For people who have not been lucky with drops of +Fire Damage gear (Cindercoat), I wanted to share the build I have been using for a month or two to clear bounties and rifts up to T4. I see no reason that this build would not be effective through T5 and 6, as it provides a good balance of damage, CC, and survivability, I just have not been lucky enough with legendary drops to put my damage in that tier, yet. Profile: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Crescendoll-1498/hero/6663479
As of last night, I was farming T3 Act 1 Adventure Mode Bounties with very few deaths (very few meaning "none" as long as I don't get unlucky with Waller affixes), and a quite efficient kill rate. A full set of T3 bounties takes about 15-20 minutes while a rift will take anywhere from 15-25 minutes depending on mob density. This build works well solo or in a group, and is an absolute white mob destroyer. It's only "weakness" is with boss fights, but only if you consider taking a bit longer to kill the boss a weakness. It's actually more effective from a survivability standpoint than my "boss build" in solo play, but in groups I will change a few things around, as I can typically stay somewhat stationary on a majority of boss fights.
Passives:
The three passive skills that I never swap out are:
Cull the Weak: This is really the core passive of the Cold build. It makes no sense to use frost abilities if you are not going to take this talent. They really go hand in hand. All enemies you shoot are going to be slowed. All enemies you shoot are going to take 20% more damage. It's a no-brainer.
Archery: Using a bow right now, but this is a strong passive for any weapon choice, really. It can be swapped out for Sharpshooter if you can live without the guaranteed 1% crit difference in favor of intermittent bursts of almost guaranteed crits after downtime.
Steady Aim: This talent can be weak for some builds, but I get a lot of mileage out of it, as it synergizes well with the slowing effect of both primary skills and the damage gain of Cull the Weak. It could be swapped out for Perfectionist if your damage is OK but you are lacking toughness, since it's benefit is not always available.
I swap out one passive on a pretty regular basis, depending on my needs. Here are the choices:
Ambush: This is my choice for farming white mobs and elites, generally. Using ambush, you are going to be dealing 40% more damage for roughly 25% of all the damage you do. If you line up other buffs when you know this ability is going to be in effect, (on pull, basically), you can melt elites through that first 25%. I have not tested whether or not a single ability that would put the mob below 75% health gets the buff for any damage it does below that threshold. If it does, the passive is even stronger, but assuming only the initial 25% is affected, you can multiply .40*.25, you are getting an overall buff of 10% of all damage done.
SharpShooter: This ability is the black sheep of Demon Hunter passives. There has been much discussion on its merits/demerits. For my purposes, if I am attacking fast with a 1-hand/dual-wield setup or a bow with lots of AS on gear, I will use this over ambush. Due to its controversial nature, I will just add a link for the discussion that got me interested in using it again: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11914552173
Single-Out I use this on bosses that do not have adds or whose add phases are not a large chunk of the fight, (Cydea, Araneae, etc). Benefit is pretty self-explanatory. More crit, as long as the boss is isolated from any adds.
Perfectionist: If I been overzealous gearing for damage and find myself struggling with a goal, I might use Perfectionist instead of Ambush/SS. More toughness never hurts, and the discipline boost is a great bonus.
Hatred Generator
Entangling Shot - Heavy Burden: This ability is a very strong damage option for a generator. I am consistently critting from 2.5M to 3.5M on T3 at ~ 600K armory DPS. It is not effective for AOE, but it will keep the target slowed for Cull the Weak while slowing a few nearby targets to help you stay alive until you can nuke them with Frost Arrow.
Hatred Spender
Elemental Arrow - Frost Arrow: This ability is THE best cold ability, and it is as strong if not stronger as anything else I have tried for clearing maps quickly. Gear correctly, and this thing will do some serious white mob destruction. The key is to get your target in front of the pack of mobs, and when the Frost Arrow hits, it will split in a cone to enemies in the rear of the intial mob. It hits very hard and is very effective. It slows everything it hits to benefit from Cull the Weak.
Other
Rain of Vengeance - Shade: This is the Ace-in-the-hole of the build. I find myself using this ability in a variety of situations both to get out of tough spots and to burn down elites. The cooldown lines up perfectly with the Wolf buff, and you can choose precisely where it hits and it has a large radius. I LOVE Rain of Vengeance. It shines even brighter in group play with melee and more stationary mobs at a distance. Solo, I drop it on myself a lot to clear mobs from my immediate area.
Companion - Wolf: Wolf is really the only companion choice for progression farming. The damage buff is great for solo and group farming. Always use with Rain of Vengeance.
Smokescreen - Healing Vapors: This is my one and only defensive ability/get out of jail free card. It is generally effective enough that I don't need anything else. At higher levels of Torment, I might lose MfD for Preparation - Focused Mind, but I haven't had to yet.
Marked for Death - Contagion: Mark an add, kill it and all nearby adds take 20% more damage? I'll take it! All the MfD runes are fairly interesting and a couple of the others work better for elites/champions, but generally there will be an add nearby that you can mark to chain the debuff to the group. Switch rune to Mortal Enemy for boss fights for more Frost Arrow spam. As effective as it is, this is probably the one throwaway skill, (got Calamity?!). Switch out with Guardian Sentries or Vault if you need a survivability boon or Vengeance if you like it.
Gearing
Gearing is very important with this build. It is Vital to stack Elemental Arrow damage where you can get it, (boots, helm, quiver) which is additive to itself, and multiplicative with +Cold skill Damage (bracers, amulet, ring). I am a perfectionist, so I insist on items with Entangling Shot (pants, belt), as well, even though it is less important, and even reforge to Rain of Vengeance (chest and shoulders), when it is possible to without sacrificing other core stats. If you are smart with your gear, you can hit way harder than your sheet DPS would lead one to believe and it will let you glide through the first few tiers of Torment.
You will need to be mobile with this build, although the mobility is not as much for survivability as it is to keep the effect of Steady Aim active. Also, it takes a while to get the hang of positioning in order to maximize Frost Arrow effectiveness, but it is pretty intuitive once you use it for a while.
The biggest weakness is probably Hatred Regen. I spend quite a bit of time generating, but since Entangling Shot hits pretty hard, I am not too gimped by this. I just wish you didn't have to be as pinpoint accurate with it to hit smaller faster mobs. I am interested in trying Evasive Fire or Hungering Arrow after the recent buffs. I highly prefer the mechanics of these two abilities, but they were too weak before patch. Also, HA does not have a Cold option, so, there is that...but if I can get +HA damage on my pants and belt, I could swing it.
I don't have a Kridershot, but I've found that the Buriza works amazingly well, the pierce means that the Frost Arrow will split *twice* if you position and aim it correctly, resulting in all the targets behind the first target getting hit *twice* by Frost Arrows, pretty much doubling your AE damage.
I use Marked for Death - Mortal Enemy which helps a lot with the group as well as for single targets (which is the main weakness of this build), and solves most of the hatred regenerating issues you may be facing.
I only care about the hatred regeneration on my generator, so it doesn't bother me that it does little damage. I don't use it much but when I need it it gets me 10 hatred per shot with MfD-ME, 14 if I pick a target that gets hit by the pierce.
If you really want to use a cold damage build, you can swap for evasive fire with cold dmg rune - with last buff it has more damage than Entangling Arrow (200% on mt, 100% on other 2), does cold damage and provides slow aswell (because of cold dmg), while not at the same level of course.The backflip can be annoying but it's all about managing it and positioning - it provides a decent way of kiting which is needed sometimes with a DH.
As a side note: the first hit with Frost Arrow or similar will already trigger Cull the Weak passive, even if the mob isn't already slowed - not a very big issue but nice to know.
Obviously Kridershot frees us from using a primary as hatred generator - this means we can make use of another secondary. Links to the build below
Standard - i'm not much a fan of MfD but contagion rune sounds pretty good for aoe/farming. Steady Aim is a fake dps increase - all it takes is one of the jumping little guys that are vitually unkitable and come in medium/big packs to negate the bonus. I'd go with Blood Vengeance which grants more FA spam.
With Kridershot- as supposed, FA become our main generator, but why FoK? Well, it hits for a load of damage and since it slows, it benefits from Cull the Weak. Also, this build doesn't use hatred at all, so i replaced Blood vengeance with Nightstalker for more cloak/vault. If you don't like that, you can choose another random/preferred hatred spender and keep Blood Vengeance.
@TrueColdkill: Good point on Steady Aim. Most of the time I am running with a Barb, so I do get quite a bit play out of it, as he tends to corral the mobs as we burn them down. I would recommend moving away from it on solo runs of higher Torment, though. Blood Vengeance is a good choice. Also, I LOVE Evasive fire, and am happy about the buff. My cold damage gear is built around Entangling Shot, although I have been messing with Hungering Arrow/Serrated Arrows for Hatred Regen a bit after rolling a +20% Fire dmg Magefist. Entangling Shot was/is strong for me, mostly due to +EntS skill damage on my gear. If I can roll something with Evasive, I would probably check it out for sure.
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As of last night, I was farming T3 Act 1 Adventure Mode Bounties with very few deaths (very few meaning "none" as long as I don't get unlucky with Waller affixes), and a quite efficient kill rate. A full set of T3 bounties takes about 15-20 minutes while a rift will take anywhere from 15-25 minutes depending on mob density. This build works well solo or in a group, and is an absolute white mob destroyer. It's only "weakness" is with boss fights, but only if you consider taking a bit longer to kill the boss a weakness. It's actually more effective from a survivability standpoint than my "boss build" in solo play, but in groups I will change a few things around, as I can typically stay somewhat stationary on a majority of boss fights.
Passives:
The three passive skills that I never swap out are:
Cull the Weak: This is really the core passive of the Cold build. It makes no sense to use frost abilities if you are not going to take this talent. They really go hand in hand. All enemies you shoot are going to be slowed. All enemies you shoot are going to take 20% more damage. It's a no-brainer.
Archery: Using a bow right now, but this is a strong passive for any weapon choice, really. It can be swapped out for Sharpshooter if you can live without the guaranteed 1% crit difference in favor of intermittent bursts of almost guaranteed crits after downtime.
Steady Aim: This talent can be weak for some builds, but I get a lot of mileage out of it, as it synergizes well with the slowing effect of both primary skills and the damage gain of Cull the Weak. It could be swapped out for Perfectionist if your damage is OK but you are lacking toughness, since it's benefit is not always available.
I swap out one passive on a pretty regular basis, depending on my needs. Here are the choices:
Ambush: This is my choice for farming white mobs and elites, generally. Using ambush, you are going to be dealing 40% more damage for roughly 25% of all the damage you do. If you line up other buffs when you know this ability is going to be in effect, (on pull, basically), you can melt elites through that first 25%. I have not tested whether or not a single ability that would put the mob below 75% health gets the buff for any damage it does below that threshold. If it does, the passive is even stronger, but assuming only the initial 25% is affected, you can multiply .40*.25, you are getting an overall buff of 10% of all damage done.
SharpShooter: This ability is the black sheep of Demon Hunter passives. There has been much discussion on its merits/demerits. For my purposes, if I am attacking fast with a 1-hand/dual-wield setup or a bow with lots of AS on gear, I will use this over ambush. Due to its controversial nature, I will just add a link for the discussion that got me interested in using it again: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11914552173
Single-Out I use this on bosses that do not have adds or whose add phases are not a large chunk of the fight, (Cydea, Araneae, etc). Benefit is pretty self-explanatory. More crit, as long as the boss is isolated from any adds.
Perfectionist: If I been overzealous gearing for damage and find myself struggling with a goal, I might use Perfectionist instead of Ambush/SS. More toughness never hurts, and the discipline boost is a great bonus.
Hatred Generator
Entangling Shot - Heavy Burden: This ability is a very strong damage option for a generator. I am consistently critting from 2.5M to 3.5M on T3 at ~ 600K armory DPS. It is not effective for AOE, but it will keep the target slowed for Cull the Weak while slowing a few nearby targets to help you stay alive until you can nuke them with Frost Arrow.
Hatred Spender
Elemental Arrow - Frost Arrow: This ability is THE best cold ability, and it is as strong if not stronger as anything else I have tried for clearing maps quickly. Gear correctly, and this thing will do some serious white mob destruction. The key is to get your target in front of the pack of mobs, and when the Frost Arrow hits, it will split in a cone to enemies in the rear of the intial mob. It hits very hard and is very effective. It slows everything it hits to benefit from Cull the Weak.
Other
Rain of Vengeance - Shade: This is the Ace-in-the-hole of the build. I find myself using this ability in a variety of situations both to get out of tough spots and to burn down elites. The cooldown lines up perfectly with the Wolf buff, and you can choose precisely where it hits and it has a large radius. I LOVE Rain of Vengeance. It shines even brighter in group play with melee and more stationary mobs at a distance. Solo, I drop it on myself a lot to clear mobs from my immediate area.
Companion - Wolf: Wolf is really the only companion choice for progression farming. The damage buff is great for solo and group farming. Always use with Rain of Vengeance.
Smokescreen - Healing Vapors: This is my one and only defensive ability/get out of jail free card. It is generally effective enough that I don't need anything else. At higher levels of Torment, I might lose MfD for Preparation - Focused Mind, but I haven't had to yet.
Marked for Death - Contagion: Mark an add, kill it and all nearby adds take 20% more damage? I'll take it! All the MfD runes are fairly interesting and a couple of the others work better for elites/champions, but generally there will be an add nearby that you can mark to chain the debuff to the group. Switch rune to Mortal Enemy for boss fights for more Frost Arrow spam. As effective as it is, this is probably the one throwaway skill, (got Calamity?!). Switch out with Guardian Sentries or Vault if you need a survivability boon or Vengeance if you like it.
Gearing
Gearing is very important with this build. It is Vital to stack Elemental Arrow damage where you can get it, (boots, helm, quiver) which is additive to itself, and multiplicative with +Cold skill Damage (bracers, amulet, ring). I am a perfectionist, so I insist on items with Entangling Shot (pants, belt), as well, even though it is less important, and even reforge to Rain of Vengeance (chest and shoulders), when it is possible to without sacrificing other core stats. If you are smart with your gear, you can hit way harder than your sheet DPS would lead one to believe and it will let you glide through the first few tiers of Torment.
See this article for the advantages of stacking skill and element damage:
http://bannedofgamers.com/index.php?threads/guide-ros-elemental-skill-damage-explained.1104/
Caveats
You will need to be mobile with this build, although the mobility is not as much for survivability as it is to keep the effect of Steady Aim active. Also, it takes a while to get the hang of positioning in order to maximize Frost Arrow effectiveness, but it is pretty intuitive once you use it for a while.
The biggest weakness is probably Hatred Regen. I spend quite a bit of time generating, but since Entangling Shot hits pretty hard, I am not too gimped by this. I just wish you didn't have to be as pinpoint accurate with it to hit smaller faster mobs. I am interested in trying Evasive Fire or Hungering Arrow after the recent buffs. I highly prefer the mechanics of these two abilities, but they were too weak before patch. Also, HA does not have a Cold option, so, there is that...but if I can get +HA damage on my pants and belt, I could swing it.
I don't have a Kridershot, but I've found that the Buriza works amazingly well, the pierce means that the Frost Arrow will split *twice* if you position and aim it correctly, resulting in all the targets behind the first target getting hit *twice* by Frost Arrows, pretty much doubling your AE damage.
I use Marked for Death - Mortal Enemy which helps a lot with the group as well as for single targets (which is the main weakness of this build), and solves most of the hatred regenerating issues you may be facing.
I only care about the hatred regeneration on my generator, so it doesn't bother me that it does little damage. I don't use it much but when I need it it gets me 10 hatred per shot with MfD-ME, 14 if I pick a target that gets hit by the pierce.
As a side note: the first hit with Frost Arrow or similar will already trigger Cull the Weak passive, even if the mob isn't already slowed - not a very big issue but nice to know.
Obviously Kridershot frees us from using a primary as hatred generator - this means we can make use of another secondary. Links to the build below
Standard - i'm not much a fan of MfD but contagion rune sounds pretty good for aoe/farming. Steady Aim is a fake dps increase - all it takes is one of the jumping little guys that are vitually unkitable and come in medium/big packs to negate the bonus. I'd go with Blood Vengeance which grants more FA spam.
With Kridershot- as supposed, FA become our main generator, but why FoK? Well, it hits for a load of damage and since it slows, it benefits from Cull the Weak. Also, this build doesn't use hatred at all, so i replaced Blood vengeance with Nightstalker for more cloak/vault. If you don't like that, you can choose another random/preferred hatred spender and keep Blood Vengeance.