Build Guide
Update 15 Jan 2015 [Patch 2.1.2]In patch 2.1.2 Blizzard decided to nerf this build. It now has become a lot harder to gear and prepare for, to fish for a good rift as well as to execute a correct play style of this build, however it is still possible to do so and might still potentially be one of the strongest solo and group builds (it is, however, much more in line with other builds right now).
[Preface]
Previously, this build involved the use of the old Nightstalker passive (Your critical hits have a chance to restore 1 discipline) in conjunction with the Meticulous Bolts quiver, which makes your Elemental Arrow - Ball Lightning travel at slower speeds, allowing to permanently stay in smoke screen and deal tremendous amounts of damage. Even after I had conceived and successfully played this build for the first time in Tier 45, I wouldn't have imagined that it would go several tiers higher than my wildest dreams. This build was so broken that Blizzard decided to nerf it out of existence, as a variation of it reached up to Tier 55 in solo and even higher in group play.
For anyone who might be out of touch with the news about this build, gameplay and guides of the old build [Patch 2.1] in action can be found on my Twitch and Youtube channel, as well as my old thread here on Diablofans. I also managed to pull of a worldwide Rank 1 DH on the hardcore leaderboards prior to patch 2.1.2 with it. I might eventually record an updated guide for this.
[The idea of the build]
Now, let's get to the build. Since this build excels at dealing huge AoE damage, you are required to have a lot of monsters on the screen, at best to keep pushing forward endlessly. As of patch 2.1.2, smoke screen has a 3 second cooldown and nightstalker no longer regenerates discipline, which provides a significant challenge in order to achieve permanent invulnerability. The idea is to use a lot of cooldown and resource cost reduction to pull it off. Since the original build involving Preparation - Punishment no longer exists, I was thinking about a new name for this build, and thus I renamed it Blue Tides (for the constant ups and downs of the discipline bar and the feeling of drowning your enemies in a surge of blue lightning).
[Gearing]
The item requirements are tremendously high, as you will need to achieve higher than 50% CDR permanently. You are required to have perfect CDR rolls on at least 4 items, best case shoulders, gloves, weapon and quiver, use the Gogok of Swiftness gem, full paragon CDR and a diamand gem in the helm. This will put you at ~52-53% cooldown reduction including Gogok, which is barely enough to stay in smoke screen permanently with a good internet connection. You can still use one more item (ring) until you feel comfortable with the build. You will also want to have as much RCR as possible, making a Pride's Fall and full paragon mandatory, as well as RCR rolls on shoulders and if possible on a 5 primary ring and maybe on your weapon.
Aside from that, you use the general M6 + RoRG setup, the Meticulous Bolts (the travel speed speed roll is the most important part - the slower, the better). Helltrapper is no longer a viable option, because it cannot spawn additional sentries anymore, making room for other weapons, the best being a well-rolled and difficult-to-get ancient Calamity. Kridershot is a good options as well. With the new density changes in greater rifts, a SoJ is no longer necessary, because there are a lot less elite packs than before inside the rifts.
In Tier 40-50, it is possible to survive one or two hits if you have some toughness, so it might be a good idea to stack some of it or even use Perfectionist as a 5th passive. When pushing beyond that, I recommend to go back to zero toughness and just use a full glass cannon playstyle, just as before 2.1.2.
As for the gems, the best combination are Taeguk, Bane of the Trapped and Gogok of Swiftness. The latter is required for the CDR value, Taeguk should always be refreshed when it is about to fall off, and Bane of the Trapped should be enabled via Sentry - Polar Station. In group play, Zei's and Bane of the Powerful might be good options as well.
[Playstyle]
The idea is to keep pushing and pull more and more monsters which you can damage using the huge AoE radius of Ball Lightning, while hiding in smoke screen indefinitely. Unfortunately, without the additional discipline regeneration via Nightstalker, true permanent invulnerability is no longer achievable without dropping a lot of mandatory damage stats on your items, so you will eventually run out of discipline before you can start spamming smoke screen anew. Your main source of discipline is Preparation - Focused Mind, which at ~52% CDR can be used every ~21-22 seconds, leaving about 6 seconds downtime of the increased regeneration. You will need to find a safe spot about twice every minute because you will have downtime on your smoke screen. Also, if you only have easy trash monsters or easy elite packs chasing you, you should try to keep the smoke screen down whenever you can in order to regenerate some more discipline for the times when you really need it. Unlike before, every single point of discipline is precious, and you cannot afford to waste any of them. Additionally, when trying to chain smoke screen, it is important to only hit the button once just when the cooldown is up, spamming the button results in a delay which will kill you.
This build excels at fighting slow-moving and big-size monsters, such as Golgors, Maggot Broods, etc, as the Ball Lightning will deal more damage to them due to their increased hit box. Like this, you can progress very rapidly true the rifts if you get the proper enemy type, because those monsters typically are the most rewarding as well. Smaller monsters or groups of small monsters should be skipped if possible, as well as any yellow elites and reflect packs that you can't kill safely.
People going around placing copyrights on builds blows my mind
Thank you for putting all of this together. I stumbled across your lightning build in the "93880-world-rank-1-solo-dh-tier-45-no-pylons" thread a month or two ago & tried to emulate it. This was before the latest patch & all the nerfs to Nightstalker, Preparation, etc. I didn't have a Kridershot, nor did I run with SoJ; instead, I was using an almost perfectly rolled Natalya's Slayer (2,935.0 DPS) with Natalya's Reflection for a humongous (73) Discipline pool w/ the 3-pc bonus. After switching to your build, I began to get Grift keystones of lvl 36~37 during the trials, as opposed to lvl 33~35 w/ fire or cold builds. (Could never attain constant invulnerability though...I think I was trying to spam the button to chain smoke screen & that was killing me...)
Since the latest patch, I have found a Krider. The damage is less than my Natalya's, but I like the fact that I can constantly stream EA w/o having to worry about hatred. That being said, I am a bit lacking in CDR & Reduced Resource Cost, and do not have a Pride's Fall helm. :-(
Anyway, a couple of questions regarding equipment, gems, etc.:
1) "...Taeguk should always be refreshed when it is about to fall off..."
Taeguk can only be refreshed by casing a Hatred spender. If using a Krider & the skills you have listed, your only hatred spender ends up being your sentry. I assume you're not constantly spamming your sentry though, are you? Is there a different gem you would use, assuming you weren't using your Calamity & were using a Krider instead...?
2) If you're using Calamity, would you drop the Marked for Death - Mortal Enemy skill to free up that slot, or do you still use it simply for the Hatred generation? (I'm assuming the skill & the bow's Marked for Death don't stack...)
3) Is there a reason why you recommend a Traveler's Pledge over a good Hellfire Amulet for equipment? Just curious. Assuming HA is viable, any recommendations on what you would want for your 5th passive--Archery? Perfection? Single Out? Ambush?
4) Is Leoric's Crown a viable option to help attain the really high CDR of this build? (I ask this simply cause I haven't gotten a Pride's Fall yet...but I do have a Leoric's Crown, as well as Ancient Legendary Marauders & Natalya's helms...)
5) Indeed, you state you need "higher than 50% CDR permanently"; is there also a minimum amount of Reduced Resource Cost required to make this build work...?
Regarding play style, even before the patch, it seems like Reflect Damage would almost always instantly kill me. :-0 (This could be related to my mistiming the pushing of my SS...) Do you ever actively skip certain types of Elites when Grifting? Just curious.
Anyway, thanks again for putting together this guide! Really appreciate it.
eastdragon
The build in this video works entirely different compared to this (or my old one). Also, I don't take credit for being the first one to experiment with lightning, just for creating this particular play style (perma ss in GRs)
@sapfo
Ancient weapons will always outperform nonancient ones. Reroll CDR > Dmg on weapon
@bymathz
Haven't used it in group play, but its potential is decreased there. Cluster builds will be better for the top spots most likely
@eastdragon
1) I'd probably use Zei's for Kridershot, didn't mention that
2) Calamity stacks with Marked for Death, you still need the hatred regeneration from Mortal Enemy. Use Contagion for Krider
3) There is no strong 5th passive, but if you have one, Ambush or Single Out are the way to go.
4) You need RCR as well, Leorics crown is not an option really
5) ~52+ CDR, ~55+ RCR
And yes, I skip elites when I can, especially reflect
Thank you for the reply.
One more quick question: Why do you recommend Strongarm bracers? I don't see any skills that take advantage of the Knockback damage bonus. (You mention "If possible, get Strongarm Bracers and reroll the secondary to knockback % to enable the proc." But I don't quite understand which proc you are referring to, & you cannot reroll the knockback secondary anyway...)
I got a Calamity off an Act I bounty. I was hoping to get a RORG but got the weapon instead. I know it's strange but it happened.
@wudijo:
Heyo, nice guide. Been using it to help my DH friend build his dh as he just consistently gets items for this build, so thanks for that!
Now that aside, I was wondering what your opinion on the new rings on the ptr are and how you think they might affect the blue tides build.
Focus/Restraint: This now gives you up to a massive 150% damage boost based on your resource... according to my friend, due tomortal enemy MFD, his hatred never moves even slightly from full. Do you think it might be worth tossing prides Fall so you can ditch rorg and use these two monsters, or is the 30% rcr too necessary to keep up 100% smokescreen?
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac: This now reduces a cooldown by 1 second every time you spend a resource. Just ONE of your cooldowns mind, but given all you do is spam a spender, I can easily see this being insane. Given you have 3 cooldowns always going, I am unsure if bad RNG could get you killed or not, or if this ring could both remove the absolute necessity of so much cdr as well as open more potential builds.
Broken Promise: This thing may or may not be the biggest abuse case. If you do not crit 5 times in a row, you gain 100% crit for the next 3 seconds. I am entirely unsure just how abusable this is. This build hits more times a second than a Gatling gun, so it should always be up... The only unfortunate bit is that you have two slots that you normally have crit on that don't really have anything appealing to swap it out for (helm, bracers), but that isn't the end of the world or anything. You do gain a usable free primary on your gloves, neck, rings, and quiver, so quite a lot of potential there... Just Always critting though is such a massive damage increase that the free stats are really just frosting. This might be one of the few builds in the game that can Really abuse this ring... assuming they don't nerf it or put an icd on it.
Any thoughts?
Perma Smoke Screen will be gone in 2.2, as will Kridershot + UE. I have thought about making some adjustments to this build suitable for next patch, but in the end we will have to wait and see how it turns out. I'm pretty sure we will see the return of the lightning DH, be it one way or the other.
I am also wondering what procs the knockback for this build??? I looked and never found an answer...
Any help is appreciated!
Edit: The only thing I see that may proc the bracers is the Ess of Johann correct???
Crazynapkinman,
I think I figured it out. Strongarm bracers come with two secondary skills, the first is fixed (i.e., the 25-30% bonus damage to enemies for 5 seconds on landing after being hit by knockback) while the second is RNG. The random secondary skill you can enchant to have up to 5.1% knockback. It took me awhile to figure out cause I had to wait until I found another pair of Strongarm bracers to confirm it--all the ones I had in my stash had already been enchanted on their primary (for either CC or elemental damage), so no way to tell what the secondary options were.
BTW, if you're doing solo & running with a follower who has the Ess of Johann, that amulet's special effect should be considered a knockback as well. (Your DH should be using a Hellfire Amulet as opposed to an Ess of Johann...)