What is the best way to apply conflagration for your party?
Hydra (unruned or Mammoth) will continually apply conflagration for 15 seconds at a cost of just 15 mana.
Other options:
Spam fire-bolts (which ties up your actions)
Drop meteors (60 AP for a maximum of 8 seconds of application)
Hydra is the optimal tool for the application of the conflagration debuff.
You just listed meteor and then took it away for without reason. Its obviously the best for debuffing a large group with conflag.
I have to agree with Theungry; this is a use I had thought of some time back for Hydra. Meteor is a strong, but inferior choice overall (for the *specific* purpose of Conflagging stuff) because if you take Meteor, that basically ties up your AP expenditure; you can't really have Meteor in a build "just for utility," whereas, given the nature of Hydra, I think you can get away with that. It is harder to aim (a debatable point, I suppose), and places the debuff for less overall duration and at higher cost than Hydra (or at least than Mammoth Hydra.) Meteor only really wins at getting the debuff on more things in less time, buy Hydra offers the debuff while still allowing substantial build versatility.
You can easily get the cost down, and/or supplement your max AP such that a couple meteors isn't a huge burden.
Since the tooltip explicitly refers to the Mammoth Hydra's single head, I suspect its rate of fire will be roughly 1/3 that of the other Hydras, which probably means something like APS/3. Still spectacular.
As far as I am aware the 3 heads fire at the same speed you do.
If not, then I would assume they fire once per second.
So I would assume the hydra would fire at least once per second, or at your cast speed.
1+ APS
Useless in Normal, not terrible in Nightmare, good after that. /thread
Normal monsters are too easy to kill for this spell. Everything's dead and you're out of the room before it has a chance to attack anything. In Hell and Inferno fights will take longer, making the AOE versions of this spell far better. The problem is it just seems too restrictive to be useful in a build that will need multiple defensive spells in the harder difficulties. Your offensive skills will need to fill a niche but still be versatile. You will probably only be able to take 3 offensive spells. You'll probably want a precision high damage attack, something good for AOEing, and something with some utility.
Cast Mammoth Hydra behind you, Slow Time in front of you. Hydra puts out 10% extra damage (Conflagration), then let loose with the Disintegrate that slows by 30% more.
Hydra's problem is it's so restrictive in placement. Once it's down, you have to always fight near it or it's wasted. Completely useless during tactical retreats... it's just not very versatile of a spell.
Personally, I never even consider normal and nightmare when it comes to skills in game.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
Personally, I never even consider normal and nightmare when it comes to skills in game.
Considering you receive the spell originally in Normal, I can see many people getting the spell, trying it out, and deeming it useless and never to be used again. Quite the contrary, it has some great uses at high levels that most people won't realize.
What you have to decide for yourself is if you've already taken a primary single target spell and an AOE spell for your main damage, and you've thus allotted one final offensive utility skill slot, is Hydra worth taking over something that is more reliable i.e. Wave of Force? Personally I want to take Frost Nova and Wave of Force in every build, Hydra not so much.
A lot of this has to do with the mechanics of the Hydras themselves... and that's all a wait and see. Gotta see how each rune variant acts and how good they are at actually hitting/dealing damage.
A cool extra-dps turret shaped into a dragon that I can rune to a specific element that no longer requires me to spend precious skill points on? Do want. Maybe not on all of the builds I've planned but still high priority. Though I doubt that I would stick to those builds after actually experiencing the skills and difficulty.
I think the best part about Hydra is that it isn't a fire-and-forget extra dps like a dot or summon. You have to place it tactically and have to mind your kiting to avoid dragging mobs out of it's[hyrda] line of fire. Makes it more interesting to use.
I can see many people getting the spell, trying it out, and deeming it useless and never to be used again.
don't think many people of the group who really are that ignorant would care about going beyond normal anyway. just see the whole story and that's it. [not that I think that's a bad thing BTW]
Personally, I never even consider normal and nightmare when it comes to skills in game.
Considering you receive the spell originally in Normal, I can see many people getting the spell, trying it out, and deeming it useless and never to be used again. Quite the contrary, it has some great uses at high levels that most people won't realize.
What you have to decide for yourself is if you've already taken a primary single target spell and an AOE spell for your main damage, and you've thus allotted one final offensive utility skill slot, is Hydra worth taking over something that is more reliable i.e. Wave of Force? Personally I want to take Frost Nova and Wave of Force in every build, Hydra not so much.
Because you think you will be facing swarms and swarms all the time and AoE is all that matters in D3. Wave of Force is useless against bosses and other high hp monsters.
Personally, I never even consider normal and nightmare when it comes to skills in game.
Considering you receive the spell originally in Normal, I can see many people getting the spell, trying it out, and deeming it useless and never to be used again. Quite the contrary, it has some great uses at high levels that most people won't realize.
What you have to decide for yourself is if you've already taken a primary single target spell and an AOE spell for your main damage, and you've thus allotted one final offensive utility skill slot, is Hydra worth taking over something that is more reliable i.e. Wave of Force? Personally I want to take Frost Nova and Wave of Force in every build, Hydra not so much.
Because you think you will be facing swarms and swarms all the time and AoE is all that matters in D3. Wave of Force is useless against bosses and other high hp monsters.
It won't knock bosses back, but it will knock back anything else. So its a good CC, that does a lot of dmg in a HUGE area, and is cheap to boot. The wizard imo will best be used as a CC caster that tries to keep the mobs at distance and stunned as much as possible.
Also if the boss has adds, such as the SK, then it works great for that too.
Hydra does do some sick damage on single target, but it feels hard to merit it a spot just for boss fights.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
I haven't completely read through all 3 pages, so it's possible somebody already brought this up, but...
I actually think hydra can be a very useful spell if it's used in a support role rather than as a main attack spell. I've been playing around with a build lately where hydra with the arcane hydra rune is used as my third attack and I take temporal flux as one of my passives. That way I can throw down a hydra that does AOE damage plus slow and just let it work it's magic while I use my two main attack spells, whatever they happen to be.
EDIT: I should also add that I have been considering trying such a build where I actually take magic missile as one of my primary attacks, even though my initial feeling is that it is underpowered. If I take the charged blast rune it is up to 143% damage, and with the temporal flux passive it also gives me slow. It's probably one of the first builds I'll try out just to see if it has any potential
EDIT2: Here's what I've been playing with. I have no idea if it is viable, but that's why I'm so excited for this game. So many things to try and discard as crap builds before finding things that work!
Just watched that video were Jay Wilsom says whats important to beat Inferno. Single target damage was his first answer. Not that it's more important then multitarget and defensive abilities, but it seens D3 future players seens to overlook that aspect more oftenly.
If bosses, champion packs and rares are the hardest challenge in the game, single target damage is definetly something you need to have checked.
Personally, I never even consider normal and nightmare when it comes to skills in game.
Considering you receive the spell originally in Normal, I can see many people getting the spell, trying it out, and deeming it useless and never to be used again. Quite the contrary, it has some great uses at high levels that most people won't realize.
What you have to decide for yourself is if you've already taken a primary single target spell and an AOE spell for your main damage, and you've thus allotted one final offensive utility skill slot, is Hydra worth taking over something that is more reliable i.e. Wave of Force? Personally I want to take Frost Nova and Wave of Force in every build, Hydra not so much.
Because you think you will be facing swarms and swarms all the time and AoE is all that matters in D3. Wave of Force is useless against bosses and other high hp monsters.
It won't knock bosses back, but it will knock back anything else. So its a good CC, that does a lot of dmg in a HUGE area, and is cheap to boot. The wizard imo will best be used as a CC caster that tries to keep the mobs at distance and stunned as much as possible.
Also if the boss has adds, such as the SK, then it works great for that too.
Hydra does do some sick damage on single target, but it feels hard to merit it a spot just for boss fights.
Well that depends on what skills you already picked. As I see it if your're not using Ray of Frost, Arcane Turrentand and Desintegrate, i think Hydra will be a must have in order to check single target damage.
Because you think you will be facing swarms and swarms all the time and AoE is all that matters in D3. Wave of Force is useless against bosses and other high hp monsters.
Trolling or something? Each of my previous posts in this thread remarked having a primary AOE and primary high damage single target spell would be a good idea. Hydra fills the offensive utility skill slot. Wave of Force isn't the ONLY thing you can use in that spot, I'm just saying there are far more reliable spells to put there than Hydra, which you might get zero out of based on any number of factors, including the positioning of where you place it, its own attack missing as monsters move around, your moving away from the area you place the Hydra, or even just killing everything before the Hydra has time to do much. Unless you're casting Frost Nova on an empty screen it's pretty hard to get it to do nothing, same for Wave of Force. Hydra's own skill video shows it doing basically nothing.
As I said already, it's going to come down to the Hydra's AI and how big the AOE is for each rune. I will play with the spell, but I expect it to suck. I will probably play with a Mammoth Hydra conflag build some, but not when I'm min-maxing in Inferno... more like when I'm romping through Hell for the 4th or 5th time for some more gear.
P.S. Most of the game is against swarms and swarms of monsters... but you want a balanced build to take advantage of the Nephalem buff.
What you have to decide for yourself is if you've already taken a primary single target spell and an AOE spell for your main damage, and you've thus allotted one final offensive utility skill slot, is Hydra worth taking over something that is more reliable i.e. Wave of Force? Personally I want to take Frost Nova and Wave of Force in every build, Hydra not so much.
A lot of this has to do with the mechanics of the Hydras themselves... and that's all a wait and see. Gotta see how each rune variant acts and how good they are at actually hitting/dealing damage.
...As I said already, it's going to come down to the Hydra's AI and how big the AOE is for each rune.
I don't think there's much of a hard-and-fast rule about exactly how many of which type of spell you can fit into a build; I think it will vary from build to build. Personally, though, I consider Frost Nova and Wave of Force much more defensive than offensive abilities (though not the best defensive abilities.) For me, something with a lower range, esp a PBAoE, and on a CD, will be less-reliable, though I wouldn't see Hydra as defensive at all in the first place.
I'm assuming that the targeting AI for Hydra will be distinct for Mammoth Hydra, and probably distinct for Frost Hydra, and the same for the 3 (4) projectile forms. In any of the AoE forms, I suspect it will be a much-better AoE damage source than single-target, as it may miss single targets a fair amount (unless in Lightning Hydra form), but it should have no problem hitting packs, incurring the arcane, poison, frost, or firewall AoEs.
I don't expect to run Wave of Force unless I'm building a melee or tanking Wizard (which I might try at some point.)
was it ever even optimal in d2? most would agree when i say NO.
I disagree. My Third highest damage build was a Hydra sorc.(top was a Zon who could 2shot uber diablo, OP ability is OP!, Point-blank lightning sorc does stupid damage for the exact same reason as zon). Prep your hydras, Don't let them stop coming. Between every hydra cast weave a fireball in, watch ANYTHING not fire immune just melt to your ridiculous amount of damage. First person I killed the first 3 ubers with(Lillith, Duriel, Diablo) - Duriel didn't even make it on my screen before he died. Lillith took only a second.
As for the topic - Like someone said, minimum - hydra does 1500%ish damage. This could become incredibly high (From what I've seen from affixes, you can get up to at least 50% attack speed increase) if they allow hydra to be effected by attack speed. Even if not, This is one of the highest damage abilities in 1 cast. Familiar, and DH's Turret could be higher.
Now, is it WORTH your slot? Here's the question. If the mob isn't going to last the entire time, you lose a lot(as with all dot abilities) of damage. This is up to you, there are a lot of choices in every build. This ones for you to decide.
I'm Level 50 and Frost Hydra is one of my best skills. It does a lot of damage and it slows. Really nice.
I've found slowing to be really good at later difficulties, when it starts to get harder!
Also, on some of the harder bosses you might use different skills than for regular mobs.. (hydra is good on bosses)
Though that might change a bit when we get the nephalem buff..
And the fact that you can fire and forget a hydra for low cost, while you use your regular skills, make it quite a nice DPS increase.
Put it inside rooms and run out if stuff is hard:)
Same for blizzard actually which I think is a really awesome skill.
That's certainly good news. And it completely disproves all the naysayers who looked purely at numbers and made summary decisions that were completely off base.
I'm only lvl 14 now but I can't wait till I get Hydra. I want it so bad.
My hydra has been ruined for arcane and I'm not level 37, it can almost solo small groups of nightmare mobs at the end of act 1. I would guess that it does quite a bit of damage to bosses too. Just killed the butcher and that hydra was doing work while i was busy running from chains and fire. The only time i replace is it on belial or azmodan or any bosses that don't move a lot, then i replace it with meteor.
Edit: with magic weapon ruined for 15% damage, I'm sitting at ~1000 DPS, arcane hydra hits for around the 300s and crits between 600-700. So it can take out a little group of 2000-2500 hp act1 nm mobs fairly easily.
Is there a video of the mammoth hydra in action?
As far as I am aware the 3 heads fire at the same speed you do.
If not, then I would assume they fire once per second.
So I would assume the hydra would fire at least once per second, or at your cast speed.
1+ APS
Personally, I never even consider normal and nightmare when it comes to skills in game.
Epicurus
Teleport+Reversal in
Slow Time+Time Warp
Hydra+Frost Hydra
Explosive Blast+Time Bomb
Teleport Out
The Hydra can finish off the whatever doesn't die, and the mob is slowed.
It has possibilites.
Considering you receive the spell originally in Normal, I can see many people getting the spell, trying it out, and deeming it useless and never to be used again. Quite the contrary, it has some great uses at high levels that most people won't realize.
What you have to decide for yourself is if you've already taken a primary single target spell and an AOE spell for your main damage, and you've thus allotted one final offensive utility skill slot, is Hydra worth taking over something that is more reliable i.e. Wave of Force? Personally I want to take Frost Nova and Wave of Force in every build, Hydra not so much.
A lot of this has to do with the mechanics of the Hydras themselves... and that's all a wait and see. Gotta see how each rune variant acts and how good they are at actually hitting/dealing damage.
I think the best part about Hydra is that it isn't a fire-and-forget extra dps like a dot or summon. You have to place it tactically and have to mind your kiting to avoid dragging mobs out of it's[hyrda] line of fire. Makes it more interesting to use.
don't think many people of the group who really are that ignorant would care about going beyond normal anyway. just see the whole story and that's it. [not that I think that's a bad thing BTW]
Because you think you will be facing swarms and swarms all the time and AoE is all that matters in D3. Wave of Force is useless against bosses and other high hp monsters.
Also if the boss has adds, such as the SK, then it works great for that too.
Hydra does do some sick damage on single target, but it feels hard to merit it a spot just for boss fights.
Epicurus
I actually think hydra can be a very useful spell if it's used in a support role rather than as a main attack spell. I've been playing around with a build lately where hydra with the arcane hydra rune is used as my third attack and I take temporal flux as one of my passives. That way I can throw down a hydra that does AOE damage plus slow and just let it work it's magic while I use my two main attack spells, whatever they happen to be.
EDIT: I should also add that I have been considering trying such a build where I actually take magic missile as one of my primary attacks, even though my initial feeling is that it is underpowered. If I take the charged blast rune it is up to 143% damage, and with the temporal flux passive it also gives me slow. It's probably one of the first builds I'll try out just to see if it has any potential
EDIT2: Here's what I've been playing with. I have no idea if it is viable, but that's why I'm so excited for this game. So many things to try and discard as crap builds before finding things that work!
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#aZRmOQ!aZU!aYaaaY
Everyone will see how important that is eventually.
If bosses, champion packs and rares are the hardest challenge in the game, single target damage is definetly something you need to have checked.
As
Well that depends on what skills you already picked. As I see it if your're not using Ray of Frost, Arcane Turrentand and Desintegrate, i think Hydra will be a must have in order to check single target damage.
That and the math alone says it's a worthwhile skill based off estimated damage over 15 seconds for it's cheap ass ap cost.
Go go hydra.
Trolling or something? Each of my previous posts in this thread remarked having a primary AOE and primary high damage single target spell would be a good idea. Hydra fills the offensive utility skill slot. Wave of Force isn't the ONLY thing you can use in that spot, I'm just saying there are far more reliable spells to put there than Hydra, which you might get zero out of based on any number of factors, including the positioning of where you place it, its own attack missing as monsters move around, your moving away from the area you place the Hydra, or even just killing everything before the Hydra has time to do much. Unless you're casting Frost Nova on an empty screen it's pretty hard to get it to do nothing, same for Wave of Force. Hydra's own skill video shows it doing basically nothing.
As I said already, it's going to come down to the Hydra's AI and how big the AOE is for each rune. I will play with the spell, but I expect it to suck. I will probably play with a Mammoth Hydra conflag build some, but not when I'm min-maxing in Inferno... more like when I'm romping through Hell for the 4th or 5th time for some more gear.
P.S. Most of the game is against swarms and swarms of monsters... but you want a balanced build to take advantage of the Nephalem buff.
I don't think there's much of a hard-and-fast rule about exactly how many of which type of spell you can fit into a build; I think it will vary from build to build. Personally, though, I consider Frost Nova and Wave of Force much more defensive than offensive abilities (though not the best defensive abilities.) For me, something with a lower range, esp a PBAoE, and on a CD, will be less-reliable, though I wouldn't see Hydra as defensive at all in the first place.
I'm assuming that the targeting AI for Hydra will be distinct for Mammoth Hydra, and probably distinct for Frost Hydra, and the same for the 3 (4) projectile forms. In any of the AoE forms, I suspect it will be a much-better AoE damage source than single-target, as it may miss single targets a fair amount (unless in Lightning Hydra form), but it should have no problem hitting packs, incurring the arcane, poison, frost, or firewall AoEs.
I don't expect to run Wave of Force unless I'm building a melee or tanking Wizard (which I might try at some point.)
I disagree. My Third highest damage build was a Hydra sorc.(top was a Zon who could 2shot uber diablo, OP ability is OP!, Point-blank lightning sorc does stupid damage for the exact same reason as zon). Prep your hydras, Don't let them stop coming. Between every hydra cast weave a fireball in, watch ANYTHING not fire immune just melt to your ridiculous amount of damage. First person I killed the first 3 ubers with(Lillith, Duriel, Diablo) - Duriel didn't even make it on my screen before he died. Lillith took only a second.
As for the topic - Like someone said, minimum - hydra does 1500%ish damage. This could become incredibly high (From what I've seen from affixes, you can get up to at least 50% attack speed increase) if they allow hydra to be effected by attack speed. Even if not, This is one of the highest damage abilities in 1 cast. Familiar, and DH's Turret could be higher.
Now, is it WORTH your slot? Here's the question. If the mob isn't going to last the entire time, you lose a lot(as with all dot abilities) of damage. This is up to you, there are a lot of choices in every build. This ones for you to decide.
While you run around trying to avoid crap, it will do some dps for you.
I've found slowing to be really good at later difficulties, when it starts to get harder!
Also, on some of the harder bosses you might use different skills than for regular mobs.. (hydra is good on bosses)
Though that might change a bit when we get the nephalem buff..
And the fact that you can fire and forget a hydra for low cost, while you use your regular skills, make it quite a nice DPS increase.
Put it inside rooms and run out if stuff is hard:)
Same for blizzard actually which I think is a really awesome skill.
I'm only lvl 14 now but I can't wait till I get Hydra. I want it so bad.
Edit: with magic weapon ruined for 15% damage, I'm sitting at ~1000 DPS, arcane hydra hits for around the 300s and crits between 600-700. So it can take out a little group of 2000-2500 hp act1 nm mobs fairly easily.