This could be a good summoner off-hand with the right affixes, but the -8 seconds to Hellhound is usesless. Who zergs Hellhounds at high levels? Can we add retail or fire damage to Hellhound instead?
Also, can we re-think the lvl 90 Salazars Sword requirement being Cunning? That is a summoner weapon with the right affixes, and no summoner is going to have >500 cunning.
Hellhound has 2 (possible) uses for a competent pet build (besides proccing devotions):
Supporting other pets with Hellfire.
Dealing Huge AoE damage with Blazing Death.
The -8 sec cd supports the second one (by almost doubling it’s dps) and it should stay IMHO.
There’s another item with -8 sec to Hellhound summing up for a total of -16 leaving it’s base cd at 2 seconds, multiplying it’s dps by 8(!).
Heck, without these item mods even Blazing Death is poor AF, leaving that wretched Hellhound with the only purpose of granting that flat damage aura.
Calling it useless was rash to say the least.
ALL swords have cunning requirement.
And there’s no rule about summoner’s can’t invest in cunning for gear requirements.
Summoners have no use of spirit either but most of them have to invest points in it to use higher level off-hands.
I’t the same thing.
The -8 sec cd supports the second one (by almost doubling it’s dps) and it should stay IMHO.
Why do you think that the Blazing Death CD is in play here? I thought the CD being reduced was the summon CD. I believe that Blazing Death is happening a lot more frequently than 18 seconds. For example, my pair of Familiars are casting Storm Orb and Lightning Strike every 5 seconds or so, not at the 15.1 second recharge rate shown on the skill.
Edit: I just purchased one and tested it. The Summoning CD drops by 8 seconds, but I detect no significant increase in DPS.
ALL swords have cunning requirement.
And there’s no rule about summoner’s can’t invest in cunning for gear requirements.
I already invested in Cunning to use the lvl 70 Salazars Blade. I cannot get my cunning up another 80 points without gimping my build. If all swords have to be cunning based, that is fine. Why does this sword have to have a higher requirement than Mythical lvl 94 swords? They are all 510, Salazar is 529.
I guess it comes down to whether you want people to use the item. I can’t see many Summoners taking the hit to try out this item in their build.
Edit: I just noticed that the Salazar’s blade I am trying to upgrade for the higher DPS Harbringer is lvl 90 and has the same Cunning requirement as the lvl 75 swords, 446.
Blazing Death (as it’s name implies) is happening and only happening when the Hellhound dies, and when you resummon it the older one dies thus the more frequent summoning leads more frequent AoE nuking.
Edit: You might have been confusing it with one of the upgrades in the line (Ember Claw or Infernal Breath) which have indeed nothing to do with the base skill’s cooldown, but Blazing Death is the ability of the base Hellhound skill (occuring on it’s death).
Salazar’s sword could be made into a spirit based item plus having it’s summon actually decent rather then a slow ass moving Roomba that eventually blows up.
I’ve been planning a build that uses the sword’s summon but it’s rather disheartening.