Where are the DH players?

[Rage-13139]

@anon52517139

If they buff builds presuming p5000 (99% of players have nowhere near this much paragon in NS!), then that means said buffs will be under powered for everyone with lower paragon.

@dmkt-1267

Look at our #1 build, N6 Rapid Fire, upper 137+ for a higher paragon player, barely GR120 for 2000 paragon due to survival.

@dmkt-1267

The 2000 paragon player needs defense, or the build just won’t work.

@dmkt-1267

Blizzard knows this, and that is why 5k is a good number, it means the balance will not fluctuate as much at 8k versus 2k.

Hey, guys.

First off, I’d just like to say that whatever level of Paragon or gear Blizz decides to “balance around”, getting more Paragon is always going to be a benefit, and higher Paragon players are always going to clear higher, on average.

With that out of the way, dmkt, I like your assessment of builds, damage, and toughness here, but I wanted to discuss a little further.

Assuming you’ve got a pretty regular setup of decent gear + augments, your armor at various levels of paragon is likely to be:

2500 P: around 34500 armor (92.01% DR)
5000 P: around 50000 armor (94.36% DR)
10000 P: around 81500 armor (96.45% DR)

Going from 2500 to 5000 gives you +15 GRs of toughness, and going from 5000 to 10000 gives you another +20 GRs of toughness. As you’ve noted, all this extra toughness lets you discard certain defensive options in favor of offensive options. So, not only does going from 2500 P to 10000 P give you about +6 GRs from Mainstat alone, it also lets you add in things like CoE or Cap’n C, each of which give another +2-3 GRs.

As far as I can tell, there are only two ways to alleviate this effect.

1. You set the balance so that even a very low paragon player (say P1000) doesn’t need to equip the defensive options.

2. You set the balance so even the very high paragon player (say P10000) must take the defensive option.

And between these two, only option 1 is any good, because with option 2, the P10000 player will find it challenging, but possible, to survive while wearing the defensive gear. But the P1000 player will have 35 GRs less toughness, even with the defensive gear, and will constantly die.

So, that leaves option 1, which basically amounts to just increasing the DR on some piece of gear that is 100% required for the build (like increasing the DR on the set bonus).

On a related note, I was thinking about the whole “fight at range vs facetank” conversation, and this discussion of toughness definitely ties into that.

If you want a DH to be fighting at range, and try to make this happen simply through a “damage taken incentive” (i.e. you make the character squishy, so they need to stay at distance from enemies), then that might be balanced correctly for a P1000 character. But a P10000 character, because of the enormous growth of toughness through added paragon, will simply facetank the same damage. Or, if you do it the other way around, the P10000 player will do ok fighting at range, but the P1000 player will get killed by every single mortar hit or goatman spear.

So, if you want the class fantasy of “fighting at range” to be fulfilled, that really needs to come in the form of more DH-specific items along the line of Zei’s or Steady Aim, that force you to remain at distance, whatever your level of Paragon, to actually get the damage bonus. Let’s call it a “damage dealt incentive”.

Because basing it around toughness is essentially impossible.

For instance, maybe a ring that sort of combines the mechanics of Steady Aim and Zei, that gives you +100% damage if no enemies are within 10 yards, +200% if no enemies are within 20 yards, and +300% if no enemies are within 30 yards. Just spitballing here.