Hydrosphere Got Bricked In Balance Changes (IMO) - Good Or Bad?

Going to be interesting to see if Eye of Winter is actually viable anymore. I think that's what hurts more than not seeing hydrosphere rip around and murder packs anymore, I'm gonna have to rely on GGG to properly balance eye of winter..

They'll make it viable right? So I can keep enjoying my D2 nostalgia.

Surely they'll do that.

Right?

Of course they will :)

Great change. Many skills were literally forced to use it.

I never liked the skill. It's one of those that sound great in theory, but in practice they either suck or become OP.

The idea of supplementing existing skills and have nice synergies with them is awesome, until you realize that your OP skill becomes mega OP. I guess now it somewhat gets to do it's original purpose....maybe?

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ValfaderTV wrote:

Socket two gems anywhere:

Sniper's Mark
Cast On Hit Support

You're welcome.

And why would anyone do that?
1. Rings were better
2. Marks are being changed to be permanent once casted

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trixxar wrote:

Its a straight 50% single target nerf to a number of builds.

Were those builds really doing twice the intended damage? I guess by GGGs logic, yes. But it sure did not feel like it.

None of the builds were even meta because they were still behind other ranged skills.


I'm not opposed to every nerf (aurastackers? Cmon!), but when they trash already underplayed skills without touching them, it feels like a monkey is pushing buttons in terms of balance design.

It's not a 50% nerf. Most builds, it's a 30% or so nerf. You can still double up using slam aoes etc. You just only benefit once every 1 second, rather than getting it 3-4 times a second.

It'll make Flicker stop occasionally, but other than that.... I don't think it's near the 50% cut you're describing, unless you aren't going to use it at all.

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rekikyo wrote:

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trixxar wrote:

Its a straight 50% single target nerf to a number of builds.

It's not a 50% nerf. Most builds, it's a 30% or so nerf. You can still double up using slam aoes etc. You just only benefit once every 1 second, rather than getting it 3-4 times a second.

It'll make Flicker stop occasionally, but other than that.... I don't think it's near the 50% cut you're describing, unless you aren't going to use it at all.

Certainly not all will be. Some examples of 50% would be ones where you have a high enough attack speed (10+ per second) that you are 45% down. Then you take off things like building rage, which was not just for berserkers, but any build where you could chain hook to 50 rage.

For my MS berserker it will probably be about a 60% effective dps loss because you now start at zero rage. For longer bosses, maybe less.

For any bow builds it will just depend on speed.

At 3 attacks per second, it will be about a 30% loss. At 10, it will be 45%.

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Aynix wrote:

Great change. Many skills were literally forced to use it.

I'll play the devil's advocate, but if the skills that used it to double their damage output were just strong, not crazily OP; and the skills themselves don't get a compensatory buff; then won't it straight up kill all those skills/builds?

I mean, if there's compensation on the skills that abused it, sure, but otherwise it's, just killing builds.

As I've said, a good change - at least for the future. But maybe they should've waited with this change, until certain skills got adjusted. It's not like 90% of all strike skills didn't need some help...

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Phrazz wrote:

As I've said, a good change - at least for the future. But maybe they should've waited with this change, until certain skills got adjusted. It's not like 90% of all strike skills didn't need some help...

They did just put in another 40% Attack Damage Keystone...

I haven't actually played strike skills other than Flicker in like 4 years; is this still related to the fact they took away some features of shift attacking to attack thin air (like with Molten Strike)?

I'm having trouble seeing how so many have problems with MultiStrike and all these insanely strong multiplying phys supports added in the last 6 or so leagues.

Too few defenses so needing more damage to survive?

A lot of strike skills were designed for a lot less mob congestion and are heavily outdated, and either need removed altogether (something GGG hasn't done often with Gems), or need total reworks.

But other strike skills are so OP they outdo spells and sometimes even minions.

looks like a good idea as long as builds that used the "unintended interaction" because they needed it due to their skill being really lacking (strike skills for example) get compensated on the back end.

however this is GGG so they most likely won't so bad idea overall.