Patching 1.0.2c -- potentially nerfed mob damage

[Concillian]

As to fixing things with the DH, there's a couple things that would easily fix some issues.

1) When using Vault, while the animation is in effect, the DH is invulnerable. The Vault distance isn't that far and typically is just enough to get you out of melee range. Other classes have skills that work in this regard (like WD spirit walk where you become invulnerable while moving).

2) Make mobs that are unhittable until they either get into Melee (looking at the Deceivers here) or can't be hit while performing a move (like the Lacuni) be hittable so that the DH has a chance to kill them before they reach melee range.

3) Increase the DH's inherent dodge so that they can dodge at twice the rate of the other classes (so at 500 Dex, a DH has 40% dodge compared to the other classes that are at 20%, this could potentially lead to issues further down the road through if a DH hits 2000 Dex or even 3000 Dex).

All three of these... ALL THREE... will worsen the game balance rather than work on fixing it. They are in the wrong direction.

Complete avoidance on DH is what is inconsistent about that class compared to the rest of the game design. Adding immunity and extra avoidance will only make the issue worse.

I mean the real issue is that a DH has no viable mitigation, so no DH is going to gear mitigation... so there is a very low value placed on mitigation stats, while every other class does place high value on mitigation stats.

You can't balance the game if one class is encouraged at such a basic level to go complete glass cannon. Your skill suggestions just go a step further in that design flaw. DH will still get one shot, they'll still have the same issues they have now.

So you fix the lacuni in Act 2, but what about the soul rippers in Act 3? what about the corrupted angel charge in Act 4? You gonna keep fixing monsters until the DH have nothing to fear? It's just not the right direction to head.

No, you have to remove some of the invulnerabilities and avoidance capabilities of the DH, then add in some base mitigation and abilities that amplify that mitigation. Demon form, for example, can buff armor / resists or both (significantly) to encourage it's use as a cooldown, since in the world of one-shots, it's current design is not very useful.

If you have a class built around no damage intake, and another class built around damage intake (melee classes) there will always be significant balance issues strictly due to the weight an intelligent player will place on defensive stats. As long as those defensive stats are any form of trade-off, anyway. No, you need to design all the classes with some capability to actually take some hits. The affix bosses are well designed to be able to give ranged some hits. Monsters like the huntresses and such are designed to give ranged some hits. That's good, you just need to give the DH class abilities that scale with their defensive stats that can mitigate those hits rather than stacking the DH full of immunities and avoidance abilities.

The DH design is the balance issue. It's the primary flaw in the gameplay and balance issues. All the issues with "cheap one shots" that DH have will continue to be a problem as long as DH have no viable mitigation mechanism. The only alternative to reduce the cheap one shots is to either nerf damage to the point that all the other classes are laughing at the damage intake and going glass cannon too, or buffing DH to the point where they're never getting hit and clearly dominant.