughts on how to improve the set:
The philosophy behind it would be that – compared to how the set is currently designed – Hydra takes more of a support role (but still contributes to large amount of damage), rather than being a spamable skill.
It would translate into something like this:
You could now have 2 or 3 Hydras active at once by default, just with the base skill.
The base skill needs a buff anyway, since it is too weak when you compare it to other skills, and this would be a good way to do it. So let us have up to 2 or 3 Hydras active at once, even without any items and just the base skill itself.
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The (2) piece bonus of the set (which turns your 3 Headed Hydras into 5 Headed Hydras and increases the duration of Hydra) is fine, but I also would make it so that you can have +2 maximum Hydras active at once (so from 2 or 3 max Hydras to up to 4 or 5 max Hydras).
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I do not like the (4) piece bonus of the current version, which give your damage reduction per Hydra Head, but causes the Hydra Heads to vanish everytime you take damage. Just imagine coming across an elite pack of these ghosts that have these siphoning attack that instantly hits you and continues to hit you over a few seconds. With the way the set is currently designed, your Hydras and with it your damage reduction will be gone almost instantly in such a situation.
That is unless you wanna funnel this build into Energy Shields to prevent damage taken, but even the Energy Shields have issues with such enemies that I mentioned above, because they quickly deal damage to you which causes the Energy Shield not to start recharging again since they only recharge until you have not taken damage for 4-5 seconds. And during this time you would run around to avoid taking damage and not cast Hydras.
I just can’t imagine this being an enjoyable playstyle to loose your Hydras when you take damage, especially when your damage reduction is tied to the number of Hydra Heads you have currently active.
Instead, why not simply give you damage reduction based on the amount of Hydras you currently have active and NOT cause them to vanish when you take damage?! 10% (or 12%) damage reduction for each active Hydra (which under my proposal would be up to 5 or 6 when you also include +1 Hydra from Serpent’s Sparker) should be fine.
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Now, the (6) piece bonus should imo also include other skills besides Hydra.
I haven’t spend much thoughts on which, but maybe the community can give a few thoughts on it.
Some skills that spontaneously come to my mind are: Disintegrate, Arcane Orb, Arcane Torrent, Ray of Frost, Energy Twister, Blizzard.
Skills that should NOT be buffed by this set are things like Archon or Meteor (except maybe Molten Impact).
So the (6) piece bonus can be something like:
Each active Hydra increases the damage of Hydra by xxxx% and the damage of Skill A by yyyy% and Skill B by zzzz%, etc…
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That would change the playstlye to where you place your 5 or 6 Hydras and then start spamming another skill, which is imo a more enjoyable playstyle that what I think the playstyle is going to be if the set goes live as it currently is (as I explained above).
Thank you all for reading!
If you have additional thoughts, post them here.
