I'd be curious to see your 168 DB build and like to try that myself. The builds aren't outdated, the issue simply seems to be that the top DH builds/sets do not allow good combination with the Sage sets. I talked to some DHs and they said that basically Sage's is okay-ish for the beginning, but once your UE gear is good enough to clear T11+ it's just so much faster and better that it's not worth it to use any of the clunky builds I tested.
Also keep in mind that "testing your own build" means that you have more experience with it and play it much better than someone else who just takes a build, slaps items/skills on, and gives it a go (that's why I labeled this "brainless comparison"). I didn't work on my playstyle for an hour or so for every build, I treat every build with the same disrespect
In the end all of this is just a sample comparison and not the definitive truth. Just helped me to see how many different builds there are and test some of them; I ended up playing some of those recently but just picked the one that I liked with regard to playstyle, even if I sacrifice a few percent efficiency. After all, it's a game...
I mainly play DH UE, and I'm much faster with it. Mainly because I have nearly perfect gear and each ancien piece is reinforced with 80+ gems. I find a bit frustrating to play T8 to farm DB. I don't play T13 either but T11-T12 are the best spot in my opinion.
I tend to say that to farm DB, just use a "speed farm" version of your most used build. The quality of your gear and the fact that you're used to this build should largely compensate the fact that this is not a "DB build".
Yes. YES! Absolutely signed 100%. Do what you enjoy most, and if that happens to be a non-DB build, then go for it. Like you say - playing a build you enjoy, perfecting the gear for it, improving the playstyle, and going 2-3 tiers higher will definitely compensate for running an optimized DB build.
I haven't done a comparison of non-Sage sets yet - mainly because it's impossible as there's MULTIPLE builds per class that absolutely wreck TX+, for some classes even a dozen if you consider all variants, so testing all of those would take ages. But I personally didn't run any more Sage builds after this comparison, but just some non-DB builds (Archon MH wizard on T13, Akkhan/Invoker/Norvald horsing on T11). I think I'll look back at this next season for the start, but beyond that... I agree with you. Non-Sage builds are more interesting for me (at the moment).
And UE is definitely a very addictive builds. Takes quite a lot of gear to become T13 capable though.
I'd be curious to see your 168 DB build and like to try that myself. The builds aren't outdated, the issue simply seems to be that the top DH builds/sets do not allow good combination with the Sage sets. I talked to some DHs and they said that basically Sage's is okay-ish for the beginning, but once your UE gear is good enough to clear T11+ it's just so much faster and better that it's not worth it to use any of the clunky builds I tested.
Also keep in mind that "testing your own build" means that you have more experience with it and play it much better than someone else who just takes a build, slaps items/skills on, and gives it a go (that's why I labeled this "brainless comparison"). I didn't work on my playstyle for an hour or so for every build, I treat every build with the same disrespect
In the end all of this is just a sample comparison and not the definitive truth. Just helped me to see how many different builds there are and test some of them; I ended up playing some of those recently but just picked the one that I liked with regard to playstyle, even if I sacrifice a few percent efficiency. After all, it's a game...
Hmm, I personally think the issue is a lack of testing and experimentation, because I have used sage setups with DH in T11 earlier in the season without feeling clunky doing so. Also clunky comes by design, as should be obvious with setups that require more CD and/or resource management.
There will always be some "testing of builds, items, and variations" since I like to design my builds myself. Even my GR pushing DH M6 setup is fairly customized, which had a GR92 clear earlier in the season (rank 4 at the time, rank 3 after people got banned, lol) despite being a solo player and thus under paragon, gem level, etc. While I never really polish builds like I did back when I was youtube'ing, I do at least enough basic testing to see if it works and if some obvious variation is clearly better.
As for playing builds better, I think it's questionable. How well a build is played in large part depends on how easy it is to play a build. Another major factor is just how compatible players are with the style. Like I've played shadow/sage way more than 12 minutes (more like hours) a few seasons back, and can say that you play that build better than I do based on your 12 minutes of gameplay. As far as builds goes, even for speeds GRs and speed T13s there are other builds (along with variations as well) that I prefer over the standard UE that most players seem to run, probably in part because I'm actually pretty bad at playing UE. I don't think build compatibility is really universal, different players are likely to excel in different builds.
Don't get me wrong, I like the compilation of what you did. It's just that as a DH player I can't help but notice that the builds submitted by DH feel old and lacking. There are at least a few other DH sage builds that IMO are more fluid, easier, faster, and capable of higher torment. Some of which already existed in previous seasons.
I simply think D3 has a lot more viable builds and variations for DBs, speed GRs, pushing, etc than most people realize.
I agree with everything you say. But would you be so kind to share those other, more efficient DH Sage's builds? I have time at some point in the future I might try them out and add videos, at least of TX/T11 (I found the T8/T12/T13 videos to be pretty useless and only did them to highlight that T8 is good for lower paragon/worse gear and gems, and T12+ is almost always worse in terms of efficiency because of the Sage's implementation of "+1" instead of "*2").
I just took the best Sage's builds I could find in our DB, and other DHs I talked to told me their weren't better ones. So if you say there are... well, where are they? ;-)
I agree with everything you say. But would you be so kind to share those other, more efficient DH Sage's builds? I have time at some point in the future I might try them out and add videos, at least of TX/T11 (I found the T8/T12/T13 videos to be pretty useless and only did them to highlight that T8 is good for lower paragon/worse gear and gems, and T12+ is almost always worse in terms of efficiency because of the Sage's implementation of "+1" instead of "*2").
I just took the best Sage's builds I could find in our DB, and other DHs I talked to told me their weren't better ones. So if you say there are... well, where are they? ;-)
Finding the builds and sharing them should be a job for streamers and youtubers. I mean I don't know which DH's you've talked to about sage sets, but I know at least 3 different setups that perform both better and easier for me than the 2 DH builds in this thread. Not to mention they all have quite a few variations to them for adjustment to different difficulty, and T11 and 12 really doesn't drop efficiency in decent rolled gear with at least one of them. That's just from casually testing out sage setups over the past few seasons when I need to farm DBs, there's probably quite a few more builds, likely even ones better than the ones I've found. There just needs more people to look for them.
Anyways, I'll upload one of the setups later to at least have a reference point that there are better setups, but probably won't upload the others. Will leave those to the streamers and youtubers to find
I just crafted some sage pieces for my HC seasons alt DH and recorded a T8 run with one of my builds. Was trying for about 12 minutes, but ended up as 11 minutes instead since I didn't use a timer, just looked at in game clock. Uploading the video to youtube now. I ran this build in the past at some point very comfortably in T10 on a more properly geared seasons DH. Build is likely capable of over T10 in the right gear, but I switched builds before really trying.
Got 126 DBs, though 21 were from a blue gob. So 105 DBs from non-goblins, plus some wasted time killing and looting the blue gob. I also left 2 DBs on the ground, lol. Would be pretty close to 120 DB in 12 minutes, which is what you got with shadow/sage-FoK.
Just for reference, I only started HC like 4 days ago this season, and the run is on is my HC alt. So the character is pretty poorly geared:
- 0 ancients
- 0 augments (obviously)
- 531 paragon
- 7700 dex, lol
- A lv60 or so bane of trapped, and 2 other crappy gems, i think lv25 on both
- I have a wasted passive and cube item (awareness passive and Gunes because I'm playing HC. HP doesn't even dip in T8, but better safe than sorry).
As an additional note, I haven't played this for a while. So as you can see I run into walls, backtracked like half a map running into a dead end, shoot facing the wrong direction, missing prep on cooldown a bunch of times, etc. And even with poor gameplay and awful gear it still performs just as well as the builds that were posted here.
And I closed immediately after the rift guardian. For DB efficiency, it might be usefull to clean to minimize the closing cooldown out of the overall duration of the rift.
I think it's common standard to do this, and I did that... but when you kill elites and elites only, you sometimes run into the end stone and have nothing to kill. (With UE DH you don't have that issue because when you shoot once to kill an elite, you also wipe the entire screen of enemies. UE SO OP.)
I see that once you kill RG, you complete rift right away. If I want to continue on with the rift until there are no more levels, are there an cons to that?
I see that once you kill RG, you complete rift right away. If I want to continue on with the rift until there are no more levels, are there an cons to that?
I complete the rift and go back and kill some more monsters.
If you continue after the rift until you hit the end stone, you stay in town idle for 30 seconds. It's just a waste of time. Besides, in rifts you should only focus on killing elites, and most rifts have barely enough elites to complete the progress bar (I had a few rifts where I killed every elite and hit the end stone, so I had to go back and kill trash to be able to complete).
There is no reason to *not* close the rift after the RG is dead. I know some people and most public groups tend to do that; but it leads to super inefficient gameplay and is literally a waste of time. If you are 2 or more people in a group, it's even best if one of you just teleports out and waits at Orek to close (RG loot is global so no one misses by not being there for the kill).
I see that once you kill RG, you complete rift right away. If I want to continue on with the rift until there are no more levels, are there an cons to that?
I complete the rift and go back and kill some more monsters.
If you continue after the rift until you hit the end stone, you stay in town idle for 30 seconds. It's just a waste of time. Besides, in rifts you should only focus on killing elites, and most rifts have barely enough elites to complete the progress bar (I had a few rifts where I killed every elite and hit the end stone, so I had to go back and kill trash to be able to complete).
There is no reason to *not* close the rift after the RG is dead. I know some people and most public groups tend to do that; but it leads to super inefficient gameplay and is literally a waste of time. If you are 2 or more people in a group, it's even best if one of you just teleports out and waits at Orek to close (RG loot is global so no one misses by not being there for the kill).
Thanks. Also obviously rifts are pretty much the best way to farm DBs. Where are the best places to get yellow, blue and white mats? Through bountys with the caches to kill two birds with one stone and get bounty mats as well? I used to pick up everything in normal rifts including items then salvage them but since I will be getting only DBs and legendary/set drops, I assume I should use another way of getting blue, yellow and white mats. For forgotten souls, do speed runs in GRs?
First, thanks for this. Awesome amount of research and testing. Now, allow me to input my top-notch opinioncrafting...I do't think you gave the Tal Electrocute build enough of a chance. Para/Manald Heal is the workhorse. Get Tals procced to 4 then just hold down electrocute/space and teleport. I keep the EW set at max 100 while you were opting for the damage reduction end. I'll try to test to see if it's a major difference.
First, thanks for this. Awesome amount of research and testing. Now, allow me to input my top-notch opinioncrafting...I do't think you gave the Tal Electrocute build enough of a chance. Para/Manald Heal is the workhorse. Get Tals procced to 4 then just hold down electrocute/space and teleport. I keep the EW set at max 100 while you were opting for the damage reduction end. I'll try to test to see if it's a major difference.
Eh, I got 127ish to your annotated lower totals. I guess I can't argue with your results. Still would recommend that build.
Update!!! For the longest time we thought the Necro would have no Sage's build - obviously, because all class sets have the default 6 armor pieces. No way to fit in Sage's. But then today this build came to my attention and as you can see, there's room for the Sage's set! So I came up with the following:
There's probably still a lot of room for improvement, but that's all I got so close to the season start (in which I'm not going to play Necro). I got decent DB on T8 and TX, but died 2 times on TX so I decided that T11 was not possible (tried and and confirmed). My gear is just way too bad. Maybe with better gear this can actually be a contender for the top builds, as it's not too far away! As usual, Sage's sets aren't made for T13 anyways - if you want to farm T13, just use your regular Necro farming build.
Thanks to masterbob96 for the inspiration and svr to bringing this to my attention!
I'll put this on my todo list and see if I can get to it when I have the time. A bit busy at the moment... setting up the build, recording the videos, and so on takes some time ;-)
hey bagstone any chance to see an updated list for 2.6.1? arent you running short of DBs yet?
I'm running out of mats, not DBs
I need DBs on HC, but can't really test there for multiple reasons (not enough gear, no DBs... oh the irony, and obviously every death means end of testing :P).
So no update planned - also because it took a ton of time and I don't have that time right now, and I couldn't just test one or two builds but I'd have to test them all. However, as pointed out I think running Sage's on T13 isn't worth it anyways (you'll always sacrifice more power than the small increase in DBs), and on T10-T11 now all those builds are insanely viable. So basically: either run non-Sage T13 on your preferred class, or try any of the builds, including the "lower ones" that are now much more powerful even on T10+.
I tried the Tal EB build on HC yesterday, but since in the beginning you have no In-Geom/Goldwrap up and I have really bad gear for it right now, I procced almost immediately and chickened out. Went back to UE MS DH which wrecks T13 (on HC, unbelievable). I'll probably also start a DH in S12 (though I might only play a few hours, barely any time these days) - so that's really the main reason why I personally have neither time nor interest in doing this all over again. But if anyone feels like they need a time filler until season start, give it a go an re-test all the builds ;-)
I'd be curious to see your 168 DB build and like to try that myself. The builds aren't outdated, the issue simply seems to be that the top DH builds/sets do not allow good combination with the Sage sets. I talked to some DHs and they said that basically Sage's is okay-ish for the beginning, but once your UE gear is good enough to clear T11+ it's just so much faster and better that it's not worth it to use any of the clunky builds I tested.
Also keep in mind that "testing your own build" means that you have more experience with it and play it much better than someone else who just takes a build, slaps items/skills on, and gives it a go (that's why I labeled this "brainless comparison"). I didn't work on my playstyle for an hour or so for every build, I treat every build with the same disrespect
In the end all of this is just a sample comparison and not the definitive truth. Just helped me to see how many different builds there are and test some of them; I ended up playing some of those recently but just picked the one that I liked with regard to playstyle, even if I sacrifice a few percent efficiency. After all, it's a game...
Yes. YES! Absolutely signed 100%. Do what you enjoy most, and if that happens to be a non-DB build, then go for it. Like you say - playing a build you enjoy, perfecting the gear for it, improving the playstyle, and going 2-3 tiers higher will definitely compensate for running an optimized DB build.
I haven't done a comparison of non-Sage sets yet - mainly because it's impossible as there's MULTIPLE builds per class that absolutely wreck TX+, for some classes even a dozen if you consider all variants, so testing all of those would take ages. But I personally didn't run any more Sage builds after this comparison, but just some non-DB builds (Archon MH wizard on T13, Akkhan/Invoker/Norvald horsing on T11). I think I'll look back at this next season for the start, but beyond that... I agree with you. Non-Sage builds are more interesting for me (at the moment).
And UE is definitely a very addictive builds. Takes quite a lot of gear to become T13 capable though.
There will always be some "testing of builds, items, and variations" since I like to design my builds myself. Even my GR pushing DH M6 setup is fairly customized, which had a GR92 clear earlier in the season (rank 4 at the time, rank 3 after people got banned, lol) despite being a solo player and thus under paragon, gem level, etc. While I never really polish builds like I did back when I was youtube'ing, I do at least enough basic testing to see if it works and if some obvious variation is clearly better.
As for playing builds better, I think it's questionable. How well a build is played in large part depends on how easy it is to play a build. Another major factor is just how compatible players are with the style. Like I've played shadow/sage way more than 12 minutes (more like hours) a few seasons back, and can say that you play that build better than I do based on your 12 minutes of gameplay. As far as builds goes, even for speeds GRs and speed T13s there are other builds (along with variations as well) that I prefer over the standard UE that most players seem to run, probably in part because I'm actually pretty bad at playing UE. I don't think build compatibility is really universal, different players are likely to excel in different builds.
Don't get me wrong, I like the compilation of what you did. It's just that as a DH player I can't help but notice that the builds submitted by DH feel old and lacking. There are at least a few other DH sage builds that IMO are more fluid, easier, faster, and capable of higher torment. Some of which already existed in previous seasons.
I simply think D3 has a lot more viable builds and variations for DBs, speed GRs, pushing, etc than most people realize.
I agree with everything you say. But would you be so kind to share those other, more efficient DH Sage's builds? I have time at some point in the future I might try them out and add videos, at least of TX/T11 (I found the T8/T12/T13 videos to be pretty useless and only did them to highlight that T8 is good for lower paragon/worse gear and gems, and T12+ is almost always worse in terms of efficiency because of the Sage's implementation of "+1" instead of "*2").
I just took the best Sage's builds I could find in our DB, and other DHs I talked to told me their weren't better ones. So if you say there are... well, where are they? ;-)
Anyways, I'll upload one of the setups later to at least have a reference point that there are better setups, but probably won't upload the others. Will leave those to the streamers and youtubers to find
I just crafted some sage pieces for my HC seasons alt DH and recorded a T8 run with one of my builds. Was trying for about 12 minutes, but ended up as 11 minutes instead since I didn't use a timer, just looked at in game clock. Uploading the video to youtube now. I ran this build in the past at some point very comfortably in T10 on a more properly geared seasons DH. Build is likely capable of over T10 in the right gear, but I switched builds before really trying.
Got 126 DBs, though 21 were from a blue gob. So 105 DBs from non-goblins, plus some wasted time killing and looting the blue gob. I also left 2 DBs on the ground, lol. Would be pretty close to 120 DB in 12 minutes, which is what you got with shadow/sage-FoK.
Just for reference, I only started HC like 4 days ago this season, and the run is on is my HC alt. So the character is pretty poorly geared:
- 0 ancients
- 0 augments (obviously)
- 531 paragon
- 7700 dex, lol
- A lv60 or so bane of trapped, and 2 other crappy gems, i think lv25 on both
- I have a wasted passive and cube item (awareness passive and Gunes because I'm playing HC. HP doesn't even dip in T8, but better safe than sorry).
As an additional note, I haven't played this for a while. So as you can see I run into walls, backtracked like half a map running into a dead end, shoot facing the wrong direction, missing prep on cooldown a bunch of times, etc. And even with poor gameplay and awful gear it still performs just as well as the builds that were posted here.
Video added:
https://youtu.be/wkCejDcEduw
Build guide added (Maybe incomplete, will fix it later if there issues):
DH - M4/Sage - Multishot DB Farming
I see that once you kill RG, you complete rift right away. If I want to continue on with the rift until there are no more levels, are there an cons to that?
If you continue after the rift until you hit the end stone, you stay in town idle for 30 seconds. It's just a waste of time. Besides, in rifts you should only focus on killing elites, and most rifts have barely enough elites to complete the progress bar (I had a few rifts where I killed every elite and hit the end stone, so I had to go back and kill trash to be able to complete).
There is no reason to *not* close the rift after the RG is dead. I know some people and most public groups tend to do that; but it leads to super inefficient gameplay and is literally a waste of time. If you are 2 or more people in a group, it's even best if one of you just teleports out and waits at Orek to close (RG loot is global so no one misses by not being there for the kill).
Thanks. Also obviously rifts are pretty much the best way to farm DBs. Where are the best places to get yellow, blue and white mats? Through bountys with the caches to kill two birds with one stone and get bounty mats as well? I used to pick up everything in normal rifts including items then salvage them but since I will be getting only DBs and legendary/set drops, I assume I should use another way of getting blue, yellow and white mats. For forgotten souls, do speed runs in GRs?
lets bump this thread, I'm sure most of the builds will be used this new season aswell. Would be good to have this thread at front pages
First, thanks for this. Awesome amount of research and testing. Now, allow me to input my top-notch opinioncrafting...I do't think you gave the Tal Electrocute build enough of a chance. Para/Manald Heal is the workhorse. Get Tals procced to 4 then just hold down electrocute/space and teleport. I keep the EW set at max 100 while you were opting for the damage reduction end. I'll try to test to see if it's a major difference.
Eh, I got 127ish to your annotated lower totals. I guess I can't argue with your results. Still would recommend that build.
Monk builds still good in 2.5?
Update!!! For the longest time we thought the Necro would have no Sage's build - obviously, because all class sets have the default 6 armor pieces. No way to fit in Sage's. But then today this build came to my attention and as you can see, there's room for the Sage's set! So I came up with the following:
Sage's Corpse Lancer for DB farming
There's probably still a lot of room for improvement, but that's all I got so close to the season start (in which I'm not going to play Necro). I got decent DB on T8 and TX, but died 2 times on TX so I decided that T11 was not possible (tried and and confirmed). My gear is just way too bad. Maybe with better gear this can actually be a contender for the top builds, as it's not too far away! As usual, Sage's sets aren't made for T13 anyways - if you want to farm T13, just use your regular Necro farming build.
Thanks to masterbob96 for the inspiration and svr to bringing this to my attention!
Bagstone, can you try the updated DH build by Desolacer?
I've changed a few skills and I really like the results.
I just want to say thanks for this thread and the work that went into it. Quality post right here! Thank you!
I need DBs on HC, but can't really test there for multiple reasons (not enough gear, no DBs... oh the irony, and obviously every death means end of testing :P).
So no update planned - also because it took a ton of time and I don't have that time right now, and I couldn't just test one or two builds but I'd have to test them all. However, as pointed out I think running Sage's on T13 isn't worth it anyways (you'll always sacrifice more power than the small increase in DBs), and on T10-T11 now all those builds are insanely viable. So basically: either run non-Sage T13 on your preferred class, or try any of the builds, including the "lower ones" that are now much more powerful even on T10+.
I tried the Tal EB build on HC yesterday, but since in the beginning you have no In-Geom/Goldwrap up and I have really bad gear for it right now, I procced almost immediately and chickened out. Went back to UE MS DH which wrecks T13 (on HC, unbelievable). I'll probably also start a DH in S12 (though I might only play a few hours, barely any time these days) - so that's really the main reason why I personally have neither time nor interest in doing this all over again. But if anyone feels like they need a time filler until season start, give it a go an re-test all the builds ;-)