with the recent hype about N6 not only for solo but also for group, I decided to try things out a little last night with some success. Since many people have trouble getting that ancient Kridershot, these runs actually sealed the deal for me to not gamble for 2h weapons anymore. This tier 63 was the first key we used, the subsequent tier 64 try was just shortly after that. We were testing some unusual setups, most notably running Natalya on the DH, but also dropping the WD in favor of a Crusader. With the Crusader we managed to clear tier 63 on our first try with a good time (13:23) just minutes before. The Crusader rift was a little worse than the 63 in this video, and by comparing Crus with WD I think that the former ultimately has higher potential because it makes the RG fight a lot easier (with a Crusader we could have easily cleared the 64 run in this video) and also brings better damage buffs; the IAS bonus of Big Bad Voodoo is a big part of the WD's damage buffs which the Natalya set does not benefit from in any way whatsoever. Unfortunately the Crusader build is still a ZEcret, so I cannot release a video showing it just yet, but I might be able to in the future (judging from the Korean rankings it seems like there might also be some teams that have discovered a similar build). Given the little testing we did, I assume that Natalya + WD/Crus will clear at least 67, maybe 68-69 in a godlike rift.
Since I see a lot of questions popping up about Natalya optimization both here and on my stream and many people seem to be waiting on a post about it similar to my UE stuff, I can tell you that this will still take some time (until after my exams, so ETA is sometime in June). Here's what I can tell you though: I was playing at the 2.14 breakpoint with a CDR of 54.30% (12.50% Diamond, 10% Paragon / Weapon / Weapon, 8% Shoulders / Gloves / Ring / Ring) and RCR of 17.20% (10% Paragon, 8% Shoulders), dropping Gogok in favor of Zei's, which put me at 13.71 sec effective cooldown on RoV, and thus required me to proc N2 six times (Strafe / Strafe / EF / Strafe / EF / Strafe). During the cooldown on Preparation - Punishment I was losing about 50 Hatred, which means I had about 25 to spare and could probably replace the RCR on shoulders. The only situations where I had trouble with hatred was when we were skipping a lot and I had to keep strafing without being able to use my generators. Also, by adding another double-tick on Strafe, it could be possible to add more dps stats to the rings without losing too much time in between the RoV casts. Going for only one ring and 1-2 suboptimal rolls on the other slots (~48-50% CDR) will be good enough to not make a huge difference both hatred and time-wise but you gain a lot more freedom in your item choices and about 5-7% more dps my dropping the CDR in favor of a dps affix. Also, I preferred Single Out over Archery, since 20-40% of your time will be spent on the RG anyway, significantly increasing the value of this passive if you are not in dire need of the extra hatred regen. The other passives are pretty straightforward, without a Hellfire I would preferably drop Single Out. The exact build and items can be seen in the beginning (however only very briefly, since I was just checking my gear and not actually showing them for the video. You might need to stop when I hover over the items.)
In addition to that, Natalya obviously offers much more engaging gameplay than UE lightning, especially for groups, and at least for me it feels very rewarding whenever I manage to pull off a perfect cycle for an extended period of time, especially in tough situations. It also feels more flexible because it does not specifically rely on huge monster hitboxes (even though they help with Anathema sometimes) or map layout so much. Survivability seems to be more or less the same if you can manage your discipline well enough. On top of that, you can bring a Calamity and more or less permanent wolf buff for 3 and 4-player groups if you so wish.
When you say your cycle is (Strafe / Strafe / EF / Strafe / EF / Strafe), are you not holding down strafe? Are you instead tapping strafe 2 times, then EF, tapping strafe once, EF, strafe?
I'm still holding down Strafe, but I time it in a way that I get the first tick of the second Strafe cycle (which is 4, so 4+1), then cast my Evasive Fire, and so on. Since it seems like you cannot cast less than 3 ticks you don't lose that much time to go for 5 instead and proc your N2 bonus twice.
FWIW - when you do get to a write-up, I think the mechanics of Strafe and how it interacts with Nats is going to require a lot of explanation. I see a ton of questions in chat on battle.net about how much CDR is needed, and they are usually responded to by uninformed answers about needing very high CDR and no relation to attack speed at all. I don't think the community really gets it.
I have a rudimentary understanding, and I know that it feels really good to have 1.88 aps and 46% CDR, but I don't know exactly why. I know I'm casting RoV-Ef-Ef-Ef-RoV, but I don't know how many ticks of Strafe are happening, etc. Here are some questions I think might need to be answered (and clearly, you've no responsibility to do so, but if you're doing the write up it can't hurt to ask for explicit clarification, since it seems you understand this rather well off the bat).
- When/how is the cooldown of RoV reduced? - i.e. at certain ticks of strafe, by how much per tick or per cast of Focus, etc.
- Is this affected by RCR?
- What are the IAS breakpoints for Strafe?
- Is there any way to reliably tell how many ticks of Strafe one is casting? It seems that after a while you get a feel for what works, but it would be useful to do it in a vacuum to train yourself first.
- How do each of those impact RoV cooldown reduction?
- Is adding IAS past a breakpoint actually a dps reduction through hatred starvation? Some calculators seem to think it is.
- Is there another magical breakpoint of IAS/CDR past 2.2%/46% that leeds to massive increase in efficiency and damage?
- Or, is everything past that very dependent on Gogok procs/uptime, hatred needs, etc?
Again - just thoughts here, and I apologize if I've missed some of this in the tons that has already been written about Nats, but to this point I've seen pretty un-documented and un-clear discussion of everything past that very first breakpoint.
FWIW - when you do get to a write-up, I think the mechanics of Strafe and how it interacts with Nats is going to require a lot of explanation. I see a ton of questions in chat on battle.net about how much CDR is needed, and they are usually responded to by uninformed answers about needing very high CDR and no relation to attack speed at all. I don't think the community really gets it.
[...]
Good point, indeed I am working on something, but it takes a while and most of the testing is not very easy to do. On top of that, I'm mostly busy with catching up ingame right now, since I have little time to play currently, but I plan on releasing something ~2 weeks from now. I'll definitely include your suggestions.
The requirement of CDR on every possible slot force us to drop CHD on rings and gloves which would potentially be a 150% CHD loss. You gain back 130% via green gem on your second weapon. And assuming all affixes are max, losing 5% AS (for not using the quiver) is insignificant for N6 builds using strafe.
For non-strafe N6 builds, AS is almost as much valuable as CDR, which is another case. But still there seems to be no other way of collecting a reasonable amount of CHD without dualwielding.
The requirement of CDR on every possible slot force us to drop CHD on rings and gloves which would potentially be a 150% CHD loss. You gain back 130% via green gem on your second weapon. And assuming all affixes are max, losing 5% AS (for not using the quiver) is insignificant for N6 builds using strafe.
For non-strafe N6 builds, AS is almost as much valuable as CDR, which is another case. But still there seems to be no other way of collecting a reasonable amount of CHD without dualwielding.
Are you sure about this? It doesn't feel like the 130% from offhand applies to the RoV dmg calculation, just like some people reroll the dmg from the offhand into something else. Plus, one could drop CC on rings in favor to CHD given the 10% CC from the Quiver. I am curious about this because I've played around for two days with this build and I found it to be more successful for some reason.
The requirement of CDR on every possible slot force us to drop CHD on rings and gloves which would potentially be a 150% CHD loss. You gain back 130% via green gem on your second weapon.
You can still get CHD on both those... You go dex, crit, CHD, and CDR for gloves, and crit, CHD, CDR, and socket for rings.
Video
Hey everyone,
with the recent hype about N6 not only for solo but also for group, I decided to try things out a little last night with some success. Since many people have trouble getting that ancient Kridershot, these runs actually sealed the deal for me to not gamble for 2h weapons anymore. This tier 63 was the first key we used, the subsequent tier 64 try was just shortly after that. We were testing some unusual setups, most notably running Natalya on the DH, but also dropping the WD in favor of a Crusader. With the Crusader we managed to clear tier 63 on our first try with a good time (13:23) just minutes before. The Crusader rift was a little worse than the 63 in this video, and by comparing Crus with WD I think that the former ultimately has higher potential because it makes the RG fight a lot easier (with a Crusader we could have easily cleared the 64 run in this video) and also brings better damage buffs; the IAS bonus of Big Bad Voodoo is a big part of the WD's damage buffs which the Natalya set does not benefit from in any way whatsoever. Unfortunately the Crusader build is still a ZEcret, so I cannot release a video showing it just yet, but I might be able to in the future (judging from the Korean rankings it seems like there might also be some teams that have discovered a similar build). Given the little testing we did, I assume that Natalya + WD/Crus will clear at least 67, maybe 68-69 in a godlike rift.
Since I see a lot of questions popping up about Natalya optimization both here and on my stream and many people seem to be waiting on a post about it similar to my UE stuff, I can tell you that this will still take some time (until after my exams, so ETA is sometime in June). Here's what I can tell you though: I was playing at the 2.14 breakpoint with a CDR of 54.30% (12.50% Diamond, 10% Paragon / Weapon / Weapon, 8% Shoulders / Gloves / Ring / Ring) and RCR of 17.20% (10% Paragon, 8% Shoulders), dropping Gogok in favor of Zei's, which put me at 13.71 sec effective cooldown on RoV, and thus required me to proc N2 six times (Strafe / Strafe / EF / Strafe / EF / Strafe). During the cooldown on Preparation - Punishment I was losing about 50 Hatred, which means I had about 25 to spare and could probably replace the RCR on shoulders. The only situations where I had trouble with hatred was when we were skipping a lot and I had to keep strafing without being able to use my generators. Also, by adding another double-tick on Strafe, it could be possible to add more dps stats to the rings without losing too much time in between the RoV casts. Going for only one ring and 1-2 suboptimal rolls on the other slots (~48-50% CDR) will be good enough to not make a huge difference both hatred and time-wise but you gain a lot more freedom in your item choices and about 5-7% more dps my dropping the CDR in favor of a dps affix. Also, I preferred Single Out over Archery, since 20-40% of your time will be spent on the RG anyway, significantly increasing the value of this passive if you are not in dire need of the extra hatred regen. The other passives are pretty straightforward, without a Hellfire I would preferably drop Single Out. The exact build and items can be seen in the beginning (however only very briefly, since I was just checking my gear and not actually showing them for the video. You might need to stop when I hover over the items.)
In addition to that, Natalya obviously offers much more engaging gameplay than UE lightning, especially for groups, and at least for me it feels very rewarding whenever I manage to pull off a perfect cycle for an extended period of time, especially in tough situations. It also feels more flexible because it does not specifically rely on huge monster hitboxes (even though they help with Anathema sometimes) or map layout so much. Survivability seems to be more or less the same if you can manage your discipline well enough. On top of that, you can bring a Calamity and more or less permanent wolf buff for 3 and 4-player groups if you so wish.
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When you say your cycle is (Strafe / Strafe / EF / Strafe / EF / Strafe), are you not holding down strafe? Are you instead tapping strafe 2 times, then EF, tapping strafe once, EF, strafe?
I'm still holding down Strafe, but I time it in a way that I get the first tick of the second Strafe cycle (which is 4, so 4+1), then cast my Evasive Fire, and so on. Since it seems like you cannot cast less than 3 ticks you don't lose that much time to go for 5 instead and proc your N2 bonus twice.
Profile | Twitch | Youtube | Twitter | Recruitment: Zero Empathy are looking for the best players in Europe
FWIW - when you do get to a write-up, I think the mechanics of Strafe and how it interacts with Nats is going to require a lot of explanation. I see a ton of questions in chat on battle.net about how much CDR is needed, and they are usually responded to by uninformed answers about needing very high CDR and no relation to attack speed at all. I don't think the community really gets it.
I have a rudimentary understanding, and I know that it feels really good to have 1.88 aps and 46% CDR, but I don't know exactly why. I know I'm casting RoV-Ef-Ef-Ef-RoV, but I don't know how many ticks of Strafe are happening, etc. Here are some questions I think might need to be answered (and clearly, you've no responsibility to do so, but if you're doing the write up it can't hurt to ask for explicit clarification, since it seems you understand this rather well off the bat).
- When/how is the cooldown of RoV reduced? - i.e. at certain ticks of strafe, by how much per tick or per cast of Focus, etc.
- Is this affected by RCR?
- What are the IAS breakpoints for Strafe?
- Is there any way to reliably tell how many ticks of Strafe one is casting? It seems that after a while you get a feel for what works, but it would be useful to do it in a vacuum to train yourself first.
- How do each of those impact RoV cooldown reduction?
- Is adding IAS past a breakpoint actually a dps reduction through hatred starvation? Some calculators seem to think it is.
- Is there another magical breakpoint of IAS/CDR past 2.2%/46% that leeds to massive increase in efficiency and damage?
- Or, is everything past that very dependent on Gogok procs/uptime, hatred needs, etc?
Again - just thoughts here, and I apologize if I've missed some of this in the tons that has already been written about Nats, but to this point I've seen pretty un-documented and un-clear discussion of everything past that very first breakpoint.
Good point, indeed I am working on something, but it takes a while and most of the testing is not very easy to do. On top of that, I'm mostly busy with catching up ingame right now, since I have little time to play currently, but I plan on releasing something ~2 weeks from now. I'll definitely include your suggestions.
Profile | Twitch | Youtube | Twitter | Recruitment: Zero Empathy are looking for the best players in Europe
Question for you wudijo,
Have you ever considered using a well rolled Holy Point Shot Quiver in the offhand instead of Balefire?
The requirement of CDR on every possible slot force us to drop CHD on rings and gloves which would potentially be a 150% CHD loss. You gain back 130% via green gem on your second weapon. And assuming all affixes are max, losing 5% AS (for not using the quiver) is insignificant for N6 builds using strafe.
For non-strafe N6 builds, AS is almost as much valuable as CDR, which is another case. But still there seems to be no other way of collecting a reasonable amount of CHD without dualwielding.
Are you sure about this? It doesn't feel like the 130% from offhand applies to the RoV dmg calculation, just like some people reroll the dmg from the offhand into something else. Plus, one could drop CC on rings in favor to CHD given the 10% CC from the Quiver. I am curious about this because I've played around for two days with this build and I found it to be more successful for some reason.
You can still get CHD on both those... You go dex, crit, CHD, and CDR for gloves, and crit, CHD, CDR, and socket for rings.
it's all about maintaining a good balance.
ideally you should aim for cdr+chc+dex+socket on rings.
You can't bargain dex on any slot except amulet maybe, and that is only if you are able to obtain high end rolls on ele+CHD+CHC+socket.
Try what you want, sooner or later you shall realize you can't have it all at the same time with 50% CDR req.
Moreover, the need for some RCR makes things even more complicated (for strafe builds).