Squirts Necklace is a little "too" unforgiving in it's current state

PTR Feedback
1

Hi. I’d love for this item to get a second look. I will be speaking from a DH perspective.

By design, it appears the necklace was intended for use with ranged builds, rewarding players for dodging attacks. This is a godsend for players who enjoy stutter stepping or other clever ways to avoid damage. There are two major problems with this:

1.  Unavoidable damage.

While pushing or playing in high GR’s will eventually have players surrounded with many attacks that one will unlikely be able to avoid the majority of, it is still by choice of the player to do so. What is not the players choice is unavoidable damage.

There’s way too many unavoidable damage mechanics. The chances of you running into an elite/champion that does not have at least one unavoidable affix is very rare. This means that throughout your rift, you will lose the squirts buff very often in circumstances that are unfair to the player trying to make use of it.

2. The 50% more damage taken punishment is too much.

In the rare opportunity in which the RNG gods bless you with a brief moment in a rift in which allows one to reach full 10 stacks due to player skill, you take 50% more damage upon the next hit. This one I don’t understand.

Sure, the intent is probably because you may not want melee classes to find a way to use it, but ranged classes don’t have the innate 30% damage reduction and are generally squishier than their counter part by nature. 50% more incoming damage is a lot, why the steep punishment for achieving a goal that’s already difficult due to affixes that force you to take damage?

I understand that the buff is huge, so yes there needs to be a drawback. I feel like reconsidering one of the following would be helpful.

1. Remove the 50% more damage taken.

This would help a lot, as straight up dying because you finally reached 10 stacks feels counter-intuitive. This would also help setups that would like to utilize shields be more viable such as gizzard gem and fortress ballista. Unfortunately that 50% more damage is also being applied to the shield, making it really hard to gear for and be effective the higher up you go. I’m aware wizards don’t really have this issue thanks to their bracer/passive.

2. Change max stacks to 5 at 20% per stack.

If we’re to leave the “more damage taken” affix in, at least allow us more time to enjoy the buff. Currently, getting hit once means you have to wait 12 seconds for maximum benefit. Every single unavoidable affix from elites/champions have lower cooldowns than the ramp up time. This change would allow us the opportunity to reach max stacks before the next unavoidable attack resets all of it.

Currently, there are only 2 DH’s in the top 50 on PTR using squirts. Please consider adjustments to the amulet.

16 Likes
2

I support this request. I play Squirts on S20 and it’s unreliable in most push attempts. I fish for maps with meleers, but most elite affixes completely negate any benefit from this item.

In my opinion, this amulet should subtract half the stacks when you take damage.
Example of 3 consecutive hits from max stacks:

10 → 5 → 3 → 2

I am not a fan of the ramp up delay either, let’s remove that.

6 Likes
3

My problem with Squirt’s is when it’s up, it’s one of the best items in the game. If it was 300% like Krysbin’s it would be the most powerful item in the game.

But that said, I have to use a shield, such as Gizzard’s to really see it’s effect on the damage side. Take the shield off and it’s basically feeling the amulets downside for 90% or more of the rift because of auto-attacks like ghost mobs.

But even with a shield if the shield breaks while you’re fighting an elite with say the plague affix, you’ll never see Squirt’s bonus again until you move away and let your shield regenerate.

So, in order for me, personally to make use of the Squirt’s necklace, I have to use a defensive gem in place of an offensive one and at that point, Squirt’s bonus is only “replacing” the effect you would get from an offensive gem.

So yeah, Squirt’s is a problem where to use it and keep it’s effect active for most of a rift, you only gain slightly more damage than if you used a offensive gem.

Just my take.

1 Like
4

Another change/buff instead could be:

"You deal 10% more damage and take 5% more damage for every 10% health you have."

At max health, you would have the full Squirt’s bonus active but at least this way you can quickly ramp up to maximum power after being scratched.

2 Likes
5

Squirt’s is supposed to have a big drawback given the bonus damage it provides.

You might as well just ask for free damage.

7

I agree. My post highlights that there’s multiple big drawbacks and that is a bit much. I’m not asking for all suggestions to make it, I’m essentially asking for the devs to “pick a major drawback” and leave out the others.

That never happens in high GR’s, ever, until you get to the RG or a shield pylon.

I just find it odd that you’re punished greatly for making it to 10 stacks, while being punished throughout the rift because unavoidable damage. You cannot outplay or “out skill” the punishments in most scenarios, which the amulet alludes you’re suppose to do. That’s counter-intuitive.

8

I think that skills and gear that provide shielding is widely lacking across the board (except for wiz). They added an awesome amulet, but didn’t look at how different classes stand a chance of using it. Barbs are mostly hopeless, since there are no shielding items or skills. Changing some things like a hota rune that gives you stacking shields per hit, or changing insatiable belt to provide shields instead of health could actually make it an option for things besides wizards.

9

Is this item not really only for tanky build, which needs some more damage?

The only issue is that there isn’t really any tanky build, beside zDPS, which does not benefit from it anyway…

10

I think it’s the exact opposite. It was meant for a glass canon build.

11

In the top 50, the rest would be FoT (LoD RF) or Traveller’s Pledge (Impale/Nat’s RF), right? If they do revisit, I’d sooner they get rid of tFoT as it makes so many pushes about searching for a conduit pylon to mash a bunch of elites at the end of a Festering/Battlefields.

Though, I will concede the whole pushing thing has been broken for a long time so what’s one more, very-specific pylon RNG requirement on top of all the other mob types/density/map/pylon/gear things already in this magnificent gambling addiction posing as an ARPG. :grin:

1 Like
12

I got my personal best with Hellfire Amulet on PTR. I got a good one very easy. Not ancient, but it had Dex, Crit, Crit, Socket, Cull the weak. I made like 8 of them after 30 minute Ubers run.

I get hit too much, strafing around with GoD 6. So I won’t use Squirt’s Necklace.

300 reforges on a Flavor of Time to get a bad one. Not going to practice with that, because I’m not going to run enough bounties in season 21.

13

I like this variation. You don’t lose everything to a paper-cut, but you still suffer the +50% damage taken when are receiving the full boost damage. And you can maintain the bonuses in direct proportion to how well you can sustain or heal wounds.

The drawback is easier to face with a tanky build, but tanky builds tend to plan to get up close and personal with damage which immediately negates the effects. So, it just basically ends up being useless on a tanky build - forever triggered into nullification.

14

Op - why so low quality buffs?

U betta ask them if u wearing squirt u got 50% chance to recive Question before GR start:

“DO U WANNA COMPLETE THIS RIFT? PLEASE CHOOSE YOUR ANSWER YES/NO”

I hope JW will double this chance after 2 burgers.
No offense

15

Squirts necklace looks like an item you only want to use with Monk in party.

Not sure if intent was to make item for groups but it is what it is.

Shadow Impale is more tanky than most DH builds. With ignore pain buff, inner sanctuary buff up, all items with All resistance rolls and augmented gear it is not possible to keep Squirts buff up in GR 150 during RG fight.

Tested with Monk who has full ancient gear and 7 items with + health from globes.

16

In group play where you most of the time stay in the middle of big pulls you just have to accept that unavoidable damage will hit you. It’s a bad mechanic. It always was.

17

In group play it hits shield you get from monk.
Shield is stronger if you have more damage reduction.

DH does not have 30% inherent damage reduction because it is ranged class (even if impale is melee).

They don’t give DH 30% damage reduction because we are supposed to be hit less often than melee classes.

But what happens when you get hit? You take more damage from that hit. That is exactly why they removed dodge chance and gave us armor instead.

18

This so much and the point of this item existence.

19

I never said it shouldn’t. I even said the following:

I wrote out multiple reasons of why having multiple drawbacks is a bit too much. I honestly don’t understand the point of replies that already state the obvious. Why bother if someone isn’t going to read all of the topic?

I’m certainty open to disagreements and other suggestions as well as rebuttals to the points I’ve made so this can be a discussion.

1 Like
20

Compare Squirt to the endless walk set. You get the same damage bonus with only one item slot, and you have more liberty on affixes for your ring because the Compass Rose always rolls main stat and movement speed.

Arguing that Squirt has multiple drawbacks is silly. If you want the necklace to have less drawbacks then you have to scale down the damage bonus too.

21

As a Wizard in party yes. As a DH in party no.