I thought D4 would never stoop to Pay to Win: A case against the OP Hydra Cosmetic

Sorcerer
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I thought Diablo 4 would never be pay to win, but I guess I am wrong.

It’s pretty obvious that Hydra isn’t meant to do dps.
Sure the non-enchantment version can have 3-4 heads but, that hardly matters if one head shoots at a time while the other two to three are too busy making bets on who will last longer. Them, with the 10 - 12 second duration, or their summoner.
That leaves one head actually firing at 14% base weapon damage.
To give us a few things for comparison- a necromancer’s weakest summon, option 2 defender, swings at 18.2% base weapon damage. Golem base attack swings at 76.7% while Shadow mages shoot at 51.6% weapon damage with piercing projectiles.

Now, take the weakest summon, option 2 defender, and for 3 skill points you get a 45% boost to it’s damage. I’d need 45 skill ranks in Hydra to match this. Not to mention the 5-7 defenders can actually all swing at a fat hitbox boss at the same time while my 4 hydra heads have to let each head take it’s turn because the other heads are too busy laughing at the glass cannon typo. Everyone knows , even my hydras, that it’s not “9%” more damage taken, it’s “9x” more damage taken. That’s probably why I only see one head firing at a time. My Hydra doesn’t want to over exert itself considering how short the boss fight is going to be, just not in the same way that it’s short for a necromancer when they bring a golem. The real challenge in hell tides for my necro is actually catching something in corpse tendrils before everything in range evaporates. On my sorcerer I challenge myself by seeing how fast I can get back to my corpse after resing at checkpoint because well, bees and that 9x multiplier on glass cannon.

To further strengthen my pay to win claims, let’s look at lucky hit. My hydra has a lucky hit chance of 2.5%. Yes, I know the tooltip says 3% but, to actually get that 2.5% to reach the number it displays, I’d have to grab a wand and pull 3 points out of glass cannon and put them into precision magic. I simply can’t do that. My hydra heads would have to find something else to make fun of and just imagine how much harder it would be to run back to my corpse using a freaking wand as a walking stick.

For comparison, the weakest necro summon, option 2 defenders, aren’t supposed to proc lucky hit at all; however, they do proc decrepify which shaves one second off a random cool down every time. Throw on an Aphotic aspect and the number of procs more than doubles.

So while considering the pathetic dps, criminally low lucky hit chance, and the fact that it can’t act as a meatshield we have to ask ourselves; what is the purpose of hydra. I tell myself I’m using it as fuel for the conjuration mastery passive, but, if i’m being really honest, it’s because the Hydra looks pretty darn cool. I know it’s worthless, but I have to cast Hydra because it looks cool.

When one considers the true purpose of Hydra, to just look neat for the cost of a skill slot, then I think i’ve made a fairly strong case that D4 has indeed decided to drift into pay to win market strategies. I buy the Hydra cosmetic and “Boom!” I get a Hydra town portal AND I get the ability to summon a hydra to sit on. That clearly more than triples the power of my Hydra! Pay to win tactics right in our faces.

The developers clearly know that no one plays a sorcerer to do damage or to be durable (not counting the broken immortal flameshield builds). Surely the only players left playing sorcerers are the ones that, like myself, are addicted to the dazzling screen affects of just about every skill. That, or they are just plain delusional, also like myself.

Obviously the Hydra Cosmetic absolutely needs to be nerfed. It’s not fair that players can more than triple the effectiveness of their Hydras if they are willing to spend the cash.

We also probably should include at least one decimal point on our tool tips so we can truly embrace how low Hydra’s lucky hit chance actually is and so we don’t waste money trying to enchant health on our gear. With the 9x glass cannon multiplier I need save my gold for repair costs. Race you from the next checkpoint…

3 Likes
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Like… are you honestly serious about everything you just wrote?

With that much effort its hard to believe you arent being serious… im at a loss for words

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The post is satire along with mostly real numbers, except the 9x damage taken multiplier on glass cannon. No one great with numbers has proven it’s a 9x multiplier yet. I imagine it will take a while for us to see irrefutable testing on glass cannon. I’ve the feeling that the class attracts more “oh sparkly” type players than it does math wizards, pun intended.

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You had some thoughts in your post that I don’t disagree with but the fact that they were pointed in the direction of “pay to win” is where it all fell apart for me. Especially tying in the Hydra cosmetics. As if the cosmetics… well, never mind on that.

Uhhh… unless I am REALLY missing something, this is just complete made up nonsense. Either you are REALLY off your rocker or I missed some cosmic shift.

Lucky hit on this DOES suck but you get that each head shooting it’s lil fire nugget each has it’s own chance, right?

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I probably shouldn’t have used numbers to back my point in a satirical post. There are glyphs, boards, and an entire skill branch dedicated to conjurations and the damage they are supposed to do. The problem with this is the numbers are just too low to make it useful.

Hydra doesn’t do tricks like stun or vulnerability. You don’t see it targeting 4 mobs at once, piercing, or shooting 4 firebolts a time at a boss. It certainly can’t shoot 4 times faster than a base skill. Throwing more heads on it does make it look neat.

Although it does make some tiny numbers on the screen, Hydra has pretty much been nerfed down into a cosmetic that costs you some skill points and a slot on your skill bar. You don’t summon hydra onto the battlefield to do damage, or debuff, or crowd control, or act as a meat shield. You summon Hydra so you can be like, “Hydra! Hell yeah, rock on,” and then you use skills that have a different purpose, like damaging your enemy.

Allowing players to spend money to give Hydra a purpose is just not fair. Not only can pay to win players summon their Hydra onto the battlefield so they can yell “Hydra,” but now their Hydra’s can suddenly do something practical like be a chair or a town portal. That’s simply not fair.

2 Likes
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the lucky hit node in skill tree is times 15% to base

so 3 X 0.15 = 0.45, then 0.45+3 = 3.45 % would be the hydras lucky hit … i believe this was noted on another post, and not a +15 % more lucky hit, same with wand i think ??

but hydra do add burning…
and yeah tons of conjur skill stuff in paragon board and glyph but even FULL tilt investment they still only hit for 120K-ish at best i thought i got them up to (in season 3 build of the game) so nothing close to meta or pit climbing skill

cant even off screen drop hydra like the old days, stacked with a blizzard to keep them away from you.

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Unfortunately, the social media trend of people saying outrageously wrong stuff to get a reaction to feed the algorithm has made it harder to get satire across.

If it helps, your post made me giggle.

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No. This is a multiplicative parameter.
That is. The successful hit of the skill is taken and increased by a percentage value. Let’s say a wand increases the value by 10% and 15% of the passive skill. X+X0.1+X0.15. And since the initial value of a successful hit is less than 15% for some skills (especially lightning), this parameter can be ignored.
Yes, it says +15%, but it means the amount of the trigger effect.
For lightning this is an average of 7% of the base. That is, the minimum chance of triggering.
Let me also remind you that 25% of triggering Blizzard themselves confirmed that it will not trigger with a chance of 1/4 (in reality they have it around 1/10).
So there are still complaints about incorrectly indicated clues. And only the graphical part and the RMT store work in their game. In fact.

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I respect the level of irritation that prompted this post, well done.

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As a side note has anyone posted suspicions about teleport. I occasionally pop into hell tides knowing I should be leveling my glyphs and I could swear I even say horse and out pops a mob spitting elites. Instinctively I teleport and always land in a second pack of elites. Out of nowhere. Frost orb happens to handle density well so they clean fast and spawn more elites and hellborne in seconds. Kind of like if I don’t really feel like hunting mobs down, I just quick pop my map open and closed and wallah swarms. Kind of like I think I’ve been using my first lvl 925 staff for the last 30 levels now. You can bet I’ve found tons of upgrades but you can forget any kind of damage roll along with double orbs. Here I am with an “all damage” staff that happened to max out double frost orbs. Brick after brick just trying to get frost and double orbs to roll together period. I’ve almost given up and every time a double greater affix lands in my bags I know what the smith is going to do to me.

The smith should be a greater world boss, one hit kill mechanics are nothing compared to the terror of the cruel man and his hammer…ding, ding, ding…“I’m coming to get you Barbra!”

1 Like
11

I love everything about this post.