I've been using Fortress Ballista and I'm kind of shocked to see it get nerfed immediately after being released. I've been using it cubed with UE6 piece with the following setup:
Fortress Ballista/MWG is used to keep Pride's Fall and Krelm's belt up permanently. FB scales with the APS bonus for Multishot and every shot restores a shield stack, so the only way to truly lose the shield is to take a huge hit. MWG provides a bit more shield but it also provides a ton of LPS just incase my shield falls. These two items work really well together, both providing a shield and the insane amount of LPS complements the big health pool well. I haven't tried swapping MWG to something else yet, might do it when the patch goes live. Shields also benefit from all toughness benefits that HP would, so things like Aquillas, WoC, ect, all make the shield even tougher.
Pride's Fall's RCR will allow me to use Shadow Power - Shadow Glide + Tactical Advantage permanently, combined with Krelm's belt I'm always sitting at 140% move speed, occasionally 190% from Werzechians. It provides the same amount of RCR as cindercoat would but now applies to all skills including discipline spenders.
I may be missing out from not using Vengeance, but I refuse to use the skill for reasons you know why. When all is said and done I feel like all things I lost from not using it, I've made up for: I don't need to rely on Dark Heart for toughness because I have a huge shield and enough speed to dodge just about anything, I may be missing 40% more damage but I'm travelling everywhere so fast I feel I'm making up for the lost time, and resources are even less of an issue because PF effects everything. I could always just swap FoK-FoD to Vengeance but I love the skills CC.
Overall I really like the item personally, but I'm sad to see it nerfed for no good reason. It really didn't deserve it, you're giving up an entire cube slot for a shield, it should be a decent size shield and 30% isn't much unfortunately, I might need to keep MWG.
I personally like Natalya set, but tbh i don't like much RoV, while i love Strafe. S1 i played with a melee Strafe/FoK/Shuriken cloud build which was a lot of fun to play for me - in my mind (before current Natalya set) this was the idea i had about what the Shadows set would have needed to be; the knives rune of FoK wouldn't have required a bow weapon, and the rest is known, with perma shadow power giving us the needed survivability to stay in melee.
I agree however that spin-to-win builds haven't a lot of dpeth in gameplay generally.
To each their own I know some people like N6, so I'd never request it get changed, I just hope S6 can stay the same as well. N6 does have some depths too it for a spin to win spec, I am genuinely impressed when people can pull off the whole strafe and EF between frames thing. The set does have lots to learn and master, I can't deny that. I just feel like if they fixed some things for Shadows Set it could be on par with other sets, just as fun, maybe more difficult, but a rewarding set in the end.
After testing S6 in Grifts for a long time now, I do think that they need to address the AoE issue with the set, but I hope that doesn't involve a complete rework. I really like S6 and the other sets are so boring/less involved in comparison imo.
-UE Multishot just blankets entire areas and requires no effort/skill to pull off really, there's nothing to learn or improve upon. Aim and Click, still a fun set, but not much to it.
-M6 you focus on making sure sentries are close by and that's about it. They will help blanket the entire area with what ever attack you want, and will auto aim and shot around corners for you. At least learning and improving upon sentry positioning is possible
-N6 I don't even like to talk about because IMO it is the absolute worst set they have released. The playstyle N6 promotes is dumb, the fact that N6/RoV doesn't even deal the damage its a legendary belt and sword that deals the damage is even worse then the playstyle, and strafe looks realllllllly stupid imo. The whole set, from looks too gameplay is just ugly and twisted if you ask me.
What they need to do to S6 is add in ways to make it deal AoE more easily, some involving active game play, others passive game play:
-Change Grim Reaper to a flat percentage of damage dealt to all enemies in 20 yards, that way its power is not diminished as you climb Grifts. Climbing grifts inevitably means larger packs of monsters because they take longer to kill.
-add in a legendary quiver that gives the first hit of impale a 50% chance to proc Area Damage
-Change Demons Demise to a sword
-Change Spike Trap so that every single rune rearms itself 3 times
-Add a shield/quiver that makes Spike Trap rearm itself 10 times
there's lots they could do for the set to make AoE easier to obtain.
Now this is gonna be an unpopular opinion, but I REALLLY hate how almost mandatory Vengeance has become. The skill looks incredibly stupid and is way to chaotic. It ruins my characters transmog appearance into ugly ass Nats 6 set, I really hate the horns on the helm and the way the cloak looks and the fact it completely negates the time I spent transmog my DH. The 40% multiplicative buff is great and all, but its making most other options completely pointless; they should either make our other damage buffs multiplicative (wolf, MFD, ect) or make Vengeance an additive buff. The new Helm and Dawn aren't helping either because the cube is also getting completely consumed by these items because of this skill, top it off with ORotZ just to keep the skill up even more. I really do not think it is healthy for the longevity of these sets/the demon hunter, we were already getting almost to many skills and items forced on to our char from these sets, but now vengeance too and vengeance is consuming all of our cube slots. There's lots I like about this patch and lots I really don't like.
My only thing about Endless Walk is I hate being forced to stand still, it just doesn't lend well to the way I like to play. I'm also a bit of a stickler for aesthetics and I hate the way Vengeance makes our char look all crazy and out of control, there's just to much visual stuff going on with it IMO. So I'm reluctant to use them, I think I might trying gaining toughness from other ways and see how far I can take it.
Also, I'm really curious how he is pushing Grift 70 with only impale and no AoE. If we compare the damage modifiers that we have exclusively compared to each other's set ups the numbers look like:
His spec has EW and Vegenace
Endless Walk = 100% Damage = x2
Vengeance = 40% Damage = x1.4
Overall Damage Buff = x2.8
We have F&R as well as Convention of Elements
Focus = 50% = x1.5
Restraint = 50% = x1.5
CoE = 200%/4 = x1.5
Overall Damage Buff=x3.375
Theses are the only differences we have in regards to damage buffs, all other buffs being used are available to both our specs so they can be ignored. So our impales should be dealing more DpS than his, we just have waaaayyyy less toughness. This is also ignoring Sticky Trap and its uptime with CoE. Maybe I missed something? Maybe I'm just dying to much? I'll take the guys word for it, but I'm a bbbit sceptical of his claims. Again, maybe I missed something.
hahaha my bad! I was falling a sleep at my desk >.< I saw it and thought "damn that's a good one" and started to nod off again. I forgot you had an idea that needed the FoK dagger, kinda disappointed I logged off now >.<
Nice to see it's working for you ^.^ I was talking to a guy on the battle.net forums and he's been using Endless Walk + Elusive Ring to pretty good effect, check out his post, you might be able to steal some ideas: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/19892049375#5
I managed to figure out a way to get really good use out of the dagger. If you get 25% RCR and use a Karlei's dagger that has +15 Impale, after the first impale is cast you can impale a single target infinitely. In situations were there are multiple enemies, the bounces from Ricochet will proc another 15 hatred, so it is possible to get 45 hatred from one throw. Same goes for Overpenetration, any enemies hit by the pierce will return 15 hatred.
Not the highest but I'm still trying to find an ancient Dagger and a lidless wall that has lightening and CHC so i can reroll the monks spirit to Discipline, as well as ancient armor. I don't think it's going to take me much higher into the grifts though. the set may need a buff. Maybe if they made the 6 piece: "Impale deals an additional 40,000% weapon damage to the first enemy hit and has an additional 30% chance to proc area damage".
Ok, dropped the new stuff for Marauder, it's insanely fun Dat 3 billion crits.
I'm still running Enforcer/Zei/Trapped, will likely drop Zei for a more reliable Stricken and Powerful for speed farming.
Garwulf seems the more balanced choice for cube, giving 12%-ish more dmg reduction and damage. The new helm is also really good as 50% dmg reduction baked on Vengeance is nice and uptime is really high with Dawn/Zodiac. Would like to try RoRG+T&T setup for even more pet damage.
Shadow set: a lot of the issues with this could be solved if Blizzard chnages the mechanics of Impale. Instead of colliding with the first monster on path, Impale just need to hit the monster we are currently pointing with the mouse. This way the skill stays a pure ST and doesn't need damage tuning, but we could actually make use of the Impale dagger and in general have more control on our damage.
I got a chance to get on the PTR and play with shadows 6 and personally, I completely disagree, I would be extremely disappointed if they change impales mechanics. For starters having it hit where you mouse is, would make the pierce and ricochet rune very clunky to use, they already go to your mouse cursor. Karlei's Point is actually useless, the damage you deal is so high that you pretty much 1 shot all monsters that you hit first with. I got up to grift 62 with 0 ancient items and a bad 1,8000 dmg dagger and I could never get the hatred return to happen because everything was dying in one shot. The dagger needs to be changed to something else in my opinion, maybe even just "RCR for Impale" would be sufficient, not as cool, but would definitely work.
I couldn't push much higher because of toughness issues, but I want to work on correcting those by swapping gear and try pushing higher again. Also, during these tests, I came across a Bug with Shadows 6 piece set that greatly reduces the Grift potential. Impale - Grievous Wounds does not work with the 6piece bonus of shadows set, it gets cancelled out and you do not gain an extra 330% CHD. Here's a video/bug report I made about it: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/19892439217#1
Cube:
-Demon's Demise
-Garwulf
-Convention of Elements
Basically, the Witching Hour and F&R are used to get the highest DPS possible, the Ess of Johan also helps with crowd control and DPS by allowing very potent procs of Area Damage. I stacked +100% area damage from my Weapon, Shoulders, Gloves and Paragon. Convention of Elements is also added for damage, but more impotantly, it makes Impales crit so absurdly high that when coupled with MFD-Grim Reaper, I was 1 shotting entire packs in Grift 62. CoE also works really well with DD+Sticky Trap, the constant AoE helps but when Fire rolls around, it would start to melt mobs. I took the rift gaurdian down in seconds with all this combined. Also Bola-Bitter Pill is lightening and Lightening comes just before phyiscal damage in CoE's rotation so it works out well. RW's were for more hatred but didn't seem to useful in the long run.
For defense I was using the 3 wolves from Garwulf much like M2 uses the Wolf, Spider and Boar as a pet wall. This helped hold monsters in place a bit, but more importantly it allowed me to forgo using Vault/smokescreen by using the pet wall and constant movement to stay alive. The enchantress also help with her own Ess of Johan and all of her CC skills.
In the end I found my toughness was far to low and that the impale dagger's returns were next to useless as I was 1 shotting everything. I want to try this all again, but with: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#WZTShj!acXi!ZabcZb
-Shadows 6 piece
-Not sure which weapon maybe Doombringer
-Lidless Wall
-Witching Hour/Zoey's Secret if Lidless and WoC aren't enough
-Wraps of Clarity
-F&R
-Ess of Johan
Cube:
-Demon's Demise
-Garwulf
-Convention of Elements
Since kerlei's is pointless I want to switch my weapon, not sure what yet. Lidless/WoC will add a lot more toughness and Zoey's secret might be a better choice than lidless wall, if so i can use HPS again. Also, since I found out impale-greivous wounds doesn't work, I'll switch to Implae - Impact for now. I also noticed that without Vault/Smokescreen, I had a ton of discipline available, so I switched to Bola - Thunder ball for extra hatred returns.
Like I said, the only issues I'm having when it comes to progress in Grifts is toughness. Impale is not easy to use, but it can be done with enough practice. I think you gave up to early. Add me in PTR, maybe we can mess around and theorycraft for a bit
I see a lot of people including Shuriken Cloud in their S6 specs, but if they haven't increased the Radius and the Tick Rate (its only once per sec atm) of the Cloud, I think it would be kind of useless unfortunately. The skill just doesn't deal enough damage and you have to be way to close for comfort imo, if you had Chak-SC included, you could probably drop it for Action Shot.
Not trying to sound so negative/pretentious about it's uses here, I just think the skill is designed terribly in a lot of ways and doesn't have much of a use for the DH in it's current form. Just my 2 cents on the skill.
I like the looks of this, but don't forget that FoK has no character animation and you can use other skills while using FoK. You could switch it to FoK-Knives Expert and spam FoK while also spamming Bola, might not work out to well with the Dagger's time requirement for the buff, but even still. A constant 250% more damage while spamming both Bola and FoK would be nice.
In regards to chakram, have you tried Razor Disc? It works like Cluster Arrow, it goes directly to where you clicked, damaging enemies along the way and at the location, and then spirals outward hitting others.
Well after some playing the shadow set seems really poor. It has most to do with pretty much all the legendaries for it being completely useless. The dagger that returns hatred when impale hits an already impaled target returns only 15 at maximum. In real in-game situations its nigh impossible to make any use of the returning hatred as one can be pretty damn sure that random monsters will always block the path to the target one actually wants to hit. This alone is also easily the biggest problem of the whole set. Sure it is nice to have good single target dmg, but getting to hit the one target that one wants just doesnt happen often enough. One simply ends up wasting all hatred on killing trash this way. (or wastes time killing the trash mobs using really weak chakram or even the fan of kniver or sticky bombs)
It's difficult to do, but it just takes time to learn how the spec plays. It seems damn near impossible at first, but like every thing, it gets easier over time. Check out this old video of Grim Sever(what Shadows set is loosely designed after): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD2HaBhUzbw
The gameplay is slightly different now, but he's using Grievous Wounds and I think this video illustrates that it is definitely possible.This was done with M6 originally because it was our only set that effected Impale during this patch. If Sentries killed the monster it didn't work. You had to be very precise with your throws to kill monsters marked with MFD before your sentries did. Grievous Wound being single target with no pierce or bounces made this even harder to pull off. Considering all of this, I think it shows you can definitely hit the same target over and over with enough practice, even with other monsters getting in the way.
I used to play Grim Sever before it got nerfed, and it took me about 1 month of playing every day before I could play it properly. I could see the same happening with S6 if you aren't used to it. But once your used to it killing monsters takes less concentration, as it becomes more muscle memory, and you can focus on dodging stuff and resource levels.
First off is the 1000% damage boost for just having the 1 hander. Currently, this makes the bonus the strongest of the 2 piece bonuses, instantly boosting your damage into T6 range. Extremely easy to get, and bam - Instant T6 farming capabilities.
The 4 piece is decent, but imo it should swap spots with the 2 piece instead. It also allows Shadow to spend disp on Vault/Caltrops, ect.
Now, the 6 piece - Currently, its retardedly OP for single target damage. Impale is an extremely high single-target damage ability among Demon Hunters, not a single other hatred spender can come close to it. Combine this with the Grevious Wounds glyph, and you have a STUPID amount of single-target damage.
Impale - 750% baseline damage.
2 piece - 1000% increased damage. We are now at 75000% weapon damage for one Impale.
6 piece - 40000% increased damage on Impale. Thats a whopping 3 TRILLION % weapon damage for a single ability!
Grevious Wound - Crits are increased by 330%. Ok, so lets say you have... 300% extra crit damage (On the lower side imo). That 3 trillion % weapon damage becomes 9 trillion % on a crit (DHs have high crit!). Now thats increased 330% - 29.7% trillion damage multiplier, single crit.
Lets say you have 1 million baseline damage (Low side). One single hit will deal... 29700000000000000000000000 damage. Yes, Shadow will currently be capable of one-shotting high-ranked RGs in a single blow. To counter that, their AoE will be on the poorer side for DHs. Still, their AoE can be increased with both the Chakram stuff, and that one leg that increased FoK damage by 300%/second (Combined with the Lightning rune, thats a lot of AoE damage)
Did I do my math right?
Grievous wounds isn't a multiplier it is quite literally crit hit damage. if you had 300% chd and then crit with grievous wounds it would be 630% chd in the damage calculation.
Impale will be really strong and should definitely be paired up with MfD-Grim Reaper and a lot of Area Damage.
it'd have to be tested in the PTR but I read the set as: Impales base skill damage will be 40,000% to the first monster hit and the 2 pc bonus would increase it by "x11" to be 440000% base skill damage. All monster hit by pierces or ricochets after the first hit would deal the usual 750% * 11 for 8250% base skill damage
Chakram sword, Chakram quiver and one of the daggers depending on which one turns out to be better. I'm curious about the gem setup - BotT is likely a must as it will be Stricken i suppose. Due to the focus on physical dmg Pain Enhancer coud be working, or Iceblink for additional crit chance (due to impale rune) and self-reliance on the slow.
EDIT: Single Out is actually an incredible skill for this Impale build. 25% more crit is a godsend on Guardians.
Chak quiver, Chak sword and cubed Impale dagger could be really good, I actually forgot about even cubing the new weapons.
I was messing around with d3planner and saw the same thing from Single Out. Out of curiosity, how are you simulating the 1000% damage from S2?
S2 gives a damage boost big enough to make melee weapons viable.
The actual "issue" about using it in conjunction with other skills is that we have a very limited selection of skills that don't require a bow/xbow (i'm excluding discipline skills as they are a different thing) : - bolas/grenade as generator - impale/chakram as main spenders - FoK/spike traps/sentries/Vengeance (the "devices" category)
Yes, we get a baseline 1000% damage increase. It's all about what we can put together and if we can get actually useful bonuses to work together. I have an idea already tbh, checking right now on d3planner if it can work.
15/24 skills and 18/19 passives can be used with a melee weapon. 6 out of 12 spenders are available to us, we only miss out on the archery tree. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/19021722744#14
the only thing we lack is generator options really: 2/5 available
Shadow 6, Chain of Shadows, Karlai's Point and Holy Point Shot quiver
Cube:
Demon's Demise
Cindercoat
CoE
Gems:
Bane of the trapped
Zei's
Bane of the Stricken
I'll let DD deal constant AoE from sticky trap and I'll focus on Impale/Grim Reaper to add in more AoE/massive single target damage. BoTS, Kalei's, Grim Reaper and the 6pc bonus will also work well together, pure focus on one target.
I've been using Fortress Ballista and I'm kind of shocked to see it get nerfed immediately after being released. I've been using it cubed with UE6 piece with the following setup:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#QUVTfS!aZch!cYacYZ
+
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/class/demon-hunter/passive/ambush from hellfire
Wearing:
UE6
Hellfire + F&R
Yang's + DML
Werzechian Bracers
Krelm's Belt
Cubed:
Fortress Ballista
Pride's Fall
Convention of Elements
Gems:
BotT
BotP
Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard/zei's/stricken
Fortress Ballista/MWG is used to keep Pride's Fall and Krelm's belt up permanently. FB scales with the APS bonus for Multishot and every shot restores a shield stack, so the only way to truly lose the shield is to take a huge hit. MWG provides a bit more shield but it also provides a ton of LPS just incase my shield falls. These two items work really well together, both providing a shield and the insane amount of LPS complements the big health pool well. I haven't tried swapping MWG to something else yet, might do it when the patch goes live. Shields also benefit from all toughness benefits that HP would, so things like Aquillas, WoC, ect, all make the shield even tougher.
Pride's Fall's RCR will allow me to use Shadow Power - Shadow Glide + Tactical Advantage permanently, combined with Krelm's belt I'm always sitting at 140% move speed, occasionally 190% from Werzechians. It provides the same amount of RCR as cindercoat would but now applies to all skills including discipline spenders.
I may be missing out from not using Vengeance, but I refuse to use the skill for reasons you know why. When all is said and done I feel like all things I lost from not using it, I've made up for: I don't need to rely on Dark Heart for toughness because I have a huge shield and enough speed to dodge just about anything, I may be missing 40% more damage but I'm travelling everywhere so fast I feel I'm making up for the lost time, and resources are even less of an issue because PF effects everything. I could always just swap FoK-FoD to Vengeance but I love the skills CC.
Overall I really like the item personally, but I'm sad to see it nerfed for no good reason. It really didn't deserve it, you're giving up an entire cube slot for a shield, it should be a decent size shield and 30% isn't much unfortunately, I might need to keep MWG.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career
After testing S6 in Grifts for a long time now, I do think that they need to address the AoE issue with the set, but I hope that doesn't involve a complete rework. I really like S6 and the other sets are so boring/less involved in comparison imo.
-UE Multishot just blankets entire areas and requires no effort/skill to pull off really, there's nothing to learn or improve upon. Aim and Click, still a fun set, but not much to it.
-M6 you focus on making sure sentries are close by and that's about it. They will help blanket the entire area with what ever attack you want, and will auto aim and shot around corners for you. At least learning and improving upon sentry positioning is possible
-N6 I don't even like to talk about because IMO it is the absolute worst set they have released. The playstyle N6 promotes is dumb, the fact that N6/RoV doesn't even deal the damage its a legendary belt and sword that deals the damage is even worse then the playstyle, and strafe looks realllllllly stupid imo. The whole set, from looks too gameplay is just ugly and twisted if you ask me.
What they need to do to S6 is add in ways to make it deal AoE more easily, some involving active game play, others passive game play:
-Change Grim Reaper to a flat percentage of damage dealt to all enemies in 20 yards, that way its power is not diminished as you climb Grifts. Climbing grifts inevitably means larger packs of monsters because they take longer to kill.
-add in a legendary quiver that gives the first hit of impale a 50% chance to proc Area Damage
-Change Demons Demise to a sword
-Change Spike Trap so that every single rune rearms itself 3 times
-Add a shield/quiver that makes Spike Trap rearm itself 10 times
there's lots they could do for the set to make AoE easier to obtain.
Now this is gonna be an unpopular opinion, but I REALLLY hate how almost mandatory Vengeance has become. The skill looks incredibly stupid and is way to chaotic. It ruins my characters transmog appearance into ugly ass Nats 6 set, I really hate the horns on the helm and the way the cloak looks and the fact it completely negates the time I spent transmog my DH. The 40% multiplicative buff is great and all, but its making most other options completely pointless; they should either make our other damage buffs multiplicative (wolf, MFD, ect) or make Vengeance an additive buff. The new Helm and Dawn aren't helping either because the cube is also getting completely consumed by these items because of this skill, top it off with ORotZ just to keep the skill up even more. I really do not think it is healthy for the longevity of these sets/the demon hunter, we were already getting almost to many skills and items forced on to our char from these sets, but now vengeance too and vengeance is consuming all of our cube slots. There's lots I like about this patch and lots I really don't like.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career
My only thing about Endless Walk is I hate being forced to stand still, it just doesn't lend well to the way I like to play. I'm also a bit of a stickler for aesthetics and I hate the way Vengeance makes our char look all crazy and out of control, there's just to much visual stuff going on with it IMO. So I'm reluctant to use them, I think I might trying gaining toughness from other ways and see how far I can take it.
Also, I'm really curious how he is pushing Grift 70 with only impale and no AoE. If we compare the damage modifiers that we have exclusively compared to each other's set ups the numbers look like:
His spec has EW and Vegenace
Endless Walk = 100% Damage = x2
Vengeance = 40% Damage = x1.4
Overall Damage Buff = x2.8
We have F&R as well as Convention of Elements
Focus = 50% = x1.5
Restraint = 50% = x1.5
CoE = 200%/4 = x1.5
Overall Damage Buff=x3.375
Theses are the only differences we have in regards to damage buffs, all other buffs being used are available to both our specs so they can be ignored. So our impales should be dealing more DpS than his, we just have waaaayyyy less toughness. This is also ignoring Sticky Trap and its uptime with CoE. Maybe I missed something? Maybe I'm just dying to much? I'll take the guys word for it, but I'm a bbbit sceptical of his claims. Again, maybe I missed something.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career
Nice to see it's working for you ^.^ I was talking to a guy on the battle.net forums and he's been using Endless Walk + Elusive Ring to pretty good effect, check out his post, you might be able to steal some ideas:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/19892049375#5
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career
I managed to figure out a way to get really good use out of the dagger. If you get 25% RCR and use a Karlei's dagger that has +15 Impale, after the first impale is cast you can impale a single target infinitely. In situations were there are multiple enemies, the bounces from Ricochet will proc another 15 hatred, so it is possible to get 45 hatred from one throw. Same goes for Overpenetration, any enemies hit by the pierce will return 15 hatred.
I've managed to clear up to Grift 63 with:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#WZTShj!aciR!YY.cZb
-Shadow 6 Piece
-Karlei's dagger
-Lidless Wall
-Ess of Johan
-F&R
-WoC
-Witching Hour
Cube:
Demons Demise
Garwulf
CoE
Not the highest but I'm still trying to find an ancient Dagger and a lidless wall that has lightening and CHC so i can reroll the monks spirit to Discipline, as well as ancient armor. I don't think it's going to take me much higher into the grifts though. the set may need a buff. Maybe if they made the 6 piece: "Impale deals an additional 40,000% weapon damage to the first enemy hit and has an additional 30% chance to proc area damage".
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career
I got a chance to get on the PTR and play with shadows 6 and personally, I completely disagree, I would be extremely disappointed if they change impales mechanics. For starters having it hit where you mouse is, would make the pierce and ricochet rune very clunky to use, they already go to your mouse cursor. Karlei's Point is actually useless, the damage you deal is so high that you pretty much 1 shot all monsters that you hit first with. I got up to grift 62 with 0 ancient items and a bad 1,8000 dmg dagger and I could never get the hatred return to happen because everything was dying in one shot. The dagger needs to be changed to something else in my opinion, maybe even just "RCR for Impale" would be sufficient, not as cool, but would definitely work.
I couldn't push much higher because of toughness issues, but I want to work on correcting those by swapping gear and try pushing higher again. Also, during these tests, I came across a Bug with Shadows 6 piece set that greatly reduces the Grift potential. Impale - Grievous Wounds does not work with the 6piece bonus of shadows set, it gets cancelled out and you do not gain an extra 330% CHD. Here's a video/bug report I made about it:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/19892439217#1
my spec while pushing was:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#WZTShj!acYi!YcbcZb
-Shadows 6 piece
-Kerlei's Point
-Holy Point Shot
-Witching Hour
-Reapers Wraps
-F&R
-Ess of Johan
Cube:
-Demon's Demise
-Garwulf
-Convention of Elements
Basically, the Witching Hour and F&R are used to get the highest DPS possible, the Ess of Johan also helps with crowd control and DPS by allowing very potent procs of Area Damage. I stacked +100% area damage from my Weapon, Shoulders, Gloves and Paragon. Convention of Elements is also added for damage, but more impotantly, it makes Impales crit so absurdly high that when coupled with MFD-Grim Reaper, I was 1 shotting entire packs in Grift 62. CoE also works really well with DD+Sticky Trap, the constant AoE helps but when Fire rolls around, it would start to melt mobs. I took the rift gaurdian down in seconds with all this combined. Also Bola-Bitter Pill is lightening and Lightening comes just before phyiscal damage in CoE's rotation so it works out well. RW's were for more hatred but didn't seem to useful in the long run.
For defense I was using the 3 wolves from Garwulf much like M2 uses the Wolf, Spider and Boar as a pet wall. This helped hold monsters in place a bit, but more importantly it allowed me to forgo using Vault/smokescreen by using the pet wall and constant movement to stay alive. The enchantress also help with her own Ess of Johan and all of her CC skills.
In the end I found my toughness was far to low and that the impale dagger's returns were next to useless as I was 1 shotting everything. I want to try this all again, but with:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#WZTShj!acXi!ZabcZb
-Shadows 6 piece
-Not sure which weapon maybe Doombringer
-Lidless Wall
-Witching Hour/Zoey's Secret if Lidless and WoC aren't enough
-Wraps of Clarity
-F&R
-Ess of Johan
Cube:
-Demon's Demise
-Garwulf
-Convention of Elements
Since kerlei's is pointless I want to switch my weapon, not sure what yet. Lidless/WoC will add a lot more toughness and Zoey's secret might be a better choice than lidless wall, if so i can use HPS again. Also, since I found out impale-greivous wounds doesn't work, I'll switch to Implae - Impact for now. I also noticed that without Vault/Smokescreen, I had a ton of discipline available, so I switched to Bola - Thunder ball for extra hatred returns.
Like I said, the only issues I'm having when it comes to progress in Grifts is toughness. Impale is not easy to use, but it can be done with enough practice. I think you gave up to early. Add me in PTR, maybe we can mess around and theorycraft for a bit
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career
I see a lot of people including Shuriken Cloud in their S6 specs, but if they haven't increased the Radius and the Tick Rate (its only once per sec atm) of the Cloud, I think it would be kind of useless unfortunately. The skill just doesn't deal enough damage and you have to be way to close for comfort imo, if you had Chak-SC included, you could probably drop it for Action Shot.
Not trying to sound so negative/pretentious about it's uses here, I just think the skill is designed terribly in a lot of ways and doesn't have much of a use for the DH in it's current form. Just my 2 cents on the skill.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career
I like the looks of this, but don't forget that FoK has no character animation and you can use other skills while using FoK. You could switch it to FoK-Knives Expert and spam FoK while also spamming Bola, might not work out to well with the Dagger's time requirement for the buff, but even still. A constant 250% more damage while spamming both Bola and FoK would be nice.
In regards to chakram, have you tried Razor Disc? It works like Cluster Arrow, it goes directly to where you clicked, damaging enemies along the way and at the location, and then spirals outward hitting others.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career
It's difficult to do, but it just takes time to learn how the spec plays. It seems damn near impossible at first, but like every thing, it gets easier over time. Check out this old video of Grim Sever(what Shadows set is loosely designed after):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD2HaBhUzbw
The gameplay is slightly different now, but he's using Grievous Wounds and I think this video illustrates that it is definitely possible.This was done with M6 originally because it was our only set that effected Impale during this patch. If Sentries killed the monster it didn't work. You had to be very precise with your throws to kill monsters marked with MFD before your sentries did. Grievous Wound being single target with no pierce or bounces made this even harder to pull off. Considering all of this, I think it shows you can definitely hit the same target over and over with enough practice, even with other monsters getting in the way.
I used to play Grim Sever before it got nerfed, and it took me about 1 month of playing every day before I could play it properly. I could see the same happening with S6 if you aren't used to it. But once your used to it killing monsters takes less concentration, as it becomes more muscle memory, and you can focus on dodging stuff and resource levels.
Here are more videos of Grim Sever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lZUWKqceHw <-- Lightening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1j0BDyydHE <-- Cold
https://www.youtube.com/user/bladezero25/videos <-- lots more Grim Sever game play videos.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career
never mind, the PTR patch notes incorrectly list Manticore's buffs
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career
Grievous wounds isn't a multiplier it is quite literally crit hit damage. if you had 300% chd and then crit with grievous wounds it would be 630% chd in the damage calculation.
Impale will be really strong and should definitely be paired up with MfD-Grim Reaper and a lot of Area Damage.
it'd have to be tested in the PTR but I read the set as: Impales base skill damage will be 40,000% to the first monster hit and the 2 pc bonus would increase it by "x11" to be 440000% base skill damage. All monster hit by pierces or ricochets after the first hit would deal the usual 750% * 11 for 8250% base skill damage
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career
I was messing around with d3planner and saw the same thing from Single Out. Out of curiosity, how are you simulating the 1000% damage from S2?
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/19021722744#14
the only thing we lack is generator options really: 2/5 available
I'm going to be messing around with:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#WZSjhd!YciX!YZcbZa
Shadow 6, Chain of Shadows, Karlai's Point and Holy Point Shot quiver
Cube:
Demon's Demise
Cindercoat
CoE
Gems:
Bane of the trapped
Zei's
Bane of the Stricken
I'll let DD deal constant AoE from sticky trap and I'll focus on Impale/Grim Reaper to add in more AoE/massive single target damage. BoTS, Kalei's, Grim Reaper and the 6pc bonus will also work well together, pure focus on one target.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TastySouP-1157/career