The mechanics on DH are simple, which makes it easy to pick up and play.
There are no stack counts reflecting surrounding density apart from standard stuff like Pain Enhancer.
Distance calculation mechanics are minuscule or available to other classes:
Zei’s is not specific to DH class.
Steady Aim is minuscule 20%.
Single Out is minuscule, may amount to 40% more damage when conditions are met.
Hebalon hit the nail on the head for why our game play is incompatible. One other point, enemies move when you’re not stationary, they instead travel towards us, which reduces density and area damage.
If they ever did remedy this issue, and made DH ranged builds more focused on separating density, or gave us a role in group play where we become very strong when the trash is gone… what would the game play be like? What would the itemization look like? How would it affect a solo and group play?
I am thinking of affixes / legendary effects that already exist:
Elite damage %
Gain % Damage when X enemies are within Y yards
Gain % Damage for every Y yards from your target.
Gain 30% damage reduction against ranged attacks.
More unique takes on them:
Gain 300% more damage, but it is reduced by 20% for every target within 5 yards of the enemy you hit.
You no longer deal area damage, but damage is increased by 150%.
You deal 100% more damage when no allies, pets, or followers are within 25 yards.
Enemies that pierced from more than 40 yards away take 75% damage from your attacks for the next 3 seconds.
Enemies hit by your attacks have a chance to be pulled back and immobilized for 8 seconds.
Each enemy knocked back within 30 yards grants a 10% damage bonus for 10 seconds and only applies to targets you hit surrounded by 10 or fewer enemies within 10 yards. (this is for 4-man groups, where your zbarb/zmonk groups many targets, or when you bust out a Windforce and become superman. There are some wonky ways to pay this solo, where you’d drag a herd of trash behind you and demolish isolated stuff ahead, it’s probably hard to keep pockets of 10 targets together without losing the bonus)
In groups, I would suggest a role that lets us quickly finish elites. If the Trash Clearer is smacking stuff down for 100Q+ every 30 seconds, we should be able to very easily hit 10 or less targets (with typical debuffs) for 3Q per second so the team can move on. Perhaps the last mechanic cited is a way to build up to this number. I can see a zbarb harpooning trash away from elites so it can die quicker.
I don’t think every DH build should avoid Area Damage, or grouping mobs together, ie Cluster Bombs, Impale, Grenades – HOWEVER, there should be a distinction in how we build our ranged and melee builds. Some of the suggestions above could be reversed for close ranged play styles.
Free, it’s the midnight hour. She is telling us don’t expect anything, she is hunting for feedback, and it’s unrealistic that anything will be done for PTR 2.6.8, but she specified the desire for short and long term feedback.
Now let me ask you this question, did you go to our class forum and see the thread showing what we requested? The one with over 30 likes titled:
PTR 2.6.8 - LAST MINUTE BUFF REQUESTS FOR DH
It is conservative, and while it may be perceived as half baked because there are no mechanic changes within, it DOES leave some room for sweeping changes in the future.
Yeah, that’s a huge issue for us, remedied through quick fixes of things like Aquilla or working Evasive Ring or both into a build just to survive.
That’s where we have to go back to our class having to play the equivalence of melee builds. We don’t get the native 30% damage reduction melee classes get but in most of our builds to really do damage they have to get in melee range for a lot of the time in the GRift.
I would really appreciate it if the devs would make the decision of whether our class should be melee or ranged.
Like dmkt said, it’s possible for us to do both but right now we just don’t have the kinds of passives that would really allow us to shine in either.
Given the way damage is calculated in this game, Blizzard could change the multiplier on set bonuses and/or items. Set bonus modifications is the simplest way to go about this (1X to 2X). This amount to ~4.5 GR change assuming damage mitigation is not limiting.
For damage mitigation, we could change either items or set bonuses.
Lets also remember that the 2.6.6 barb buff proposal did not yield any changes for barbs in patch 2.6.6 (due to timing). DH proposals should be based on a fundamentally sound premise and not overly expansive. For example, it is highly unlikely that Blizzard will change a DH passive (or 8 for that matter) or >30 set bonuses/items.
P.S. Both DH and witch doctors have had a falloff in the number of high end players on the leaderboard from era 11 to era 12. For DH, there are 4.5X the number of DHs who cleared GR 121 in era 11 versus era 12. For WD, the era 12 numbers have dropped to roughly half in comparison to era 11. Even with the decrease in popularity, GR 124 on average is being cleared by a DH of 5K paragon while it is still ~ GR 128 for a 5K WD for both era 11 and era 12.
Oops, you’re absolutely right. I just double checked it, and it doesn’t even change much when you increase the HP of the RG, or the level of Stricken.
I think it’s not intuitive on the first glance, but on a second thought: With Ambush (and only a few stricken stacks at the beginning) you do benefit from the passive for a longer time. With Ruthless (and a lot of stricken stacks at the end), you benefit only for a few hits from both bonuses - at the end, the results are the same.
Interestingly, both ways of dealing more damage are equivalent (almost). Therefore: I withdraw that argument.
Yes, that is probably true. But that’s nothing new, actually. Balancing sets with such huge damage multipliers isn’t easy, and the higher the numbers become, the more complicated balancing becomes, imho …
No, just Stricken and the mentioned passives. My argument was that the Barb mechanic works way better with Stricken, and this is not the case. Math doesn’t lie.
How this changes when you consider mor complex combinations of items/skills/passives as well, I can’t say, as I don’t have an overview over all the classes. But comparing DML+Ambush with Ruthless only would be unfair.
UE MS ranged build is ostensibly the most popular build because it’s relatively good at most things (GRs, speeds, bounties, farming) except in most cases GR pushing. It’s because a couple item swaps (Nems/Warz v Wraps, Goldwrap v WH or CC) don’t gimp the build for that particular content…just zip zip pew pew profit.
But the push build is usually S6 (with exception of skill RF folks) which is an in your face melee build where you are up close and personal with elites so all 3 daggers hit the target.
Technically - that goes against everything a DH is supposed to be, according to the Game guide:
Demon hunters are relentless vigilantes who execute their infernal targets with an arsenal of ranged weapons. They crouch and **take aim far from danger**, relying on bows, deadly traps, and projectiles to swiftly bring an end to the creatures that haunt their world.
That’s not the difficult part, buffing your damage to make you higher GR capable, means higher incoming damage.
Higher damage is great, but if you spend half your rift laying on the ground, there is no real benefit.
They beat me to it lol
That might be a good way to help.
Don’t forget that the WW set has a built in DR set bonus.
This could also be something that could be looked at for DH sets.
Probably.
I seen someone post, not sure if it was here or somewhere else, about buffing Yangs & DML to 350%.
Although I know people seem to prefer set items being buffed, so they don’t have to re-farm weapons, especially if they already have a Primal or GG ancient.
You want to know why blizzard may well be holding back on buffs? Your entire communities behaviour and the behaviour of 2 or 3 people in particular.
I want to see DH get buffed. I have no idea at this point what the class needs so I’ll leave those suggestions to players who are more familiar with the specific mechanics.
Blizzard’s decision making progress should not be swayed by the actions of a few people in a class “forum community”. They should balance the game because it is just and fair.
Do you actually believe that Blizzard would hold back buffs or really any kind of improvement for the class because of few poorly executed posts of community members?
Does that really make sense to you?
Look, yeah, the thread got a bit nasty last night. No one is denying that but if you really read the thread it was a two way street with venom coming from more than just the DH’s side.
But yeah, we’re totally the bad guys in this, jay. Yep.
All our sets have defensive bonuses baked into them.
S6- 4 piece: Shadow gains the effect of all runes and is always active which comes with a 30 or 40% bonus to damage resistance thanks to one of the runes.
UE: 4 piece: You gain 60% damage resistance and 60% damage increase if no enemies are near you.
Marauder doesn’t get one but is given one through Zoey’s Secret belt in combination with the 4 piece giving you all pets.
And Natalya’s is tied to Rain of Vengeance in the 4 piece (I think).
Point is, the devs did consider it and added it but in most cases it isn’t enough because again, we have to play like a melee character without the 30% native resistance to melee damage melee classes get.
Is it just melee damage resistance? Or all incoming damage?
30% DR is enough to withstand about 12 additional GRs of damage (1.023 ^ 12 = 1.31). Maybe they should just “bake-in” a damage bonus for all ranged classes, including DH (you could have it be like UE4 / Steady Aim, and only take effect when no enemies are near your character, or like Zei’s, and be “tiered” based on distance).
12 additional GRs of damage might be excessive (this would be a 6.58x multiplier), but I could definitely see intelligent incorporation of a 300% bonus, or something like that. It would certainly make sense if DH, WD, Nec, and Wiz were a little squishier, but dealt more damage at range…
I would prefer to be treated like melee characters if we have to play like one, but any improvement would be good in my book if that was asking too much.
