Over 1 Year and ( Fire Skills ) no Buff …with all Classes at Qual 2 i do over 10 million damage but the Hydra maximal 500k wtf
Devs are incompitent. Play spiritborn is what they want us to do…
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Hydra might still be bad (I doubt this) but they have absolutely buffed it, hugely so as of last season. In s5 they did the following:
- Base damage increased from 14% → 16%
- Summoned Hydra burn increased from 60% of base damage to 100% of base damage.
- Hydra head weapon temper added so that you can, with perfect masterworking crits, have up to 16 heads per Hydra for a total of 48 heads with Serpentine Aspect and three active Hydra casts.
Granted I have not tested it out this season but I played it last season and even with only 12 heads per Hydra (2 MW crits on a staff) it did murderous single target damage, way more than my S4 Ice Spikes build could manage. It’s probably not S-tier but should be very solid relative to our other builds.
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Hydra does work, and yes its received alot of buffs over the last year.
<3 hydra, i never make a build without it.
At a base lvl, there are key things you want to make hydra have impact:
Gear (chasing multipliers isnt unique to hydra, of course)
-serpentine aspect
-Starless skies, talrasha, and harlequin (for the +4)
-shredding blades and concieted (multipliers)
-(+10 to +12) heads to hydra (i prefer +6 on main hand, +5 on off for an extra mw crit to go to cooldown or some other functionality related affix)
-attack speed (as close to max, just like most other builds)
-a 10trillion gold amulet with CM, DB, and %intel, preferably (i still need one amulet with cm and db to drop this patch, havent seen one and blizz took the one i had from last patch because the entire company is displeased with the playerbase or something)
Paragon: any good distribution that includes searing heat, frigid fate, elemental summoner, and the last choice is your focus: the new board for a direct damage approach, or burning instict for a burning damage focus.
Subsequent details are in accordance with the focus of burn or direct damage, it up to you to see what you like. Idk which is better, im sure it varies from patch to patch. I typically go a direct damage route.
I liked the build a lot with two caveats:
Because I play on console, certain fights that are sensitive to where the Hydras are placed really, really sucked. Exhibit A: Tormented Andariel was awful due to how tricky it was to place Hydras perfectly within the pylon shields.
AoE was also lacking, which made the build less than ideal for Infernal Hordes. Don’t get me wrong, it could do them just fine, but less smoothly than more traditional Sorc builds. I ran Fireball enchant to help offset this weakness.
OTOH, Andariel aside I absolutely melted all Tormented bosses with fairly low end, easily obtainable gear and no mythics. The build was also tough as nails; it was easy to get 100% uptime on Aspect of Concentration and Everliving Aspect. I used Temerity in conjunction with life per hit (which is pretty great when you’ve got 36 Hydra heads machine gunning stuff) and Warmth, so perma barrier up to the Temerity limit once you got going in a fight, with lots of additional DR to boot.
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Life on hit with hydra was so good. Also temerity has never left my spec since s1 timeframe [#gudpants].
On the subject of aoe, i used to use zfal/firebolt enchant (tried it again this patch but even with 200% lucky hit, its better to use starless/rasha, i think. It fired alot tho.)
Now, i get around the aoe thing with ice shards (morph with 25% damage and always ricochet with shield) as well as vyr’s, triggered by spear because familiar is a buggy mess. The idea is (at 88% crit), hydra get 10% of its hits to arc to other targets (helps with single target boosting too). This, coupled with shards shotgunning around targets all the time, helps in high target density.
Im on pc, but i use a controller because old school xbox player. Positioning hydra is weird but it works well enough once you get used to it; i think the huge size with 10+ heads helps with that tho lol
Im still determening how best to approach aoe, not sure if the setup im running is best method but i can burn through 10 round t3 IH well enough. I think that amulet drop and fixing up masterwork crits for certain pieces will allow reasonably decent t4 access, but i have yet to test of course. Your idea of fireball enchant is intriguing, i may need to try. Another idea i could try is to take off fist of fate and use either splintering or piercing cold aspect there.
Last thought for future action: i still need to mess with runes, currently only using the 25% crit runeword. Maybe additional functionality can be gained by adding some other pair but idk)
Well just as follow up, i put back on xfals last night, and it seemed to have comparable damage to talrasha single target, and decidedly better add clear, neither of which of course make sense. Ill test more this weekend, id love to have xfals as a competitive option, but was likely just poor observation.
Oh that’s nice. I always assumed it would be a dud with Hydra since it has such an awful Lucky Hit Chance. I ran FW in S3 and I think X’Fals pretty much carried that build, which is sad.
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You’re right; hydra doesnt proc it in my experience. Firebolt enchant and flame shield do all the work there.
I figured out why it felt like equivalent damage, think. Taking off xfals (ive got like 150 or so all stats on it) shut off like 6 paragon node secondary effects lol. I had forgotten that i planned my paragon around that affix. Silly mistake.
sorcerer is such a worthless class compared to the rest
whoever still uses that class, deserves no respect. IMO.
things will change when nobody chooses it