Update: Made visual upgrades to make it easier to read.
Update: Patch 13
Update: Added more purposed builds!
ToDo: Add to attack speed chart with Smoke Screen, Marked for Death, Sharpshooter, Perfectionist SP numbers.
Can a build be made by not using a single yellow hatred generator? If so how viable is it?
Theory
In theory it can. There are a number of options within purple, discipline, spells that allow a DH to regenerate hatred and keep them in the fight. The main point of a build like this is to not rely on the yellow hatred generators because they have lower damage and typically poor effects and instead focus more on spenders that can front much more damage, and when built properly, can provide nice control over the battlefield.
There are some problems to overcome with this build. One is attack speed. Your hatred consumption goes up with faster speeds. Because of this the DH must be conscious over gear choice at all times along with knowing when he should change his build accordingly to better suit his generation rates. Another problem comes in the form of crowd control. The best CCs for the DH are mostly under the generator and discipline move sets. This makes some choices harder to make since one would have to think about where they should get their control and survivability from.
Skills
The Discipline Spells:
Preparation: Unlocks at level 19 with the rune needed for these builds unlocking at 35. This skill when runed Punishment will restore 125 hatred at the cost of 20 discipline. Currently this is the most powerful generator or hatred in the kit however it has no use outside pure hatred generation.
With Vengeance it will generate an additional 25 hatred. This has been lowered since patch 12. The passive not is much less powerful for this build than it was before however it is a good option.
Smoke Screen: Unlocks at level 22 with the rune for Breathe Deep unlocking at 45. Costing only 15 hatred and generating 20 per second for two seconds is strong. On top of the stealth this is not only a good tool to get hatred but also a great way to keep alive in a pinch.
Companion: Unlocks at level 25 with the Bat rune unlocking at 37. Patch 13 made a buff to this passive regen. It is now 3 per second up from 2.4. This change makes the Bat much more competitive than it was in the past. It also adds a decent amount of damage so it is a good option to those builds who need more output.
Marked for Death: Unlocks at level 15 and the rune at 46. Currently it generates 3 hatred per shot on the marked target. This one is hard to rate as a hatred generator. It scales the generation with attack speed however you also scale your hatred usage with attack speed. To really get a handle on it you have to find how much hatred you spend considering you use less per shot. Because of this moving average the math is not pretty.
Shadow Power: Generates 45 hatred over 20 sec. This is now a very powerful option to the DH for this type of build. Because of the 'nerf' to it (used to be 30% attack speed not life drain) it now has a very balanced amount of hatred generated over the time. It is the lowest option but since it now can heal the DH for a substantial amount it is quite powerful in this build.
Everything else: Costs are either too high or typically not enough room to keep on a build. Since you are devoting at least 1 move that uses discipline in order to fuel your hatred taking much else in the way of spending more for something that does not generate hatred will make your build much harder to play if not unplayable because of the divided usage of your discipline. The only real exceptions to this are Caltrops , runed golden and Marked for Death only because of their low cost.
The Hatred Skills:
Rapid Fire: Your best single target attack. The only thing that can out damage this is Impale and this is only during the first few seconds. Rapid Fire quickly out damages Impale because of the ability to channel it over a longer period of time.
Elemental Arrow: An amazing line based AOE. Because it can pierce targets, do massive damage to everything in its path and low hatred cost it is the most efficient and potentially the most powerful attack available. Rune options, well anything really. The preferred rune is Frost Arrow only because it is probably one of the best and most reliable slows that a DH can come across next to Chain Gang and Caltrops.
Multi Shot: Probably your second best AOE skill due to Suppression Fire. The only reason why I say second best move is because with a yellowless build you will not have much room for Vault so an AOE like this one that relies on proximity is not as good as one like Elemental Arrow. Its hatred cost is very high but with the rune it is capable of refunding itself and then some. It can generate some serious discipline if used a couple times in a row.
Rain of Vengeance: A very powerful one shot AOE. I only state this here because it is a good way to get rid of extra hatred generated from Multi Shot. Since Multi Shot gets an absurd amount of discipline generated this move and FoK are nice to burn it off with. The only reason why I value this over FoK is because this one has a very long range to it and can burn off the hatred much faster than any other move.
Everything else: Either too inefficient or too random to guarantee not wasting hatred. Impale and Strafe have hatred costs that are just too high to be supported on a build like these. This is not all that bad because Rapid Fire is a good alternative to Impale and Multi Shot to Strafe. Chakarm is just too random to guarantee that it will hit the target but it can be supported due to its costs. I do not recommend Chakarm but it will work. I mentioned FoK before for being a good move to burn off the extra hatred when Multi Shot generates discipline however Rain of Vengeance does the job better and faster. It is a personal preference as to which one you would like to use however I suggest Rain.
Passives:
Vengeance: This gives 2 discipline per orb on top of 25 initial hatred. It has a nice synergy with Prep on the rune to allow for very high amounts of hatred regen. This passive is very powerful in this build however it is not necessary. Because of the nerfs I feel that this passive has been brought down to the level of Perfectionist and Night Stalker.
Night Stalker: As you can guess this ability can be quite good with high amounts of crit. If the chance to restore discipline is high enough this may be even more powerful than Vengeance with Prep. However it is yet to be seen exactly how powerful this is and exactly how much you will get the bonus.
Perfectionist: Another very powerful option. If the DH does not have high crit I feel this would be a good replacement for Night Stalker. It may also outclass Vengeance but until we have a final word on the runes and how they affect skills we do not know exactly how good Prep truly is.
Sharpshooter: I only mention this because of the synergy with Night Stalker. It does a good bit to help with evening out crit chance and boosting it slightly.
Everything else: I only mentioned the passives that would be good to help the build generate hatred more efficiently. In no way am I saying you need all 3 or you can not play this class properly. I suggest getting things like Cull the Weak, Archery or Steady Aim as well. It is best if you have some of your passives tailored for damage and some toward getting better output of hatred.
Some Math
For starters we should first define how much hatred the DH should be expecting during a fixed amount of time during a fight. To keep the numbers simple I will be doing the math based around 20 sec intervals. This is because Prep and SP can only be used every 20 sec from the 1 disc per second you naturally have.
I would like to make a note right now that I will not be talking about +disc over time affixes on gear or hatred/disc cost reductions. I only say this because the numbers for those conflict on different sites. It is hard to get a good fix on the bonus so I will disregard the affix for now and until I have more definitive proof I will avoid talking about them until that time.
Over a 20 sec interval you will passively generate 80 hatred. This number is quite low. If we wanted to try and achieve anything with this build we can already see that with a 2h xbow firing Rapid Fire or Elemental Arrow you will run out of hatred much faster than it is generated. This assumes the bow is at the slowest speed of 1.1 APS. Obviously gear should be considered at this point. We know that there is an affix to generate hatred. At level 60 the affix clocks in at 2.68-3.33 hatred per second. Assuming you have a 3 hatred per second on both a 2h xbow and quiver it brings the generation up to 10 per second. Bumping the generation up to 200 over the 20 sec!
200 seems to be a bit much but I will throw this into perspective. At 1.1APS while firing Rapid Fire or Elemental Arrow you will use 220 hatred over 20 sec. You can already see that even without any modifier to APS you will run through your hatred way too fast. Lets look at some of the alternative options to the DH to see if there is a way around this.
Prep 125 over 20 sec (150 with Vengeance)
Smoke Screen 53.3333 over 20 sec
Companion 60 over 20 sec
Shadow Power 45 over 20 sec
Marked for Death 3 less per shot
You can see that by adding any one of these means we will achieve enough hatred regen to support a 1.1 speed build. Some of them, like Prep, have quite a good amount of excesses hatred generated. Knowing this we can bump up our attack speed a little bit and give much more play room when it comes to gear choices.
TODO: Graph for some attack speed comparisons.
The math is quite nice in that it points to every yellowless option is powerful in its own way. Although Prep outshines the rest it should be taken with a grain of salt for two reasons. One, the attack speeds that can be used are much higher but that does not always mean better. It does allow for some much more wide choices but you have to pay much more attention when using faster weapons. Also it lacks survive ability. All the math in the world can point to it being the most efficient means but that in no way means that it is a better option for surviving. Remember Prep is pure hatred gen, Marked and Companion are dps, Smoke Screen and SP are survival.
PLEASE REMEMBER. This math is done under the assumption you have a build designed to play in either multiplayer and singleplayer. This is why the passive regen from the Templar is not taken into account. I am also in no way suggesting the example build I used for the math is the build that is “the best” I am leaving this up to you. The math was to purely show that this type of build can be sustained and give some idea into exactly what type of attack speeds people should be using in order to not overextend their hatred spending.
Some Purposed Builds
Simple Prep: http://us.battle.net...gRVh!Yed!ZbabaZ
This build is designed with one thing in mind. Simplicity. The large amount of hatred generation supported by some of the more standard attacks for the DH should make this build quite handy in every situation. The main point of the build is to keep range on enemies while hammering away on them with whatever attack best suites the situation. Vault and Brooding were taken to keep the DH alive even if their discipline is completely dry and FoK is a powerful tool to keep enemies off your back.
Crit Abuse, Using 1h xbow: http://us.battle.net...ghVl!XTe!YYYZaY
Because of the insane amount of hatred generated with a combo of affix, Prep and the passives this build should be capable of using a 1h xbow. Although we don't know the exact numbers that go into Night Stalker it is till obvious that with the abuse of critting there is a very high chance that this build will in fact work. SP and vault were taken to improve surviveability since there is little otherwise.
Rocket build! http://us.battle.net...glQi!eUh!bcbaYa
The basic idea is to boost your damage by the use of rockets. In this build you look like you are putting all of your eggs into one basket, that is because you are. The problem with rocket builds in general is the devotion of particular slots to some mechanics. These slots must be added to the slots we need to go completely yellowless. The surviveabiliy is not all to stellar however this build should boast some powerful damage.
Smoke Screen abuse: http://us.battle.net...kQjh!aeT!bZaYbb
The concept is to get the most bang for the buck with Smoke Screen. The main focus is on keeping enemies slowed and killed before they get to the player. Elemental Arrow is a great tool for this. Rapid Fire is there because bosses can only be slowed if they are not immune and it can do higher single target dps than Elemental Arrow. If enemies do get close Smoke Screen and Prep are there to get out especially with the 60% movement speed with Smoke Screen. The choice of passives was difficult and can easily change to support more survival.
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The following builds are Exitium's. Most of them show the differences between crit builds and he does a good job of covering the crit passives quite nicely. Due note that I am paraphrasing/quoting him although I am not using proper format or the quote tag. All credit for it goes to him.
My Favourite nHG Build: takes the premise of an nHG build and throws in Caltrops for good measure.
Multishot is in there for its runed effect of providing 1 Discipline for each monster the attack hits, it's also a strong AoE ability. Rapid Shot is the ability of choice in single target (i.e. boss) situations, it has incredible damage output and runed with Web Shot, inflicts a powerful slow, making kiting that much easier. Caltrops is there to provide an extra slow, useful when you're Multishotting for Discipline - the rune choice roots enemies briefly when the trap is initially triggered, meaning that that large stream of enemies should turn into a ready-to-pwn group - did I mention that the more enemies you hit with Multishot, the more discipline you get? Mmmmm efficiency. Vault with Tumble is there for when you need to GTFO quickly, it could easily be changed to any of the other rune choices; my second choice would be Rattling Roll.
The passives that support this build are Vengeance, Cull the Weak (CtW) and Perfectionist. Vengeance synergises well with Prep giving you more bang for your buck. CtW takes advantage of the huge amount of slowing effects in this build by increasing total damage. Perfection "perfects" the build by reducing ALL Discipline consumption, meaning the cycle of Prep'ing then unloading occurs that much quicker.
Moderate Crit Build - a calculating build that takes advantage of crit synergies, stuns and Shadow Power. This particular variant has moderate/low H/D generation gear requirements and hence uses Multishot as its main AoE.
The premise of all 3 of these builds is that you crit ALLLLL THE TIMEEEEE, though it does require more planning. Caltrop as normal to slow approaching cuddlemonsters, pop one on yourself then go nuts.
Rapid Fire makes a return for single target situations, Elemental Arrow takes the Lightning Bolts rune, meaning crtical hits will stun the targets! This buys you more time on Bait the Trap. Multishot is augmented with Full Broadside to provide a heavy hitting AoE which will, coincidentally, crit a LOT and net you some nice Discipline returns through passives. Shadow Power features Night Bane for H generation at a hefty cost, though it should provide excellent healing returns when used just before a Multishot, which as mentioned should quickly cover the D expenditure. Companion (Bat) is thrown in for the extra H regen.
The passives used are Nightstalker, Sharpshooter and Archery. Nightstalker is the crux of this build, it has a *chance* to provide 2 Discipline every time you crit. Sharpshooter increases your critical hit chance, moreso when you haven't crit for a while - useful for both frontloading crit before you attack or just making sure you don't go more than a nanosecond without critting Archery is taken for it's synergies when using Crossbows or Hand Crossbows, using a Crossbow you will simply do more damage and using Hand Crossbows you will simply crit more - Hand Crossbows are very useful if you have the Hatred Generation, but lack base crit.
This build is very well rounded, though you must absolutely have enough generation and crit. If it turns out that the *chance* on Nightstalker is very low, then these builds will require some form of D generation. It is also important to note that Caltrops only lasts 6 seconds - i.e. you will probably be using up your base D regen + that of a Templar with Inspire (that's 2 per second). Base D regen, gone on just Caltrops.
High Crit Build - an improved version of the above, deals higher damage at the cost of higher gear requirements, including high base crit to ensure Discipline gains.
There are two differences between this build and the last, this one utilises Marked for Death (Valley of Death), for increased damage - ideally you throw the mark over the Caltrops that are slowing the mobs down. Loaded Cluster Arrow is then taken to be the main AoE ability in place of Multishot - it hits extremely hard and literally just takes the AoE damage slot. Note that it's also plausible to still take Multishot with Marked for Death, since that H costs and damage will drop - giving more breathing room for gear reqs. You could take Rain of Vengeance (RoV) with Flying Strike for additional stuns if you could cope with the cooldown on it.
This build shares the same weaknesses as before for obvious reasons, except they are exacerbated. It will be crucial to have satisfactory gear.
Stupid Crit Build - theoretically this build would be capable of insane damage at the cost of probably unobtainable levels of H/D regeneration, it would make a solid boss build though, utilising the synergy between Rapid Fire and the Mortal Enemy variant of Marked for Death. Smoke Screen is there to allow enemies to practically cuddle you before making your escape, maximising time on Bait the Trap. This would be a reasonable build in general if it included a Hatred Generator, or used a sneaky gearing option which I'll go over later.
As this build has raised the finger to sensible Hatred Generation it is extremely vulnerable even when gear levels are satisfactory - as I said it's basically a boss build that will struggle at anything else. Why did I link it and talk about it? To show how far this nHG thing can really go - this may well be possible at Inferno gear levels.
Sensible Stupid Crit Build (ohai oxymoron) - with one change and a sneaky gearing attitude the build above can actually be a sensible high damage build. We drop the useful Marked for Death and trade it in for our good old nHG friend Prep (Punishment), combine this by gearing towards increased total Hatred (an affix I mentioned earlier) and suddenly you have a sensible build that is actually pretty balanced providing you have the Discipline gearing necesarry. Hurray! Note that you could swap Archery for Vengeance if you wanted to bias towards hatred instead of damage or Discipline.
Conclusion
The idea works on paper. Still we do not have the game in our hands so until that happens there is no real way of saying for sure that any of these builds will work or whether this idea is a good one or not. I am in no way trying to give you the “perfect” build but rather presenting all the relevant information about this subject into a single place in order to give better advice to people who want to build their DH in this way.
Also I have not posted the build I would use for this type of DH. This is only because if you want to talk about a particular build I would prefer to see what you have built first! I have given very good options for builds and guidance for choices. I would like it more to see how you took my advice, or if you think you have a build that is better that I did not even talk about.
If you made it this far I will personally bake you a metaphysical cookie and deliver it post haste. If you have a build you think would be great for me to add to this to help others get guidance PM me with it. If you want to talk about a build, or if you want to try and get me to link mine feel free to post it up even if it seems we are in a heated debate in the forum already.
Thank you to everyone and their input. Without it these builds would be much worse and my advice less then stellar. Special thanks to Exitium for offering his builds
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What about +atk speed on gear? You just wouldnt take any (much)?
Good point but from the numbers you get an extra 20 hatred every 21 seconds that does not get spent. Even if you get enough attack speed to push that out there is a little saving grace that I forgot to mention.
Edit: did the math. If you have a 1.2 speed weapon you get 252 Hatred spent using elemental arrow for the full 21 sec (with rounding). This means you can not take over 9% attack speed bonus or you start to use hatred faster than you generate it. However...
The preparation skill is runed for 21D for the cast at a level 4 rune. At level 4 this build is sustainable but pushing the levels higher, up to the max of 7. I bet the cos will drop to at least 18D (assuming starting at 25D at level 1, 21D at level 4 and 18D at level 7) This than generates the 251H down to every 18 seconds and the hatred cost for 18 seconds to be 217.8 (for Elemental Arrow and 1.1 speed) giving you even more breathing room to play with.
Just did the math for 1.4 speed and you have 252 hatred spent and 251 hatred gained.
To get 1.4 speed you need to have 27.27% attack speed bonus on top of a 1.1 weapon. Seems like quite a large buffer of speeds to me.
Edit: so yes at lower rune values (4-5) I would try to avoid attack speed bonuses higher than 10% but getting to the higher values you do not have to care as much and can start going much more for it. Actually I would say to maximize damage you need to be shooting for very specific values of attack speed to make sure you do not waste hatred! (I will get better numbers for this posted tomorrow when I'm not so tired)
I will work on this a little bit tomorrow and see what values per rune level (assuming the 1D cost reduction per rank is how the rune works) a DH would need to shoot for in terms of attack speed.
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im sure its possible, but it seems like a real challenge and would require a good bit of planning. personally i wouldnt make this build just because i love hungering arrow, and entangling shot (with indigo for multiple targets) are really great abilities. guided arrow and a slow <3
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(this build was before D3 launched... looking back on it now - i had no idea what i was doing)
Did you include 15% attack speed you get from dual wielding in your calculations?
I assume he is using a single two-handed crossbow.
If you read all of this it was exactly as he stated. The build is only works with a 1.1 speed weapon. This is factoring in the projected bonus from having a rank 7 rune.
After I finish my breakfast (and before I go to class) I'm going to try and get up a full breakdown of hatred costs and how much play you have with attack speed. So if you want to see that check up later today I'll update the top post with it.
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Posted the chart if you would like to take a look. I also did some extra math to provide another option of using the yellow rune on the bat to allow for even faster attack speeds. Still the numbers come out to say that duel wielding is still much too fast for this build.
So crossbow or bow are your only real options when considering making this build.
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I don't fancy your companion of choice, though. I always picture myself fighting multiple monsters in diablo, so a single target slow is not all that effective, imo. For extra dps, I would probably go for a boar, while I realise monsters might not always be clustered enough for the extra strike to take place - or maybe even the wolf rune..
Just my personal choice, though! Won't be make or break for the build!
Haha, personally I was going to use the ferret because I see gold becoming quite important in terms of leveling the Smith and Jeweler. The main point of the companion was to provide an extra source of damage or add in some utility because of the loss of movement moves like vault.
Looking into the build a little bit more it is obvious that not having to switch to hatred generators provides a much higher sustained DPS build instead of the, rather bursty feel, of a Shadow Power build. Trapper builds are cool in theory but I highly question their actual usefulness in terms of actual game play.
Honestly being able to sustain Elemental arrow instead of having to switch to another different generator is a huge DPS increase.
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You still could use golden runestone for your companion, if you want or need more hatred generation.
I guess due to the lack of passive that really support this build (except vengeance), you took the best you could? At least sharpshooter and archery synergize each other.
Great idea so far.
Did you look at the attack speed chart? I factored in the golden rune on the Companion. If you combine that with the Passive it gives you a large amount of breathing room to pick gear with attack speed on it. In essence there is no need for any more hatred than what Preparation already gives you. If you really wanted to make an interesting build drop Vengeance and use the golden rune and you have another slot for a passive.
Technically if you are using a bow, or have lots of attack speed on your gear you may need to have the Vengeance + Companion with golden build just to generate the proper amount of hatred to play.
Remember that chart is the total attack speed supported by those choices per rank of Crimson rune in Prep.
Also I have this strange feeling that sometime tonight I will have to redo all that math because we may be getting patch info so hold tight!
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Moderately off topic but this reminds me of a random build I saw in someones sig yesterday that was a barb build with no fury generators. Someone needs to explain to that poor soul how fury works, it makes me sad to think he has 6 awesome skills at his disposal, none of which he can ever use.
Perhaps you could make use of the Fundamentals passive if you are ever going to be using your basic attack? Obviously critical hit from sharpshooter is nice but unless I miss something crits don't specifically benefit this build more so than any other, do they?
Edit: After looking more closely I gather you're getting from your numbers that you won't need any more hatred than you already will have, so in that case I guess there is no real need to change anything unless you want to use different hatred spenders.
All my builds are meant to be playable without assistance. Aka no I don't take them into account because the build should be playable in PvE solo and multi with no changes.
Moderately off topic but this reminds me of a random build I saw in someones sig yesterday that was a barb build with no fury generators. Someone needs to explain to that poor soul how fury works, it makes me sad to think he has 6 awesome skills at his disposal, none of which he can ever use.
Saw that too. At least I do the math to know mine works.
Well, if you factor in the +10 hatred from globes (Vengeance) and the time you run around not being able to spend hatred, I guess you actually will have too much hatred generation then.
This is true but as a DH, and especially with this build, getting in close to grab them can be a problem. The lack of vault is quite a hindrance.
Perhaps you could make use of the Fundamentals passive if you are ever going to be using your basic attack? Obviously critical hit from sharpshooter is nice but unless I miss something crits don't specifically benefit this build more so than any other, do they?
Edit: After looking more closely I gather you're getting from your numbers that you won't need any more hatred than you already will have, so in that case I guess there is no real need to change anything unless you want to use different hatred spenders.
At least someone trusts my math! Though I would like input on the passives. Vengeance is a must but the other two are quite open to debate. If someone has better options please let me know.
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Its called hype. And you bought it, hook line and sinker.
Not hype read 1up's comment. He makes a very good point that no one has brought up (and I have been waiting for them to do so because I have an alternative build for it)
Seems great on paper but when you will get to hell and inferno, you'll get your ass wiped totally from the lack of mobility/escaping abilities imho.
Exactly the same problem I see with this build. There is no good method to escape, however, you have an extremely reliable AOE slow. It really all depends on exactly how much mobility this build needs considering its ability to put out good sustained DPS.
There is an option, that I don't much like but the numbers say it works, change Explosive Shot for Vault. All it takes is 2 Multi Shots to generate the discipline in order to use this assuming your discipline is empty. If you find yourself letting things get too close this can be a very good alternative build. Still I believe between other players and companions you should not find yourself in a melee situation all too often.
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Wich DH spells use basic attacks? i wanted to put Fundamentals in my builds but dont know wich one it effects.
I believe Fundamentals is supposed to be build into builds that do not have a maxed out skill roster. Remember you only have 6 slots and the only way to perform a basic attack is to either only equip 5 at a time and have the auto attack on one of them, or to run out of hatred to spend on an attack.
So in essence as soon as you unlock 6 slots that passive can be really terrible.
Edit: I had a random thought this morning. If you were to have that passive on along with something like the Companion. Cast the Companion than pull the spell off the bar and put on the auto attack button. As long as the Companion spell stays on the active skillbook I have a feeling that you can get something like Fundamentals to work. Still this requires you to open your skillbook to put the skill back to a bar slot if the Companion goes away for some reason.
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Just added to the front post as well. It was something I came up with after taking a look at someone with the same concept. His had generators though. I really like this option of using Breathe Deep instead of Preparation. There are some interesting things you can change with it. For example the companion is only there for an extra little bit of damage and nothing more. It can be switched for Rapid Fire because with Preparation Rapid Fire may be viable enough to work over a longer period of time than the other build I posted (change the rune on the companion and you are talking about some serious hatred gen over that time).
The rune on Prep is debatable. The point of Prep was to allow Smoke Screen to be used in a bind and if you are in a bind you might be needing the health as well. Other than that Prep can be used with other runes like onyx since onyx will provide probably the best total bonus for what this build needs.
Fan of Knives is an okay option as well instead of the Companion, but with Elemental Arrow having a reliable slow that option is really personal preference. Personally I will most likely stick with either the Companion or Explosive Shot (with the healing yellow? rune).
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Just added to the front post as well. It was something I came up with after taking a look at someone with the same concept. His had generators though. I really like this option of using Breathe Deep instead of Preparation. There are some interesting things you can change with it. For example the companion is only there for an extra little bit of damage and nothing more. It can be switched for Rapid Fire because with Preparation Rapid Fire may be viable enough to work over a longer period of time than the other build I posted (change the rune on the companion and you are talking about some serious hatred gen over that time).
The rune on Prep is debatable. The point of Prep was to allow Smoke Screen to be used in a bind and if you are in a bind you might be needing the health as well. Other than that Prep can be used with other runes like onyx since onyx will provide probably the best total bonus for what this build needs.
Fan of Knives is an okay option as well instead of the Companion, but with Elemental Arrow having a reliable slow that option is really personal preference. Personally I will most likely stick with either the Companion or Explosive Shot (with the healing yellow? rune).
21 Discipline for 175 hatred seems a lot better than 15 Discipline for 60 hatred.
Also, why not go with more passive hatred regen and lower cost spells.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
One is never hurt by being given additional choices, only by taking them away. A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
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Update: Patch 13
Update: Added more purposed builds!
ToDo: Add to attack speed chart with Smoke Screen, Marked for Death, Sharpshooter, Perfectionist SP numbers.
Can a build be made by not using a single yellow hatred generator? If so how viable is it?
In theory it can. There are a number of options within purple, discipline, spells that allow a DH to regenerate hatred and keep them in the fight. The main point of a build like this is to not rely on the yellow hatred generators because they have lower damage and typically poor effects and instead focus more on spenders that can front much more damage, and when built properly, can provide nice control over the battlefield.
There are some problems to overcome with this build. One is attack speed. Your hatred consumption goes up with faster speeds. Because of this the DH must be conscious over gear choice at all times along with knowing when he should change his build accordingly to better suit his generation rates. Another problem comes in the form of crowd control. The best CCs for the DH are mostly under the generator and discipline move sets. This makes some choices harder to make since one would have to think about where they should get their control and survivability from.
The Discipline Spells:
Preparation: Unlocks at level 19 with the rune needed for these builds unlocking at 35. This skill when runed Punishment will restore 125 hatred at the cost of 20 discipline. Currently this is the most powerful generator or hatred in the kit however it has no use outside pure hatred generation.
With Vengeance it will generate an additional 25 hatred. This has been lowered since patch 12. The passive not is much less powerful for this build than it was before however it is a good option.
Smoke Screen: Unlocks at level 22 with the rune for Breathe Deep unlocking at 45. Costing only 15 hatred and generating 20 per second for two seconds is strong. On top of the stealth this is not only a good tool to get hatred but also a great way to keep alive in a pinch.
Companion: Unlocks at level 25 with the Bat rune unlocking at 37. Patch 13 made a buff to this passive regen. It is now 3 per second up from 2.4. This change makes the Bat much more competitive than it was in the past. It also adds a decent amount of damage so it is a good option to those builds who need more output.
Marked for Death: Unlocks at level 15 and the rune at 46. Currently it generates 3 hatred per shot on the marked target. This one is hard to rate as a hatred generator. It scales the generation with attack speed however you also scale your hatred usage with attack speed. To really get a handle on it you have to find how much hatred you spend considering you use less per shot. Because of this moving average the math is not pretty.
Shadow Power: Generates 45 hatred over 20 sec. This is now a very powerful option to the DH for this type of build. Because of the 'nerf' to it (used to be 30% attack speed not life drain) it now has a very balanced amount of hatred generated over the time. It is the lowest option but since it now can heal the DH for a substantial amount it is quite powerful in this build.
Everything else: Costs are either too high or typically not enough room to keep on a build. Since you are devoting at least 1 move that uses discipline in order to fuel your hatred taking much else in the way of spending more for something that does not generate hatred will make your build much harder to play if not unplayable because of the divided usage of your discipline. The only real exceptions to this are Caltrops , runed golden and Marked for Death only because of their low cost.
The Hatred Skills:
Rapid Fire: Your best single target attack. The only thing that can out damage this is Impale and this is only during the first few seconds. Rapid Fire quickly out damages Impale because of the ability to channel it over a longer period of time.
Elemental Arrow: An amazing line based AOE. Because it can pierce targets, do massive damage to everything in its path and low hatred cost it is the most efficient and potentially the most powerful attack available. Rune options, well anything really. The preferred rune is Frost Arrow only because it is probably one of the best and most reliable slows that a DH can come across next to Chain Gang and Caltrops.
Multi Shot: Probably your second best AOE skill due to Suppression Fire. The only reason why I say second best move is because with a yellowless build you will not have much room for Vault so an AOE like this one that relies on proximity is not as good as one like Elemental Arrow. Its hatred cost is very high but with the rune it is capable of refunding itself and then some. It can generate some serious discipline if used a couple times in a row.
Rain of Vengeance: A very powerful one shot AOE. I only state this here because it is a good way to get rid of extra hatred generated from Multi Shot. Since Multi Shot gets an absurd amount of discipline generated this move and FoK are nice to burn it off with. The only reason why I value this over FoK is because this one has a very long range to it and can burn off the hatred much faster than any other move.
Everything else: Either too inefficient or too random to guarantee not wasting hatred. Impale and Strafe have hatred costs that are just too high to be supported on a build like these. This is not all that bad because Rapid Fire is a good alternative to Impale and Multi Shot to Strafe. Chakarm is just too random to guarantee that it will hit the target but it can be supported due to its costs. I do not recommend Chakarm but it will work. I mentioned FoK before for being a good move to burn off the extra hatred when Multi Shot generates discipline however Rain of Vengeance does the job better and faster. It is a personal preference as to which one you would like to use however I suggest Rain.
Passives:
Vengeance: This gives 2 discipline per orb on top of 25 initial hatred. It has a nice synergy with Prep on the rune to allow for very high amounts of hatred regen. This passive is very powerful in this build however it is not necessary. Because of the nerfs I feel that this passive has been brought down to the level of Perfectionist and Night Stalker.
Night Stalker: As you can guess this ability can be quite good with high amounts of crit. If the chance to restore discipline is high enough this may be even more powerful than Vengeance with Prep. However it is yet to be seen exactly how powerful this is and exactly how much you will get the bonus.
Perfectionist: Another very powerful option. If the DH does not have high crit I feel this would be a good replacement for Night Stalker. It may also outclass Vengeance but until we have a final word on the runes and how they affect skills we do not know exactly how good Prep truly is.
Sharpshooter: I only mention this because of the synergy with Night Stalker. It does a good bit to help with evening out crit chance and boosting it slightly.
Everything else: I only mentioned the passives that would be good to help the build generate hatred more efficiently. In no way am I saying you need all 3 or you can not play this class properly. I suggest getting things like Cull the Weak, Archery or Steady Aim as well. It is best if you have some of your passives tailored for damage and some toward getting better output of hatred.
For starters we should first define how much hatred the DH should be expecting during a fixed amount of time during a fight. To keep the numbers simple I will be doing the math based around 20 sec intervals. This is because Prep and SP can only be used every 20 sec from the 1 disc per second you naturally have.
I would like to make a note right now that I will not be talking about +disc over time affixes on gear or hatred/disc cost reductions. I only say this because the numbers for those conflict on different sites. It is hard to get a good fix on the bonus so I will disregard the affix for now and until I have more definitive proof I will avoid talking about them until that time.
Over a 20 sec interval you will passively generate 80 hatred. This number is quite low. If we wanted to try and achieve anything with this build we can already see that with a 2h xbow firing Rapid Fire or Elemental Arrow you will run out of hatred much faster than it is generated. This assumes the bow is at the slowest speed of 1.1 APS. Obviously gear should be considered at this point. We know that there is an affix to generate hatred. At level 60 the affix clocks in at 2.68-3.33 hatred per second. Assuming you have a 3 hatred per second on both a 2h xbow and quiver it brings the generation up to 10 per second. Bumping the generation up to 200 over the 20 sec!
200 seems to be a bit much but I will throw this into perspective. At 1.1APS while firing Rapid Fire or Elemental Arrow you will use 220 hatred over 20 sec. You can already see that even without any modifier to APS you will run through your hatred way too fast. Lets look at some of the alternative options to the DH to see if there is a way around this.
Prep 125 over 20 sec (150 with Vengeance)
Smoke Screen 53.3333 over 20 sec
Companion 60 over 20 sec
Shadow Power 45 over 20 sec
Marked for Death 3 less per shot
You can see that by adding any one of these means we will achieve enough hatred regen to support a 1.1 speed build. Some of them, like Prep, have quite a good amount of excesses hatred generated. Knowing this we can bump up our attack speed a little bit and give much more play room when it comes to gear choices.
TODO: Graph for some attack speed comparisons.
The math is quite nice in that it points to every yellowless option is powerful in its own way. Although Prep outshines the rest it should be taken with a grain of salt for two reasons. One, the attack speeds that can be used are much higher but that does not always mean better. It does allow for some much more wide choices but you have to pay much more attention when using faster weapons. Also it lacks survive ability. All the math in the world can point to it being the most efficient means but that in no way means that it is a better option for surviving. Remember Prep is pure hatred gen, Marked and Companion are dps, Smoke Screen and SP are survival.
PLEASE REMEMBER. This math is done under the assumption you have a build designed to play in either multiplayer and singleplayer. This is why the passive regen from the Templar is not taken into account. I am also in no way suggesting the example build I used for the math is the build that is “the best” I am leaving this up to you. The math was to purely show that this type of build can be sustained and give some idea into exactly what type of attack speeds people should be using in order to not overextend their hatred spending.
Simple Prep: http://us.battle.net...gRVh!Yed!ZbabaZ
This build is designed with one thing in mind. Simplicity. The large amount of hatred generation supported by some of the more standard attacks for the DH should make this build quite handy in every situation. The main point of the build is to keep range on enemies while hammering away on them with whatever attack best suites the situation. Vault and Brooding were taken to keep the DH alive even if their discipline is completely dry and FoK is a powerful tool to keep enemies off your back.
Crit Abuse, Using 1h xbow: http://us.battle.net...ghVl!XTe!YYYZaY
Because of the insane amount of hatred generated with a combo of affix, Prep and the passives this build should be capable of using a 1h xbow. Although we don't know the exact numbers that go into Night Stalker it is till obvious that with the abuse of critting there is a very high chance that this build will in fact work. SP and vault were taken to improve surviveability since there is little otherwise.
Rocket build! http://us.battle.net...glQi!eUh!bcbaYa
The basic idea is to boost your damage by the use of rockets. In this build you look like you are putting all of your eggs into one basket, that is because you are. The problem with rocket builds in general is the devotion of particular slots to some mechanics. These slots must be added to the slots we need to go completely yellowless. The surviveabiliy is not all to stellar however this build should boast some powerful damage.
Smoke Screen abuse: http://us.battle.net...kQjh!aeT!bZaYbb
The concept is to get the most bang for the buck with Smoke Screen. The main focus is on keeping enemies slowed and killed before they get to the player. Elemental Arrow is a great tool for this. Rapid Fire is there because bosses can only be slowed if they are not immune and it can do higher single target dps than Elemental Arrow. If enemies do get close Smoke Screen and Prep are there to get out especially with the 60% movement speed with Smoke Screen. The choice of passives was difficult and can easily change to support more survival.
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The following builds are Exitium's. Most of them show the differences between crit builds and he does a good job of covering the crit passives quite nicely. Due note that I am paraphrasing/quoting him although I am not using proper format or the quote tag. All credit for it goes to him.
My Favourite nHG Build: takes the premise of an nHG build and throws in Caltrops for good measure.
Multishot is in there for its runed effect of providing 1 Discipline for each monster the attack hits, it's also a strong AoE ability. Rapid Shot is the ability of choice in single target (i.e. boss) situations, it has incredible damage output and runed with Web Shot, inflicts a powerful slow, making kiting that much easier. Caltrops is there to provide an extra slow, useful when you're Multishotting for Discipline - the rune choice roots enemies briefly when the trap is initially triggered, meaning that that large stream of enemies should turn into a ready-to-pwn group - did I mention that the more enemies you hit with Multishot, the more discipline you get? Mmmmm efficiency. Vault with Tumble is there for when you need to GTFO quickly, it could easily be changed to any of the other rune choices; my second choice would be Rattling Roll.
The passives that support this build are Vengeance, Cull the Weak (CtW) and Perfectionist. Vengeance synergises well with Prep giving you more bang for your buck. CtW takes advantage of the huge amount of slowing effects in this build by increasing total damage. Perfection "perfects" the build by reducing ALL Discipline consumption, meaning the cycle of Prep'ing then unloading occurs that much quicker.
Moderate Crit Build - a calculating build that takes advantage of crit synergies, stuns and Shadow Power. This particular variant has moderate/low H/D generation gear requirements and hence uses Multishot as its main AoE.
The premise of all 3 of these builds is that you crit ALLLLL THE TIMEEEEE, though it does require more planning. Caltrop as normal to slow approaching cuddlemonsters, pop one on yourself then go nuts.
Rapid Fire makes a return for single target situations, Elemental Arrow takes the Lightning Bolts rune, meaning crtical hits will stun the targets! This buys you more time on Bait the Trap. Multishot is augmented with Full Broadside to provide a heavy hitting AoE which will, coincidentally, crit a LOT and net you some nice Discipline returns through passives. Shadow Power features Night Bane for H generation at a hefty cost, though it should provide excellent healing returns when used just before a Multishot, which as mentioned should quickly cover the D expenditure. Companion (Bat) is thrown in for the extra H regen.
The passives used are Nightstalker, Sharpshooter and Archery. Nightstalker is the crux of this build, it has a *chance* to provide 2 Discipline every time you crit. Sharpshooter increases your critical hit chance, moreso when you haven't crit for a while - useful for both frontloading crit before you attack or just making sure you don't go more than a nanosecond without critting Archery is taken for it's synergies when using Crossbows or Hand Crossbows, using a Crossbow you will simply do more damage and using Hand Crossbows you will simply crit more - Hand Crossbows are very useful if you have the Hatred Generation, but lack base crit.
This build is very well rounded, though you must absolutely have enough generation and crit. If it turns out that the *chance* on Nightstalker is very low, then these builds will require some form of D generation. It is also important to note that Caltrops only lasts 6 seconds - i.e. you will probably be using up your base D regen + that of a Templar with Inspire (that's 2 per second). Base D regen, gone on just Caltrops.
High Crit Build - an improved version of the above, deals higher damage at the cost of higher gear requirements, including high base crit to ensure Discipline gains.
There are two differences between this build and the last, this one utilises Marked for Death (Valley of Death), for increased damage - ideally you throw the mark over the Caltrops that are slowing the mobs down. Loaded Cluster Arrow is then taken to be the main AoE ability in place of Multishot - it hits extremely hard and literally just takes the AoE damage slot. Note that it's also plausible to still take Multishot with Marked for Death, since that H costs and damage will drop - giving more breathing room for gear reqs. You could take Rain of Vengeance (RoV) with Flying Strike for additional stuns if you could cope with the cooldown on it.
This build shares the same weaknesses as before for obvious reasons, except they are exacerbated. It will be crucial to have satisfactory gear.
Stupid Crit Build - theoretically this build would be capable of insane damage at the cost of probably unobtainable levels of H/D regeneration, it would make a solid boss build though, utilising the synergy between Rapid Fire and the Mortal Enemy variant of Marked for Death. Smoke Screen is there to allow enemies to practically cuddle you before making your escape, maximising time on Bait the Trap. This would be a reasonable build in general if it included a Hatred Generator, or used a sneaky gearing option which I'll go over later.
As this build has raised the finger to sensible Hatred Generation it is extremely vulnerable even when gear levels are satisfactory - as I said it's basically a boss build that will struggle at anything else. Why did I link it and talk about it? To show how far this nHG thing can really go - this may well be possible at Inferno gear levels.
Sensible Stupid Crit Build (ohai oxymoron) - with one change and a sneaky gearing attitude the build above can actually be a sensible high damage build. We drop the useful Marked for Death and trade it in for our good old nHG friend Prep (Punishment), combine this by gearing towards increased total Hatred (an affix I mentioned earlier) and suddenly you have a sensible build that is actually pretty balanced providing you have the Discipline gearing necesarry. Hurray! Note that you could swap Archery for Vengeance if you wanted to bias towards hatred instead of damage or Discipline.
The idea works on paper. Still we do not have the game in our hands so until that happens there is no real way of saying for sure that any of these builds will work or whether this idea is a good one or not. I am in no way trying to give you the “perfect” build but rather presenting all the relevant information about this subject into a single place in order to give better advice to people who want to build their DH in this way.
Also I have not posted the build I would use for this type of DH. This is only because if you want to talk about a particular build I would prefer to see what you have built first! I have given very good options for builds and guidance for choices. I would like it more to see how you took my advice, or if you think you have a build that is better that I did not even talk about.
If you made it this far I will personally bake you a metaphysical cookie and deliver it post haste. If you have a build you think would be great for me to add to this to help others get guidance PM me with it. If you want to talk about a build, or if you want to try and get me to link mine feel free to post it up even if it seems we are in a heated debate in the forum already.
Thank you to everyone and their input. Without it these builds would be much worse and my advice less then stellar. Special thanks to Exitium for offering his builds
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Sorry had to fix that table.
I will work on this a little bit tomorrow and see what values per rune level (assuming the 1D cost reduction per rank is how the rune works) a DH would need to shoot for in terms of attack speed.
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Sorry had to fix that table.
I assume he is using a single two-handed crossbow.
If you read all of this it was exactly as he stated. The build is only works with a 1.1 speed weapon. This is factoring in the projected bonus from having a rank 7 rune.
After I finish my breakfast (and before I go to class) I'm going to try and get up a full breakdown of hatred costs and how much play you have with attack speed. So if you want to see that check up later today I'll update the top post with it.
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Sorry had to fix that table.
So crossbow or bow are your only real options when considering making this build.
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Sorry had to fix that table.
Haha, personally I was going to use the ferret because I see gold becoming quite important in terms of leveling the Smith and Jeweler. The main point of the companion was to provide an extra source of damage or add in some utility because of the loss of movement moves like vault.
Looking into the build a little bit more it is obvious that not having to switch to hatred generators provides a much higher sustained DPS build instead of the, rather bursty feel, of a Shadow Power build. Trapper builds are cool in theory but I highly question their actual usefulness in terms of actual game play.
Honestly being able to sustain Elemental arrow instead of having to switch to another different generator is a huge DPS increase.
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Sorry had to fix that table.
Step 1) Enter Blizzard WoW forums
Step 2) Read comments
Step 3) ???
Step 4) Profit
*May also work for rage*
Did you look at the attack speed chart? I factored in the golden rune on the Companion. If you combine that with the Passive it gives you a large amount of breathing room to pick gear with attack speed on it. In essence there is no need for any more hatred than what Preparation already gives you. If you really wanted to make an interesting build drop Vengeance and use the golden rune and you have another slot for a passive.
Technically if you are using a bow, or have lots of attack speed on your gear you may need to have the Vengeance + Companion with golden build just to generate the proper amount of hatred to play.
Remember that chart is the total attack speed supported by those choices per rank of Crimson rune in Prep.
Also I have this strange feeling that sometime tonight I will have to redo all that math because we may be getting patch info so hold tight!
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Sorry had to fix that table.
Lawl
h-o-p-e-s.net
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Sorry had to fix that table.
Edit: After looking more closely I gather you're getting from your numbers that you won't need any more hatred than you already will have, so in that case I guess there is no real need to change anything unless you want to use different hatred spenders.
Saw that too. At least I do the math to know mine works.
This is true but as a DH, and especially with this build, getting in close to grab them can be a problem. The lack of vault is quite a hindrance.
At least someone trusts my math! Though I would like input on the passives. Vengeance is a must but the other two are quite open to debate. If someone has better options please let me know.
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Sorry had to fix that table.
Might need to rethink the surviveability of this build.
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Sorry had to fix that table.
"Just google "diablo 3 gold guide" and magical rainbow covered demons will assault your eyes."
Not hype read 1up's comment. He makes a very good point that no one has brought up (and I have been waiting for them to do so because I have an alternative build for it)
Exactly the same problem I see with this build. There is no good method to escape, however, you have an extremely reliable AOE slow. It really all depends on exactly how much mobility this build needs considering its ability to put out good sustained DPS.
There is an option, that I don't much like but the numbers say it works, change Explosive Shot for Vault. All it takes is 2 Multi Shots to generate the discipline in order to use this assuming your discipline is empty. If you find yourself letting things get too close this can be a very good alternative build. Still I believe between other players and companions you should not find yourself in a melee situation all too often.
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Sorry had to fix that table.
I believe Fundamentals is supposed to be build into builds that do not have a maxed out skill roster. Remember you only have 6 slots and the only way to perform a basic attack is to either only equip 5 at a time and have the auto attack on one of them, or to run out of hatred to spend on an attack.
So in essence as soon as you unlock 6 slots that passive can be really terrible.
Edit: I had a random thought this morning. If you were to have that passive on along with something like the Companion. Cast the Companion than pull the spell off the bar and put on the auto attack button. As long as the Companion spell stays on the active skillbook I have a feeling that you can get something like Fundamentals to work. Still this requires you to open your skillbook to put the skill back to a bar slot if the Companion goes away for some reason.
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Sorry had to fix that table.
Just added to the front post as well. It was something I came up with after taking a look at someone with the same concept. His had generators though. I really like this option of using Breathe Deep instead of Preparation. There are some interesting things you can change with it. For example the companion is only there for an extra little bit of damage and nothing more. It can be switched for Rapid Fire because with Preparation Rapid Fire may be viable enough to work over a longer period of time than the other build I posted (change the rune on the companion and you are talking about some serious hatred gen over that time).
The rune on Prep is debatable. The point of Prep was to allow Smoke Screen to be used in a bind and if you are in a bind you might be needing the health as well. Other than that Prep can be used with other runes like onyx since onyx will provide probably the best total bonus for what this build needs.
Fan of Knives is an okay option as well instead of the Companion, but with Elemental Arrow having a reliable slow that option is really personal preference. Personally I will most likely stick with either the Companion or Explosive Shot (with the healing yellow? rune).
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Sorry had to fix that table.
21 Discipline for 175 hatred seems a lot better than 15 Discipline for 60 hatred.
Also, why not go with more passive hatred regen and lower cost spells.
A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!