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.
Other then that, it's a pretty fun build outside of greater rifts, but I just don't understand how you manage to survive in the greaters Even with almost 10mil toughness, 29% cooldowns, and a high level gogok my smokescreen just has too much of a delay and I struggle to even pass level 30 when I can usually do 38+ with ease
I have tried using a rank ~50 Mirinae, and it's not worthwhile. Sentries are just too strong, even if it procs like hell. Could try to use it if you manage to get the 4.154 breakpoint without Gogok in solo, or put in Zei's if you have a WD in party. Wreath of Lightning is crap imo; if it would actually hit all of the targets around you, it could be good, but it generally hits just 3 or so and the procs overlap far too often.
Wyrdward is shit. You can basically stunlock anything as long as you keep shooting, but stun is subject to diminishing returns and it becomes useless very quickly. Other than that, you actually dont want enemies to be slowed down when following you, as you should try to keep pushing forward all the time.
Kridershot is a nice variation for normal rifts, I use Vault instead of MfD then, and I can run T6 rifts at 4m toughness easily. It's fun and not so bad, but you will want to actually hit stuff before it dies on the high end. I was thinking about going 4.154 bp using Kridershot with a WD in party, but even then I'll need to use Gogok, Pain Enhancer and it will only work with a lot of monsters around, so it will not be worth it.
Marked for Death - Mortal Enemy could be a great variation, I didn't test it yet. Maybe you could even drop Punishment and use Caltrops instead or something, however I expect it to fall behind. Could be good to get into this playstyle, as it eases the resource issues a little bit.
1. I haven't experienced too much lag whether in solo or in groups. We even ran 2x lightning dh + 2 other people and it was fine... If it's a horde electrified pack and they are all clumped up, it can certainly lag the game a bit but for me it was only for like 2 seconds for the initial wave of electrified bolts. I don't know, i guess it's really rig dependant unlike lags in certain maps which seem to happen even on high end rigs.
2. For trials you can use caltrops bait the trap and just stand down next to the health pool while a wd is cc'ing everything up next to the crack in the ground. I like to use mfd with grim reaper for trials and just cast it on the big mobs.
3. With the Kridershot variation it's a lot easier to get perma ss but it's not viable in gr 40+ in my opinion because the loss of the 2 extra sentries from ht costs too much dps. Having said that, with Krider you basically act as a 4th sentry so i won't be surprised if someone can utilize this variation in high gr.
4. Adding CA dazzling arrow works. I haven't tested it in GR because as OP mentioned, stunning can be counter productive in GR and especially in trials where you want everything to come to the middle and not get stunned at the sides or top where mobs will be too scattered and reduce the efficiency of your sentries.
5. Running 2p combo with a zdps wd looks very promising. When the wd has everythign under control, you don't even need night stalker / smoke screen. In theory, with a good density "easy" zombie rift, you can give up on night stalker for steady aim / archery, give up on vault for bait the trap and just stand there behind your wd friend. Also, because of the bbv, you can get rid of some of the AS on your gear.
Good job on the build and gr45 clear. Awesome stuff indeed.
Quote from Ashkarok
One question here, how the hell are you able to reach 4.154aps when you're at base 2.60 ? All I get (2.55 base) with a WD and Gogok fully stacked is 3.15-ish, and our gear isn't that different, AS-wise - looks to me this isn't even attainable in 2-player, let alone solo with Gogok.
You are forgetting to count the benefit of having TnT. If you are at 3.15 with the WD in your group + Gogok stacked, you are way over 4.15. even with the lowest possible TnT (40%) You'd be at 4.41.
Your APS x 1."Tnt Bonus" = Sentries/Pets APS
I personally like to calculate my APS myself, as the character sheet typically rounds very poorly. That is:
Weapon attack speed x total IAS bonus.
If your weapon has an IAS roll on it, to calculate its proper AS it would be:
Base weapon attack speed x 1.0X (where x = the weapons IAS roll)
Base AS of Weapons
2h xbow= 1.1
2h bow= 1.4
1h xbow= 1.6
Hop;e this helps.
How should I keep my Paragon?
What should I max first? I mean, what is the order for each type?
Regards
Daniel Sartor
IAS till breakpoint, CDR till you have enough to survive (33 and up), Crit, Chd
I guess we just took different approaches here, though. The perma smoke screen was the core I was building around from the very beginning.
About the Haunt of Vaxo: I just randomly included it because it's still a strong choice in any case. The MfD casts by the shadow clones are really neat, as we as some slows they might provide.
@NotStyg, once you learn how this build works, you should be able to get higher again. If you get hit, you die, no matter if it's tier 30 or 45. You might want to try to not spam your smoke screen but rather hit the button once (and only once) after the CD is up, otherwise it won't activate. This is a common mistake for beginners, your items look pretty good so far - hope it helps =)
I replaced Smoke Screen with Shadow Power since I have the Shadow's mantle set. All runes help increase survivability substantially and I can use it constantly. Illusory Boots allow me to walk through mobs/walls.
I replaced Preparation with Vengeance (hatred rune). Cooldown reduction was a priority here so I can keep constant DPS and Vengeance also breaks all CC so I sometimes use it in conjunction with Shadow Power.
I also replaced Awareness with Steady Aim for higher dmg.
Legendary gems I currently use Gogok, Bane of Powerful and Zei's stone of vengeance.
All the other skills are the same. Let me know what you think, currently it works really well for me. Good survivability while dishing out insane dmg.