First Hardcore Inferno Belial Kill (by a Barbarian, too)

[Lissa]

That's just it though, Vortex is completely unavoidable for ranged classes, and when you are as fragile as the DH is and everything 2 shots you, it makes playing pretty pointless.

So why do people ask to make the game super easy by essentially removing all danger from vortex rather than asking for fixes to DH utility and defensive abilities so they don't get one shot?

This is what I don't get.

If you ask me, the root of the problem is that dodge is useless when 2-3 hits will kill you and dodge is the defensive stat that DH get. The defensive model of "classes with prime stat DEX get free Dodge for their defense" completely breaks down when you can be killed in fewer than 10 or 15 hits.

If you ask me to fix this problem, I add some form of mitigation to DEX and virtually eliminate dodge as a defensive stat. It's only really useful in areas you completely outgear, so just get rid of it, it doesn't work.

I would also buff natural armor and resist from prime stats, which reduces some of the NEED of resist all. Not a lot, you don't need much tuning here, but a little would go a long way. I just feel like there is a little too much defensive gear necessary for inferno. I suppose they're going the opposite route by nerfing the monsters a bit, but I think increasing the defensive component of your prime stat is going to be a more attractive route for gamers.

Now with that design, you have a DH with a natural mitigation of some +2000 armor from where they are now. From there, you need to re-work defensive abilities so they aren't all-or-nothing. Sentry should be able to take a hit for you, for example. Remove that god awful tether rune and make it more like the guardian familiar.

Change shadow power to a defensive cooldown that increases your resists or armor by a large percentage. This with the understanding that DH will have fairly low values and often just need a big spike of mitigation rather than full time mitigation, but this would probably warrant a cooldown, as well.

I completely agree that the defense gap between a DH and any other class is huge, but the solution is not to remove all difficulty from vortex, the solution is to re-work the mechanics of the DH so one can actually survive. There are no DH mitigation skills outside of sentry with a 15% mitigation. Woo-hoo, that almost makes up for having no useful defensive value from your prime stat.

There's a simpler solution for dealing with vortex...it's called vault. I can't understand why people undervalue vault as it's a good escape skill. The only thing that would make it better is make it so you are invulnerable while the vault is in effect (this is the only real problem with the skill IMO).