Hello everyone, this is Wudijo. After beating greater rift tier 45 as a solo Demon Hunter last night, I want to introduce you to the build and items I used to do it, since its mechanics seems to be fairly unknown to many.
Disclaimer: After trolling people with my poison Chakram / Spike Trap build for a full day (I really enjoyed those guys who believed it, though), I guess it's time to resolve the mystery about what really went down on this run. So here it is:
Most of you probably have already heard of the Meticulous Bolts quiver and the potential lightning builds that arise when using it. Ever since blizzard announced this quiver on the 2.1 ptr I wanted to create a build that revolves around lightning and M6, and after some experimentation, I believe I have found the optimal build for solo play in high grifts, which basically comes down to something I like to call “Meticulous Punishment”.
The idea is to keep up hatred regen via Preparation – Punishment and spam shots nearly incessantly. Because the ball lightning is moving slower, it hits the targets more often, thus dealing more damage and generating more procs. Like this, you can use the Helltrapper one-handed crossbow found in Act V bounties, which allows you to offset the loss of Bombadiers Rucksack by spawning up to two more sentries nearly instantaneously upon entering a fight. The second benefit of these procs, and perhaps even more importantly, is the huge amount of discipline that you can regenerate using the Night Stalker passive. This doesn’t work so well on single targets, however on huge packs of 10 or more monsters you’ll basically need just one or two shots in order to refill all of your discipline, which in turn lets you chain smoke screen nearly indefinitely. You will need to tightly manage your resources in order not to run out of hatred or discipline, because otherwise you will most likely be dead at the spot. Aside from the effectiveness of this build, it’s also great fun as well, as you are forced into attacking actively yourself and not rely on sentries entirely. It’s a really engaging play style that offers a most welcome variation to the Demon Hunter class.
The biggest downside to this build is the huge amount of internet traffic and graphical clutter it creates, which oftentimes leads to gigantic lags. With a fully stacked Gogok of Swiftness gem I am sitting at around 42% cooldown reduction, which sometimes still is not enough to ensure a permanent uptime of smoke screen in really intense situations even though you’ll just need 25% theoretically (2.0 sec CD, 1.5 sec duration). This issue becomes even bigger when playing in a party. It’s still good in two player parties for the most part, but after that it becomes worse really quickly, leaving the build basically unusable in four player rifts. Even at night time, we sometimes encountered massive lag spikes of up to 2 minutes, including disconnects and game crashes. The same problem arises even in solo when fighting electrified packs, as they spawn such huge amounts of lightning bolts that basically the whole screen gets covered not only in your but also in their blue light show, and the game stops reacting to anything you do, leading to instant death. It might work a little bit better now that electrified cannot proc as often anymore, but it remains to be seen.
The items:
The two most prominent items of this build: Meticulous Bolts and Helltrapper. Other than that, you will want to use a Lacuni or Steady Strikers, a Witching Hour, Hellfire or Xephirian Amulet as well as the typical M6 + TnT.
As you can see, I have fairly suboptimal items mostly, and there’s still much room for improvement. Optimally, the weapon would have %dmg, %ias and dex, and the quiver 30% travel speed, %elemental arrow, %crit, %cdr, dex and +max disc. Additionally, I have a really bad Hellfire Amulet, okayish SoJ and a bad RoRG, losing out on ~150% critical hit damage (by dropping crit chance on rings), but I can’t seem to get any better ones. The reason why I recommend a Xephirian Amulet is because of the aforementioned laggy situations, and it could really help you survive on electrified packs, even though I haven’t tried it myself.
All in all, counting in an ~10% increase in dps by a better weapon, ~10-15% increase by a better quiver and another ~10-20% increase in sheet dps by having better stats on items, I see this build going up to 48 solo without pylons in a near-perfect rift like I had one (assuming perfect gameplay and next to no deaths). Add in one or two pylons and the game is on; I’m fairly excited to see where this will end.
The run:
With the advent of leaderboards and me consistently getting top rankings, I naturally got many requests from friends and clan mates to stream them, so a few nights ago I actually rebooted my stream that I once set up when DH in Torment 6 still was really underrepresented. The run was done live on stream und you can watch it there as a highlight. I also streamed my rank 1 two player rift, however at that time I wasn’t aware of the option to save my broadcasts automatically to twitch. It’s saved to my hard drive but I can’t seem to upload it, gladly taking any advice here.
For those of you who are curious: I had 11 keys in total, 4 of which I used until I managed to complete the 45 rift within 15 minutes, which was – to say the least – kind of unexpected for me and made me freak out a little towards the end (especially with Awareness gone on a boss that can oneshot you nearly instantaneously). I got a very very lucky rift, including neverending masses of zombies in an okayish layout (A5 Labyrinth). Some nasty reflect pack early on and a split up pack of blue archers nearly cost me the rift, but I was able to make it past those and actually beat it after encountering Erethon as the rift guardian. Just see for yourself
after grift 40 it all depends on the types of monsters and luck still well done& congrats ( especially with a diffrent build rather than other players&streamers)
Well, not taking the defense of the OP (kudos for completing that GR) but this basically shows how once reached high levels gear and build starts to matter progressively less (you get oneshot no matter what, you need to cheese/immune mechanics) and what makes the run doable is getting the right density/mob type composition coupled with high and sustained aoe damage.
The lighting build presented is effective because of this; he got the right GR where the build shines and can make the difference, though any other composition would have made the run not succeed, independently from the build used.
Gratz on completing GR45. Anyway more thanks go to zombie packs than to the actual build.
EDIT: the lag spikes caused by the build alo are a big let down to me. Though it sounds really fun and i'm going to try it if i manage to get everything needed.
Well, not taking the defense of the OP (kudos for completing that GR) but this basically shows how once reached high levels gear and build starts to matter progressively less (you get oneshot no matter what, you need to cheese/immune mechanics) and what makes the run doable is getting the right density/mob type composition coupled with high and sustained aoe damage.
The lighting build presented is effective because of this; he got the right GR where the build shines and can make the difference, though any other composition would have made the run not succeed, independently from the build used.
Gratz on completing GR45. Anyway more thanks go to zombie packs than to the actual build.
EDIT: the lag spikes caused by the build alo are a big let down to me. Though it sounds really fun and i'm going to try it if i manage to get everything needed.
People doing rifts with help of conduits - other says 'More thanks to the conduits, do this without pylon!'
Someone does this without pylon - other says 'More thanks to the density, you try this on EMPTY grift'.
Someone will do this on not-so-great-density GRift and Saxtis - other will say 'More thanks to the broken set M6, you try this without it'.
Someone will do this naked, after descending 25 levels due to low density of the mobs - other will say 'More thanks to the paragon level, try this without paragon levels'
Someone will do this naked, after descending 25 levels, with fresh lvl70 - other will say 'More thanks to the game mechanics, try to do this without using the game mechanics'.
Someone will uninstall the game to make others happy, other will say 'Good for you newb, go exploit somhwere else'.
Jelly will stay jelly.
LOL, some truth to this. Grats to the op. I gotta try this build out.
This is awesome. And here I was believing all those people that told me that lightning/Helltrapper is useless in Greater Rifts (I don't main a DH nor am I interested in solo, so not a big deal, but it's still interesting that only so few people are willing to "try something out" for more than one run).
@OP: Congratz to rank 1 (which you might enjoy for quite some time now, given the recent trial change).
@All those saying "oh, it's just because of a good rift": You don't clear a GR45 solo without having the "right" density, type of mobs, and an easy boss. The other GR45 solo clears (and probably most GR44, 43, maybe even lower) weren't done with a long sewers map full of act 5 mobs, yellow electrified/jailer/frozen/thunderstorm packs, and Saxtris as rift guardian. Of course you need a good rift gifted to you by RNG, we all know that.
That changes absolutely *nothing* about this impressive feat.
Concerning the density issue: Of course I fish for good rifts, but if you actually watch me doing rifts on stream, I'm progressing past 30-50% almost every time before I decide to start a new game. This build is not really reliant on having huge amounts of monsters ALL of the time, you will just need to reach a certain treshold depending on your remaining resources. It doesn't work so well in empty rifts, but as was already mentioned, you can't get a rank in those either.
About Custom Enginneering: Obviously I don't use it as a passive as it is on my Hellfire Amulet, yet it is mandatory, which is why I included it in the skill calculator. I use Steady Aim as my 5th passive in solo, and Ambush in party.
Edit: Yes, reflect packs are really difficult to beat. Usually I just skip those or drag them along until I find more monsters to survive. I decided to kill the yellow pack in the beginning only because I encountered the blues just at the same time, and in hindsight, with a little bit better gameplay, I wouldn't have needed to die several times there. If you discount the time lost there, you can see that even without Erethon a 45 rift like this is very much feasible.
Another thing: I actually feel like I need less RNG on my rifts, as I can basically survive any monster type regardless of how dangerous they are, with only few exceptions. So while a zombie rift is really great to progress quickly, I can still get comparable results in a rift of this density (almost) no matter which monster types I get.
Grats on being #1, i was messing with the quiver and loved it. But I kept getting winged assasins, ghosts and other things that ignored the slow ball of light. When it works it works great, when it doesnt it gets very frustrating.
I think that even if I could manage to get to the 4.154 breakpoint without the use of the Gogok of Swiftness gem, I'd probably still use it because of the cdr. Trying to get it on other items will cost you far too much in terms of dps, even counting in another gem (which would probably be Smite or Poison gem). It's not worthwhile to gear up on attack speed that much if you keep using the Gogok of Swiftness gem, as you will get to 15 stacks very easily. As I specified in the initial post already, 10% damage, 7% attack speed is best on the weapon. Getting additional cooldown reduction on shoulders and the quiver will suffice.
For normal rifts: I have tried using a Kridershot + 3 sentry at the 2.842 breakpoint while changing Marked for Death to Vault, and including Tactical Advantage. It seems to be fairly good, I can run T6 at 4m toughness (with Awareness), and it's a lot of fun. I have done it on stream at some point already, might do again, but I can't see it surpassing the general frostfire builds simply because at the top end, everything on the screen basically dies instantly and you will want your shots to actually reach the enemies before that. Kridershot lets you spam Ball Lightning all day, which in turn lets you Vault and Smoke Screen all day.
Disclaimer: After trolling people with my poison Chakram / Spike Trap build for a full day (I really enjoyed those guys who believed it, though), I guess it's time to resolve the mystery about what really went down on this run. So here it is:
Most of you probably have already heard of the Meticulous Bolts quiver and the potential lightning builds that arise when using it. Ever since blizzard announced this quiver on the 2.1 ptr I wanted to create a build that revolves around lightning and M6, and after some experimentation, I believe I have found the optimal build for solo play in high grifts, which basically comes down to something I like to call “Meticulous Punishment”.
The build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#RjkVXS!XiUc!aaYZZ
The idea is to keep up hatred regen via Preparation – Punishment and spam shots nearly incessantly. Because the ball lightning is moving slower, it hits the targets more often, thus dealing more damage and generating more procs. Like this, you can use the Helltrapper one-handed crossbow found in Act V bounties, which allows you to offset the loss of Bombadiers Rucksack by spawning up to two more sentries nearly instantaneously upon entering a fight. The second benefit of these procs, and perhaps even more importantly, is the huge amount of discipline that you can regenerate using the Night Stalker passive. This doesn’t work so well on single targets, however on huge packs of 10 or more monsters you’ll basically need just one or two shots in order to refill all of your discipline, which in turn lets you chain smoke screen nearly indefinitely. You will need to tightly manage your resources in order not to run out of hatred or discipline, because otherwise you will most likely be dead at the spot. Aside from the effectiveness of this build, it’s also great fun as well, as you are forced into attacking actively yourself and not rely on sentries entirely. It’s a really engaging play style that offers a most welcome variation to the Demon Hunter class.
The biggest downside to this build is the huge amount of internet traffic and graphical clutter it creates, which oftentimes leads to gigantic lags. With a fully stacked Gogok of Swiftness gem I am sitting at around 42% cooldown reduction, which sometimes still is not enough to ensure a permanent uptime of smoke screen in really intense situations even though you’ll just need 25% theoretically (2.0 sec CD, 1.5 sec duration). This issue becomes even bigger when playing in a party. It’s still good in two player parties for the most part, but after that it becomes worse really quickly, leaving the build basically unusable in four player rifts. Even at night time, we sometimes encountered massive lag spikes of up to 2 minutes, including disconnects and game crashes. The same problem arises even in solo when fighting electrified packs, as they spawn such huge amounts of lightning bolts that basically the whole screen gets covered not only in your but also in their blue light show, and the game stops reacting to anything you do, leading to instant death. It might work a little bit better now that electrified cannot proc as often anymore, but it remains to be seen.
The items:
The two most prominent items of this build: Meticulous Bolts and Helltrapper. Other than that, you will want to use a Lacuni or Steady Strikers, a Witching Hour, Hellfire or Xephirian Amulet as well as the typical M6 + TnT.
My items: http://imgur.com/Xh8HPkg,mWafQ1H#0
My stats: http://imgur.com/Xh8HPkg,mWafQ1H#1
As you can see, I have fairly suboptimal items mostly, and there’s still much room for improvement. Optimally, the weapon would have %dmg, %ias and dex, and the quiver 30% travel speed, %elemental arrow, %crit, %cdr, dex and +max disc. Additionally, I have a really bad Hellfire Amulet, okayish SoJ and a bad RoRG, losing out on ~150% critical hit damage (by dropping crit chance on rings), but I can’t seem to get any better ones. The reason why I recommend a Xephirian Amulet is because of the aforementioned laggy situations, and it could really help you survive on electrified packs, even though I haven’t tried it myself.
All in all, counting in an ~10% increase in dps by a better weapon, ~10-15% increase by a better quiver and another ~10-20% increase in sheet dps by having better stats on items, I see this build going up to 48 solo without pylons in a near-perfect rift like I had one (assuming perfect gameplay and next to no deaths). Add in one or two pylons and the game is on; I’m fairly excited to see where this will end.
The run:
With the advent of leaderboards and me consistently getting top rankings, I naturally got many requests from friends and clan mates to stream them, so a few nights ago I actually rebooted my stream that I once set up when DH in Torment 6 still was really underrepresented. The run was done live on stream und you can watch it there as a highlight. I also streamed my rank 1 two player rift, however at that time I wasn’t aware of the option to save my broadcasts automatically to twitch. It’s saved to my hard drive but I can’t seem to upload it, gladly taking any advice here.
For those of you who are curious: I had 11 keys in total, 4 of which I used until I managed to complete the 45 rift within 15 minutes, which was – to say the least – kind of unexpected for me and made me freak out a little towards the end (especially with Awareness gone on a boss that can oneshot you nearly instantaneously). I got a very very lucky rift, including neverending masses of zombies in an okayish layout (A5 Labyrinth). Some nasty reflect pack early on and a split up pack of blue archers nearly cost me the rift, but I was able to make it past those and actually beat it after encountering Erethon as the rift guardian. Just see for yourself
Enjoy: http://www.twitch.tv/wudijo/c/5173975
Edit: Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emwZ5zPOW3M
Edit (23/10/2014): Here's a video guide for the Helltrapper lightning build:
Twitch Link: http://www.twitch.tv/wudijo/c/5343481
Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehvaQpc-oIA
TL;DR - Go farm Helltrapper, get a Meticulous Bolts quiver and run lightning asap. It’s fun and op as f*ck. Keep it coming, guys and gals!
- Wudijo
Profile | Twitch | Youtube | Twitter | Recruitment: Zero Empathy are looking for the best players in Europe
after grift 40 it all depends on the types of monsters and luck still well done& congrats ( especially with a diffrent build rather than other players&streamers)
The lighting build presented is effective because of this; he got the right GR where the build shines and can make the difference, though any other composition would have made the run not succeed, independently from the build used.
Gratz on completing GR45. Anyway more thanks go to zombie packs than to the actual build.
EDIT: the lag spikes caused by the build alo are a big let down to me. Though it sounds really fun and i'm going to try it if i manage to get everything needed.
congrats tho!
@OP: Congratz to rank 1 (which you might enjoy for quite some time now, given the recent trial change).
@All those saying "oh, it's just because of a good rift": You don't clear a GR45 solo without having the "right" density, type of mobs, and an easy boss. The other GR45 solo clears (and probably most GR44, 43, maybe even lower) weren't done with a long sewers map full of act 5 mobs, yellow electrified/jailer/frozen/thunderstorm packs, and Saxtris as rift guardian. Of course you need a good rift gifted to you by RNG, we all know that.
That changes absolutely *nothing* about this impressive feat.
Concerning the density issue: Of course I fish for good rifts, but if you actually watch me doing rifts on stream, I'm progressing past 30-50% almost every time before I decide to start a new game. This build is not really reliant on having huge amounts of monsters ALL of the time, you will just need to reach a certain treshold depending on your remaining resources. It doesn't work so well in empty rifts, but as was already mentioned, you can't get a rank in those either.
About Custom Enginneering: Obviously I don't use it as a passive as it is on my Hellfire Amulet, yet it is mandatory, which is why I included it in the skill calculator. I use Steady Aim as my 5th passive in solo, and Ambush in party.
Edit: Yes, reflect packs are really difficult to beat. Usually I just skip those or drag them along until I find more monsters to survive. I decided to kill the yellow pack in the beginning only because I encountered the blues just at the same time, and in hindsight, with a little bit better gameplay, I wouldn't have needed to die several times there. If you discount the time lost there, you can see that even without Erethon a 45 rift like this is very much feasible.
Another thing: I actually feel like I need less RNG on my rifts, as I can basically survive any monster type regardless of how dangerous they are, with only few exceptions. So while a zombie rift is really great to progress quickly, I can still get comparable results in a rift of this density (almost) no matter which monster types I get.
Profile | Twitch | Youtube | Twitter | Recruitment: Zero Empathy are looking for the best players in Europe
For normal rifts: I have tried using a Kridershot + 3 sentry at the 2.842 breakpoint while changing Marked for Death to Vault, and including Tactical Advantage. It seems to be fairly good, I can run T6 at 4m toughness (with Awareness), and it's a lot of fun. I have done it on stream at some point already, might do again, but I can't see it surpassing the general frostfire builds simply because at the top end, everything on the screen basically dies instantly and you will want your shots to actually reach the enemies before that. Kridershot lets you spam Ball Lightning all day, which in turn lets you Vault and Smoke Screen all day.
Profile | Twitch | Youtube | Twitter | Recruitment: Zero Empathy are looking for the best players in Europe
Congrats mate! Well done!
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Wiberg-21958/hero/35061489