Question about the Sentry rune for a Meticulous Bolts Ball Lightning build:
Why use the Polar Station rune if you're soloing? If you go with a Templar follower, you can put Intimidate on him and a Thunderfury and have a very good way to proc Bane of the Trapped.
If you choose to go with another rune, you could get more damage with Spitfire
When solo´ing with EA/BL you want to pull huge groups. Sometimes even double or triple packs along with some more trash.
With all due respect, as a DH you wouldn't be able to stand and shoot or mostly even survive with more than 3-4 elite afflix rolling around you. Even some trash mobs don't feel like trash above certain levels. I am still having a hard time on trying to avoid death by any given act V trash (winged assassins, 2+punishers, etc.)
When solo´ing with EA/BL you want to pull huge groups. Sometimes even double or triple packs along with some more trash.
With all due respect, as a DH you wouldn't be able to stand and shoot or mostly even survive with more than 3-4 elite afflix rolling around you. Even some trash mobs don't feel like trash above certain levels. I am still having a hard time on trying to avoid death by any given act V trash (winged assassins, 2+punishers, etc.)
Assuming you are running solo with smoke screen, preperation and nightstalker, you can pretty much run perma ss and stand next to everything. Just need to time the shots / skills inbetween smokescreens right and manage both fo your resources.
Also the sentry rune isn't gonna change much in the DPS output, we're talking less than 1 % more dmg by changing to spitfire, since the elemental arrows is your main dmg.
This is not true. Spitfire Turrets deal a whole lot of damage. There's like a million calculations on Reddit... it's somewhere between 5% and 15% more damage. I think that might be a bit high but 5-10% more damage for sure, and that can be a game changer (especially considering that those rockets don't have the travel time disadvantage of Ball Lightning).
From what i've seen so far, spitfire + ballistics is a lot more useful in trials than in GR but still, if you have 2x dh in a group and one of them has a decent hf amu, he can go for spitfire + ballistics while the second dh stays polar station. This will definitely increase the overall dps output of the group.
I think if a zdps crus with involiable faith goes for cold consecration, both of the demon hunters can go spitfire+ballistics. But really, it's only good when you got a decen hf amu imo because awareness + custom engineering + cull the weak + steady aim are too good to give up in favor of ballistics. I guess the slows from a zdps monk + zdps wd with bott is also quite reliable but the covered area is relatively small in relation to polar station / crus with consecration.
Also the sentry rune isn't gonna change much in the DPS output, we're talking less than 1 % more dmg by changing to spitfire, since the elemental arrows is your main dmg.
This is not true. Spitfire Turrets deal a whole lot of damage. There's like a million calculations on Reddit... it's somewhere between 5% and 15% more damage. I think that might be a bit high but 5-10% more damage for sure, and that can be a game changer (especially considering that those rockets don't have the travel time disadvantage of Ball Lightning).
He's right in this case. For a ball lightning build, spit fire only accounts for like 1-2% of your total damage. You can check for your own case in this calculator:
Also the sentry rune isn't gonna change much in the DPS output, we're talking less than 1 % more dmg by changing to spitfire, since the elemental arrows is your main dmg.
This is not true. Spitfire Turrets deal a whole lot of damage. There's like a million calculations on Reddit... it's somewhere between 5% and 15% more damage. I think that might be a bit high but 5-10% more damage for sure, and that can be a game changer (especially considering that those rockets don't have the travel time disadvantage of Ball Lightning).
He's right in this case. For a ball lightning build, spit fire only accounts for like 1-2% of your total damage. You can check for your own case in this calculator:
Hm... I just entered some data off the top of my head (don't have my lightning gear equipped) and ended up between 1.5% (8 AoE targets) and 11% (one small target, like Ember as RG or a remaining yellow elite). Even one huge rift Guardian (Ghom) will still receive ~6% damage from sentries.
Unless you get a zombie rift (which lags out these days anyways) I think 3-5% might be a more realistic estimate; in some cases possibly even higher. Also note that I was very much in favor of Ball Lightning with my data (EA instead of Sentry on quiver, 30% MB). With a 35% quiver and sentry instead of EA you might easily get 15% against small single targets from the sentries - and again, you don't have the travel time disadvantage (consider 1-2 small ranged mobs standing outside of a pack).
My initial estimate of 10% might be a bit high, but I think your 1-2% are a bit pessimistic ;-) If you play with a Consecration Crusader there's really no need for Polar Station at all.
Bagstone, the reason it says 10 %, is the sentry itself, what we're talking about is 1-2 % more dmg by changing the rune from cold to spitfire, and the 1-2 % dmg is of your TOTAL damage output. Let's say thats 89 % from elemental arrow and 11 % from sentrys. Meanwhile if you use cold, it might be 10 % from sentrys and 90 % from elemental arrow.
When I switch Sentry rune to cold it's at 0% in that calculator.
When using ambush, you have to take into account that the first 25% health drop faster than the last 75%. It's more like a 7.7% increase in dps. It's multiplicative though, so a pure dps increase.
Why use the Polar Station rune if you're soloing? If you go with a Templar follower, you can put Intimidate on him and a Thunderfury and have a very good way to proc Bane of the Trapped.
If you choose to go with another rune, you could get more damage with Spitfire
If you get 50 mobs in a pack his thunderfury isn't going to hit them all/keep them all under cc the whole time where as a sentry will
I think if a zdps crus with involiable faith goes for cold consecration, both of the demon hunters can go spitfire+ballistics. But really, it's only good when you got a decen hf amu imo because awareness + custom engineering + cull the weak + steady aim are too good to give up in favor of ballistics. I guess the slows from a zdps monk + zdps wd with bott is also quite reliable but the covered area is relatively small in relation to polar station / crus with consecration.
http://d3profile.com/
http://i.imgur.com/vrh6R0T.png
Unless you get a zombie rift (which lags out these days anyways) I think 3-5% might be a more realistic estimate; in some cases possibly even higher. Also note that I was very much in favor of Ball Lightning with my data (EA instead of Sentry on quiver, 30% MB). With a 35% quiver and sentry instead of EA you might easily get 15% against small single targets from the sentries - and again, you don't have the travel time disadvantage (consider 1-2 small ranged mobs standing outside of a pack).
My initial estimate of 10% might be a bit high, but I think your 1-2% are a bit pessimistic ;-) If you play with a Consecration Crusader there's really no need for Polar Station at all.
Math: http://puu.sh/cn0Sj/489a8ee262.png
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