The Punishment Change might be good after all

by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Yesterday, we got hit by pretty big news about DH’s

Personally, punishment is a big deal for me. Thus, I’m currently torn about the subject.

I absolutely hated it when I first read it. But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

The big thing is that the current form of Punishment made stacking Resource Cost Reduction(RCR) an intuitive choice for some builds, it opened a lot of possiblities to different set-ups that completely shook the “must stack attack speed” mentality. The problem was that these builds became not only an option, but mandatory if you wanted to play at the highest level. The only option you had was completing your Marauders Set to change your play style.

With the proposed changes, Cooldown Reduction (CDR) now becomes more attractive as a stat. But unlike the Monk or Crusader, I don’t feel like DH’s have a lot of options that make good use of CDR. Further changes might be needed to ensure build diversity.

Now a build that stacks CDR and uses Vengeance, Companion, Preparation – Punishment, Smokescreen, Sentries/Rain of Vengance/Fan of Knives – Pinpoint Accuracy and a mid-to-high cost spender might end up being super interesting to play with. But if you look around, there aren’t many more options for such a setup to build around. If you want to go for CDR you will likely have just a single build option.

Speaking about CDs, Does the DH have a passive that isn’t seeing much use? maybe we could have one that reduces the CD on some specific abilities (Companion, Vengeance, Rain of Vengance, Preparation) every time we spend X hatred or maybe everytime kill a monster.

Discipline and its use

Now, the other important thing is that I don’t think Discipline should be shoe-horned into just utiltity and survability.

Other classes have, albeit limited, ways of spending their primary resource for extra utility or survability. Take a look at Mantra of Healing, Mantra of Evasion, or Sprint; they all bring you extra defenses or mobility. A Monk’s Cyclone Strike might deal damage but it’s amount is way too low compared to its cost, if you are using CS it is mainly for its utility. The Wizard’s Blizzard is similar to CS, although its damage might be a bit better. Armors and Familiars on the Wizard also cost primary resource, even if you only cast them every 10 minutes.

I don’t think its problematic for Demon Hunters to have options that allow them to turn their discipline into damage, we already have that in the form of the Choking Gas and Trail of Cinders runes. Caltrops is also a good example with Jagged Spikes and Bait the Trap.

Maybe Preparation – Punishment wasn’t the best way, but I really hope that you Blizzard looks at what they have and make sure that RCR builds don’t become obsolete.

The Three Types of DH

We all know that Crit Chance and Damage are king of the hill. But for the remaining slot on your itemization, there are three contenders:

Attack Speed, Cooldown Reduction, and Resource Cost Reduction.

Those are the three DPS stats that will compete to be alongside Dex, Crit, and your +element%/+skill%. The beauty about these new stats is that they are enablers for build diversity.

Attack Speed, CDR, and RCR aren’t just things you can add to every build for a fixed % DPS increase, all three of them are tremendously situational and they depend heavily on the kind of build that you are sporting.

The inclusion of CDR and RCR did a lot for the game, but there’s still work to be done. The classes and their skill sets clearly weren’t designed with these new mechanics in mind. A little revamp of our runes and skills would go a long way towards making a lot of different builds possible.

Attack Speed Based: Uses generators and low cost spenders, loves life on hit, adores damage procs like Andariel’s Visage and the Wizardspike, also makes good use of Marked for Death – Mortal Enemy. It is currently missing skills that buff the DH passively and are not tied to a CD. What about redesigning Caltrops – Jagged Spikes? Make them so that every time you fire an attack, they deal x% damage to all enemies stepping over it.

Shadow Power is the best fit for attack speed based builds, maybe add a bit more fun giving a proc-coefficient-based chance of your enemies exploding for x% weapon damage when you hit them.

Does the bleed damage affix stack with all their different applications? I haven’t tested personally, but somebody told me that they didn’t stack. If they do stack, they would be wonderful for attack speed builds.

Right now an attack speed build might look something like Chakram – Shuriken Cloud, Grenades, Impale, Spike Trap, Shadow Power, and Smokescreen – Choking gas. Doesn’t look ideal to me. Krydershot is a good enabler for attack speed builds but Legendary Items shouldn’t be counted on for balance, they should change the rules an improve upon an already balanced game.

Cooldown Reduction Based: Uses long CD-based skills, and a mid-cost spender to take advantage of the passive hatred regen and Punishment. Needs more diversity in CD-based skills.

Maybe more runes like  Fan of Knives – Pinpoint Accuracy would be in order. Maybe a rune on Cluster Arrow that removed the cost but added a cooldown instead?

Many of the Discipline skills have runes that change their discipline cost into Cooldown, but what would we be using our discipline on then? Smokescreen could become mandatory as a discipline dump.

Resource Cost Reduction Based: Needs abilities that intuitively support the usage of high-cost, high-damage skills. A resource cost reduction build would allow for short-high powered sustained burst. You need skills that give you buffs on your next attack like Punish – Fury or skills that buff you for short windows like Blinding Light – Faith in the Light.

A rune on Vault that gives you a damage bonus for a few seconds might be a great step forward. Maybe a rune on Caltrops that whenever a monster stepped on the caltrops they would get a debuff to make them recieve x% more damage on the next attack.

Sharpshooter would also fit perfectly for this type of builds with a slight modication. If you lower the amount of Crit you get per second, and raise the amount the buff lasts. It would be perfect for short bursts.

Going about it the Right Way

If we want to be honest, we got to admit that Punishment was in the middle of a problem. It made low cost spenders obsolete and high attack speed builds weren’t really being worth it. You can tell Blizzard has the right intentions here as this is a move that looks to promote build diversity.

I’m still not 100% convinced that Punishment was actually the issue, I feel the problem lies more in the fact that CDR-IAS and IAS-based builds didn’t have a good supporting cast until 6-set marauders. The DH desperately needs new runes to enable new builds. If Blizzard delivers on them, everyone will be two happy to complain about this change.

The thing is, if this is the only change that 2.1 brings to the DH’s active skills. The people will cry NERF, and nobody wants that.