I stopped playing Diablo a while ago, but tried it out again the past few days due to the new leveling system and this was what was on my mind the whole time.
Like many other DH's, I steamrolled through this game when it first came out. I quickly made it to level 60, got some nice gear and took advantage of nether tentacle.
The downside to this isn't that i felt bored because i cleared inferno so quickly, it's that i havent enjoyed playing since the severe NT nerf.
NT is a skill i used to really enjoy. The concept of having an attack doing periodic burst of damage for every second that it touchs a mob was really cool. I chose to stack crit damage and crit chance pre-NT nerf and i loved seeing HUGE numbers as i mowed down enemy after enemy. Farming act 3 was A LOT more enjoyable. This was aslo pre-inferno nerf so the mobs were doing a ton more damage. Even with gloom, i'd be flattened into the ground if i had gotten hit which forced me to use SS. I was fine with that, however because to me, that's the most fun way to play.
My first kill on diablo was done WITHOUT NT (i used spike traps, impale, hungering arrow, and rain of vengance), so this excludes him, but i really enjoyed nuking bosses. Here i am, a sweet archer who's able to drop the king of hell himself, and now im being told that it's not right for me to kill one of his henchmen in under 20 seconds? (azmodan lol) Nether Tentacle made boss fights fun because it showed you how powerful and how much damage you really were doing
Now it is said this is overpowered because other classes can not do this, well maybe that was a reason to buff the other classes be4 nerfing DH into the ground and nerfing inferno into the ground for other classes. This game literally receives NO VALUE from complete class balance. One could think that different classes are like another form of difficulty added to the game, DH being easy mode and WD being hard mode (pre-WD buffs). As this game is a grind fest, and ONLY a grind fest (because no pvp), nerfs do not make nearly as much sense as buffs! More damage = more fun. Less damage = more time needed to get the same job done. My DH never became more difficult to play, it just ended up becoming boring. With the most recent patch, I know the game is going in this direction (buffs to all classes, legendaries, more levels for more stats, etc), however, I would LOVE to see Nether Tentacle reworked to act similar to how it used to work.
I was really happy with the NT nerf because it gave me a reason to try other skills. Also, ball lightning still can hit up to three times.
Have you tried a pure strafe build with the prep punishment rune? Or gotten a two handed crossbow and tried cluster arrow? I can one shot champ packs with it in act 1 the DH is my favorite class by far just because of the different play styles available, including fast kite / fast attacks, huge hit / kite, LoH face tank, snare / standing still, ect. You can even cheat and just stack ToC from vault
I wouldnt give up just yet, I'm still having a blast. Hell ive even changed out smoke screen for gloom shadow power.
Yea i ditched SS after the NT nerf for gloom because I literally blow up into peices if i dont have gloom on against damage reflect. I've been sticking with spike trap, rain, hungering arrow, ball lightning/ice arrow since the nerf. I tried using cluster bombs yesterday and wasn't too happy with it. I love playing as a glass cannon. The idea of being hit just once in order to die makes the game a lot more fun. I'll look into the strafe build as i've never actually used that skill. Graphically NT was my favorite too which is while i never minded only using it haha
Yea i ditched SS after the NT nerf for gloom because I literally blow up into peices if i dont have gloom on against damage reflect. I've been sticking with spike trap, rain, hungering arrow, ball lightning/ice arrow since the nerf. I tried using cluster bombs yesterday and wasn't too happy with it. I love playing as a glass cannon. The idea of being hit just once in order to die makes the game a lot more fun. I'll look into the strafe build as i've never actually used that skill. Graphically NT was my favorite too which is while i never minded only using it haha
I believe Blizz said they were working on a fix for grenades. Trying to find a better way to get grenades to be able to bounce off walls and so on, but they couldnt implement it because they said what they came up with didnt feel right. At least that what i read in their blog posts.
Yea i ditched SS after the NT nerf for gloom because I literally blow up into peices if i dont have gloom on against damage reflect. I've been sticking with spike trap, rain, hungering arrow, ball lightning/ice arrow since the nerf. I tried using cluster bombs yesterday and wasn't too happy with it. I love playing as a glass cannon. The idea of being hit just once in order to die makes the game a lot more fun. I'll look into the strafe build as i've never actually used that skill. Graphically NT was my favorite too which is while i never minded only using it haha
I believe Blizz said they were working on a fix for grenades. Trying to find a better way to get grenades to be able to bounce off walls and so on, but they couldnt implement it because they said what they came up with didnt feel right. At least that what i read in their blog posts.
What I read was that they can't fix grenades, they're a flawed concept. The idea behind 1.0.4 was to fix skills, not replace them. Grenades will be completely revamped as a new skill at some point.
Yea i ditched SS after the NT nerf for gloom because I literally blow up into peices if i dont have gloom on against damage reflect. I've been sticking with spike trap, rain, hungering arrow, ball lightning/ice arrow since the nerf. I tried using cluster bombs yesterday and wasn't too happy with it. I love playing as a glass cannon. The idea of being hit just once in order to die makes the game a lot more fun. I'll look into the strafe build as i've never actually used that skill. Graphically NT was my favorite too which is while i never minded only using it haha
I believe Blizz said they were working on a fix for grenades. Trying to find a better way to get grenades to be able to bounce off walls and so on, but they couldnt implement it because they said what they came up with didnt feel right. At least that what i read in their blog posts.
What I read was that they can't fix grenades, they're a flawed concept. The idea behind 1.0.4 was to fix skills, not replace them. Grenades will be completely revamped as a new skill at some point.
Thats what i had said, that they were trying to revamp it for this patch but could get them to work just right so they took it back to the drawing board. Sorry if i didnt make that clear enough. Either way, a new grenade system or a revamped way of using them would be good imo. Always wanted to use grenades however i couldnt because they just arent that great. Not a big deal at least they are trying. I dont mind bola shot, seems to do the trick for me.
I was forced to use NT because it was so powerful that not using it meant that you are hindering your progress.
I don't buy that for a second. This isn't an MMO where your ability to progress limits that of your guild/team members. This is a single player game, you play it to have fun. So, if you don't like a certain build... don't use it. Simple. No one is "forced" to do anything.
I spent oodles and noodles on a tank spec demon hunter build that was going great until they nerfed jagged spikes and shuriken cloud. I enjoyed breaking the cycle of death and being able to tank and do it in style. Now every class but Demon Hunters has some face roll tank and spank build. Wizards with their critical mass builds and Witch doctors even with their mega buffed pets do more to mitigate and control damage than the Demon Hunter. Brooding passive is still a joke and none of the other passives even got looked over. Barbs with their broken WW spec and monks of course as usual op as ever.
The game is getting great for everyone else, we've been on a downhill path EVER since the NT nerf. Sure it was crazy and did alot of damage but did it have to get capped at one hit per use? Maybe hitting twice but only hitting once is absurd. The heal return on it should have been increased for being drastically nerfed. Ball Lightning rune heals better than NT since it hits multiple times and has a wider hit box.
Its just starting to lose its appeal plus the insane prices for our gear in comparison to other classes is just like a big wtf all the time. I killed Diablo without the NT skill, hell it was mostly rain of veng and hung arrow + spike traps with a lot of kiting back in the beginning of june.
Trail of Cinders is fun. It definitely takes me out of my normal defensive playstyle and has brought some variety. Like the previous posts stated. If things are getting dull, and you have the time, respec into something else. High IAS DW is fun
I drop any A3 elite packs in 5 secs with Ball Lightning, we are talking about 155% weapon damage divided into half for each hit. With the old NT? probably under 2 secs.
"nerf" NT was the right decision to make because let's admit it, it's way too overpowered. The only changes I want to see that can be made on NT is to increase its hit range, projectile speed and bump up the life drain% abit.
Trail of Cinders is fun. It definitely takes me out of my normal defensive playstyle and has brought some variety.
Indeed only downside is that part where stuff can hit you as you role through them, dunno if it's a bug, but would not mind if you actually couldn't get hit as you are rolling past stuff at high speed.
Either way I love DH atm, so many different choices you can make depending on how you want to play.
Thats why I stopped using vault altogether. I believe blizzard has stated this isnt a bug
Like many other DH's, I steamrolled through this game when it first came out. I quickly made it to level 60, got some nice gear and took advantage of nether tentacle.
The downside to this isn't that i felt bored because i cleared inferno so quickly, it's that i havent enjoyed playing since the severe NT nerf.
NT is a skill i used to really enjoy. The concept of having an attack doing periodic burst of damage for every second that it touchs a mob was really cool. I chose to stack crit damage and crit chance pre-NT nerf and i loved seeing HUGE numbers as i mowed down enemy after enemy. Farming act 3 was A LOT more enjoyable. This was aslo pre-inferno nerf so the mobs were doing a ton more damage. Even with gloom, i'd be flattened into the ground if i had gotten hit which forced me to use SS. I was fine with that, however because to me, that's the most fun way to play.
My first kill on diablo was done WITHOUT NT (i used spike traps, impale, hungering arrow, and rain of vengance), so this excludes him, but i really enjoyed nuking bosses. Here i am, a sweet archer who's able to drop the king of hell himself, and now im being told that it's not right for me to kill one of his henchmen in under 20 seconds? (azmodan lol) Nether Tentacle made boss fights fun because it showed you how powerful and how much damage you really were doing
Now it is said this is overpowered because other classes can not do this, well maybe that was a reason to buff the other classes be4 nerfing DH into the ground and nerfing inferno into the ground for other classes. This game literally receives NO VALUE from complete class balance. One could think that different classes are like another form of difficulty added to the game, DH being easy mode and WD being hard mode (pre-WD buffs). As this game is a grind fest, and ONLY a grind fest (because no pvp), nerfs do not make nearly as much sense as buffs! More damage = more fun. Less damage = more time needed to get the same job done. My DH never became more difficult to play, it just ended up becoming boring. With the most recent patch, I know the game is going in this direction (buffs to all classes, legendaries, more levels for more stats, etc), however, I would LOVE to see Nether Tentacle reworked to act similar to how it used to work.
Have you tried a pure strafe build with the prep punishment rune? Or gotten a two handed crossbow and tried cluster arrow? I can one shot champ packs with it in act 1 the DH is my favorite class by far just because of the different play styles available, including fast kite / fast attacks, huge hit / kite, LoH face tank, snare / standing still, ect. You can even cheat and just stack ToC from vault
I wouldnt give up just yet, I'm still having a blast. Hell ive even changed out smoke screen for gloom shadow power.
I believe Blizz said they were working on a fix for grenades. Trying to find a better way to get grenades to be able to bounce off walls and so on, but they couldnt implement it because they said what they came up with didnt feel right. At least that what i read in their blog posts.
What I read was that they can't fix grenades, they're a flawed concept. The idea behind 1.0.4 was to fix skills, not replace them. Grenades will be completely revamped as a new skill at some point.
Thats what i had said, that they were trying to revamp it for this patch but could get them to work just right so they took it back to the drawing board. Sorry if i didnt make that clear enough. Either way, a new grenade system or a revamped way of using them would be good imo. Always wanted to use grenades however i couldnt because they just arent that great. Not a big deal at least they are trying. I dont mind bola shot, seems to do the trick for me.
I don't buy that for a second. This isn't an MMO where your ability to progress limits that of your guild/team members. This is a single player game, you play it to have fun. So, if you don't like a certain build... don't use it. Simple. No one is "forced" to do anything.
However, I agree with you in spirit.
The game is getting great for everyone else, we've been on a downhill path EVER since the NT nerf. Sure it was crazy and did alot of damage but did it have to get capped at one hit per use? Maybe hitting twice but only hitting once is absurd. The heal return on it should have been increased for being drastically nerfed. Ball Lightning rune heals better than NT since it hits multiple times and has a wider hit box.
Its just starting to lose its appeal plus the insane prices for our gear in comparison to other classes is just like a big wtf all the time. I killed Diablo without the NT skill, hell it was mostly rain of veng and hung arrow + spike traps with a lot of kiting back in the beginning of june.
Just starting to lose my interest in the game.
"nerf" NT was the right decision to make because let's admit it, it's way too overpowered. The only changes I want to see that can be made on NT is to increase its hit range, projectile speed and bump up the life drain% abit.
"Reworked"? You mean the damage buffed so it's always the only choice for a Hatred spender. NTY.
We used to have an OP ability and many players enjoy it when something they have is OP. But you have to realise that it is bad for the game.