Anyway, i think this is much better now.
But i want to ask you, what do you think about droping Night stalker for Steady aim?
I think if you will be away kiting, it's basically a steady 20% damage for the most part
AntiRepublican : I don't like it. I think having Steady aim without snares or vault or anything won't be that much usefull and also i don't think you will need that much hatred regen from the bat pet as the build you suggested does not have any hatred spenders. Yea 3 traps are 90 hatred ( as far as i know) but that's just for large AOE packs. For smaller elite packs it would be a terrible drain even if you had Punishment.
As for replacing night stalker for Steady Aim I do have some qualms. One is that it is a conditional 20% where you can be pretty sure to have a decent regen (and your only regen besides natural without gear) for discipline. Also if you are using Bait the Trap on Caltrops you have to place a trap further away from the mobs. This is rather wasteful. You lose 8 discipline at a constant rate and you dont have your stronger generator so you are left high and dry setting traps in a formaton to slow rather then deeps. However that crit bonus aside, we may as well replace caltrops with a move like vault or evasive fire to allow for mobility or damage utility. However I guess it could work if you are diligent. I just dont think the ups beat the downs. Sorry if this post doesnt make sense, I am a little incoherent at the moment xD
Also, that is good news on chain shot. Chain Powa!
I really like the last build. The damage seems really high and you have a number of snares at your disposal to keep a lot of mobs away from you.
The combination of elemental arrow, punishment and marked for death look like it will provide good enough dmg on the boss and rapid fire will be a good "aoe" when combined with runed marked for death.
Also i think having elemental arrow will be quiet usefull for mobs with high armord.
One question, does entangling shot do dmg to all 4 targets or just the first one it hits?
If it does not do damage to all 4 I will be highly disappointed. If anyone from the beta can confirm how it works I would be really happy
Well even if there is no trash packs like that, your lack of dps seems problematic on bosses.
I assume act bosses will be immune to snares, stuns, roots etc. If they are not, they will be too easy, it is almost 100% safe to assume they will be. In that case i can see you will have some problems with them.
Sure you have good survivability and kiting options for normal mobs and elites. but bosses could be a problem. You could switch 1-2 skills for a boss for sure, but it seems with the valor buff that blizzard doesn't want that.
The mobility and kiting options are DHs strongest sides, for sure. But i see so many high mobility or snaring builds from everyone and i am thinking the dps should be a problem. I think people can't have so many defensive spells and snares. PVM demon hunter will need a sharp balance between high burst, mobility and defensive skills to get around if you ask me.
The thing the remember about the build is that we will be stacking crit to supplement our basically passive 25%. 1 in 4 rapid fire shots should land as a crit on average and if the boss spawns adds then using sticky trap on them and killing them off intelligently will allow for decent chunks of AoE and a blistering single target bombardment. We cant calculate the damage rapid fire would do as we do not yet know how to calculate the shots per hatred (If I am wrong I would like to see how it's done xD) but the assumption is that this spell will do plenty of damage for us.
I would be interested, however, on your take of how to manage snares and damage. I am not saying put up or shut up but I would like to know what damaging abilities should be included. I have thought of 2 builds to try and adjust the damage output.
This build replaces Spike Trap with Elemental Arrow glyphed with Frost Arrow. The allows for a strong AoE snare that is inexpensive. A bonus to that is it is point and click to activate rather then point click kill then activate. This allows us to combat teleporting mobs by having a strong reactive slow that we can spam while reassembling our caltrops. This allows us to change the glyph on Rapid Fire to High Velocity allowing a lot more crit chances as was previously posted and then Marked for Death's glyph is replaced with Grim Reaper to allow AoE while single target bashing with Rapid Fire.
This build is identical to the last except we forgo the Shadow Power combo for the much more blunt Preperation/ Punishment route while gaining our health from Death Toll on Marked for Death.
I am not a beta player so I am using my imagination a bit here. I think Worra's is a well thought out and balanced build (especially with the tweaks you made per others' suggestions). I would like to run a slightly altered version of Worra's concept by him/her and anyone interested. I didn't pay attention to level requirements so these might not be practical changes to the build because they might not be available until unlocks some 20+ levels higher Maybe look at them as potential "paths" for your build once the options open up in higher levels...
I really like vault, I wont lie, and any excuse to try it while keeping the basic structure of my build is definitely welcomed. I do like the marked for death alternate glyph as well, something I overlooked, but I think it would really come down to preference at this point. One glyph is more disc efficient and the other leads to more raw damage. Also it was not my intention to make the build usable by level 30 but it did just kind of happen that way minus caltrops. xD
Marked for Death - "Contagion" will be good at the start but when mobs have higher health pools I honestly think you will be far better off with "Grim Reaper".
I understand your thinking but as I said before, marked for death is definitely a toss up glyph picker. The more I think of it the better all of its glyphs look. Imagine if Grim Reaper allowed critical strikes on all of the mobs around the target. I am sure that the discipline regen would be almost abusive.
I can't say i'm a fan of so many snares.
If you get a teleporter or snare immune group in higher difficulties you are screwed, i think it needs more dmg to be honest, can't see the point in so many snares.
But it's just my taste...
I agree, I would like some more proactive avoidance, but if you come across a group that is immune to snares you were screwed from the start unless you planned out your attack on them. The only moves that are not direct snares that would help you out of a tough patch are Vault and Evasive Fire and while I love vault, if I can't get away with using Contagion on Marked for death due to their health pools, odds are your vault will have eaten your discipline quite quickly. Also Evasive Fire is a very clunky looking skill, while its a nice damage and dodge you spend less time damaging and more time dodging. Problem being that you will still encounter large health pool mobs not taking much damage and hunting you down as you hop away.
In summary, lets just hope we don't find non boss packs like this.
Ill make adjustments to my build to reflect the marked for death adjustments.
My take on DH build. Hatred is generated by going invisible and slowing enemy down. Calotrops deal some AOE. Traps for AOE, rapid fire for lots of shots and cirts=disc for calotrops and invis. Increased damage to slowed targets.
Bat companion and some hatred regen equipment (i think it is already in beta) should allow me to spam rapid fire.
The other take would be indeed sentry for damage reduction, and damage reduction to slowed enemies + FoK + calotrops and a bit of %of damage-regen gear.
I could definitely see this working except we don't know how the Spike Traps will be laid out so it might make it very difficult to predict. You would probably be better off with an AoE that was more precise if you only have one and that's my only real criticism. If you got the regen to sustain Rapid fire indefinitely you would be laughing. Oh but now that i think of it, are you going for a crit build? I understand the passives you are using are still useful but if the build is not crit-centric then perhaps you can adjust Night Stalker to Steady Aim and try to equip a 2h crossbow for the slower rate of fire to make getting your Rapid Fire regen easier. Being able to spam this indefinitely would definitely trump 10% crit as with 2 1h XBows you would end up having to default to your hatred generator between bursts with the same regen.
I am not a fan of impale really :/ Its a little too blunt xD As much as I make my builds to be practical there is something to love about the flash of some skills :P. For example I would LOVE to see a build that could walk into inferno and effectively use Rain of Vengeance but usually it would scream death trap, or so I believe.
That crit build is interesting. If it is possible to get massive numbers like that I think I would try for a balance between Crit Hit damage and chance and use a 2H Crossbow for massive and frequent AoE stickies.
I like this build alot! The demon hunter looks better and better, seems there is going to be a nice skill cap with trying to avoid and snare enemies. I think this class will be the one that surpries me the most and eventually takes most of my attention.
I was surprised when I made this build truth be told. I tried to convince myself there was a good balance between snares, damage, discipline and hatred use and I popped this out. I particularly like that regen combo I stumbled upon. It seems a little broken if you ask me, if it gets widely used I can see a big nerf incoming. Especially seeing you get all of the components by level 21.
Sharpshooter seems pretty terrible to me, and it gets massively worse the faster you attack and the more crit you have. Which makes it downright terrible for a Dual Wield Xbow Crit build.
As I think about it I agree with you. Rarely would I get a bonus that exceeds more then 3-6%. Perhaps a better passive could be Cull the Weak or Steady Aim? If damage isnt the way to go Perfectionist could really hit home in the health and hatred regen combo with Night Stalker. Ill edit to include this.
So this is my first post here on Diablo Fans and I was hoping for some feedback on this crit and snare intensive build. Sorry for the wall but I try and cover every loose end with this build, I think it is one of the most solid DH builds posted on the forum.
Active
First we use Entangling Shot with the glyph Chain Gang. Not a lot of people go this way but snares will be invaluable in Inferno and to have one that not only causes a 4 mob 60% snare but is also spamable and provides you with your main resource seems like a no brainier. One may ask why I don't go with Piercing Arrow with Spray of Teeth in a crit build. The answer is simple in that the small AoE damage caused by the spray does not make it more valuable then an AoE snare. If it does pierce on a crit and crits again, should Spray of Teeth work this way, I am taking a chance on a chance of this skill being useful and that is not acceptable end game.
Next, for our main hatred dump, we have Rapid Fire coupled with Web Shot. This is in fact another snare and it is not the last you'll see in this build. This skill is an easy choice for a crit build, especially since it will rely on dual wielding crossbows, but we will get into that later. The speed at which shots are fired along with the dual wield speed bonus allows, on average, for the optimal chance of getting critical shots in the least amount of time. This works in synergy with the passive Night Stalker to provide us with a bit of regeneration for our discipline.
For the final snare we get Caltrops paired with Hooked Spines while leveling but then Bait the Trap when moving onto inferno. This trap will bain anything that attempts to reach you should you place it effectively. This coupled with Archery will grant you a consistent 25% crit chance before gear. Put simply 1 in 4 shots, on average, will land as a critical. At the same time, you are getting the bonus of once again of slowing enemies down. The goal is to be as safe as possible and this skill accomplishes that as well as additional indirect damage.
The must have Marked for Death is included along with Contagion to boost damage by 12% on the mob being blasted by our unwavering stream of arrows. The skill is self explanatory, cast it and forget it, and the longer the fight goes on the more valuable those 6 discipline become to you. However the glyph can be swapped out easily for Valley of Death if you manage your traps and snares well. The Caltrops should allow for easy grouping of mobs as the mobs outside the trap will quickly make their way to their comrades, snared, inside. Also brought to my attention by Casanova and Kimchisundae is that there are way more glyphs that work for this and it really is a toss up on preference. Might I even say Mortal Enemy and Grim Reaper might very well be the two best glyphs endgame for this build.
Of course each build needs a solid AoE which is why we pick up Spike Trap stuck with Sticky Trap. This allows us to plant a bomb on up to 3 enemies and then switch our focus back to single target as the bombs detonate after the mob dies. This allows us to control when we want the bomb to go off while doing almost completely passive, massive, AoE damage. Landing a critical strike with this bad boy will net you 606% weapon damage per crit but 404% per mob standard is nothing to scoff at. This also allows us to still focus primarily on Rapid Fire.
We are still left with 2 glaring problems and that is health regeneration and hatred regeneration. Surprisingly though, this can be done with a single ability. Shadow Power and Nightbane work together fantastically to solve all of our loose ends. While it may seem costly, and it is, it also has no cool down and allows for 3 seconds of possible infinite Rapid Fire. 3 seconds of Rapid fire also translates to 3 discipline return, but this is not entirely true. With Night Stalker we have a chance to regenerate 2 discipline every crit and even though it is a chance of a chance, the rate at which Rapid Fire does fire allows a reasonable amount of certainty that we will see some regen in those 3 seconds.
Passives
Night Stalker has been explained rather extensively but basically the more you attack, the better your regen will average out to be. With enough luck you could very likely be able to hit Shadow Power twice in a row or at least shortly after each other to provide tons of health, almost infinite rapid fire with a possible hatred surplus and all of this being passively available. Yes please.
Archery is another passive I spoke about, specifically with dual wielding. We want that 15% passive increase to speed for more shots in Rapid Fire and as a bonus we get 10% more in our crit chance. One may ask why not go with the other two powerful passive damage increase and increased crit damage effects but this becomes obvious when you look back at Night Stalker and Shadow Power. You want as much crit as possible to run this combo for more Night Stalker procs and with more shots in Rapid Fire you further increase your odds.
For the third passive you can decide for yourself with the optimum choices being Numbing Traps for damage mitigation if you need it, Cull the Weak and Steady Aim for damage output or Perfectionist for a stronger regen combo with Night Stalker.
Note: You can have everything in this build by level 30 with the exception of the glyph Bait the Trap which can be replaces with Hooked Spines on the skill Caltrops. This means you can start full on slaying starting in Nightmare mode!
*****I welcome constructive criticism but I do not care for flaming. I've seen a lot of people puff out their chests on these and the official forums but keep in mind you know as much as anyone else reading and people are bound to catch each others mistakes.*****
Edit: Why I kept saying rage, I don't know, but I fixed it.
Edit: I realized that rage consumption is not static with rapid fire and adjusted the infinite comments.
Edit: Antirepublican showed me I'm too cocky with Passives.
Edit: Marked for death is nuts.
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As for replacing night stalker for Steady Aim I do have some qualms. One is that it is a conditional 20% where you can be pretty sure to have a decent regen (and your only regen besides natural without gear) for discipline. Also if you are using Bait the Trap on Caltrops you have to place a trap further away from the mobs. This is rather wasteful. You lose 8 discipline at a constant rate and you dont have your stronger generator so you are left high and dry setting traps in a formaton to slow rather then deeps. However that crit bonus aside, we may as well replace caltrops with a move like vault or evasive fire to allow for mobility or damage utility. However I guess it could work if you are diligent. I just dont think the ups beat the downs. Sorry if this post doesnt make sense, I am a little incoherent at the moment xD
Also, that is good news on chain shot. Chain Powa!
If it does not do damage to all 4 I will be highly disappointed. If anyone from the beta can confirm how it works I would be really happy
The thing the remember about the build is that we will be stacking crit to supplement our basically passive 25%. 1 in 4 rapid fire shots should land as a crit on average and if the boss spawns adds then using sticky trap on them and killing them off intelligently will allow for decent chunks of AoE and a blistering single target bombardment. We cant calculate the damage rapid fire would do as we do not yet know how to calculate the shots per hatred (If I am wrong I would like to see how it's done xD) but the assumption is that this spell will do plenty of damage for us.
I would be interested, however, on your take of how to manage snares and damage. I am not saying put up or shut up but I would like to know what damaging abilities should be included. I have thought of 2 builds to try and adjust the damage output.
http://us.battle.net...YjRg!eXc!aYcbZa
This build replaces Spike Trap with Elemental Arrow glyphed with Frost Arrow. The allows for a strong AoE snare that is inexpensive. A bonus to that is it is point and click to activate rather then point click kill then activate. This allows us to combat teleporting mobs by having a strong reactive slow that we can spam while reassembling our caltrops. This allows us to change the glyph on Rapid Fire to High Velocity allowing a lot more crit chances as was previously posted and then Marked for Death's glyph is replaced with Grim Reaper to allow AoE while single target bashing with Rapid Fire.
http://us.battle.net...YjRV!eXc!aYccZZ
This build is identical to the last except we forgo the Shadow Power combo for the much more blunt Preperation/ Punishment route while gaining our health from Death Toll on Marked for Death.
I really like vault, I wont lie, and any excuse to try it while keeping the basic structure of my build is definitely welcomed. I do like the marked for death alternate glyph as well, something I overlooked, but I think it would really come down to preference at this point. One glyph is more disc efficient and the other leads to more raw damage. Also it was not my intention to make the build usable by level 30 but it did just kind of happen that way minus caltrops. xD
I understand your thinking but as I said before, marked for death is definitely a toss up glyph picker. The more I think of it the better all of its glyphs look. Imagine if Grim Reaper allowed critical strikes on all of the mobs around the target. I am sure that the discipline regen would be almost abusive.
I agree, I would like some more proactive avoidance, but if you come across a group that is immune to snares you were screwed from the start unless you planned out your attack on them. The only moves that are not direct snares that would help you out of a tough patch are Vault and Evasive Fire and while I love vault, if I can't get away with using Contagion on Marked for death due to their health pools, odds are your vault will have eaten your discipline quite quickly. Also Evasive Fire is a very clunky looking skill, while its a nice damage and dodge you spend less time damaging and more time dodging. Problem being that you will still encounter large health pool mobs not taking much damage and hunting you down as you hop away.
In summary, lets just hope we don't find non boss packs like this.
Ill make adjustments to my build to reflect the marked for death adjustments.
I could definitely see this working except we don't know how the Spike Traps will be laid out so it might make it very difficult to predict. You would probably be better off with an AoE that was more precise if you only have one and that's my only real criticism. If you got the regen to sustain Rapid fire indefinitely you would be laughing. Oh but now that i think of it, are you going for a crit build? I understand the passives you are using are still useful but if the build is not crit-centric then perhaps you can adjust Night Stalker to Steady Aim and try to equip a 2h crossbow for the slower rate of fire to make getting your Rapid Fire regen easier. Being able to spam this indefinitely would definitely trump 10% crit as with 2 1h XBows you would end up having to default to your hatred generator between bursts with the same regen.
That crit build is interesting. If it is possible to get massive numbers like that I think I would try for a balance between Crit Hit damage and chance and use a 2H Crossbow for massive and frequent AoE stickies.
I was surprised when I made this build truth be told. I tried to convince myself there was a good balance between snares, damage, discipline and hatred use and I popped this out. I particularly like that regen combo I stumbled upon. It seems a little broken if you ask me, if it gets widely used I can see a big nerf incoming. Especially seeing you get all of the components by level 21.
As I think about it I agree with you. Rarely would I get a bonus that exceeds more then 3-6%. Perhaps a better passive could be Cull the Weak or Steady Aim? If damage isnt the way to go Perfectionist could really hit home in the health and hatred regen combo with Night Stalker. Ill edit to include this.
What do you think of the rest of the build?
Active
First we use Entangling Shot with the glyph Chain Gang. Not a lot of people go this way but snares will be invaluable in Inferno and to have one that not only causes a 4 mob 60% snare but is also spamable and provides you with your main resource seems like a no brainier. One may ask why I don't go with Piercing Arrow with Spray of Teeth in a crit build. The answer is simple in that the small AoE damage caused by the spray does not make it more valuable then an AoE snare. If it does pierce on a crit and crits again, should Spray of Teeth work this way, I am taking a chance on a chance of this skill being useful and that is not acceptable end game.
Next, for our main hatred dump, we have Rapid Fire coupled with Web Shot. This is in fact another snare and it is not the last you'll see in this build. This skill is an easy choice for a crit build, especially since it will rely on dual wielding crossbows, but we will get into that later. The speed at which shots are fired along with the dual wield speed bonus allows, on average, for the optimal chance of getting critical shots in the least amount of time. This works in synergy with the passive Night Stalker to provide us with a bit of regeneration for our discipline.
For the final snare we get Caltrops paired with Hooked Spines while leveling but then Bait the Trap when moving onto inferno. This trap will bain anything that attempts to reach you should you place it effectively. This coupled with Archery will grant you a consistent 25% crit chance before gear. Put simply 1 in 4 shots, on average, will land as a critical. At the same time, you are getting the bonus of once again of slowing enemies down. The goal is to be as safe as possible and this skill accomplishes that as well as additional indirect damage.
The must have Marked for Death is included along with Contagion to boost damage by 12% on the mob being blasted by our unwavering stream of arrows. The skill is self explanatory, cast it and forget it, and the longer the fight goes on the more valuable those 6 discipline become to you. However the glyph can be swapped out easily for Valley of Death if you manage your traps and snares well. The Caltrops should allow for easy grouping of mobs as the mobs outside the trap will quickly make their way to their comrades, snared, inside. Also brought to my attention by Casanova and Kimchisundae is that there are way more glyphs that work for this and it really is a toss up on preference. Might I even say Mortal Enemy and Grim Reaper might very well be the two best glyphs endgame for this build.
Of course each build needs a solid AoE which is why we pick up Spike Trap stuck with Sticky Trap. This allows us to plant a bomb on up to 3 enemies and then switch our focus back to single target as the bombs detonate after the mob dies. This allows us to control when we want the bomb to go off while doing almost completely passive, massive, AoE damage. Landing a critical strike with this bad boy will net you 606% weapon damage per crit but 404% per mob standard is nothing to scoff at. This also allows us to still focus primarily on Rapid Fire.
We are still left with 2 glaring problems and that is health regeneration and hatred regeneration. Surprisingly though, this can be done with a single ability. Shadow Power and Nightbane work together fantastically to solve all of our loose ends. While it may seem costly, and it is, it also has no cool down and allows for 3 seconds of possible infinite Rapid Fire. 3 seconds of Rapid fire also translates to 3 discipline return, but this is not entirely true. With Night Stalker we have a chance to regenerate 2 discipline every crit and even though it is a chance of a chance, the rate at which Rapid Fire does fire allows a reasonable amount of certainty that we will see some regen in those 3 seconds.
Passives
Night Stalker has been explained rather extensively but basically the more you attack, the better your regen will average out to be. With enough luck you could very likely be able to hit Shadow Power twice in a row or at least shortly after each other to provide tons of health, almost infinite rapid fire with a possible hatred surplus and all of this being passively available. Yes please.
Archery is another passive I spoke about, specifically with dual wielding. We want that 15% passive increase to speed for more shots in Rapid Fire and as a bonus we get 10% more in our crit chance. One may ask why not go with the other two powerful passive damage increase and increased crit damage effects but this becomes obvious when you look back at Night Stalker and Shadow Power. You want as much crit as possible to run this combo for more Night Stalker procs and with more shots in Rapid Fire you further increase your odds.
For the third passive you can decide for yourself with the optimum choices being Numbing Traps for damage mitigation if you need it, Cull the Weak and Steady Aim for damage output or Perfectionist for a stronger regen combo with Night Stalker.
Note: You can have everything in this build by level 30 with the exception of the glyph Bait the Trap which can be replaces with Hooked Spines on the skill Caltrops. This means you can start full on slaying starting in Nightmare mode!
Build: http://us.battle.net...YjSg!eXc!aZcaZa
*****I welcome constructive criticism but I do not care for flaming. I've seen a lot of people puff out their chests on these and the official forums but keep in mind you know as much as anyone else reading and people are bound to catch each others mistakes.*****
Edit: Why I kept saying rage, I don't know, but I fixed it.
Edit: I realized that rage consumption is not static with rapid fire and adjusted the infinite comments.
Edit: Antirepublican showed me I'm too cocky with Passives.
Edit: Marked for death is nuts.