Ive been looking through the skill calculators and trying to plan out what builds I thought would be viable throughout leveling/ endgame for months. Some skills I knew would be a necessity others I thought I wouldn’t use as much. With D3 release yesterday I was surprised at how badass some of the other abilities are.
Elemental arrow with Ball lightning rune is a wrecking machine. Granted I am only lvl 27, this ability clears rooms.
Around the middle of act 2 I kind of felt useless while I was paired up with my Barbarian buddy who was absolutely wrecking shit. I died a few times and felt as though our AOE was kind of shit. Right when I got twin chakkram is when I started feeling a bit better with the DH. As soon as there would be a large group of monsters id spam grenades and Twin chakkram and turn everyone to hamburger meat. Shadow power mixed with elemental arrow / lightning rune is a monster. I haven’t read much on elemental arrow, but wanted to see if anyone else was as happy with it as I am
I some how skipped over ball lightning, but I'll have to go back and try it. I used frost arrow and it really helped that the team as a whole when we didn't have a wizard for some nice aoe cold slow effect and did nice damage for very low hatred per shot. It didn't pack the punch multi did, but it was much more spammable which against the huge groups really helps.
The Screaming Skull Rune does some work on hell. Its very cheap and spammable CC/interrupts. unlike Say Clusster Arrow's Dazzling rune which is very good, but also very expensive.Especially potent in the thin long corridors where the enemies will all line up.
I've been using Elemental Arrow runed With Ball Lightning. it's so amazingly easy to clear hallways and rooms. Though I am curious on how it works.
It doesn't appear to do 155% damage as the tooltip states, but it can hit the same target more than once. I'm not sure if there is a limit, but if there isn't, and it is entirely dependent on the size of the target. (or just how long they're in range of it) It very well could be higher single target dps than any hungering arrow variation.
I've been using Elemental Arrow runed With Ball Lightning. it's so amazingly easy to clear hallways and rooms. Though I am curious on how it works.
It doesn't appear to do 155% damage as the tooltip states, but it can hit the same target more than once. I'm not sure if there is a limit, but if there isn't, and it is entirely dependent on the size of the target. (or just how long they're in range of it) It very well could be higher single target dps than any hungering arrow variation.
It can definitely hit the same target more than once. I tested this on a rusty door that I believe is in act 2. It takes 2 shot to break these doors open, but if you situate yourself just right you will hit the door twice using Ball of Lightning, thus breaking it in one shot. I doubt you will get more than 2 shots on the same mob though, but it does seem to be good. 310% wpn dmg on most targets, twice the dmg of multi-shot at 1/2 to 1/4 of the price.
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I've been using Elemental Arrow runed With Ball Lightning. it's so amazingly easy to clear hallways and rooms. Though I am curious on how it works.
It doesn't appear to do 155% damage as the tooltip states, but it can hit the same target more than once. I'm not sure if there is a limit, but if there isn't, and it is entirely dependent on the size of the target. (or just how long they're in range of it) It very well could be higher single target dps than any hungering arrow variation.
It can definitely hit the same target more than once. I tested this on a rusty door that I believe is in act 2. It takes 2 shot to break these doors open, but if you situate yourself just right you will hit the door twice using Ball of Lightning, thus breaking it in one shot. I doubt you will get more than 2 shots on the same mob though, but it does seem to be good. 310% wpn dmg on most targets, twice the dmg of multi-shot at 1/2 to 1/4 of the price.
I just wanted to chime in that I am, in the past 5 minutes, an Elemental Arrow (Ball of Lightening) convert. It was absolutely amazing, and I have multiple times seen it hit the same target 3 times, although the situation has to be fairly conducive to that happening, and I admit I did force it. But at half the hatred cost of a runed Multishot? There's no reason to take multi over this, except for faster barrel breaking.
I will concur with Mystic that, far from occasionally hitting the same target twice, it has a definite tendency to do so(exceptions being unslowed elite packs that move fairly fast; they often only get hit once)...this means that, honestly, it's also one of our better single target shots a good amount of the time...all for 10 hatred. Ridiculous.
Yes, going higher levels myself I've switched from OP multishot on normal to elemental arrow (cold one) on nightmare as it stops elite mobs nicely from reaching me fast. But the best elite killer is actually Strafe together with Preparation (Punishment rune) and ES with Chain Gang if you run of Heatred for the moment (though I would just rather run in this case). This last setup make it difficult though to run from wallers and any other elite who immobilize you as it does not allows use of discipline abilities like smoke screen (Punishment eats all). Also it requires double handed crossbows as otherwise you would run from hatered too fast.
I should note that I'm an idiot and most everything I said before is wrong: somehow I never noticed that Ball Lightning only does half of the 155% each hit, IE requiring two hits to get to the full 155%. This is "duh" worthy, but it's worth noting since it appears I'm not the only dumb fella out there to be fooled.
That said, I still prefer it to Multishot for general AoE, simply due to the lower hatred cost...although I don't see how I'll be using it once I get Nether Tentacles, which do the full 155% and have a (slight) chance to hit twice, dealing an actual 310%. The minor heal is just gravy on top of that. Impale with Overpenetration is absolutely deadly to elite packs, though.
should note that I'm an idiot and most everything I said before is wrong: somehow I never noticed that Ball Lightning only does half of the 155% each hit, IE requiring two hits to get to the full 155%. This is "duh" worthy, but it's worth noting since it appears I'm not the only dumb fella out there to be fooled.
how did u test that?
If you simply pay attention, you'll notice it immediately: hungering arrow at 115% does more damage a hit than one shot of ball lightning. Case closed that it's not 155%. You can simply do some math after that to figure out the exact percentages, and while I'll admit I haven't totally done that, it seems very close to 1/2 of what an un-runed Elemental Arrow does.
I can confirm a suspicious low damage of the ball lightning rune.
I think the frost damage rune is the real winner. The 60% slow is so potent, that you can even kite elite packs without much effort. It's nearly impossible to touch you, if you use Smoke Screen, too...
And 170% weapon damage per target is nuts. The initial projectile is very fast, so it's easy to hit the front target so that the fan of frost arrows behind the first target becomes very effective. Because of the long range of the first projectile, it's possible to hit groups of monster even from a much longer distance compared with multishot! And for just 1/4 hatred...
btw... Elemental Arrow has the same advantage as Chakram: You don't need discipline to fuel your need of hatred (via preparation), because of a very low cost of 10 hatred per shot. Smoke Screen spam, here we go!
I tried using the frost damage rune, and for whatever reason I'm just not liking it that much, at least for generalized play. It's great against elite packs, I agree, but for general AoE situations against non-elites, I just don't find the AoE potential is that fantastic. But I can totally see the use of it.
I also can't stress enough how much I agree with you about the hatred cost: I tried going back to Multishot for a bit, and even runed for a 20 hatred cost, it just seems to eat up so much hatred...it's hard to go back from Elemental Arrow once you start using it a lot.
Switched to EA last night from RF after reading thread, and I have to say I was incredibly please with un-runed EA...seemed to be decimating enemies. When I finally got Ball Lighting at first I was not a fan, mainly because of how slow the ability seems to be. But as I kept running down the corridor and saw how it was littered with corpses, gear, and gold I realized it was legit. While it was much slower, it basically extinguished an entire wave of trash mobs with about three shots/30 hatred.
Switched to EA last night from RF after reading thread, and I have to say I was incredibly please with un-runed EA...seemed to be decimating enemies. When I finally got Ball Lighting at first I was not a fan, mainly because of how slow the ability seems to be. But as I kept running down the corridor and saw how it was littered with corpses, gear, and gold I realized it was legit. While it was much slower, it basically extinguished an entire wave of trash mobs with about three shots/30 hatred.
Excited to see what it does for me in the future.
the speed of the ball is what makes it good, combined with entangling shot chaingang. Slow enemies with a slow projectile moving through them means more hits
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I kinda fell for the nether tentacles version:p Switched between EA with electroball, chakrams with twin rune and multishot with fire at will earlier, but now, nether tentacles. Just love how it slows, wrecks and heals, all in one shot.
Xeley, you can test this on any number of mobs in the game; there is absolutely no question that Ball Lightning does significantly (in the vicinity of half, which leads me to believe that it is 1/2) damage. It compensates by generally hitting mobs twice and having a very potent AoE.
I'm amazed I didn't notice this immediately, but I fell too much in love with the skill to think about it, I think. I'm still using it until I get Nether Tentacles, actually...it's still a great AoE ability.
I kinda fell for the nether tentacles version:p Switched between EA with electroball, chakrams with twin rune and multishot with fire at will earlier, but now, nether tentacles. Just love how it slows, wrecks and heals, all in one shot.
It doesn't slow.
Nether tentacles does "weapon damage" so if he has +frost damage on his weapon (can +frost damage come from anywhere else?), it could slow for him on top of everything else. I recently started using nether tentacle and i love it.
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Elemental arrow with Ball lightning rune is a wrecking machine. Granted I am only lvl 27, this ability clears rooms.
Around the middle of act 2 I kind of felt useless while I was paired up with my Barbarian buddy who was absolutely wrecking shit. I died a few times and felt as though our AOE was kind of shit. Right when I got twin chakkram is when I started feeling a bit better with the DH. As soon as there would be a large group of monsters id spam grenades and Twin chakkram and turn everyone to hamburger meat. Shadow power mixed with elemental arrow / lightning rune is a monster. I haven’t read much on elemental arrow, but wanted to see if anyone else was as happy with it as I am
"Just google "diablo 3 gold guide" and magical rainbow covered demons will assault your eyes."
It doesn't appear to do 155% damage as the tooltip states, but it can hit the same target more than once. I'm not sure if there is a limit, but if there isn't, and it is entirely dependent on the size of the target. (or just how long they're in range of it) It very well could be higher single target dps than any hungering arrow variation.
It can definitely hit the same target more than once. I tested this on a rusty door that I believe is in act 2. It takes 2 shot to break these doors open, but if you situate yourself just right you will hit the door twice using Ball of Lightning, thus breaking it in one shot. I doubt you will get more than 2 shots on the same mob though, but it does seem to be good. 310% wpn dmg on most targets, twice the dmg of multi-shot at 1/2 to 1/4 of the price.
"Just google "diablo 3 gold guide" and magical rainbow covered demons will assault your eyes."
I just wanted to chime in that I am, in the past 5 minutes, an Elemental Arrow (Ball of Lightening) convert. It was absolutely amazing, and I have multiple times seen it hit the same target 3 times, although the situation has to be fairly conducive to that happening, and I admit I did force it. But at half the hatred cost of a runed Multishot? There's no reason to take multi over this, except for faster barrel breaking.
I will concur with Mystic that, far from occasionally hitting the same target twice, it has a definite tendency to do so(exceptions being unslowed elite packs that move fairly fast; they often only get hit once)...this means that, honestly, it's also one of our better single target shots a good amount of the time...all for 10 hatred. Ridiculous.
keep impale with the dot for bosses/single target.
That said, I still prefer it to Multishot for general AoE, simply due to the lower hatred cost...although I don't see how I'll be using it once I get Nether Tentacles, which do the full 155% and have a (slight) chance to hit twice, dealing an actual 310%. The minor heal is just gravy on top of that. Impale with Overpenetration is absolutely deadly to elite packs, though.
If you simply pay attention, you'll notice it immediately: hungering arrow at 115% does more damage a hit than one shot of ball lightning. Case closed that it's not 155%. You can simply do some math after that to figure out the exact percentages, and while I'll admit I haven't totally done that, it seems very close to 1/2 of what an un-runed Elemental Arrow does.
I tried using the frost damage rune, and for whatever reason I'm just not liking it that much, at least for generalized play. It's great against elite packs, I agree, but for general AoE situations against non-elites, I just don't find the AoE potential is that fantastic. But I can totally see the use of it.
I also can't stress enough how much I agree with you about the hatred cost: I tried going back to Multishot for a bit, and even runed for a 20 hatred cost, it just seems to eat up so much hatred...it's hard to go back from Elemental Arrow once you start using it a lot.
Excited to see what it does for me in the future.
the speed of the ball is what makes it good, combined with entangling shot chaingang. Slow enemies with a slow projectile moving through them means more hits
I'm amazed I didn't notice this immediately, but I fell too much in love with the skill to think about it, I think. I'm still using it until I get Nether Tentacles, actually...it's still a great AoE ability.
Nether tentacles does "weapon damage" so if he has +frost damage on his weapon (can +frost damage come from anywhere else?), it could slow for him on top of everything else. I recently started using nether tentacle and i love it.