I know this is a long post. Just read the bold parts, and you won’t miss anything other than supporting details.
At the moment, rapidfire is a useless skill. With mobility and survivability being extremely important, a skill that makes you stay stationary and vulnerable isn’t particularly useful, especially when it doesn’t even make up for its weaknesses by killing faster. It doesn’t help that the only DH set that can be used with it is the Natalya set, which buffs all damage output. The rest of the sets have specifically omitted Rapidfire. So the player can either use the Natalya set, or no set at all.
By using the Natalya set, the player is forced to either give up a weapon affox, or give up a ring affix, in order to wear the set (either by using a Natalya’s Reflection or a Ring of Royal Grandeur). With weapon and ring affixes being some of the best in the game, that is a huge sacrifice to be made, all because the set doesn’t include pauldrons. That allows the player to use the Mantle of Channeling, which increases damage dealt and reduces damage taken by 25% once the player has been channeling the skill for 1 second. This helps, but it’s nowhere near enough protection for someone who only has one ring slot left. They absolutely need an Oculus Ring since they’re standing in place, a Convention of the Elements is mandatory for anyone trying to put out real damage, and an Elusive Ring is an integral part of any DH build that intends to survive, which is very needed on a Rapidfire build. The player is now forced to choose whether they want their Rapidfire build to actually kill anything, or if they want to survive so that they can actually use their ability. They also can’t make good use of the Demon Hunter’s Wraps of Clarity to make up for their lack of an Elusive Ring, because the legendary weapon for Rapidfire forces them to remain channeling for a longer duration to make proper use of its buildup to 30 stacks of damage bonus. They don’t get to use their primary skill every 5 seconds unless they want to give up almost all of their damage output. Here are my solutions to this:
Make the Natalya’s Reflection ring automatically roll with Reduces damage from Ranged attacks by 25-30% as a secondary affix. This affix makes sense for the ring’s name, and makes sense for DH playstyles even when they aren’t using rapidfire, as they ideally would want to avoid getting hit by melee attacks, but would inevitably get hit by some ranged attacks. Fixing this item isn’t just for Rapidfire; this is for the Natalya set in general, so players aren’t losing quite so much to equip a Natalya’s Reflection (although 30% less damage from Ranged attacks still doesn’t compare to the Legendary Rings available, I just wanted it to be some kind of bonus).
Adjust “Wondrous Deflectors” as a wrist item with a legendary affix of “Gain 15% damage reduction per second while channeling, up to a maximum of 60%.” This has to be stronger than the Wraps of Clarity’s 40-50% because it forces the player to be immobile and the bonus is lost the moment they stop channeling rapidfire to get moving or stop channeling strafe to fire a primary and keep their momentum up. Strafe builds would almost certainly prefer the Wraps of Clarity for a buff that is easy to keep up at full strength 24/7, but they’d still have the option to use these Ranger’s Deflectors if they wanted to, if only so they feel like they got to choose which bracers they have equipped. Mainly these would be intended for Rapidfire builds that have no other bracers they can make good use of.
The end result of this will be that Rapidfire users will be significantly more vulnerable than a Strafing GoD DH until they’ve been channeling for 4 seconds, at which point their pauldrons and their slightly tougher bracers will have them modestly tougher. They’ll still have to get up and move when a bunch of enemies come their way, but maybe they’ll finally be tough enough for an Esoteric Alteration gem (also sacrificing damage output) to enable them to stay put and channel while the inevitable enemy DoT’s cover the ground under their feet.
The base ability itself also needs its various damages increased. It forces you to stay put and channel. It should at least do more damage than skills that enable you to keep moving around. It deals the same damage as Strafe, which lets you move around quickly and is just as easily sustainable when using its own GoD set. That’s absurd. Why would anyone Rapidfire while standing still when they can Rapidfire in all directions while quickly moving around? The damage of Rapidfire should be increased from 685% up to 800%. Yes, that makes it just a tiny bit stronger than Impale. What’s wrong with that? Impale lets you keep moving, and strafe doesn’t. Besides, the various runes on Impale will still make it more damaging than Rapidfire. The damage of the Fire Support ability should be increased from 145% up to 165%. The radius of the Bombardment rune should be increased from 8 yards up to 10 yards and its damage modestly increased from 545% to 560%. It’s currently lower than the Strafe’s 9-yard grenades. As an ability that forces you to be stationary, its explosive variant should have more coverage to be used to protect you from packs of enemies. The Withering Fire rune should reduce the initial Hatred cost to 5, rather than 10, like I believe it did at one point. Think about what it’s competing with. A player is dedicating a skill rune to this. They are giving up the other choices. They should at least be rewarded with the ability to pack up and move and shoot somewhere else. Even if they used it to move regularly while using rapidfire, they can’t shoot while moving and they’re already giving up a lot of damage output. On top of that, the rune already doesn’t work well with their weapon that forces them to stay put and charge up. So just let it do its original job by nullifying the startup cost.
The Wojahnni Assaulter could also stand to have an adjustment added to it so that the “Withering Fire” rune can actually have its place in a rapidfire build. It should have some effect added to its ability: “The Withering Fire rune causes Rapidfire to instead begin channeling with 35 stacks and degenerate while channeling to 0.” That doesn’t mean players can use Withering Fire and just run&gun with full damage output. They’ve got to stop attacking to bring their stacks back up to 35, and they give up channeling bonuses to do so, but at least it enables them to use Withering Fire the way it was intended.
The Taeguk also needs adjustment. The way it is now, it only gives its bonuses when you spend resource on a channeled skill. With the Rapidfire quiver removing the channel cost which was already low and easily sustained in the first place, it prevents players from utilizing the Taeguk which builds up damage and armor over time while channeling, something that would work well with Rapidfire and was probably originally intended to be used with it among other skills. Adjusting the Taeguk to be “When you use a channeled skill”. Yeah, that risks players also using it to benefit channeled primary skills. Is that really so bad? If you are worried about that, another option is adjusting the Sin Seekers quiver to reduce the channeling cost of Rapidfire to 1, rather than 0.
I don’t expect these changes to be enough to bring a Natalya Rapidfire build up to par with a GoD Strafe build, but I don’t think the developers ever intended for it to be on par, anyway. I’m only asking for it to at least be restored to a usable level. With all of these buffs, I believe the player’s maximum potential with this build would leave them dealing a just a bit more damage and having a bit more toughness than a Strafe build, while having severely impaired mobility. That’s if they take full advantage of all benefits available to them, including Bombardment with a Hellcat Waistguard. More buffs might still be necessary after this, but it’s better to undershoot and go the rest of the distance later than to overshoot and try to back up.
