With Endless Walk, you get a dual bonus. One for standing still and one for moving. There’s technically not a draw back or a disadvantage state, and the player is in complete control of how they want to use those buffs. You’re not punished for using EW in any way.
With Squirts you do not have a choice of how often this buff is up, as it is almost strictly at the mercy of unavoidable damage RNG. You are punished for reaching 10 stacks. Due to the 50% more damage taken, often times you have to slot a defensive buff/item somewhere to help mitigate it, essentially still taking up more than “one slot”.
The difference between the two is opportunity cost. EW is much easier to utilize with no real draw backs and a reward system that the player can control. This is why you see far more EW setups than squirts setups atm on PTR. Squirt’s is rare because it’s too unforgiving.
The culprit is actually unavoidable damage, but blizzard isn’t going to do anything about that.
The item doesn’t work well in it’s current state because you’re not in control of the buff and then you’re punished for reaching the max stacks because the game forces you to take damage. Personally I’d be fine with all of the current drawbacks if the game allowed player skill to be the main factor of squirts up time. That right now is not the case. If RNG is going to be the main factor, then you might as well use Flavor of Time, as evidenced on the leaderboards.
You forgot to add that to get the same damage bonus of Squirt with the Endless Walk set, you need to remain stationary, give up a ring slot, and also not be able to get a ring with all the affixes that you want because the Compass Rose has two mandatory primary affixes. You’re suggesting to remove the only real drawback from Squirt (the increase in damage taken), for a damage bonus that will be up more often than Endless Walk.
And Squirt should be unforgiving given the benefits. If you want to take away it’s biggest drawback, then you also need to nerf its benefit.
Not all items need to be equally useful for all classes.
Why do you complain about an item that is used a lot, it just has some use case but is still good, if not OP, when used properly. Some items work for group, some for solo. There are a lot of items that are literally useless, that’s what should be changed. If you want to push really high solo FoT is better in a lot of cases. If you want to push on 4man you’re likely going to use Squirts as a DPS if you can, if you can’t, you have options like FoT for LoDs and EW for sets. I believe having options is the best balance you can have on this game and it’s what should be the aim of balance changes.
It takes 12 seconds for squirts to reach max bonus. It takes 5 seconds for Endless walk to reach max bonus for either damage or toughness. You don’t even lose all your stacks completely when you move (damage) or when you stay still (toughness).
I’m not crapping on EW by any means, but this is not even a close comparison.
What? Each one of my suggestions will still reset stacks to 0 on every hit, meaning it’ll still be up far less than EW, it just won’t be as punishing. Where do you see in any of my post that I’m attempting to remove the stack reset?
But… It’s not used a lot at higher end play. Re-read my original post. I’ve written guides on gizzard and smoke screen usage on the current season, but those only do so much.
You say that it’s OP if used properly. Can you find me any videos or guides on how to stay near max stacks vs unavoidable damage? Looking at the PTR, it does not appear that players have figured that part out.
I’m not asking for squirts to be THE amulet. I’m not asking to remove all drawbacks. I’m simply asking to make the consequences “less punishing”. I’m simply stating why it’s not being used at the higher levels.
Actually, after 5 seconds of moving/staying still you do lose all the counterpart stacks, and you completely avoid discussing how Squirt’s damage buff is independent of movement and you can keep it up between packs.
Clearly Squirt isn’t as bad as you say it is when so many people use it.
No, it’ll only be up far less than EW if you’re standing still in the middle of mobs. Squirt isn’t for that kind of playstyle.
Again, go look up the leaderboards, several top DH players use it.
There’s a reason why I mentioned PTR. Anyone who actively runs squirts can see why there’s such a big difference.
That is true to a certain extent. The bigger reason why EW is less common, specifically UE MS is because it simply does not work well with the set, not because people don’t want to.
That’s ironic, because the play style of squirts is suppose to be glass cannon and reward you for reaching higher stacks. So why does unavoidable damage punish you for playing the style the amulet was design for? This seems to be the point that’s being conveniently ignored. Also, where in any of my post did I say squirts was bad?
If we as players aren’t going to have control over our stacks, then it should be “less punishing” in some way. That’s all I’m saying.
We did ask for that. Have you read dmkt’s DH proposal thread by chance? Dmkt, Iria and I asked for one of our passives to grant us a shield bonus of some sort, specifically for squirts usage. Obviously it did not go through, but we did try.
In my OP in this thread, i mentioned the following.
If option #1 was granted, then one can more effectively use shield options such as gizzard at the high level. This would be balanced by the fact that you have to give up a DPS gem to maintain a higher squirts up time so a sacrifice is made.
I wish people would actually read the OP instead of just looking at the title and responding. Clearly I’m not asking to make it free damage.