I want to share with you guys my latest run, Tier 57 - 13:20 (Rank 3 EU) on seasons. While there don't seem to be many DHs around that actually play cold and just decided to follow the fire RoV meta, I was experimenting with it a little and found that it might actually be about equally as strong, maybe even stronger at the high end. It's really interesting because back on the PTR, everyone was running cold, however after the bugfix no one played it anymore and fire was the new way to go. Cold feels a lot more smooth to play and does not depend on RNG as much as other DH builds in the past or the fire variation of Natalya, since you can clear good and bad rifts alike and should not have too much trouble with almost any rift guardian.
The night of the clear was the first time I was pushing solo in S3, I was just sitting at 54 from 2-3 keys I used a couple of days before. I was trying out different item and skill combinations and found this one to work the best for now, however it is still a work in progress, and I already have some ideas that I want to try out next time. I used about 25 keys on tier 58, 6 of which were kind of close tries at ~1-2 min overtime, so the build is working pretty well and consistently (keep in mind I have no practice with Natalya solo rifts yet). If we consider that the current R1 on nonseason has cleared 62 solo, I think cold has pretty much the same potential (let's assume +1 tier for the remaining time, Stonesinger, Unburieds, a fourth pylon, respectively, and maybe another +1-2 for less skipping, better gameplay and the lack of dps with my current items and paragon, we're at 62+ as well). Also, I had about ~0.5% too little CDR, which had me waiting ~50-100ms to cast my RoV again everytime I perfectly executed a full cycle.
Since I got so many questions about cold while I was streaming this I decided to put together a build here. It's not yet finalized and I will expand on it as I will do more testing. Also, I have been working on some numbers for Natalya already but it'll still take a while until I can release something that resembles my last post on UE + M6, especially given how busy my schedule is for the upcoming weeks.
I was running with ~54% CDR without and ~61% with Gogok, which ensures almost infinite discipline via Focused Mind and almost perma wolf uptime, as well as a clean 2 generator cycle with Strafe - Evasive Fire - Strafe - Evasive Fire - Strafe - RoV. I'm not yet decided on Gogok though, ~54% CDR is pretty much exactly what you get with perfect rolls on everything but amulet, which would require you to get a double tick on Strafe only once and still keep a clean 2 generator cycle, or making use of even more double ticks would enable you to drop even more CDR in favor of better dps while only slightly decreasing your RoV frequency. The Ancient Parthan Defenders are a nice bonus but they really don't do much at tier ~60 anymore, even with 30m toughness and 10 frozen enemies. Not sure if they are bugged or anything, but I got oneshot very often even in perfect scnenarios, and I feel going for a glass cannon setup will ultimately be the way to go. This would also let you reach the 2.14 breakpoint without a Gogok (15 dual wield, 9.6 paragon, 3 enchantress, 7 Steady Strikers = 34.6% IAS). I was missing a full 10% RCR on my weapon and if needed you could also reroll the damage range to hatred regen as well, which could be enough to self-sustain the hatred without a templar or regen skill. For lower tiers you can get really tanky with Taeguk + Ancient Parthan Defenders and maybe even Perfectionist if you want to. If you have a Hellfire, I recommend Single Out or Ambush. RG fights become very long in the high 50's, however for ultimate rift fishing Single Out is not needed (Stonesinger).
There are a couple of differences to the fire RoV:
- Icy Trail actually contributes a little to your dps in AoE situations.
- You can more aggressively move through the rift and pull more monsters if you time your Smoke Screen and Flying Strike correctly.
- You won't knockback enemies out of your screen or your RoV AoE, which makes it a lot easier to control them. Also, you will not lose out on big chunks of your RoV damage.
- Bad monster types can more easily be dealt with. Even in Anarch / Assassins / Ghost maps I was consistently getting decent results as long as I didn't get completely screwed over by hordes of nasty elites. The biggest pain are Lacunis because you cannot stun them mid-air, and at some point they will jump at you during Smoke Screen downtime.
- You can more easily stack up the monsters in the AoE of your casts, since they will close in and finally get stuck in the freeze, while with Stampede you will scatter them everywhere if you don't have an obstacle nearby.
- Ess of Johan procs from your follower are free instakills on almost anything. I've tried to use one myself for a bit but the proc coefficients seem too low unless you have a godlike roll.
- You can permafreeze elites for ~6-7 seconds and then move on, pull more, and go back once the diminishing returns have refreshed, thus you have to kite offscreen a lot less even on dangerous packs.
I will explore more of cold RoV once I have some more time to play, and I definitely intend to push cold to tier 62 by the end of the season. For me, it's definitely the way to go until I see another incredible stunt by the fire version.
Hey wudijo! Thanks for all the good read on DH, always nice to read what you have to say.
what do you feel is the safest to go for in Hardcore? Natalya does seem nice to farm T6 but then Smokescreen and skipping elites is going to be frightening as hell in high GRs in HC, and I always feel like getting surrounded by mobs to maximize your damage is a bad idea overall in HC.
Do you think natalya is viable to push GRs in HC or would you stick to UE for that, or would you change something in your nat build and still go with that in HC?
Great work, I was running Ice N6 for the longest time, but you have a good variation
How do you deal with Waller? With Rocket storm, the rockets go over the walls to still keep the Focus/Restraint damage, and will have the ROV cooldown. With Icy Trail, you can't get that Strafe to hit, to cooldown ROV
The only issue I have with cold is the weakness to adds who can cast/use a ranged attack from 1 1/2 screen away, which is only slightly less annoying than the stampede rune missing for getting hung up on some weird map path. Other than that the nat's builds are the most engaging setup since hell trapper. Always good to see a post/video Wudijo, looking forward to more.
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Hi everyone,
I want to share with you guys my latest run, Tier 57 - 13:20 (Rank 3 EU) on seasons. While there don't seem to be many DHs around that actually play cold and just decided to follow the fire RoV meta, I was experimenting with it a little and found that it might actually be about equally as strong, maybe even stronger at the high end. It's really interesting because back on the PTR, everyone was running cold, however after the bugfix no one played it anymore and fire was the new way to go. Cold feels a lot more smooth to play and does not depend on RNG as much as other DH builds in the past or the fire variation of Natalya, since you can clear good and bad rifts alike and should not have too much trouble with almost any rift guardian.
The night of the clear was the first time I was pushing solo in S3, I was just sitting at 54 from 2-3 keys I used a couple of days before. I was trying out different item and skill combinations and found this one to work the best for now, however it is still a work in progress, and I already have some ideas that I want to try out next time. I used about 25 keys on tier 58, 6 of which were kind of close tries at ~1-2 min overtime, so the build is working pretty well and consistently (keep in mind I have no practice with Natalya solo rifts yet). If we consider that the current R1 on nonseason has cleared 62 solo, I think cold has pretty much the same potential (let's assume +1 tier for the remaining time, Stonesinger, Unburieds, a fourth pylon, respectively, and maybe another +1-2 for less skipping, better gameplay and the lack of dps with my current items and paragon, we're at 62+ as well). Also, I had about ~0.5% too little CDR, which had me waiting ~50-100ms to cast my RoV again everytime I perfectly executed a full cycle.
Since I got so many questions about cold while I was streaming this I decided to put together a build here. It's not yet finalized and I will expand on it as I will do more testing. Also, I have been working on some numbers for Natalya already but it'll still take a while until I can release something that resembles my last post on UE + M6, especially given how busy my schedule is for the upcoming weeks.
I was running with ~54% CDR without and ~61% with Gogok, which ensures almost infinite discipline via Focused Mind and almost perma wolf uptime, as well as a clean 2 generator cycle with Strafe - Evasive Fire - Strafe - Evasive Fire - Strafe - RoV. I'm not yet decided on Gogok though, ~54% CDR is pretty much exactly what you get with perfect rolls on everything but amulet, which would require you to get a double tick on Strafe only once and still keep a clean 2 generator cycle, or making use of even more double ticks would enable you to drop even more CDR in favor of better dps while only slightly decreasing your RoV frequency. The Ancient Parthan Defenders are a nice bonus but they really don't do much at tier ~60 anymore, even with 30m toughness and 10 frozen enemies. Not sure if they are bugged or anything, but I got oneshot very often even in perfect scnenarios, and I feel going for a glass cannon setup will ultimately be the way to go. This would also let you reach the 2.14 breakpoint without a Gogok (15 dual wield, 9.6 paragon, 3 enchantress, 7 Steady Strikers = 34.6% IAS). I was missing a full 10% RCR on my weapon and if needed you could also reroll the damage range to hatred regen as well, which could be enough to self-sustain the hatred without a templar or regen skill. For lower tiers you can get really tanky with Taeguk + Ancient Parthan Defenders and maybe even Perfectionist if you want to. If you have a Hellfire, I recommend Single Out or Ambush. RG fights become very long in the high 50's, however for ultimate rift fishing Single Out is not needed (Stonesinger).
There are a couple of differences to the fire RoV:
- Icy Trail actually contributes a little to your dps in AoE situations.
- You can more aggressively move through the rift and pull more monsters if you time your Smoke Screen and Flying Strike correctly.
- You won't knockback enemies out of your screen or your RoV AoE, which makes it a lot easier to control them. Also, you will not lose out on big chunks of your RoV damage.
- Bad monster types can more easily be dealt with. Even in Anarch / Assassins / Ghost maps I was consistently getting decent results as long as I didn't get completely screwed over by hordes of nasty elites. The biggest pain are Lacunis because you cannot stun them mid-air, and at some point they will jump at you during Smoke Screen downtime.
- You can more easily stack up the monsters in the AoE of your casts, since they will close in and finally get stuck in the freeze, while with Stampede you will scatter them everywhere if you don't have an obstacle nearby.
- Ess of Johan procs from your follower are free instakills on almost anything. I've tried to use one myself for a bit but the proc coefficients seem too low unless you have a godlike roll.
- You can permafreeze elites for ~6-7 seconds and then move on, pull more, and go back once the diminishing returns have refreshed, thus you have to kite offscreen a lot less even on dangerous packs.
I will explore more of cold RoV once I have some more time to play, and I definitely intend to push cold to tier 62 by the end of the season. For me, it's definitely the way to go until I see another incredible stunt by the fire version.
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Thanks for sharing.
Great job, your posts are always so well constructed and informative.
Hey wudijo! Thanks for all the good read on DH, always nice to read what you have to say.
what do you feel is the safest to go for in Hardcore? Natalya does seem nice to farm T6 but then Smokescreen and skipping elites is going to be frightening as hell in high GRs in HC, and I always feel like getting surrounded by mobs to maximize your damage is a bad idea overall in HC.
Do you think natalya is viable to push GRs in HC or would you stick to UE for that, or would you change something in your nat build and still go with that in HC?
Thanks!
Great work, I was running Ice N6 for the longest time, but you have a good variation
How do you deal with Waller? With Rocket storm, the rockets go over the walls to still keep the Focus/Restraint damage, and will have the ROV cooldown. With Icy Trail, you can't get that Strafe to hit, to cooldown ROV
The only issue I have with cold is the weakness to adds who can cast/use a ranged attack from 1 1/2 screen away, which is only slightly less annoying than the stampede rune missing for getting hung up on some weird map path. Other than that the nat's builds are the most engaging setup since hell trapper. Always good to see a post/video Wudijo, looking forward to more.