I do not know what Raxx and the team of professionals thought about, but asking to get rid of the most beloved playstyle was a huge mistake. “Thank” you guys for this change.
@Blizzard, please turn this set back to the PTR version. And also, do not always listen to “smart” advices espicially if lots of players mind against such changes. There are plenty of dicussions and a lot of people mentioned, they do like this spin-to-win in Natalya.
and there I was thinking the Gears of Dreadlands was the spin to win set for DH
Change was needed. Strafe Nat didnt proc Nat 6pc chained detonation as anticipated. 5% buffed dmg oppose to 2x more. The manual cast playstyle is ok, something unexpected happened. The behaviours from lightning rod vs manual hard cast on PTR is entire different. Not sure what they did when balanced unexpected tragoul coil interactions.
Given state probably better stick with strafe tbh
To have a big, unexpected and bugged interaction between Nat and Shadow?
No thanks
It does not interact with each other… The change in the Shadow set was made specifically to exclude interaction with spiked traps!
No. I want a sick NUKE!! Basically the Bell Monk where you kick the bells to blow them all up. I want to watch damage ramp up and see the SICK damage that happens with the last blast.
It’s not the build idea that’s the problem.
The problem is the “blast to set Caltrops” doesn’t work properly. CC immunity will suck for the pull effect. The Lightning rune is broken, and shouldn’t be glitched for extra 6p chain reactions, and caltrops doesn’t drop where you aim.
I want to see a pool, drop Spike traps around them, drop a caltrops in the middle and blow them all into the center. I want to then stack up the traps, caltrops the pack, and blow it to bits again for double damage the second time.
At the moment, it’s see a pool, drop traps, then jump into the middle, then drop a caltrops, then trigger and have them all come into melee range (maybe) and try to get out before you get killed.
Or, see the pool, drop traps, jump in the middle, drop caltrops, jump out, hope the caltrops isn’t triggered (which it usually is) and then trigger it, and hope that the monsters are blasted to the caltrops.
“Trap, trap, trap, trap, vault in, Caltrops, vault out, trigger.”
But nothing happens because the caltrops got triggered.
I just want to stand to the side and play chess with them. I don’t want to have to climb on top of the chess board and get messed up.
Sitting back, trap trap trap trap trap, caltrops, trigger. Watch the sick nuke go off!!! Repeat.
Actually I wish. Now one of the very rare DH builds I enjoyed is defunct. I really liked Nat5-Gears3 hybrid setup when Natalya’s was a Strafe oriented Set. Guess I have to settle for Bolas with S2-G3 now. I hope it works right at least.
So you want another build that is basically the same thing as your beloved one, just with explodies instead of bolts flying everywhere? What is the point in that?
I don’t think he is saying he wants the shadow bug back. I think he is saying he wants to old 2piece bonus back:
original change:
updated change that killed strafe spike trap build:
At least that is how I read it.
No point, but at the very least it looked more fun than this clunky mess it is now.
After playing in this set, I just made sure that it was uncomfortable…
Disgusting build… It was better on the PTR, Without strain, fast and, most importantly, much nicer than in Gears… And now it resembles the 2nd job, and games are still entertainment, not work… in general, Natalia’s set has undergone incomprehensible and most importantly unnecessary changes! 
this is why you have to do a 2 week ptr, the build is not working as intended. Bright side is you can all pretend they never changed Nats in the first place and not touch it the entire season.
GoD, Buffed UE and Marauder are more than enough to keep you busy
I’ll just play tal rasha wizard instead now and afk my rifts
I lol’d @ professional. I love Raxx and Wudi as people who can break down hidden mechanics, explain animations in frame rates and proc coefficients, have direct contact with blizzard to get information we “non-professionals” can’t have. They make great content that’s well explained.
Both of them are great analysts. However neither of them have a firm grasp on what the majority of the player base wants vs want they want. They seem to be stuck in the elitist bubble with a loud minority and apparently a youtube streamers input is worth 100k actual players input. This is a parallel of the NRA being the loudest, and fighting against regulation, while a huge majority of the country wants universal background checks, but we can’t have them.
I do wish it would get reverted back to PTR style. Strafing in GoD flat out sucks but we’re stuck in it because it’s the only build to use it. It would also be quite amusing for Blizz to leave current Nats, as is, and watch how many streamers suddenly don’t use it because it’s crap, and they switch to GoD, the strafe set they swear they didn’t want to use.
I just played the new Nat’s spike trap and it is HORRIBLE! It might have worked if DH were more tankier, but even then, it feels broken to me.
One good thing that came out from my playing the Nat’s set. I know I WILL NOT be playing Nat’s in the new season. I’ll start with DH GoD because they are fast and pretty good until I complete season journey and Altar, then transition to Wizard.
I don’t want Natalya to be spin-to-win, we already have spin-to-win build for DH and that’s GoD. What Nat needs is to have its own playstyle. It needs to be fluent and more importantly playable at range. Currently it seems the most efficient way to play is to stand on the enemies and trying to chain the Spike Trap detonations.
Being able to lure enemies to specific spot at range and then killing them with ST detonations is goal. Manual ST placement and detonations are fine as long as it can be done at range. DH is not a melee class.
Well, it wasn’t really performance friendly to say the least. I don’t think they’d revert it now.
How do you know which opinion falls into the “loud minority” and which ones fall into the “majority of the playerbase”? Did you do a survey? And 10, 20 or 50 people with the same idea does not constitute a statistical sample representative of reality ; )
Even if the current build is not yet correct, and needs to be improved, one does not replace an error by committing another bigger error, namely having 2 builds spin to win.
Many players want it easy. And luckily a lot of other people, and streamers, and developers have more perspective on this game as a whole.
That is absolutely a fair point. I subjective stated the streamers to be the loud minority because a large portion of blizzards changes came from them for several seasons. Notice how Blizzards website has had links to several streamers content and events throughout the years and it’s more prevalent now.
However if you were to judge by PTR and General forum topics, and I do feel I need to specify the mechanics of how likes work, a larger portion of forum users seem to prefer the set opposite of what the streamers wanted.
The topics that have suggestions in favor of nats, pre manual cast have a much higher like count in the overall context of the post.
The topics that have suggestions to change to manual cast have a handful of likes for the poster and supporters, but a greater internal like count for keeping the original setup.
I would love if they had a petition where they forced every player logging in to play the set in both specs and to pick which they prefer.
I would gladly bet my life that if every single diablo 3 player in the world were questioned, a majority would pick the the smoother, more fun gameplay over the clunky abomination that Nats is in now.
Yes it’s subjective to only go by likes in a forum that only a small % of people use, however this forum is comprised of people with both views and the more supported view is that of the previous Nats.
Thought I should add this for context. Season 28 is the first season that materials will be picked up for QoL and currently everyone seems to be happy with it. For many seasons and a few years prior to this it has already been requested, and there was a very vocal pushback from SOME people “No, you should have to click your materials, this shouldn’t be an automated game. Too bad you have to push buttons”. they stated.
Even though that change would not have negatively affected their game in any way, they still complained.
This reply should be its own post tbh. All respect to streamers and the work they’ve put in, but when making build or playstyle suggestions they need to be sure this is something the playerbase also wants, not just them. I was personally fine with “another strafe build” since GoD sucks to play.