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[2.1.2] Blue Tides [Lightning Tier 45+] (Update 15 Jan 2015)

by last updated Jan 19, 2015 ( Patch 2.1.2 )
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Skills

  • Elemental Arrow Ball Lightning
  • Marked for Death Mortal Enemy
  • Sentry Polar Station
  • Preparation Focused Mind
  • Smoke Screen Lingering Fog
  • Companion
  • Cull the Weak
  • Awareness
  • Steady Aim
  • Custom Engineering

Items

More Details

  • Legendary Gems

    • Bane of the Trapped
    • Gogok of Swiftness
    • Taeguk
It's not possible to include spell bonuses as a stat priority right now, Dmg % means Sentry / Elemental Arrow bonus for the adequate item slots. The Meticulous Bolts quiver is not in the database, but it is the one suitable to this build. On quiver, go for Elemental Arrow. If you can't get an amulet with Lightning / CHC / CHD / Socket, you should drop the Lightning % for Dex. If possible, get Strongarm Bracers and reroll the secondary to knockback % to enable the proc.

Paragon Priorities

Core

Movement Speed
Primary Stat
Maximum Resource
Vitality

Offense

Cooldown Reduction
Critical Hit Damage
Critical Hit Chance
Attack Speed

Defense

Resist All
Life
Armor
Life Regeneration

Utility

Resource Cost Reduction
Area Damage
Life on Hit
Gold Find
Core: Go for movement speed cap, rest goes to dexterity.

Offense: 10% CDR, then CHD, then CC, then IAS.

Defense: Lolwhat

Utility: 10% RCR, then area damage.

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.