I just read the PTR and it looks like they are adding new tempering affixes for Conjurations. I’ve wanted to do a decent Hydra build for a while, but unfortunately, at the moment, Conjurations exist only as a utility for Frozen Orb. I’m hoping the devs will seriously buff Hydra damage by adding a damage boost to Serpentine Aspect and other Conjurations as well without having to use a bunch of aspects just to end up doing no damage.
Also the Sorc Enchantment slots need to be overhauled, maybe add an extra slot. Almost all of them are useless and need to be buffed.
I am running a Hydra Sorc right now in Season 4. It is doing relatively well for a Sorc build. I can finish up to P105 or so with it, but that’s pushing hard.
However Hydra Sorc is dead on arrival in Season 5. Why? Because of this:
Elemental Summoner
Now caps at its damage bonus at 30%|x|.
This gigantic nerf guts around 40%x to 50%x of your damage. All the other tiny buffs and aspects they added to compensate won’t make up for it.
The Hydra Temper is a joke. Extra +xx Lucky Hit strike? You can give Hydra +100% lucky hit chance it’ll still just be 6% lucky hit. 100% of 3% is just 6%.
look at this, even picking up the little crackling energy hits also gets nerfed and capped. its “Ceaseless Conduit” man! people purposely attaching this relatively weak paragon board is to get benefit from every bits of crackling energy, but now devs make it harder.
They hit three paragon nodes that nobody uses hard, I don’t even understand. And they just buffed Crackling Energy and pushed Esadora’s Cameo hard this season.
I guess they be like, “Oh, so you refuse the grace I give you? Then I taketh it away!”
Same with Incinerate. “Oh, so you all still think Incinerate is a bad skill, huh? Then I nerf your Burning Instinct into the ground!”
I swear, with Blizzard, Sorcs are always 1 Step Forward, 10 Steps Back.
out of curiosity, i wonder how good hydras are able to fend off those fiery-fast-walking-and-increased-hp elites in the Pits.
these elites don’t bother to attack/ distracted by the hydras but will run towards you. so you keep avoiding and let the summoned hydras do their job?
They do just fine. Remember I have Ice Blades and Lightning Spears flying around stunning everything, and while Frozen Orbs freeze stuff, too. The other major source of damage in the build is Conjuration Mastery after all, which is at level 6 (couldn’t get a Greater Affix) and with 15-19 conjures out that translates to around 90%-110%x multiplier.
The Ice Blades also do good damage, they hit harder than the Hydras but not as many times. Still they can take care of those elites.
There are elites though, normally snakes, and the other CC immunes that are annoying and just shrug off the CC defenses. You just teleport away. Hydra build is actually the best for dealing with them because you can just kite them all day and the Hydras will just mop them up without any effort from you – this is the true benefit of running Hydra.
I’ll try uploading a video of P101 gameplay sometime so you can see how it works. I’m just demotivated to play Diablo right now because of the patch notes.
thank you for the insightful details. hydras are my good buddy every time i play sorc during leveling. then will let them go when gears/aspects/glyphs are getting matured.
well, as for the s5 patch notes, really speechless after reading it. truly demotivating as if we paid blizzard to ask them slap us.
Maybe it’s addition instead of multiplication?
[Extra +xx Lucky Hit Strike]，here is no [ X ], consider that the trigger probability class of the weapon tempering is now additional. if Hydra lucky hit up to 30%(or 40% i hope) it will be powerfull, ill test it in ptr
We can only wish, but that’s not how Lucky Hit modifiers work in the game so far. But if it did work that way, I would actually be very happy and that might keep me playing.
We’ll find out in the PTR. I have by the way edited some footage of some Pit 101 Hydra gameplay. Rendering the video right now, will upload shortly.
2 plus heads to Hydra per tempering(at least +4 plus or +6 plus max），3 heads X 2→7 heads X2. Even we had an enchant hydar(5 heads), it mean 3 heads X 2+5 heads X 1→7 heads X2+9 heads X1, 11→23! If the Lucky Hit chance could be addition & we could have 23 heads of 30% lucky hit Hydras, it will be fantasitic (almost 21X Lucky Hit Chance, Visage will kill them all)
At this point the only thing I’m hoping for is they bug the Lucky Hit on Hydra, Lighting Spear and Ice Blades, and it becomes 100% Lucky Hit similar to what happened with Ebonpiercer, and it slips past their notice and I will obliterate everything with Andariel.
Well Andy’s is just one option. Could also use it to proc Meteors instead. If they would buff Starfall Coronot to let Meteor Enchantment proc 4 meteors instead of just 2, then give the abyssmal 8% proc rate a buff to say 16% this build would be viable.
Here’s the promised Hydra video. I edited out t he second part since I didn’t want to upload 1GH up to youTube and the encoding was already taking so long on my crappy PC.
No prob. I am experimenting with the encoder I was using. Trying to render it at a higher resolution, will re-upload a better quality video for anyone interested if it works.
Uploaded a higher quality vid. Still haven’t figured out a nice video editor I can use to upload quality videos, the encoding of this program is kinda bad, but oh well I’m not a pro YouTuber no biggie, but it irks me.
If the Lucky Hit chance could be addition & we could have 23 heads of 30% lucky hit Hydras, it will be fantasitic 
(almost 21X Lucky Hit Chance, Visage will kill them all)
useless harmless skill with a cooldown its ridiculous