2.6 PTR going live today

Agreed.
Hustle as it stands is awesome for a bowzon. But for folks who prefer to be truly defensive (read: CtA) or who just don't deal with procs, it'll be too annoying to deal with, leaving Faith as a very valid allrounder choice still.
And yeah, it does remain the only real reason to ever use an A1 merc.


Either way, I do hope Hustle stays as is. Or at least doesn't get worse. It is inherently shit for nearly every other build and situation and a crap weapon in and by itself. But specifically for a zon, it takes a fun build and simply makes it more fun and a good bit more performant while still not making it OP as compared to any other high/top tier build.

And it helps with with one thing that any real bowa (read: no Enigma) really needs help with. Bad. And that's keeping up in

Terror zones. You're still f'd trying to keep up in zones with dead ends but at least with an early Hustle proc for run speed, you can finally keep up with good, fast CS clears and cows and such as the teleporting you're trying to follow is in open space.

Literally the only reason to nerf it again (which is a BS reason to begin with) is folks crying over having wasted their Wealth on a Faith they may now no longer prefer. Well, such is life in a changing environment. Still far less than what sunder reworks cost me per character for most of mine.

PezRadar posted a short update;

Blizzard wrote:

Thanks all for the feedback on PTR. Some pretty significant changes will be coming based off community feedback from the PTR to these new runewords. We expect to have final patch notes up sometime next week.

Likewise, we expect this patch to roll into season fairly quickly so wanted to give you all a heads up that we plan on the S3 start to occur on February 16 with S2 ending the same day.

Direct link to post:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t ... /153770/55

Fully expecting "significant changes" to turn into "Hustle is made entirely useless as well now, to match the rest". :/

I seem to remember in previous ptrs that if they were going to make “pretty significant changes” they still ran those changes in the ptr before the patch came out. Any idea if they intend on extending the ptr?

Reading that official forum thread, it's funny to me how people still hang on to any hope that stackable runes and gems will ever be a thing in this game. It's like none of them saw how badly bloated the tooltip for Metamorphosis became. What gives anyone hope that they could solve a more complex UI challenge that would also require potentially addressing the local stash storage limit bug?

I've been playing on PTR off and on now for a few days with the supplied Zon that is now at level 79. I've been trying to find a better 3os bow to make a Hustle to get a better feel for it but so far no luck. I like the movement speed given by the Hustle armor but the weapon damage is meh. A 4 socket +1

Matriarchal Bow dropped so I made a Harmony, and dropped the Hustle bow. Then a Buriza Do-Kyanon dropped so I started using that on swap with the Harmony. To use the Buriza I needed as much attack speed as I could muster so I swapped the Hustle armor for a Treachery, which brought my IAS to 185%, and later I will add the

Andariel's for another 20%. The Harmony gives me plenty of movement speed, the Treachery is better for IAS, so as I see it the Hustle is good through Nightmare, but otherwise might not be a serious option. All you really need to make a good speed zon is a Harmony and a Faith or Shaeled

Windforce,

Laying of Hands,

Andariel's and or any 20% IAS amulet.

mhlg wrote: 1 year ago

I've been playing on PTR off and on now for a few days with the supplied Zon that is now at level 79. I've been trying to find a better 3os bow to make a Hustle to get a better feel for it but so far no luck. I like the movement speed given by the Hustle armor but the weapon damage is meh. A 4 socket +1

Matriarchal Bow dropped so I made a Harmony, and dropped the Hustle bow. Then a Buriza Do-Kyanon dropped so I started using that on swap with the Harmony. To use the Buriza I needed as much attack speed as I could muster so I swapped the Hustle armor for a Treachery, which brought my IAS to 185%, and later I will add the

Andariel's for another 20%. The Harmony gives me plenty of movement speed, the Treachery is better for IAS, so as I see it the Hustle is good through Nightmare, but otherwise might not be a serious option. All you really need to make a good speed zon is a Harmony and a Faith or Shaeled

Windforce,

Laying of Hands,

Andariel's and or any 20% IAS amulet.

Hustle isn't a main weapon. Switch to proc, then switch back to a real bow asap until you need to reproc. Mind you, given enough dmg charms you can still easily kill everything with Hustle itself..but no bow with 150ed and basically nothing else for dmg will ever be a serious higher lvl weapon choice.

Just build it in a matri for the attack speed boost to get the proc done faster.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

mhlg wrote: 1 year ago

I've been playing on PTR off and on now for a few days with the supplied Zon that is now at level 79. I've been trying to find a better 3os bow to make a Hustle to get a better feel for it but so far no luck. I like the movement speed given by the Hustle armor but the weapon damage is meh. A 4 socket +1

Matriarchal Bow dropped so I made a Harmony, and dropped the Hustle bow. Then a Buriza Do-Kyanon dropped so I started using that on swap with the Harmony. To use the Buriza I needed as much attack speed as I could muster so I swapped the Hustle armor for a Treachery, which brought my IAS to 185%, and later I will add the

Andariel's for another 20%. The Harmony gives me plenty of movement speed, the Treachery is better for IAS, so as I see it the Hustle is good through Nightmare, but otherwise might not be a serious option. All you really need to make a good speed zon is a Harmony and a Faith or Shaeled

Windforce,

Laying of Hands,

Andariel's and or any 20% IAS amulet.

Hustle isn't a main weapon. Switch to proc, then switch back to a real bow asap until you need to reproc. Mind you, given enough dmg charms you can still easily kill everything with Hustle itself..but no bow with 150ed and basically nothing else for dmg will ever be a serious higher lvl weapon choice.

Just build it in a matri for the attack speed boost to get the proc done faster.

I agree to a point, but a Matriarchal Harmony on swap gives all the movement speed needed, easy to reach breakpoints, and does a fair amount of damage as well even in Hell lvl through to Act 3. By then both a Hustle bow and Armor are completely outclassed. I just don't see either pulling people to join Ladder S3.

mhlg wrote: 1 year ago

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

mhlg wrote: 1 year ago

I've been playing on PTR off and on now for a few days with the supplied Zon that is now at level 79. I've been trying to find a better 3os bow to make a Hustle to get a better feel for it but so far no luck. I like the movement speed given by the Hustle armor but the weapon damage is meh. A 4 socket +1

Matriarchal Bow dropped so I made a Harmony, and dropped the Hustle bow. Then a Buriza Do-Kyanon dropped so I started using that on swap with the Harmony. To use the Buriza I needed as much attack speed as I could muster so I swapped the Hustle armor for a Treachery, which brought my IAS to 185%, and later I will add the

Andariel's for another 20%. The Harmony gives me plenty of movement speed, the Treachery is better for IAS, so as I see it the Hustle is good through Nightmare, but otherwise might not be a serious option. All you really need to make a good speed zon is a Harmony and a Faith or Shaeled

Windforce,

Laying of Hands,

Andariel's and or any 20% IAS amulet.

Hustle isn't a main weapon. Switch to proc, then switch back to a real bow asap until you need to reproc. Mind you, given enough dmg charms you can still easily kill everything with Hustle itself..but no bow with 150ed and basically nothing else for dmg will ever be a serious higher lvl weapon choice.

Just build it in a matri for the attack speed boost to get the proc done faster.

I agree to a point, but a Matriarchal Harmony on swap gives all the movement speed needed, easy to reach breakpoints, and does a fair amount of damage as well even in Hell lvl through to Act 3. By then both a Hustle bow and Armor are completely outclassed. I just don't see either pulling people to join Ladder S3.

Harmony only gives you the move speed while you switch to it and is otherwise also outclassed (albeit less so) by any real high-end bow.

Hustle by comparison gives significantly more movement speed and lets you reach 7 frame breakpoints on your actual main bow even when that bow is a

Windforce or similar. That's what makes it so good as a switch (and only as a switch). You lose a second or two every zone switch (realistically) to keep the proc up but the proc more than makes up for that.

Neither is an actual high-end main bow. Though Hustle does fail at that earlier than Harmony does.

Hustle by comparison gives significantly more movement speed

You're referring to just the armor right? It does give more movement speed but not enough to make it significantly better than the Harmony and I don't mind swapping, but the armor IAS is much less than that of a Treachery which also has

Fade. A Harmony gives 36% movement speed (which is quite fast) vs the 50% on the Hustle, but add

Natalya's Soul with 40% or Gore Riders with 30% and you have all the movement speed needed. Are you currently playing in PTR?

No, I'm talking about the weapon.
The

Burst of Speed proc grants more movement speed than Harmony's

Vigor and it is basically a mini-

Fanaticism on top of that (enough to drop your IAS breakpoints but without the added ED/AR).

And yeah, I did a fair few comparison runs with and without Hustle procs. Might/Pride/WF + Hustle on switch for 7 frames at ridiculous run speed = GG.
Unless you're too annoyed by having to switch to proc once per zone/game start (roughly) which I would totally understand but personally feel is well worth it for both, the performance and the fun boost thereafter.

If you reaaaally don't mind switching though...both = even more gg I guess. Keep Harmony in cube, Hustle to proc then replace Hustle with Harmony and proceed with gg bow and Harmony on switch for double run speed madness in gaps. But that'd be way too annoying for me at least - I refuse to switch out gear for buffing purposes.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Fully expecting "significant changes" to turn into "Hustle is made entirely useless as well now, to match the rest". :/

God, I hope not!

After reading your post about Hustle I was planning on making a bowzon instead of a javazon! I'm still gonna make one no matter the changes, but it'll be a shame to miss out on a GREAT budget bowzon idea because Hustle on bowzon is overlooked

Make both, they're both great fun

Peaceful_Leaf wrote: 1 year ago

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Fully expecting "significant changes" to turn into "Hustle is made entirely useless as well now, to match the rest". :/

God, I hope not!

After reading your post about Hustle I was planning on making a bowzon instead of a javazon! I'm still gonna make one no matter the changes, but it'll be a shame to miss out on a GREAT budget bowzon idea because Hustle on bowzon is overlooked

All but decided on my S3 char being a bowzon actually. Albeit with a

Javelin on switch for dclone and ubers (no

Charged Strike though).