PTR 2.6.10 Preview Blog is up

I was really thinking that Shadow would get a boost in this next patch. It would have been really nice to get some love as an RGK.

Next season looks fun.

https://us.diablo3.com/en/blog/23529004/ptr-2610-preview-blog-9-25-2020

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So, nothing for DHs. Sad.

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Kanai’s Cube: Additionally, the Kanai’s Cube will have a fourth slot this season. This fourth slot will have the choices of the first 3 slots but will not stack with any of them. The intent is to provide players with creative flexibility to their character builds.

  • Haedrig’s Gifts now grants all class sets and we have a new rotation schedule. This upcoming season, depending on which class you choose, Haedrig’s Gifts will reward you with Horde of the Ninety Savages, Aegis of Valor, Gears of Dreadlands, Patterns of Justice, Masquerade of the Burning Carnival, Mundunugu’s Regalia, or Typhon’s Veil.
  • Paragon Bonus Gold Find has been changed to Gold Pickup Radius at 0.1 per point.

Those are the top 3 announcements that interest me. Unfortunately, there are no DH set rebalances but I suspect they will be doing them 3 classes at a time now (so maybe season 23 or 24 will have several tweaks).

As for the other season theme (the shadow clones), if the clones don’t benefit from appropriate 6-piece set bonuses, the damage will be negligible and thus only the Marked for Death - Valley of Death and possibly Multishot - Windchill attacks will be of any use.

Basically, I’m just happy about the Kanai buff (what season 20 should have been) and that we get +5 pickup radius

The builds I want to try with the extra cube slot:

GoD6 with cubed Elusive + CoE (standard variant but with 2.5x toughness)
GoD6 with cubed CoE + Squirt’s or FoT (standard variant but with extra amulet)
GoD6 with Yangs + NCS with cubed Dawn + Echoing Fury (for speed runs)
GoD6/A3 with cubed RoRG + CoE (or Elusive)
GoD6 Bolas with Leonine + Duffel with cubed Dawn + Buriza
GoD6/CC3 with Yang’s + NCS with Hunter’s Wrath + Depth Diggers cubed

There are probably more ideas I’m not thinking of yet.

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Be happy, at least they did not nerf GOD :slight_smile: And the 4th slot in Kanai is going to be amazing for us !

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Same. That pickup radius change is very nice and the extra cube slot adds some flexibility. Wish that would be a permanent thing rather than just a seasonal buff (the cube slot).

This clone’s power will scale with your character and will last for 1 minute or if your character dies.

I assume it means it should be a literal clone, but we’ll see.

Ofc GoD6/A3+CoE interest me the most out of all on the list, but as stated earlier, it’s nice to have even more flexibility with GoD6.

I am very surprised to not see a nerf to GoD6 in some form, and it’s unfortunate that DH’s did not get touched, leaving GoD6 as the far superior set build. Some nice changes for the other classes though, which gives me an idea on what they’ll do for DH’s when it’s our turn down the road. Not much for us to do in this PTR though.

Since I like toughness, I’m in the GoD/CC camp instead! See my other thread about it.

Agreed. :confused:

Can’t wait to try this. I am running 131 solo for now (with paragon 2000), I wonder how many additional GR levels this will give us

I speculate all setups would be anywhere from 1 to 3 GR’s for GoD6 HA varations, with builds that couldn’t use CoE before would be on the latter end of that scale.

GoD6 builds that couldn’t fit all legendary pieces such as bolas and grenades will get about a 5 GR bump, but still trail behind the HA variants by a significant amount.

The extra cube slot helps M6 generator setups moreso than UE6 variants, though won’t threaten GoD6’s throne. S6 gets to tack on CoE, which is a nice little buff. zDH setups won’t change significantly.

All of this is without considering the seasons theme clones of course.

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I might use the spare cube slot for something like Rechel’s Ring of Larceny for that sweet 60% speed boost.

For pushing, it may be worth a gamble on Nemesis Bracers to spawn a dampening elite? Or cube Wraps of Clarity and jam in Aughild’s Authority?

More likely to get spinners as well from those pylons, though the risk/reward factor in this route would make this interesting.

It will be pretty powerful if the clones get the conduit pylon proc. 4P groups with 8 lighting rods will melt everything.

N6/M4 Hybrid with free RoRG will be an option and the extra cube slot will make UE/HA interesting to play around with.

Actually, I’d argue that the DH will benefit less from this than any other class in the game. All of our relevant items can already be equipped simultaneously. The 4th cube slot for us will mean adding 25-50% DPS.

Meanwhile, the necromancer and crusader will gain 300-500% DPS from the cube slot, despite already being significantly buffed by the patch.

The DH was only just starting to be viable again with the GoD set. Solo leaderboard scores with GoD were only by restarting for the perfect 1 out of 500 GR with conduit, pylon, and abusing missile dampening, on open rifts. Without doing all of that, GoD was still just a bit behind par, with the other DH builds far behind.

This next patch along with the season will put DH back into the dust where it had already waited for years to be useful. This patch saw a multitude of buffs to every single class in the game, and yet not a single buff to any DH build at all. The DH has only one viable build, with such constricting options that you can’t even change the rune on the skill that you’re dealing damage with, and now even that build will not be effective.

The only new build that is available is the GoD6/CC3 build since we need that extra cube slot for Depth Diggers.

I’d hardly call GoD constrictive considering the decent amount of variation already allowed for in, say, weapon, neck, and 3rd cube slot choice. The 4th cube’s also allowing for a much larger variation in choice on survival vs damage, although as you mention that’s mostly due to the limited damage to be gained outright from it.

zDH might replace zmonk in 4man meta or at least construct a highly viable alternative. GoD still has a role for off-meta speed (at least, I’d love to run with one over a 2nd bone spear or thornsader given the opportunity), so DH will remain useful. And the range of buffs to every class were by and large underwhelming (outside sader, necro, and semi-arguably ET wiz of course), so unless you were looking for an 8 tier gain of still-irrelevancy for marauder’s or nat’s or something, nothing to see there.

Frankly I’d take the lack of blizzard attention to GoD for another season, the climate is definitely there to give it an unfair nerf for precisely that 1 in 500 rift with only a wonky poorly-considered buff of another set to compensate. GoD clears 150 non-season and escaped the nerfbat and meanwhile pscythe is getting dropped despite clearing up to 148.

Let people see GoD fall back a bit on a season without being the champions of snowball dropping and maybe S23 can be the season of the demon hunter?

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A set’s balance shouldn’t be made with the idea that “if players restart for 1 in 500 GRifts to get the right GRift to abuse a mechanic, then they can beat GRifts 16x harder than what they can normally, and it’s as good as the other builds.”

Hopefully the devs thought similarly when they decided to not do some simple-minded nerf to the set!

GoD’s still in a good spot to at least easily be in the 140-145 crowd next season with more of a 1 in 60-100 rift I’d expect.

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After 135, at least in S21 not abusing season theme but using it as a bonus with some luck, you start to fish for really good ones, that mandate good mobs, good density, a conduit at the right time and hopefully a power for rg. That is without counting on missile dampeners.
135-140 feels more reasonable to me with decent paragon (sub 3k). 140+ for very very lucky ones.

I’ve had atrocious luck trying to get 138 down. Had some amazing first levels but then been done in by poor 2nd/3rd/4th/5th levels. Or conduit/power pylons have spawned in really bad places. Or the mob type/density/elite affixes/seasonal effects on subsequent floors have been suboptimal.

Spent maybe 700 keys on it so far. :joy: Maybe I should just take the RNG hint.

I haven’t yet run a rift where I’ve reached the end of it before hitting 100% but that time must surely be coming… I’ve bailed on a bunch where I’ve been ahead on time but there’s no way there’s going to be enough time to beat the RG.

Have beaten the RG on a couple and been around the 15:26-30 mark. That’s frustrating. Especially the one without a power pylon.

There’s also a skill/timing element I haven’t quite worked out, too… I have yet to effect an RG kill using mainly the seasonal effect.

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I’m around 700 keys too trying 140s, I think that’s enough, I don’t have that kind of determination in me. Several boss spawns with 2-3min left but never with power, and of course it’s not enough and bad luck with boss choice.
And not playing with coe didn’t help either, but I’m not good enough to succeed without elusive. S22 will help in that regard, wait & see, crimson will give us both (elusive + coe… ish).

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