[HexGirlBestGirl]

Cursed thread time. Yeah. It's me. I've got a wonderful idea. One rife with so much powerful cursed potency. Now, I hope you're ready for this. It's going to hit kind of hard for some of you.




But I have a suggestion for Cobra and Snake Dancer in particular that I believe should change. To start this off, I have but a simple issue with Cobra right now. I don't feel like i'm actually benefiting much from it. Especially compared to being a tanky tonky boye. I don't feel comfortable both using or relying on Snake Dancer since I feel often screwed either way. Even if I avoided damage. I got this idea from when I was bug testing some stuff and decided to shoot a Max Ki Kahouda at myself and dodged entirely out of the way, yet still got knocked down. 

Now I know what you're thinking. "But you avoided damage! Some builds who can't have enough hits to counter that and a low hit rate can easily get shut down! Spacing and positioning can also be screwed up! How is that BAD?!"

Now. This is where my suggestion comes in. Snake Dancer should function so that the dodges happen BEFORE the attack take places.  I got this idea from when I was bug testing some stuff and decided to shoot a Max Ki Kahouda at myself and dodged entirely out of the way, yet still got knocked down. 

Now, what does this mean? Simple. Say I use something like... a really big AoE move. I'unno. Black Bubble is an easy example. Say Black Bubble attempts to hit me. Now that's an attack going off, yeah? Big AoE. Currently, how it functions is that the attack goes off and then you dodge it and move in any direction one tile. If you dodge into the attack, you have a chance to dodge it again or even get hit twice or even thrice since it's two individual hits. You'll more likely than not dodge the first two and dodge back into it for getting hit anyway. However, even if you dodge out of the actual range of the skill, you still get silenced as per usual. 

With how i'm suggesting Snake Dancer should function, your actual active tile for the sake of the skill's overall targeting would be considered at the end point of your dodging. Meaning if I dodge successfully out of the range, I just outright avoid the attack. No silence, no damage, no anything. Since as far as the game is concerned, I wasn't actually within the range since I cobra dodged away from said spacing. This alone would make it far more better to rely on the RNG without feeling like i'm getting too screwed over for not just going tanky hours while maintaining the pros and most all the cons it still has all the same. 

In any scenario where this would matter is usually one where someone either dodges in a way that keeps them in the range, changing nothing. Or changes nothing more than not being status inflicted if they did move out of the way. But if anyone can come up with some ways where this overall would serve as a nerf to Snake Dancer compared to how it actively functions, I really do want to hear it. Since I struggled to come up with many myself but i'm sure there's some iffy situations with that.

I do believe that there should also be some kind of exception rule for moves that need a tile in particular to end upon or else not even be able to be used. Primarily and most notably, Sidecut. Since what if I just dodge backwards onto the tile the sidecutter would end on? Then what???

There is also the whole "but multi-hits are the only way I can hurt a cobra user but what if they just move out of the way? Then my basic attack or multi-hit wouldn't be valid, right?!" And I do believe that multi-hit skills like Mad Chop or Multi-Round guns should be exempt from this but not basic attacks that have many on-hits stacked or something similar.

But yes. That is my cursed request. To shorten that for anyone too lazy to read.


tl;dr

Snake Dancer should make you dodge before the attacks in particular from basics and autohits actually go through and proc so that the attack happens to you as if you're on the tile you ended up dodging on rather than happening then having you dodge, causing you to still take most of the intended effect or brute force or even getting double tapped by skills at times. This will allow you to dodge attacks truly and avoid status inflictions while not being much different from how Snake Dancer functions now in terms of pros and cons.

[Fern]

This feels like both a buff and a nerf at once to me, haha. But if Snake Dancer began working this way, I wouldn't mind.

It was always kind of strange to me that despite dodging an attack entirely, you would still get slapped with its effects. Or that people could ignore an entire explosion by moving one tile back, so if anything I think this change would make it work more fittingly.

I wouldn't have been fine with it before with how universally easy it was to kite with Cobra, but I think it should be fine if that change goes through now specially with how many AOEs exist.

[Autumn]

Its risky since Snake Dancer is in a spot most people generally consider fair, you dodge attacks on a chance and there are clear counterplays to it via multi-hits or AoEs. But generally the method in which those specific AoEs form is incredibly jank, so stuff like Holy Spark and Black Bubble and Sear, all can be dodged back into generally.

This can happen with line AoEs too if you're unlucky enough, such as icicle spear or slithering earth, and most famously, sidecut.

[Snake]

I don't know if that would solve the problem, really. It's like Spo said. Mishaps that happen with Snake Dancer is when you dodge backwards most of the time. Or when you dodge into another damage instance caused by AoEs that go from the middle-out.

If you dodged always to either left or right this would not happen. Maybe up-left/up-right too. In a sense...



...Just a maybe. It could make your 'dancing' less harmful in situations where you're really unlucky and score that 25% chance of stepping backwards and taking a skill over and over again.

The other circular skills could receive the same effect Lead Storm with shotguns received before, where it no longer procs more than once on someone else if they moved. The list might be smaller than we think, actually. So far I only detected:

• Black Bubble
  
• Air Pressure
  
• Isendo
  
• Magaisendo
  
• Sear
  
• Icicle Spear
  

That's all I recall from the top of my mind. But whether this is necessary or not is a big (?) to me.

[WaifuApple]

If this is what I think it is, I could support it. Turning the jank dodging into a more consistent mechanic that tackles the fact that cobra users clearly shouldn't be able to just dodge something big by 'dodging' into another tile it's happening in, while also making it so that attacks that miss, well, actually feel like they miss... is a good change to me.

At least on paper.

[Maksimum_Fire]

Unless Snake Dancer has some other major QoL changes made to it in accompaniment, I don't think I'd be for this.

I can agree that status effects shouldn't apply on attacks that function as a miss on cobra, thematically, but it's fairly balanced as is and I wouldn't want to mess with that too much.

Making AoEs an easy way of hitting snake dancers, which I assume is the point and major extent of these changes, makes cobra even worse to handle against those sorts of attacks.

Now, instead of only being KDed while dodging the damage of a kadouha, I'll instead lose all my snake dancing charges, take full damage, and be KDed by kadouha. Grenades launched within range of a cobra user are guaranteed to hit, regardless of positioning or other stuff. Cyclone spear. Just about every class has a very solid AoE fall back option that they can hit cobra users with. I feel like it just invalidates snake dancer as a tool in more situations than it provides a boon.

This is wayy more in nerf territory than buff territory, and I don't think snake dancer deserves that treatment.

I could be misunderstanding it. In which case, I'll clarify how I'm understanding this.

>attack is made
>If snake dancer in attack area, hitcheck is made
>If pass, functions normally.
>If fail, snake dancer procs. Consumes charge 1 of Snake Dancer.
>New position w/ snake dancer dodge
>if AOE, hitcheck is made if snake dancer is still in AOE range.
>If pass, functions normally.
>If fail, snake dancer procs. Consumes charge 2 of Snake Dancer.
>If dancer is still in AoE range, they're struck.

I had to read twice to make sure I was understanding this right, and I still might not be. I couldn't call this anything other than a nerf, with the only benefits it really provides being an avoidance of additional effects from attacks on cobra procs- which is relatively minor compared to extremely easily confirmed hits against a snake dancer without caring for positioning.

I guess take this with a grain of salt since I've gotten to extensively use cobra and understand how it works in practice. But IMO that's why I can confidently say this would suck as a change for cobras and would make it even more appealing to build Demon Hunters tanky over dodgy.

--If that's the goal, to nerf Snake Dancer, though, then this is a change that's on target for that. I don't have any comment on whether that's a good thing to do or a bad thing to do.

[HexGirlBestGirl]

I could be misunderstanding it. In which case, I'll clarify how I'm understanding this.

>attack is made
>If snake dancer in attack area, hitcheck is made
>If pass, functions normally.
>If fail, snake dancer procs. Consumes charge 1 of Snake Dancer.
>New position w/ snake dancer dodge
>if AOE, hitcheck is made if snake dancer is still in AOE range.
>If pass, functions normally.
>If fail, snake dancer procs. Consumes charge 2 of Snake Dancer.
>If dancer is still in AoE range, they're struck.

This would be correct. And the main reason I'd consider it a buff and a nerf is solely because with how Cobra is now. Even if you only consume 1 dodge, if the AoE functions as two hits or you move and dodge into it again then the same thing occurs either way.

Now, instead of only being KDed while dodging the damage of a kadouha, I'll instead lose all my snake dancing charges, take full damage, and be KDed by kadouha. Grenades launched within range of a cobra user are guaranteed to hit, regardless of positioning or other stuff. Cyclone spear. Just about every class has a very solid AoE fall back option that they can hit cobra users with. I feel like it just invalidates snake dancer as a tool in more situations than it provides a boon.

However, if charge one successfully takes you out of Kahouda Range, then you just don't get hit by it in general. Nor KD'd. Grenades have timers now, but hand trigger exists. So manageable a bit. Cyclone Spear is a big one.
However, you're right in saying that it'll consume both your charges otherwise. Maybe making it a toggleable passive or an additional opt-in skill on the Cobra tree could do. But the intent wouldn't be to nerf it so that's a big bad. I just want it so that if you're not in the area in general or you dodge successfully away from a valid place to be hit, be it by basic, a skill that targets you or a tile targeter or a big AoE as a whole, then Snake Dancer simply should outright avoid it as a whole and not even let it proc, thus not giving anything more than momentum wasted on the attackers side at the expense of your Snake Dancer Charge(s).

I'unno how i'd manage that though outside of it being optional rather than an overwrite/fundamental change on the base level.

[WaifuApple]

If the worry is more about taking a charge than the damage itself, the possibility could be that you only move once per attack. While this sounds like a nerf, in the circumstances of this idea it would end up being so that, since the user would likely take the damage anyway by virtue of dodging into a tile still happening and then dodging back into another tile to the same effect, it would leave the user in the same situation but with one charge up.

Alternatively, have it check whether they take damage after dodging, and refund any charges wasted on trying to make an unsuccessful dodge. At least, in this case, it would make cobra users feel less like they're wasting charges for no result. To make it more reliable for them, too, you'd want to at least ensure that they're making the attempt to dodge towards the closest safe tile, to avoid them dodging one tile off from safety and then dodging right back where you started.