If you've read the front page (here's the link just in case) Blizzard is going to shuffle the cards and change some of the elements tied to certain skills.
This said, what would you like to see for your DH?
Personally, i'd like to see some more support for a Cold damage build - atm we have only one generator and one spender for that. Also Poison damage is really underpar, Chakram isn't bad but we don't have actually much choices. Third, i'd like to see the lighting skills to be spread around and not only tied to stuns - the budget spent on stuns makes their damage basically not viable compared to other kind of builds (namely fire/physical).
Lightning skills should do what lightning skills do best. Arc. Which means the skills should just split off in all directions and just do lightning damage everywhere. Similar to the way Javazons use to work. Possibly change cold arrow to lightning damage.
Poison skills should be the highest damage skills out there, doing damage over time.
Fire should be full of explosions and some dot damage. Maybe some sort of a knock back. Great at medium sized aoe.
Phisical skills should probably the one that either does the most instant damage with some sort of a stun attached.
Cold Skills should probably have some sort of a synergy with with frozen targets. Maybe freeze enemies and have them take increased cold damage once they are frozen. Similar to shatter in wow. Either that or at least make the slow be something remotely useful. A synergy with fire would also be nice. Maybe do something like a builder / spender combo, where fire damage puts up a burn debuff on the mob, followed by a freeze that will take the mob take extra damage if it's burning.
I can already see loaded for bear changing for poison dmg or something like that. The high number of DHs using the same skill is outrageous. Besides that, I really thing we need more cold and poison skills, and some buffs to lightning ones.
When i got Frostburn and a Buriza on my DH i was happy, but the selection of Cold skills is minimal. One generator, two spenders....
As other have said, we need more Poison and Cold skills to play with but with the CinderCoat-Magefist combo, i still see it as the dominant element....
Id really like some more synergy among skills to support a cold build. I really love frozen arrow ability but high health mobs just take too long to kill with it. I'd like possibly a cold rain of vengeance rune and a few other cold centered abilities to help build a solid cold spec.
also, sentry needs some better runes, like almost all of them are physical I think. I mean come on, physical for the chaining rune?!?
Physical/Rocket, rarely uses this anymore because the rockets that does most the dmg is very rng/low.
I too would like to see some kind of themed/synergy setup for the elementals, like it's described by other posts, with specific emphasis on making Cold & Lightning usable.
While i don't think Physical is very good compared to Fire and other classes. It's probably more of an itemization problem then it is a ability-elemental problem.
Cinder Coat, Mage Fist and the likes are making Fire the only spec to run, while i don't think there should be equal items for each elemental, there should be items that make other elemental spec viable. These could be something like.
Physical abilities has a chance to double proc ability used or increase damage stack "like conflagration".
Lightning abilities has a chance to stun or arc to other targets.
Cold abilities has a chance to freeze or chilled targets takes more damage.
Fire is already fine with reduced cost.
I know this is not what was requested, but i believe the itemization is half the problem here.
You are right, the problem really lies on itemization. You can do Cold builds with Kridershot/Frostburn/SoJ/Andy but you need so much awesome gear to get close to a fire DH with magefist/any one hander/cindercoat. The same thing goes for druid and fan of knives builds (both physical). Changing elemental will sounds like a nerf (imagine loaded for bear becoming poison right now), what we need more elemental gear.
After thinking a little, i came to the conclusion that cold damage skills for DH are just out of place, basically for two reasons:
- we have already strong themes around fire, poison and physical, plus a decent lightning - we don't need an additional one
- the actual implementation may be more tricky than explected; we would need an entire set of new abilities/old ones reworked and we know that of one bevomes more efficient than the others, everyone would use that single option.
Ideally we want a choice of all elements into any skill, and if blizzard doesn't suddendly change all abilities to reflect this there's no much space for Cold (though i like it a lot).
Another way to make things more interesting and possibly more balanced would be to apply the elemental damage type to your weapon and remove damage types from abilities.
For example a lightning damage weapon will apply lightning damage effect to your ability.
Cold Weapon would apply some sort of a frost blast that would freeze or slow everything in a small area with a ton of burst, vs lighting that would just zap all the enemies win a small area for a ton of burst, possibly stunning them or doing a small discharge. Yes they sound like the same abilities, and in essence they should be with a small twist, but this will also allow for more versatility in terms of gearing.
Or another example could be cold arrow would pierce more enemies with a lighting weapon, whereas with a cold weapon it would do what it does now. With poison it would be more like contagion where the first enemy hit takes burst damage and rest get a dot debuff.
I assume this would take a lot of work to implement. So I don't actually see this coming. My examples are pretty stale, but I'm sure people that are much more creative than I can see this in a much brighter light.
This said, what would you like to see for your DH?
Personally, i'd like to see some more support for a Cold damage build - atm we have only one generator and one spender for that. Also Poison damage is really underpar, Chakram isn't bad but we don't have actually much choices. Third, i'd like to see the lighting skills to be spread around and not only tied to stuns - the budget spent on stuns makes their damage basically not viable compared to other kind of builds (namely fire/physical).
Lightning skills should do what lightning skills do best. Arc. Which means the skills should just split off in all directions and just do lightning damage everywhere. Similar to the way Javazons use to work. Possibly change cold arrow to lightning damage.
Poison skills should be the highest damage skills out there, doing damage over time.
Fire should be full of explosions and some dot damage. Maybe some sort of a knock back. Great at medium sized aoe.
Phisical skills should probably the one that either does the most instant damage with some sort of a stun attached.
Cold Skills should probably have some sort of a synergy with with frozen targets. Maybe freeze enemies and have them take increased cold damage once they are frozen. Similar to shatter in wow. Either that or at least make the slow be something remotely useful. A synergy with fire would also be nice. Maybe do something like a builder / spender combo, where fire damage puts up a burn debuff on the mob, followed by a freeze that will take the mob take extra damage if it's burning.
As other have said, we need more Poison and Cold skills to play with but with the CinderCoat-Magefist combo, i still see it as the dominant element....
also, sentry needs some better runes, like almost all of them are physical I think. I mean come on, physical for the chaining rune?!?
Can't wait to see what they are going to do >.<
- we have already strong themes around fire, poison and physical, plus a decent lightning - we don't need an additional one
- the actual implementation may be more tricky than explected; we would need an entire set of new abilities/old ones reworked and we know that of one bevomes more efficient than the others, everyone would use that single option.
Ideally we want a choice of all elements into any skill, and if blizzard doesn't suddendly change all abilities to reflect this there's no much space for Cold (though i like it a lot).
For example a lightning damage weapon will apply lightning damage effect to your ability.
Cold Weapon would apply some sort of a frost blast that would freeze or slow everything in a small area with a ton of burst, vs lighting that would just zap all the enemies win a small area for a ton of burst, possibly stunning them or doing a small discharge. Yes they sound like the same abilities, and in essence they should be with a small twist, but this will also allow for more versatility in terms of gearing.
Or another example could be cold arrow would pierce more enemies with a lighting weapon, whereas with a cold weapon it would do what it does now. With poison it would be more like contagion where the first enemy hit takes burst damage and rest get a dot debuff.
I assume this would take a lot of work to implement. So I don't actually see this coming. My examples are pretty stale, but I'm sure people that are much more creative than I can see this in a much brighter light.