Since the new patch I have been trying to find a good balance for my DH. Since my 2 handed bow got its DPS nerfed because of the halved attack speed (and having no gold to upgrade at the moment), I had to look for a way to beef up my DH in other departments. I love trying new builds that I often see on these forums, and some are actually pretty fun to play. Since Blizzard is always really big on “build diversity” I thought to myself, “There has got to be more than just stacking DEX, speed and DPS while constantly getting hit one-shot because you have under 15k HP.”
So I tinkered around with different DH skills and thought about creating a DH completely opposite of current popular damage builds. The inspiration came from the massive movement away from Smoke Screen towards Shadow Power wih Gloom rune. This is a very underestimated (and underutilized) DH skill. Three seconds of life steal and -65% damage reduction is a huge help. Synergize that with the life steal of Nethertentacles and the native life steal and/or life on hit from your weapons and gear – crazy. The core of the build is Elemental arrow with nethertentacles, Shadow Power with gloom, and Preparation with back-up plan. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#aRgVke!eTX!YcYccc
Reasoning for other skills:
Sentry Turret (Guardian Turret)– Set it down to help you AND allied by giving them additional damage reduction. The turret's attack also heals you with Shadow Power active.
Hungering arrow (Devouring Arrow)– Nice optional damage when you run out of hatred
Chakram (Shuriken Cloud) – A spell that costs only 10 hatred to cast and lasts 3 minutes dealing 4-6k damage to ALL enemies around you. Not only is it very efficient (Damage per hatred) but it also synergizes very well with Shadow power for life steal.
I found this build to be very fun as well as a nice change from kiting everything hoping to god nothing even sneezes on you. With below average gear for inferno, I am currently able to face tank almost all elites in Act 1 (I found a pack of fast, desecration, molten, immune minion frogs things(?) that I couldn’t kill without wasting 3 deaths on). With this build, even reflect damage elites won’t be a problem. Instead of finding items with high DEX only, I try to look for items that also have VIT, resist all and +armor. My weapon is some crap 2 handed cross bow with 1180DPS; I would prefer to have something with VIT, speed, and life on hit or life steal.
My DH has:
88k DPS with Sharpshooter
~21k HP
Good amount of resist (don’t know the exact number off the top of my head)
Hope someone enjoys it as much as I do! Good luck have fun!
D3 isnt fun.... ive farmed for weeks and havent gotten shit ive could use except for a pair of gloves
and if you want a good bow u gotta cough up like 100 million wich is absolutley idiotic.
This really wasn't the topic of discussion for my post, but yes it does take a long time to find "best in slot" gear for your characters. That is how the whole Diablo franchise was made since the beginning. Nothing new.
I mean I have a friend that played half of what I have (I have about 160 Hours) and he already found a set piece while I have never seen one yet. Bad luck I guess... but it turns around sooner or later.
Of course this is not a "nuke" build and I am using Chain Gang / Frost as a control mechanic (basically perma slow everything), but the premise is that, with gloom / prep I tend to face tank elites.
They key here is getting enough "max discipline" so that you can cast 4 glooms. That's 12 seconds of face pounding before you even pop prep. The sentry made things hit less hard, but honestly, it was wasted cause the healing effect from gloom is more then enough.
Backup plan? I found, when face tanking, that if I need prep, I need healing so I ditched backup plan for the heal.
So yea ... it's pretty cool not to have to kite stuff around ... much. Hell, even on linked mobs I generally don't have to kite move much at all. It's kind of cool to face tank ... takes a bit longer, but then again, kiting is kind of wasting time anyways, so in the end it's almost a wash.
I've made the best experiences with a real face tank build, like this.
Gas Grenades and Jagged Spikes are pretty essential for this play style, as they proc LoH on every hit/tick they do.
I'm running with a shield and a 1H crossbow, so this is a rather low DPS build (around 13k), but it gets the job done, and is so much more entertaining than shooting, running away, shooting, running away, shooting...
What a lot of DH’s don’t realize is DHs actually have a lot of diversity. You are right, there is so much more to Demon hunters than just run, shoot, die, start all over.
I like your build, looks interesting. I might give it a try. The only problem I see is having a potential to run out of discipline very easily with sentry and caltrops (since you most likely deploy more than on caltrop). I guess if you have +10 discipline on both your 1 hander, off hand, and chest it would offset the problem a bit. I used to run with caltrops in my build but switched off to chakram to save discipline for shadow power.
I have yet to try 1 hand and shield build – no monies at the moment. Looks like 1 hand with shield is VERY viable on a tanky DH.
I didn't like not having a hatred spender so I dropped turret and went to awareness rune for impale and although I havent used gas grenade I have tried stun grenades in the past and fund them extremely hard to use. So I would also suggest trying cinder arrow. It applies a dot that appears to stack but I may be wrong but it allows you to deal with ranged mobs a whole lot better. I was switching between that and spray of teeth because my crit is almost 50% with a one hander and archery. I'd also like to point out that with high crit alot of these tank builds become easier because of the passive disc regen on crit. It really is amazing synergy with fast hit builds like these.
I've tanked just about everything in act 1 with this combo with about 700 loh, 35k hp, minimal resists and 15k dps.
I was not able to make it work in Act3 with my gear. Either not enough mitigation or life steal. Could be fixed with gear.
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So I tinkered around with different DH skills and thought about creating a DH completely opposite of current popular damage builds. The inspiration came from the massive movement away from Smoke Screen towards Shadow Power wih Gloom rune. This is a very underestimated (and underutilized) DH skill. Three seconds of life steal and -65% damage reduction is a huge help. Synergize that with the life steal of Nethertentacles and the native life steal and/or life on hit from your weapons and gear – crazy. The core of the build is Elemental arrow with nethertentacles, Shadow Power with gloom, and Preparation with back-up plan.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#aRgVke!eTX!YcYccc
Reasoning for other skills:
Sentry Turret (Guardian Turret)– Set it down to help you AND allied by giving them additional damage reduction. The turret's attack also heals you with Shadow Power active.
Hungering arrow (Devouring Arrow)– Nice optional damage when you run out of hatred
Chakram (Shuriken Cloud) – A spell that costs only 10 hatred to cast and lasts 3 minutes dealing 4-6k damage to ALL enemies around you. Not only is it very efficient (Damage per hatred) but it also synergizes very well with Shadow power for life steal.
I found this build to be very fun as well as a nice change from kiting everything hoping to god nothing even sneezes on you. With below average gear for inferno, I am currently able to face tank almost all elites in Act 1 (I found a pack of fast, desecration, molten, immune minion frogs things(?) that I couldn’t kill without wasting 3 deaths on). With this build, even reflect damage elites won’t be a problem. Instead of finding items with high DEX only, I try to look for items that also have VIT, resist all and +armor. My weapon is some crap 2 handed cross bow with 1180DPS; I would prefer to have something with VIT, speed, and life on hit or life steal.
My DH has:
88k DPS with Sharpshooter
~21k HP
Good amount of resist (don’t know the exact number off the top of my head)
Hope someone enjoys it as much as I do! Good luck have fun!
This really wasn't the topic of discussion for my post, but yes it does take a long time to find "best in slot" gear for your characters. That is how the whole Diablo franchise was made since the beginning. Nothing new.
I mean I have a friend that played half of what I have (I have about 160 Hours) and he already found a set piece while I have never seen one yet. Bad luck I guess... but it turns around sooner or later.
I tried a similar build, but found that the sentry was not really a good use of Disc.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#bRjgdV!cYe!aZYYbb
Of course this is not a "nuke" build and I am using Chain Gang / Frost as a control mechanic (basically perma slow everything), but the premise is that, with gloom / prep I tend to face tank elites.
They key here is getting enough "max discipline" so that you can cast 4 glooms. That's 12 seconds of face pounding before you even pop prep. The sentry made things hit less hard, but honestly, it was wasted cause the healing effect from gloom is more then enough.
Backup plan? I found, when face tanking, that if I need prep, I need healing so I ditched backup plan for the heal.
So yea ... it's pretty cool not to have to kite stuff around ... much. Hell, even on linked mobs I generally don't have to kite move much at all. It's kind of cool to face tank ... takes a bit longer, but then again, kiting is kind of wasting time anyways, so in the end it's almost a wash.
What a lot of DH’s don’t realize is DHs actually have a lot of diversity. You are right, there is so much more to Demon hunters than just run, shoot, die, start all over.
I like your build, looks interesting. I might give it a try. The only problem I see is having a potential to run out of discipline very easily with sentry and caltrops (since you most likely deploy more than on caltrop). I guess if you have +10 discipline on both your 1 hander, off hand, and chest it would offset the problem a bit. I used to run with caltrops in my build but switched off to chakram to save discipline for shadow power.
I have yet to try 1 hand and shield build – no monies at the moment. Looks like 1 hand with shield is VERY viable on a tanky DH.
I've tanked just about everything in act 1 with this combo with about 700 loh, 35k hp, minimal resists and 15k dps.
I was not able to make it work in Act3 with my gear. Either not enough mitigation or life steal. Could be fixed with gear.