That was a nice analysis TastySoup. One of the things I like about UE is it is a very agile build. Maybe it plays a little different on PC than Console (where I play D3) but I think UE is about constantly re-positioning yourself in relation to mobs. F+R does not penalize you for this but Endless Walk does. In group play with a support providing better grouping and crowd control the picture is not so clear, but lets be honest, in this patch there is only 1 build for serious DPS pushing and the DH is not it, so the primary focus of the DH is solo pushing, which blows, but that is just how Blizzard rolls.
I've tested both combinations quite extensively and Focus and Restraint seems stronger. If, by chance you roll a godlike Traveler's Pledge (%Fire Crit/Cit Socket) and a great compass rose, it might be as good, or in some situations, slightly better.
Botting no doubt makes it worse, but I agree with the OP. Being able to speed run very high Grifts is key to fast Paragon progress since the XP you earn appears to scale up so significantly as you run higher and higher levels.
The meta this season is even more of a clusterf!ck than last season. I would love to hear Blizzard make an official comment on the massive disparity in dps potential between the Twister Wiz and everything else. My bet is we won't hear a peep from them. They tend to ignore their glaring failures as if they don't actually exist.
To clarify the issue, the patch notes on the PS4 (you can view them by selecting the options button and displaying the notes) clearly says gems are capped at 100, so it is not actually a bug. Rather, it is a very strange (and I think poor) design choice.
To further clarify, all previously boosted gems were "truncated down" to Level 150. In other words, legit gems can only be leveled to 100, but previously boosted gems all sit at 150.
I can only speculate, but if there was a bug at all, it is probably more likely related to the fact that the boosted gems got nerfed to 150 rather than 100, but that seems unlikely as well.
Anyway, as said I think it was a terrible choice given legit groups are pushing past 100. I've been part of a "non modded" group that has beaten 102 and has been chasing 103 for a couple of weeks now. Honestly, my best guess is that when the patch went live, Blizzard probably didn't think people were going to be able to push past 100, which I think demonstrates a lack of a deep understanding of their own game, or more specifically the potential of some of the builds they have defined.
One of the biggest weaknesses I perceive in this game is the very obvious variance between set build strengths. This happens because all sets, by their very design, have finite potential. while tiny amounts of increased power is possible (via paragons) the relative strength variance between the sets remains.
Invariably specific sets prove themselves to be the flavor of the current patch, and group pushing revolves around those sets, with other build choices made to enhance and support the "chosen one". For 2 patches in a row now my favorite class has been left without a legitimate home in group pushing, and I feel Blizzard has failed the gamers (ie their customers) very badly in this regard.
What I would like to see is instead (or more likely in addition) to paragons, is an ability to level the inherent stats related to sets. eg for Unhallowed essence I'd love to be able to level the increased damage% per point of discipline, for example. Allowing you to scale set damage implies that if I invest time in a set because I enjoy it, then the strength of that set can grow and it can arguably form the part of a viable pushing group. I call this being allowed to play my way, something I've rarely been able to do with this game unless I got lucky within a specific patch cycle.
The basic idea no doubt needs some refinement, but as things currently stand, I think D3 is a great game that could have been so much better than it currently is. All the amazing additional content and features have not addressed its biggest and most obvious flaw, and as a genuine fan of the game that is very disappointing.
ps. and yeah, that the meta for group pushing in an absolute lagfest I have to agree with the previous poster who made reference to it. It really is not fun to be rubber-banding all over the show and experiencing game-time as if it was in some sort of interdimensional time-warp
Prior to 2.4 there was a lot of hype (much of it coming from Blizzard) about how this patch represented the biggest set rebalancing they had ever attempted.. I remained very skeptical that the vision of a much greater variety of viable groups when pushing GR's would eventuate, primarily because I felt the issue of balancing was (and is) inherent in the fundamental design of the game mechanics.
Nevertheless, I was hopeful that, within the limitations of the existing design, both classes and sets would come a lot closer together, meaning that even though I expected one or two configurations would prove superior to all others, the gap would be small enough that group variety (if put together in a complimentary fashion) would be an ideal whose time had finally come.
My initial impressions (as a DH player) was quite favorable. I found the set buffs to be quite strong, both in terms of damage potential and damage mitigation. It also appeared to me that most of the sets were now, to a greater or lesser extent, a lot closer together in terms of their overall potential.
It sure did not take long though for the Wizard twister build to demonstrate dps potential that was vastly higher than anything else in the game. On the one hand I was happy for my friends who favour this class, but on the other I was genuinely baffled that Blizzard somehow saw fit, yet again (keeping in mind they nerfed the hell out of static charge) to allow one build to be head and shoulders above any other.
I personally can't believe Blizzard actually intended this, in the same way i felt they never intended static charge to be so much stronger than anything else. With that in mind, I can't help but come to the conclusion that they lack the ability to properly understand the capabilities of their own builds.
While I remain genuinely grateful at how Bliz have continued to support; expand and enhance this game their continued apparent lack of ability to prevent 1 or 2 specific builds being so much stronger than everything else is very disappointing. The Hunter, for the 2nd patch running, is a DPS class without a home in group pushing. While the innovation of people like Wudijo have created an alternative solution by remolding the hunter into a support class, that is not really what I had in mind, and to be honest, it is hard to see this as a genuinely optimal choice when Monk/WD and Barb all offer such compelling support options (as a non wiz player I've created both a WD and Monk support for GR pushing and they both perform very well in that role).
At this stage, for yet another patch cycle (I'm on console) my hunter is relegated to solo pushing and farming. For GR pushing, the meta is locked in stone, and is essentially a lag fest dominated by a screen full of twisters and DOT, with supports spamming buff and debuff skills, while spawning bucket loads of health globes for the insatiable arcane needs of the dps wizard(s).
To be fair, my level of disappointment reflects my love of the game, and my desire that Blizzard would actually get it right, or at least get closer this time round.
no, f&r is two seperate multipliers of 50% each, making it slightly better than a single 100% multiplier (eg Endless Walk set).
So to answer the OP, Manald Heal/SoJ is not better for reasons discussed in many previous threads, however, Endless Walk set with SoJ (and Convention in cube) is a viable alternative.
with this set up you lose:
6% crit chance on ring
1*100% multi vs 2*50% multi
5th Hellfire passive
And gain:
+Elite Damage (30%)
10 Disc +200% added to existing Damage buff
+Elemental Damage on ring
Defensive buff when moving, which will however lower the 100% damage multi.
My own testing (with Unhallowed) has shown F&R to still be slightly better, but this is likely to also be due to my playstyle, and top end F&R rings and Hellfire amy. However if I ever rolled a Travellers pledge with +Fire/Crit/Crit I suspect that would at least make both setups almost identical in terms of their potential, and the extra Elite Damage, depending on the Grift, could make it better in some situations.
ps. the +10 Disc does not seem to make as much difference as you might think. It is an extra 200% damage, but that is added to an already very large damage buff so it is very much a case of diminishing returns.
If you have a level 25 or higher Bane of the Powerful, I'd run that instead of Gogok. Are you using it to get extra cooldown? Diamond in Helmet and +8% on two items of gear (eg shoulders and gloves) will get you 100% uptime.
You can abandon Dawn if you have max cdr on each and every possible slot. Maybe even swap one of the gems to Gogok. Then you will have room for Rucksack+DML+YR Bow. But I doubt it's worth over a pure CA build.
It could be something worth trying once I've got most of the standard builds all done
As I play on Console, I'll be frank about the fact it is generally much easier to get top end gear, with endless mats at our disposal..
ps. With Unhallowed, a friend suggested a great build variation which I'm gearing up for now, and which you may want to try:
Endless Walk, Stone of Jordan (with Fire or Cold for solo or group respectively), +Elite Damage, Socket and +10 Discipline, then roll off mainstat for +Crit Damage, and cube convention. I think this is quite likely going to be stronger than focus restraint, that +10 Disc is 200% more Multishot damage.
ps. and finally, a way to get some solid elite damage
Quivers are categorized under weapon slot in cube.
Why try to attach MS to Marauder while there's already a strong set maxing out the skill? Current NS rank1 is UE/MS build btw..
you are right, bummer. However if it had been possible to combine both quivers without loosing 100% vengeance it would have been well worth it in my opinion! Also, I've run both the cluster arrow and multishot versions of M6 and frankly, I prefer multishot, although at the moment I have an almost perfect yangs recurve so until I get a Manticore of similar quality I can't make a fair comparison.
ps. I've been very impressed with U.E. Personally, I'm finding it to be stronger than M6, but again, I have almost perfect U.E. gear across the board so it is probably not a fair comparison.
Wear Compass Rose/Travelers Pledge. Wear either RoRG or Convention (whichever is best) and cube the other. Cube Dawn and Deadmans and wear Visage of Gunes.
If hitting under 60% twice applies to sentries shooting multishot as well, this could be very powerful
ps. obviously you are using Yangs Recurve as your weapon and rucksack as your quiver..
If the patch does not drop tomorrow then I am convinced it is because the dev team is under serious pressure as they try to resolve some outstanding bugs and/or issues.
Which is not that surprising, this patch is the biggest they have done and I'm led to believe there were a number of outstanding problems still evident on the final version of the PTR. As a developer myself, I know how horrible it can be when management set a timeframe for production delivery and you find yourself burning huge amounts of time just trying to track down fix and test a nasty bug. Cleaning up problems can be a massive time sync and the weeks and days leading up to launch can take years off your life because of intense stress.
Guess I'm just saying, we should try to cut them a bit of a break if for some reason it slips a little. I do suspect that the season will start on time, and that if worse comes to worse, they will go live with known bugs (assuming they don't view them as show stoppers).
ps. I am kind of curious as to what development methodology they adopt. These days, "Agile" is taking the world by storm, but it can lead to a very volatile work environment. One of the things about Agile though, is that features can be dropped and de-scoped, normally on a weekly basis. That does not fit very well with a product where all the new features have already been so well publicized.
Blizzard have announced that season 4 ends 30th dec and season 5 starts 15th Jan. Somewhere in the middle of that we get the new patch. Anyone care to speculate when?
The +XP stats and bonuses will be almost pointless in 2.4. The level of XP you will get from them will in no way compete with using gear with better stats that allows you to push a higher GRIFT -which will yield comparatively more XP than pushing a lower GRIFT with the XP gear. The only possible exception is if your best gear happens to already have +XP on it, which probably means that you should be on the lookout for an eventual upgrade that makes better use of that secondary stat.
As already stated by others, support builds will probably still be a thing, but not to provide +XP, but rather to provide CC; buffs and debuffs, ultimately resulting in faster and/or higher GRIFT runs. Efficient XP farming is a ratio of how much you earn vs how long it takes you to earn it. With XP bonuses being nerfed into the ground, Blizzard has publicly stated the rationale for the XP nerf is to end the current meta of endless XP buffed grinding, as it makes players feel they are forced to do it if they want to compete on paragon level progress.
-Vengeance skill now multiplies your total damage by 40%
-Vengeance will be also added to skills buffed by your UE 6pc bonus with new patch (it will gain +20% increased damage per disc you have along with MS and generators).
-With the new Dawn crossbow (in cube) Vengeance cooldown is reduced by 60%
-With the new Visage of Gunes helm (in cube again), vengeance gains the effect of Dark Heart rune which reduces damage taken by 50% and in that case best rune option is Seethe which gives +10 hatred per second
-It is possible to have 100% uptime for vengeance skill with estimately 36% cdr from gear.
-this means 40% damage increase, 50% damage reduction and +10 hatred per second permanently a.k.a. "perma vengeance"
-In light of this knowledge 10%cdr on weapon would definitely beat the gain from that +2 disc
This is very good news as I have a Yangs with very high damage range and a natural 10% cooldown which has just sat in my chest unused. and I tend to agree. About the helm, would you cube or wear it?
1
That was a nice analysis TastySoup. One of the things I like about UE is it is a very agile build. Maybe it plays a little different on PC than Console (where I play D3) but I think UE is about constantly re-positioning yourself in relation to mobs. F+R does not penalize you for this but Endless Walk does. In group play with a support providing better grouping and crowd control the picture is not so clear, but lets be honest, in this patch there is only 1 build for serious DPS pushing and the DH is not it, so the primary focus of the DH is solo pushing, which blows, but that is just how Blizzard rolls.
1
I've tested both combinations quite extensively and Focus and Restraint seems stronger. If, by chance you roll a godlike Traveler's Pledge (%Fire Crit/Cit Socket) and a great compass rose, it might be as good, or in some situations, slightly better.
0
Botting no doubt makes it worse, but I agree with the OP. Being able to speed run very high Grifts is key to fast Paragon progress since the XP you earn appears to scale up so significantly as you run higher and higher levels.
The meta this season is even more of a clusterf!ck than last season. I would love to hear Blizzard make an official comment on the massive disparity in dps potential between the Twister Wiz and everything else. My bet is we won't hear a peep from them. They tend to ignore their glaring failures as if they don't actually exist.
1
To clarify the issue, the patch notes on the PS4 (you can view them by selecting the options button and displaying the notes) clearly says gems are capped at 100, so it is not actually a bug. Rather, it is a very strange (and I think poor) design choice.
To further clarify, all previously boosted gems were "truncated down" to Level 150. In other words, legit gems can only be leveled to 100, but previously boosted gems all sit at 150.
I can only speculate, but if there was a bug at all, it is probably more likely related to the fact that the boosted gems got nerfed to 150 rather than 100, but that seems unlikely as well.
Anyway, as said I think it was a terrible choice given legit groups are pushing past 100. I've been part of a "non modded" group that has beaten 102 and has been chasing 103 for a couple of weeks now. Honestly, my best guess is that when the patch went live, Blizzard probably didn't think people were going to be able to push past 100, which I think demonstrates a lack of a deep understanding of their own game, or more specifically the potential of some of the builds they have defined.
0
One of the biggest weaknesses I perceive in this game is the very obvious variance between set build strengths. This happens because all sets, by their very design, have finite potential. while tiny amounts of increased power is possible (via paragons) the relative strength variance between the sets remains.
Invariably specific sets prove themselves to be the flavor of the current patch, and group pushing revolves around those sets, with other build choices made to enhance and support the "chosen one". For 2 patches in a row now my favorite class has been left without a legitimate home in group pushing, and I feel Blizzard has failed the gamers (ie their customers) very badly in this regard.
What I would like to see is instead (or more likely in addition) to paragons, is an ability to level the inherent stats related to sets. eg for Unhallowed essence I'd love to be able to level the increased damage% per point of discipline, for example. Allowing you to scale set damage implies that if I invest time in a set because I enjoy it, then the strength of that set can grow and it can arguably form the part of a viable pushing group. I call this being allowed to play my way, something I've rarely been able to do with this game unless I got lucky within a specific patch cycle.
The basic idea no doubt needs some refinement, but as things currently stand, I think D3 is a great game that could have been so much better than it currently is. All the amazing additional content and features have not addressed its biggest and most obvious flaw, and as a genuine fan of the game that is very disappointing.
ps. and yeah, that the meta for group pushing in an absolute lagfest I have to agree with the previous poster who made reference to it. It really is not fun to be rubber-banding all over the show and experiencing game-time as if it was in some sort of interdimensional time-warp
0
Prior to 2.4 there was a lot of hype (much of it coming from Blizzard) about how this patch represented the biggest set rebalancing they had ever attempted.. I remained very skeptical that the vision of a much greater variety of viable groups when pushing GR's would eventuate, primarily because I felt the issue of balancing was (and is) inherent in the fundamental design of the game mechanics.
Nevertheless, I was hopeful that, within the limitations of the existing design, both classes and sets would come a lot closer together, meaning that even though I expected one or two configurations would prove superior to all others, the gap would be small enough that group variety (if put together in a complimentary fashion) would be an ideal whose time had finally come.
My initial impressions (as a DH player) was quite favorable. I found the set buffs to be quite strong, both in terms of damage potential and damage mitigation. It also appeared to me that most of the sets were now, to a greater or lesser extent, a lot closer together in terms of their overall potential.
It sure did not take long though for the Wizard twister build to demonstrate dps potential that was vastly higher than anything else in the game. On the one hand I was happy for my friends who favour this class, but on the other I was genuinely baffled that Blizzard somehow saw fit, yet again (keeping in mind they nerfed the hell out of static charge) to allow one build to be head and shoulders above any other.
I personally can't believe Blizzard actually intended this, in the same way i felt they never intended static charge to be so much stronger than anything else. With that in mind, I can't help but come to the conclusion that they lack the ability to properly understand the capabilities of their own builds.
While I remain genuinely grateful at how Bliz have continued to support; expand and enhance this game their continued apparent lack of ability to prevent 1 or 2 specific builds being so much stronger than everything else is very disappointing. The Hunter, for the 2nd patch running, is a DPS class without a home in group pushing. While the innovation of people like Wudijo have created an alternative solution by remolding the hunter into a support class, that is not really what I had in mind, and to be honest, it is hard to see this as a genuinely optimal choice when Monk/WD and Barb all offer such compelling support options (as a non wiz player I've created both a WD and Monk support for GR pushing and they both perform very well in that role).
At this stage, for yet another patch cycle (I'm on console) my hunter is relegated to solo pushing and farming. For GR pushing, the meta is locked in stone, and is essentially a lag fest dominated by a screen full of twisters and DOT, with supports spamming buff and debuff skills, while spawning bucket loads of health globes for the insatiable arcane needs of the dps wizard(s).
To be fair, my level of disappointment reflects my love of the game, and my desire that Blizzard would actually get it right, or at least get closer this time round.
0
no, f&r is two seperate multipliers of 50% each, making it slightly better than a single 100% multiplier (eg Endless Walk set).
So to answer the OP, Manald Heal/SoJ is not better for reasons discussed in many previous threads, however, Endless Walk set with SoJ (and Convention in cube) is a viable alternative.
with this set up you lose:
6% crit chance on ring
1*100% multi vs 2*50% multi
5th Hellfire passive
And gain:
+Elite Damage (30%)
10 Disc +200% added to existing Damage buff
+Elemental Damage on ring
Defensive buff when moving, which will however lower the 100% damage multi.
My own testing (with Unhallowed) has shown F&R to still be slightly better, but this is likely to also be due to my playstyle, and top end F&R rings and Hellfire amy. However if I ever rolled a Travellers pledge with +Fire/Crit/Crit I suspect that would at least make both setups almost identical in terms of their potential, and the extra Elite Damage, depending on the Grift, could make it better in some situations.
ps. the +10 Disc does not seem to make as much difference as you might think. It is an extra 200% damage, but that is added to an already very large damage buff so it is very much a case of diminishing returns.
0
If you have a level 25 or higher Bane of the Powerful, I'd run that instead of Gogok. Are you using it to get extra cooldown? Diamond in Helmet and +8% on two items of gear (eg shoulders and gloves) will get you 100% uptime.
0
It could be something worth trying once I've got most of the standard builds all done
As I play on Console, I'll be frank about the fact it is generally much easier to get top end gear, with endless mats at our disposal..
ps. With Unhallowed, a friend suggested a great build variation which I'm gearing up for now, and which you may want to try:
Endless Walk, Stone of Jordan (with Fire or Cold for solo or group respectively), +Elite Damage, Socket and +10 Discipline, then roll off mainstat for +Crit Damage, and cube convention. I think this is quite likely going to be stronger than focus restraint, that +10 Disc is 200% more Multishot damage.
ps. and finally, a way to get some solid elite damage
0
ps. I've been very impressed with U.E. Personally, I'm finding it to be stronger than M6, but again, I have almost perfect U.E. gear across the board so it is probably not a fair comparison.
0
what about this:
Wear Compass Rose/Travelers Pledge. Wear either RoRG or Convention (whichever is best) and cube the other. Cube Dawn and Deadmans and wear Visage of Gunes.
If hitting under 60% twice applies to sentries shooting multishot as well, this could be very powerful
ps. obviously you are using Yangs Recurve as your weapon and rucksack as your quiver..
0
If the patch does not drop tomorrow then I am convinced it is because the dev team is under serious pressure as they try to resolve some outstanding bugs and/or issues.
Which is not that surprising, this patch is the biggest they have done and I'm led to believe there were a number of outstanding problems still evident on the final version of the PTR. As a developer myself, I know how horrible it can be when management set a timeframe for production delivery and you find yourself burning huge amounts of time just trying to track down fix and test a nasty bug. Cleaning up problems can be a massive time sync and the weeks and days leading up to launch can take years off your life because of intense stress.
Guess I'm just saying, we should try to cut them a bit of a break if for some reason it slips a little. I do suspect that the season will start on time, and that if worse comes to worse, they will go live with known bugs (assuming they don't view them as show stoppers).
ps. I am kind of curious as to what development methodology they adopt. These days, "Agile" is taking the world by storm, but it can lead to a very volatile work environment. One of the things about Agile though, is that features can be dropped and de-scoped, normally on a weekly basis. That does not fit very well with a product where all the new features have already been so well publicized.
0
Blizzard have announced that season 4 ends 30th dec and season 5 starts 15th Jan. Somewhere in the middle of that we get the new patch. Anyone care to speculate when?
0
The +XP stats and bonuses will be almost pointless in 2.4. The level of XP you will get from them will in no way compete with using gear with better stats that allows you to push a higher GRIFT -which will yield comparatively more XP than pushing a lower GRIFT with the XP gear. The only possible exception is if your best gear happens to already have +XP on it, which probably means that you should be on the lookout for an eventual upgrade that makes better use of that secondary stat.
As already stated by others, support builds will probably still be a thing, but not to provide +XP, but rather to provide CC; buffs and debuffs, ultimately resulting in faster and/or higher GRIFT runs. Efficient XP farming is a ratio of how much you earn vs how long it takes you to earn it. With XP bonuses being nerfed into the ground, Blizzard has publicly stated the rationale for the XP nerf is to end the current meta of endless XP buffed grinding, as it makes players feel they are forced to do it if they want to compete on paragon level progress.
0
This is very good news as I have a Yangs with very high damage range and a natural 10% cooldown which has just sat in my chest unused. and I tend to agree. About the helm, would you cube or wear it?