[Kameron8]

I've noticed an overwhelming number of players running Demon Hunter right now, and it's not difficult to see why.

• Cobra provides some of, if not the, most momentum efficient movement in the game. It also allows for complete negation of almost any attack you can dodge.
  
  
• Reaver has autohits that deal disproportionately high damage, can be used with magical weapons, knockdown enemies, and can combo into Cobra for more aforementioned free movement.
  
  
• Matador has a damage reduction with no stat prerequisite, and gives tank builds an avenue to deal decent damage.

It wouldn't make much sense to make this post without covering the class' weaknesses, so to the best of my ability, those would be:

• Taxing on Skill Pool
  
• Requirement to pick 2 of the 3 available stances (only 35 SP available)
  
• No passive evade granted

Of the three, Matador doesn't really seem to be much of a problem. However, it's my belief that a few components of the class should have some power pulled from them. Before I make specific suggestions, the main points I'm trying to address are:

1. Constant, nearly unstoppable efficient movement in Cobra.
   
2. The requirement to roll hit checks twice when basic attacking a Cobra Demon Hunter.
   
3. The damage scaling of Reaver autohits, especially since they have knockback/knockdown incorporated into them.

With that in mind, what I would personally do to address these are:

1. Make Leaping Lizard with Enemy Climb refund 3 momentum, instead of costing 0 up front (like Voidgate). This keeps the net cost the same, but limits a person's ability to take their full turn then jump away with 1 momentum to spare. Increase the cooldown of Winged Serpent by 1 round.
   • In that same vein, a 2 round cooldown helps mitigate the 1 momentum airborne statuses (Burn Up, Gain Air) being used for infinite 1 momentum movement.
2. Disallow Cobra's Snake Dancer passive from activating on basic attacks, abilities that perform basic attacks, and On-Hit effects attached to basic attacks. It feels terrible to 'Hit' someone, then have them jump away anyway because your second roll on the dice wasn't as fortunate.
   
   
3. Reduce the scaling on Reaver autohits, even if by a small amount.
   • Chaser from 140% at final rank to 120%.
     
   • Rising Tide from 160% at final rank to 145%.
     
   • Elemental Rave from 170% at final rank to 155%.

I don't think these changes are severe enough to hinder the different stance identities, but feel free to correct me if something here is blatantly wrong.

[PinnyAerani]

Perhaps change how Snake Dancer works rather than outright gut an entire stance. If you have over 100% hit you should be able to hit them, yeah, but if you have, let's say, 80% chance to hit, you still have that 20% chance to miss, or proc cobra. Don't like it, move around to the side, behind, or do something beyond blindly charge straight at the enemy.

That's all I really wanna comment on, really, aside from Reaver scaling being buffed primarily because they weren't that great to begin with.

[Kameron8]

Perhaps change how Snake Dancer works rather than outright gut an entire stance. If you have over 100% hit you should be able to hit them, yeah, but if you have, let's say, 80% chance to hit, you still have that 20% chance to miss, or proc cobra. Don't like it, move around to the side, behind, or do something beyond blindly charge straight at the enemy.

I might be misunderstanding your point, but currently if you have an 80% chance to hit, it isn't just 80%. You have an 80% chance to not be dodged the normal way, and then a further 80% chance to not be dodged by Cobra after 'hitting' them. That makes your hit chance only 64%, in essence, and you can miss while hitting. Spells and autohits only go through the Cobra check.

That's all I really wanna comment on, really, aside from Reaver scaling being buffed primarily because they weren't that great to begin with.

Agreed, I just think they were overbuffed. I'd like to see them put somewhere between where they were, and where they are.

[Snake]

Seems fair enough. To be honest, I'd like seeing Reaver using more actions, instead of just lazily using 3 skills to do 500 damage. And Cobra does have counterplay at least, unlike Geist Crutch.

Making it unable to proc on basic hits is only fair if we remove the Blind counterplay.

[Autumn]

Bang-bang-bang---The stated changes seem to be pretty alright, Demon Hunter seems to be used a lot as a supplement class to a lot of mage archetypes, especially since the Qinglongram/Baihurai/Xuanwuken line seem to be a huge problem in tome selection, the listed changes for Leaping Lizard and especially the winged serpent changes are largely what I favor here.

Also I don't think you should have to make 2 hit checks on a cobra user, basics shouldn't be inherently at a disadvantage versus Cobra because you generally like to build Hit in a basic build to begin with.

I still stand by that Combination Fighter should have been 15 > 30% damage reduction instead of Reaver's autos getting a huge scaling buff, but its a little late for that now, so the above changes are also fine.

[Miller]

I personally feel like Demon Hunter is fine as of right now, but I can agree with giving Winged Serpent a two round cooldown. It's easily the most potent movement skill in the game that can cost 0m or 1m with little downside and I don't really have a problem with the Enemy Climb change. I'm also fine with Snake Dancer not working on basic hits and the effects that also apply on hit.

Although, I feel like Reaver scaling should remain unchanged if the previously mentioned changes are added. To get the full damage potential out of Reaver you have to invest 6m and have your opponent in a reasonable enough spot to achieve that. (The latter would be harder with the change to Winged Serpent)

[Fern]

I'm up for nearly all of these, and if something should change, at the very least it should be the Cobra part of it. Kiting with it is incredibly easy in most cases, specially if you're running Skyburn / Gain Air.

As for the Reaver suggestions, I'm honestly a bit on the fence about it. The times I saw them hit absurdly hard were when Salamander Sword first came out and many people flocked to it, but I don't see it as much anymore. I think Reaver only really gets crazy now when you pair it up with a fan tome due to their total 150% scalings.

But fan tomes sound like an issue for another thread.

[Chaos]

• Chaser from 140% at final rank to 120%.
  
• Rising Tide from 160% at final rank to 145%.
  
• Elemental Rave from 170% at final rank to 155%.

I'm gonna have to disagree with this, especially with your assessment of 'they (reaver autohits, sounds plural here) cause knockback/knockdown'. Rising Tide and Elemental Rave lack effects that justify slashing their damage modifiers. In Elemental Rave's case, its additional effect can turn out worse than a standard use.

Chaser is a more understandable case, since its the one skill that can knockback and knockdown all at once, but this is assuming that both the user and the target are airborne. This requires setup that usually demands you to be adjacent to the target, and unless you're using a 0~1m airborne enabler against a Corbie or an 'always airborne' monster, you aren't going to get Chaser to KD/KB for under roughly 6m without triggering Combination Fighter's significant damage penalty, and that point, your 140% becomes a 105%.

I'm not too sure about Snake Dancer, given that it has numerous countermeasures, and Soldier's Watchful Eye is too easily sidestepped to reinforce it.

[Lonestar]

Reaver more than often tends to be shafted by Flottement users when you proc Evasion, by stepping either backward, sides or even diagonally. Not to mention the same as the above, but the class's skills was buffed because it didn't provide enough damage for its FP cost, so I'd rather not bring this ping-pong of buff/nerf. The main offender of this is either the fan tomes, or Martial Lawbreaker itself. (Could always limit it to sword/spear/axes.)

I do agree with Winged Serpent having a bigger cooldown, but not with Snake Dancer's. Blind, knockdown and rear attacks already seal the deal with that trait, and things like DoTs like poison tends to remove one stack at the beginning of the fight. That'll leave them with one 'invicibility' only and be vulnerable for the rest of the round, which, mind you, Snake Dancer's users tend to be really squishy.

[Autumn]

I do agree with Winged Serpent having a bigger cooldown, but not with Snake Dancer's. Blind, knockdown and rear attacks already seal the deal with that trait, and things like DoTs like poison tends to remove one stack at the beginning of the fight. That'll leave them with one 'invicibility' only and be vulnerable for the rest of the round, which, mind you, Snake Dancer's users tend to be really squishy.

Any DoTs taking away stacks of snake dancer is purely a bug and should be exempt from basing judgement on the Snake Dancer skill itself, but I believe that DoT thing to be visual effect only, the stacks in the corner for Cobra have always been visually buggy anyways.

The lower your hit chance is, the more drastically that double check actually lowers your hit chance, snake dancer serves as a huge annoyance to archers and gunners especially, to make the argument 'but they have range' is actually their biggest downfall when it comes to this passive, and thats because of the line of sight cone which makes it near impossible for them to travel out of the farther away they are, which Cobra has easy access to kiting with winged serpent.

If you have a 20% hit chance on somebody, lets say because they proc'd Yomidori or what not, you don't have a 1 in 5 shot of hitting them anymore, you have a 1 in 5 shot of hitting them on top of another 1 in 5 shot (And this is assuming the evasion proc for Cobra doesn't use current evasion rules, which is docking 10% of your total hit) which would turn out to be an effective 6.25% hit chance, or almost a 1 in 20 hit chance.

Its not just melee duelists who can very easily veer around an opponent who get impacted by this.