@Chippy you really should take this info to a new thread. Not saying I don't want you here it is just a wealth of information being wasted in an off topic fashion. I know it all stemmed from a question about the builds but we keep getting so far off topic and I would like to at least try to stay on topic in this thread. I implore you to take this to a new thread and show the community the work you put into this! The math is honestly amazing and the datamineing you have done far surpasses my own, it really deserves its own thread.
Yeah, sorry...I was thinking I was starting to go off-topic, but didn't really feel like starting a new thread.
Possible yes but I was only factoring things that were guaranteed we only know the rates of some hatred/disc returns on attacks. Night Stalker may have good potential but since we don't know the proc rate and the average crit level players will have it is impossible at this point to tell if it is a good passive for these builds or not.
As of now, max crit% from gear is 54% plus 5% base plus 10% from Archery with hand xbows plus 10% from a Scoundrel follower. That's enough to get you to what I've heard is the hard-cap of 75%. Again, standard caveats that you actually have to find the gear and that we don't know what the proc rate is yet. With 75% crit you'd be getting anywhere from 0-1.5D/hit depending on proc rate. So, its possible that you could have the MS Discipline generation benefits with any multi-target skill this way.
Also my issue with multi is that it is very short range. 15? (b.net is down so I can't find the actual value) yards is short. I've had this exact convo in the monk forums about another skill that was 15 yard range that people were talking about as if it could hit anything on screen. Problem is none of them had access to the beta and this is far from the case. 15 yards is surprisingly short. For a DH who has absolutely no good means of damage mitigation other than avoidance and slows to get in close to use this sort of build will be highly deadly.
Not sure where you got this 15 yard number from, but I can assure you its wrong. You can see a video of MS in action on the official skill page: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/class/demon-hunter/active/multishot. The shot seems to be hitting nearly to the edge of the screen which is at least 35 yards (roughly Vault distance). Perhaps 15 yards has something to do with how wide the shot hits?
As for mitigation, MS should give enough Discipline regen in most cases to allow very high uptime on Shadow Power w/ Gloom. That's 65% damage reduction with 20% life steal, which seems like it should be plenty tanky to let you go toe-to-toe when you want to.
@Chippy: Having a blah kinda night so it was mostly TL;DR however I did skim it and pick out something I kinda want to say to that. You did a good job pulling all of that together but I am kinda concerned by the conclusion of the sheer absurd attack speeds. 4+ APS? I have yet to see anything in any video go this fast ever. Not for any class at any level range. I have a distinct feeling the attack speed stat is NOT additive but something else.
Directly from the numbers in the beta. 7% and 6% on 1h xbows with 15% duel wield. In total that should be an increase on the standard APS by .448. Basically 1.6+.448 getting 2.05. THIS ASSUMES IT IS ADDITIVE. When i actually equip the gear it gives me only 1.97. There is either some amount of diminishing returns or nature (or some other relation we don't have an equation for just yet) that limits attack speed. I highly doubt that we will break the 3 barrier very easily even with duel wielding.
Basically, though, IAS on a weapon only counts for that one weapon. In your case we have 1.6 * 1.07 * 1.15 = 1.9688 = 1.97. If you put the 6% bow in your main hand you should see 1.6 * 1.06 * 1.15 = 1.9504 = 1.95.
In the beta you're looking at max level 13 gear, which is a far cry from the stats you can get at level 60. I've seen all of the stats I used for that spreadsheet in the beta (at lower values) except for the flat +attack speed on magic items (which I've only seen on a white item as far as I can remember) and have tested the attack speed formula I used in-game and have yet to find an example which doesn't match the prediction.
If you think about it, those attack speeds aren't wildly unreasonable compared to Diablo 2. A 4-frame zeal was 6.25 APS and a 2-frame strafe was 12.5 APS. Even a 7-frame MS was 3.57 APS, so these number's don't seem wildly unreasonable compared to what was possible in D2 (and it was a lot easier to hit the max breakpoints in D2 than it will be to put together a set of max attack speed gear in D3).
I'm also surprised at your damage estimates. They look way too unbalanced (I mean come on relative % diff for them ranges all the way down to 43%? ). I have a feeling you have something way off in your calculations if these relations are so far away from each other. If I was a game designer, and to be honest I am in college for it, I would take one look at those numbers and go back to the dev team and have them rework the numbers to balance it out. There really should be no reason to gimp players so baddly for using 2 1h xbows. Especially when that is the main weapon the design of all of the artwork and themeing is based around.
First of all, the 1h xbow + shield definitely should be below the other dps numbers.
Second, the bottom 4 test cases were just thrown in there to see if the relative ordering would change if you prioritized different stats--the relative dps values for those cases are basically worthless. Stacking attack speed in its different forms is more beneficial to the slower base attack weapons than the faster ones, so its no surprise that the 1h xbow setups do poorly under these conditions. On the flip side, stacking +damage is more beneficial to the faster base attack speeds and we can see from the final test case that all weapon setups are pretty much dead even in that case.
Looking at the second set of values on top (the max possible dps setup). The dual wield setup is only 13% behind the 2h xbow setup, but has a faster attack speed if your build benefits from any sort of procs and has an extra slot that can roll the Hatred regen and max Discipline affixes. Sure it could be closer, but it doesn't seem way out of line.
I went ahead and added another test at the very bottom to show what the numbers would look like if Quivers were a true off-hand item (if they couldn't be used with a 2h weapon). In this case, the 1h xbow setups slightly edge out the 2h setups. Its very close in this comparison, but the 2h setups will fall further behind when you account for the fact that they will have a few less affixes on the one item in the weapon slots compared to two items in the 1h xbow setups. Something like this is what other classes are likely to see with the different item setups being pretty darn close. The Demon Hunter has this weird mechanic of being able to have double stats with 2h base damage at the same time. It's probably not as balanced as it could be, but even a 13% difference is likely to be the sort of on-paper thing that is virtually undetectable in the actual game (player proficiency and skill selection will account for a lot bigger difference than this).
Another thing to consider is that gear differences dwarf these variations by orders of magnitude. Going from no stats to max stats is nearly a factor of 10 difference. Once you include Dexterity thats probably nearly another factor of 20 plus possible crit, etc. All told, gear affixes will probably increase total dps by as much as 200 times what's possible with level 60 white gear. Because of this, a good pair of 1h xbows will almost certainly beat out a mediocre 2h xbow + quiver (and visa versa).
Discipline Spender Estimates
Those "Durations" don't make sense to me. Caltrops, Vault, and Prep don't have a duration or a cooldown (other than the spell cast time). Mark lasts for 30 seconds, though you can cast it more frequently on multiple targets. Smoke Screen lasts for 2 second (3 with the rune) and Shadow Power lasts for 3 seconds.
It seems like you are actually using the duration column to estimate average time between casts? I think it would be more useful to calculate the D/s required for 100% uptime on SS and SP (good to know for MS builds) and then maybe calculate average uptime at one or two common D/s values for all other builds.
Hatred Spenders
Hatred Spenders with cooldowns aren't exactly additive with other hatred usage rates. You can't fire off two attacks at the same time, so if you use RoV on cooldown in an EA build you are really only spending an extra 30H every 30 seconds. So, RoV costs a max of 1H/s and FoK costs a max of 1H/s as well.
More importantly, though, your estimate of 1 APS doesn't cover any real world situation at all. I threw together a spreadsheet to compare different weapon setups, but it also illustrates the ranges for attack speeds with these setups (without a Frenzy Shrine): https://docs.google....V2Z5aVhWZFczVWc
Here I'm looking at only attack speed and +damage modifiers from gear (+% damage from dex and skills is on top of this, but it effects all setups equally). In all cases I've assumed the top level 60 items with average base weapon damage and average quiver automod damage.
The first block of data is base values with no additional stats from gear. The second block is with max stats from gear. Next I show which gear pieces with what mods are used. Finally I threw in some tables that isolate each stat to see if the relative positions of the item setups change by focusing on one stat and no others. In nearly all case, the setups from best to worst are:
The only case where this doesn't hold is the final one with max +damage but no attack speed improvements of any kind. In this case 2h bow takes the lead with dual wield right behind, but all setups besides the shield are very close. The most interesting result to me was the poor performance of the dual wield combo. It turns out that the 15% IAS bonus stacks additively with other IAS from gear rather than multiplicatively and that IAS on a weapon effect only that weapon. A quiver can have up to 17% IAS, beating out the dual wield bonus. The one thing that keeps dual wield from falling hopelessly behind is that fixed +attack speed on a weapon applies to both weapons when dual wielding, giving that setup the possibility of an extra +0.25 attacks per second affix.
Back to the weapon speed issues, here is the possible range of speeds for each setup (numbers in parens are max speed with a Frenzy Shrine):
The slowest possible attack speed is a 2h xbow with no speed modifiers at 1.1 APS. If you want to use a 2h bow or 1h xbow then you can't get any slower than 1.4 and 1.6 APS respectively. With full attack speed gear, a dual wield setup can get up to a whopping 6.14 APS with a Frenzy Shrine and even a 2h xbow with that gear level has 3.84 APS without a shrine. Even with a 10H/attack skill, that's going to be 38.4H/s required which isn't quite sustainable even with max hatred regen gear, companion, passives, and Prep, and a Templar.
Now, obviously we shouldn't expect to hit the absolute max attack speeds, and a non-MS build can actively avoid those attack speed boosts (at the potential cost of overall dps), but it doesn't seem at all unlikely to hit 2.0+ APS. As gear improves, a non-MS build is going to have to focus more and more on hatred generation to support itself. You do, however, always have the option of switching to MS as your primary attack, which can support itself even at a whopping 6.14 APS * 15H = 92H/s (you'd have to mash that Prep button every 1-2 seconds, but with over 30D/s from MS if you're hitting 5 targets at this speed, you can certainly afford that).
Yes improving discipline returns can help, but you can only use hatred so fast. If we assume you have an attack speed of 1.3 you will end up using 260 hatred every 20 sec. I only use 20 sec because that is the length of time to get the discipline to use Prep. Over this 20 sec we can assume that you have a natural regen of about 10 based on gear. Prep generates 125 hatred. Overall you generate 325 hatred and only spend 260 of it. This is why I say Prep is over kill. Trying to get even more regen for either resource at this point is pointless. You have no way to burn off the extra hatred unless you are in a special case where spamming something like Strafe or Cluster Arrow is a good idea.
If for example you want to get more damage out you can switch out Prep for the Companion(Bat) you will generate less hatred but also have more damage output on top of freeing up discipline to use on other things like Vault of Sentry.
That's all well and good if all you want to do is spam an attack skill, but what if you want to do other things like Vault around a lot, drops lots of Caltrops, go invis all the time with Smoke Screen, or try to keep Shadow Power up as much as possible for 20% leach and 65% damage reduction? Even if you can get enough passive hatred regen and a slow enough attack speed to not need Prep, you are still limited by your natural Discipline regen. Multishot lets you get so much more Discipline than you could get any other way. Perhaps this is a different build--max Discipline defensive/utility that just happens to not require hatred generators, instead of a no hatred generator build that just happens to generate a ton of Discipline for defensive/utility use--but either way, it seems like a great way to build the DH.
The 2h and 1h weapon's mod is the same for bows/xbows. The idea is that no matter what combo you are technically duel wielding even if one of the two is a quiver. The potential mod bonus with any combination of weapons for the DH is the same regardless of what is chosen. The only exception is the duel wield +15% and still then that is balanced by internal game mechanics because 2h do more DPS than 1h, this was intentional and they are making sure it is balanced.
All other classes have to choose between the higher base DPS of a 2h weapon or the extra stats of dual wielding (or 1h + offhand). The DH gets the best of both worlds with a 2h weapon + quiver (higher 2h base dps plus double stats). If you had a 1h xbow + quiver and could magically convert that 1h into a 2h bow/xbow while keeping its same stats, then you would almost certainly see a dps increase. And since my napkin math puts dual wield and 1h + quiver at roughly the same dps, I expect 2h + quiver to be the top dps setup for most Demon Hunters.
Yes in a perfect situation having either 2h+quiver or 2 1h is the best dps option. They both boast the same potential, based on gear alone, dps. While you do mention that in some cases getting something other than an xbow in the offhand may be necessary you neglect to mention that +attack speed is not additive. The problem here is as gear gets better and attack speed goes up the bonus from duel wielding goes down in strength. At level 60 it may be so unnoticeable that getting a good enough quiver will give you the same if not better dps.
I also don't see why you say that 2h+quiver will always beat 2 1h. The speed bonus is supposed to balance out that gap that 2h weapons have in terms of pure dps values they carry, it is the same way with other duel wield classes why not the DH?
I'll say this right now. It is really unwise to try and min/max gear in a game that has this much randomness to the loot. Since there is no set values for anything it is hard to judge how powerful any combo of gear and weapons is the best. Most of this will happen in game when you pick it up and be completely subjective to the situation at hand.
2h xbow, 2h bow, and 1h xbow do scale differently with different stats. +damage is more beneficial for faster attacking weapons but on the other hand, straight +attacks per second is more beneficial to the slower weapons. If you stack straight up damage, then a 1h xbow will be your best weapon, but if you have an even mix or stack +attacks per second then the 2h xbow will come out on top. (+% attack speed and damage effect both equally, so they don't impact this comparison).
Understanding these sorts of trade-offs is important if you want to pick the right gear, no matter what stats happen to spawn. If you find a great 1h xbow and/or you want to use a shield for better defenses, then you should try and focus the rest of your gear on +damage and don't worry too much about +attacks per second. If you have lots of +damage and not much +attacks per second, then you probably want to pickup a good 1h xbow. If you have a good 2h xbow, then you want to focus on +attacks per second and worry less about +damage, if you have a good 2h bow you probably want to focus on a good balance of the two stats, etc.
Am I misunderstanding something here? Preperation[Punishment] gives you all the hatred you could ever use. It seems like these builds should focus on Discipline replenishment, so that you can pop Preperation whenever you want to. Multishot seems to be the winner here.
That's my thinking, hence the MS build I posted above. MS does less damage per target than Elemental Arrow, but it should hit more targets due to its cone AoE instead of line AoE and/or its easier to line up your shots with. The real kicker, though, is it should give you pretty much unlimited Discipline to play with if you're shooting big packs with a decent attack speed. And Diablo is all about mowing down hoards of demons, so this is definitely my top build right now.
But that's just because you can craft level 13 rare 1h xbows in the beta. In the full game if you're using a quiver then you'd do more dps with a 2h bow/xbow + quiver (you're basically getting the best of both a 2h and dual wielding with this setup).
If you really want to use a 1h xbow and are shooting for max dps with the setup you can either get a 15% attack speed bonus from a 2nd equal hand xbow or the +damage automod from a quiver. A level 60 quiver can get up to +90 damage (average), which isn't quite enough to equal dual wielding with perfect +damage in all your other slots, but it should be fairly competitive.
Obviously you could get lucky with 1h xbow drops, but with equally good items a 2h + quiver is always going to be the highest dps setup end-game. If you want to use a shield or really want an extra slot worth of resource affixes, then you have to give up some dps when dropping down to a 1h xbow.
Well that's retarded, I can see why you would have a quiver with a 2h Bow/XBow, but why would you choose a 1h Bow and then not use an OH bow as well? Seem really pointless.
Yeah, I would prefer either a shield or a second 1h xbow over a quiver, but you can do it if you want.
I screwed up my math when calculating hatred regen from items (post is fixed now). Max is 10H/s with dual wield hand crossbows and 6.66 with other ranged weapons.
Is this because Quivers are an off-hand item? I thought they just sat in the inventory, chillin'.
Yup. They are a bit strange though, since you can equip them with a 2h crossbow or 2h bow as well as with a single 1h hand crossbow. Neither of the 2h options can have hatred regen or max discipline, so you need either 1h xbow + quiver + cloak or 1h xbow + 1h xbow + cloak to get the maximum regen.
I screwed up my math when calculating hatred regen from items (post is fixed now). Max is 10H/s with dual wield hand crossbows and 6.66 with other ranged weapons.
The core of the build is obviously:
* Multishot w/ Supression Fire
* Preparation w/ Punishment
Even without anything else, this pretty much lets you constantly spam MS as long as you hit 2+ enemies each time. Beyond this, everything else is really optional, but here's why I chose what I did:
Perfectionist - Multishot has the potential to generate a lot more Discipline than we need, so we're going to focus on ways to take advantage of that Discipline. Think of Perfectionist as +25% Discipline generation and it fits right in with this theme.
Vault w/ Tumble - Great for general movement between fights, repositioning during combat, and running away if things go badly. Tumble plus Perfectionist lets us Vault for only 4D. With base regen that's a Vault every 4 seconds and with a Templar while solo it's every 2 seconds. This is well within the 6 second window of Tumble and gives us great mobility. This mobility should make it reasonable to forgo slows/snares without too much difficulty.
Tactical Advantage - If we're going to be vaulting a lot it only makes sense to take this passive. While solo Vault can be used every time the debuff runs out allowing great distances to be traversed in a short time. This should help to track down those champion/rare packs that drop that loot we really want without wasting too much time in between.
Shadow Power w/ Gloom - This is where we take advantage of all the Discipline that we can generate with MS. With a 1.5 attack speed and hitting 5 targets per shot that's 7.5D/s. Including base regen, that's enough to keep Shadow Power up constantly while still using Prep as needed. This gives us the option to stand and fight with 20% leech and 65% damage reduction or Vault to safety.
Hungering Arrow w/ Scatter Shot - MS's main weakness is its relatively low single-target damage. Hungering Arrow averages ~177% damage per cast and Scatter Shot should increase that to ~300% damage per cast (assuming after the first split each arrow becomes a normal Hungering Arrow that can't split again, but still has a 35% chance to pierce). MS is sustainable on as few as 2 targets, and there are other single-target Hatred Spenders we could have picked, but Hungering Arrow does at least as much dps and has the extra utility of being able to shoot around corners and easily hit things that are off screen. Even if it cost hatred instead of generating it, it would still be a good pick here (the generated hatred will likely just be wasted). It also opens up more options for single-target fights.
Companion w/ Ferret Companion - The last spot could be just about anything. If CC is needed, swapping Caltrops in here would be a good idea, but if you can manage without, then the Ferret should make it so you don't have to run over to every pack of mobs that you just mowed down at range with MS. Companion scrolls are gone for everyone but the DH, so we're going to take advantage of that.
Steady Aim - Really anything could be plugged in here, but this seems like the best dps increase starting out. Once I scraped together some crit on gear I'd probably switch this one out for Archery with a 2h crossbow (with 50% crit chance that's about a 25% damage increase that doesn't go away if enemies are nearby). If Perfectionist ends up being overkill then we can grab both.
Skill Swaps
Marked for Death w/ anything - For boss fights this will replace Companion. There are several good runes to choose from and specific boss mechanics will probably determine which to use in each situation.
Impale w/ Impact - For any bosses that are stunnable (I think this was working on the Skeleton King) this will be a great way to lock them down. If its truly a single-target fight, then this can replace MS. If there are some adds with the boss that MS would be helpful in clearing then this can replace Preparation. We'll be using Hungering Arrow between Impales and minion waves anyway, so hatred shouldn't be an issue in these cases. If we keep Prep in the build we can swap the rune to keep the Discipline flowing for Shadow Power without our MS spam.
Sentry w/ Guardian Turret - For those really tough situations this provides a little bit more damage reduction. It applies to all party members, so great for groups in particular. If you have people to tank a boss for you this could be a good replacement for Vault.
Here is the problem. These 3rd party sites conflict each other as well as we have yet to see most of these affixes in game. Although I do encourage numbers to be thrown around and used to try and benefit builds I highly stress to not use data about things we have yet to see from Blizz. They keep most of this information under wraps because it is highly subject to change. This is the way they always have been and I have a feeling this is how it will remain.
It may be in the patch data but the only ones available to the players are +hatred per sec and max hatred/disc. Also even if it is in the patch data you have to remember that it may just not be turned on! The data could just be there because someone was too lazy to remove it if it is turned off. Programmers, and I am one, have a tendency to be lazy and instead of delete information they just disable it.
Well, I did say "According to the latest patch data". Its certainly possible things may change or that not all of these mods are actually enabled (I'm not sure if anyone has figure out how affixes are marked as enabled or not in the data files). As for conflicting data, I'd actually be interested if you could point me to any conflicting sources. I worked with the guy who runs d3inferno while we were initially figuring out the formats for a lot of the data files and while I'm pretty sure he's parsing them correctly, seeing conflicting data would help me to improve my own understanding of how the data files work.
In any case, there's definitely no discipline regen or max hatred affixes in the game right now and only a few skills even have the possibility of having their costs reduced, which was the main point I was trying to make.
Base Hatred /w Vengeance = 150. Base Restoration = 4H/s. Templar bonus = +1H/s.
Just quickly looking at ability costs tells us with the max hatred generation of +10/s from gear, we see that Elemental Arrow and the channeled part of Rapid Fire are sustainable. Factor in Base regen and we're onto a winner with both of those. Adding gear regen to base regen gives us a passive 15H/s, which is also enough to sustain Multishot spam. Of course getting perfect modifiers on each gear piece is an unreasonable expectation, but the lowest it can be with the rank 10 modifier is like 2.7, hence a low end regeneration of 8.1H/s with bad gear. Of course, I haven't included any of our regeneration abilities in this, so it's perfectly reasonable to say this build of this style could sustain itself in terms of Hatred, especially should Bat companion be used (+3H/s). It shouldn't have a problem with Discipline either, given that Multishot is the generator.
This assumes you are only attacking once per second. With a 2.0 attack speed, Multishot cost would increase to 30H/s for example.
so we could generate theoretically 5D/s from Multishot alone.
Again, you are discounting attack speed, but in this case faster attacks will work in your favor. A 2.0 Multishot will be generating 10D/s for you if its hitting 5 targets each.
With Multishot+Suppression Fire, Preparation+Punishment, and Perfectionist or Vengeance, you are resource positive while hitting 2 targets per shot at any attack speed. Once you include base hatred regen, a 2.0 speed Multishot could sustain itself at 2 targets without either passive and with a little regen on gear and/or not spamming 100% of the time you could support an even higher attack speed.
Another interesting note: I was testing some other stuff earlier today and noticed that it took around 26-27 second to fully recharge my hatred. This means that the base regen rate is more like 4.75H/s now. (Discipline looks like 1/s still).
There are several useful affixes available to us, although sadly we don't yet know any exact details which prevents us from doing any math on the subject - still it is important to take a look anyway:
Hatred Regen - provides a passive bonus to Hatred regen, simple enough.
Hatred Total - increases our maximum Hatred by a fixed amount, this is useful when combined with Prep (Punishment).
Discipline Regen - provides a passive bonus to our Discipline regen, also obvious.
Discipline Total - increases our maximum Discipline by a fixed amount, this is useful with Prep (unruned) if we are relying on a form of Hatred generation that requires Discipline expenditure over a 45 second timescale (cooldown on Prep).
Imbued (http://www.diablowik...agical_Prefixes) - provides flat reductions to skill costs, little is known about this affix as it has only been seen a few times and appears to be class specific.
In theory it should be possible to create an nHG build that relies purely on gear to provide necessary resources.
According to the latest patch data, not all of these mods are actually available.
Resource_Max_Bonus (http://www.d3inferno..._Max_Bonus.html)
* You can get +Discipline, but not +Hatred
* Available on Hand Crossbows, Quivers, and Cloaks
* Maximum value is +15 Discipline (+45 total possible while dual wielding, +30 total otherwise)
Resource_Regen_Per_Second (http://www.d3inferno...Per_Second.html)
* You can get Hatred Regen, but not Discipline Regen
* Available on Hand Crossbows, Quivers, and Cloaks
* Maximum value is 3.33 per second (10.00 total possible with a 1h xbow, 6.66 total otherwise)
Power_Resource_Reduction (http://www.d3inferno..._Reduction.html)
* Chakram: 1-2 per item, 5 slots max => -10 hatred max (free Chakram)
* Impale: 1-3 per item, 5 slots max => -15 hatred max (10 hatred Impale)
* Strafe: 1-2 per item, 5 slots max => -10 hatred max (5 hatred Strafe)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Yeah, sorry...I was thinking I was starting to go off-topic, but didn't really feel like starting a new thread.
As of now, max crit% from gear is 54% plus 5% base plus 10% from Archery with hand xbows plus 10% from a Scoundrel follower. That's enough to get you to what I've heard is the hard-cap of 75%. Again, standard caveats that you actually have to find the gear and that we don't know what the proc rate is yet. With 75% crit you'd be getting anywhere from 0-1.5D/hit depending on proc rate. So, its possible that you could have the MS Discipline generation benefits with any multi-target skill this way.
Not sure where you got this 15 yard number from, but I can assure you its wrong. You can see a video of MS in action on the official skill page: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/class/demon-hunter/active/multishot. The shot seems to be hitting nearly to the edge of the screen which is at least 35 yards (roughly Vault distance). Perhaps 15 yards has something to do with how wide the shot hits?
As for mitigation, MS should give enough Discipline regen in most cases to allow very high uptime on Shadow Power w/ Gloom. That's 65% damage reduction with 20% life steal, which seems like it should be plenty tanky to let you go toe-to-toe when you want to.
1.97 is exactly what I would expect from that setup. I posted a separate thread with the full attack speed formula here: http://www.diablofans.com/topic/36153-attack-speed-formula/
Basically, though, IAS on a weapon only counts for that one weapon. In your case we have 1.6 * 1.07 * 1.15 = 1.9688 = 1.97. If you put the 6% bow in your main hand you should see 1.6 * 1.06 * 1.15 = 1.9504 = 1.95.
In the beta you're looking at max level 13 gear, which is a far cry from the stats you can get at level 60. I've seen all of the stats I used for that spreadsheet in the beta (at lower values) except for the flat +attack speed on magic items (which I've only seen on a white item as far as I can remember) and have tested the attack speed formula I used in-game and have yet to find an example which doesn't match the prediction.
If you think about it, those attack speeds aren't wildly unreasonable compared to Diablo 2. A 4-frame zeal was 6.25 APS and a 2-frame strafe was 12.5 APS. Even a 7-frame MS was 3.57 APS, so these number's don't seem wildly unreasonable compared to what was possible in D2 (and it was a lot easier to hit the max breakpoints in D2 than it will be to put together a set of max attack speed gear in D3).
First of all, the 1h xbow + shield definitely should be below the other dps numbers.
Second, the bottom 4 test cases were just thrown in there to see if the relative ordering would change if you prioritized different stats--the relative dps values for those cases are basically worthless. Stacking attack speed in its different forms is more beneficial to the slower base attack weapons than the faster ones, so its no surprise that the 1h xbow setups do poorly under these conditions. On the flip side, stacking +damage is more beneficial to the faster base attack speeds and we can see from the final test case that all weapon setups are pretty much dead even in that case.
Looking at the second set of values on top (the max possible dps setup). The dual wield setup is only 13% behind the 2h xbow setup, but has a faster attack speed if your build benefits from any sort of procs and has an extra slot that can roll the Hatred regen and max Discipline affixes. Sure it could be closer, but it doesn't seem way out of line.
I went ahead and added another test at the very bottom to show what the numbers would look like if Quivers were a true off-hand item (if they couldn't be used with a 2h weapon). In this case, the 1h xbow setups slightly edge out the 2h setups. Its very close in this comparison, but the 2h setups will fall further behind when you account for the fact that they will have a few less affixes on the one item in the weapon slots compared to two items in the 1h xbow setups. Something like this is what other classes are likely to see with the different item setups being pretty darn close. The Demon Hunter has this weird mechanic of being able to have double stats with 2h base damage at the same time. It's probably not as balanced as it could be, but even a 13% difference is likely to be the sort of on-paper thing that is virtually undetectable in the actual game (player proficiency and skill selection will account for a lot bigger difference than this).
Another thing to consider is that gear differences dwarf these variations by orders of magnitude. Going from no stats to max stats is nearly a factor of 10 difference. Once you include Dexterity thats probably nearly another factor of 20 plus possible crit, etc. All told, gear affixes will probably increase total dps by as much as 200 times what's possible with level 60 white gear. Because of this, a good pair of 1h xbows will almost certainly beat out a mediocre 2h xbow + quiver (and visa versa).
Those "Durations" don't make sense to me. Caltrops, Vault, and Prep don't have a duration or a cooldown (other than the spell cast time). Mark lasts for 30 seconds, though you can cast it more frequently on multiple targets. Smoke Screen lasts for 2 second (3 with the rune) and Shadow Power lasts for 3 seconds.
It seems like you are actually using the duration column to estimate average time between casts? I think it would be more useful to calculate the D/s required for 100% uptime on SS and SP (good to know for MS builds) and then maybe calculate average uptime at one or two common D/s values for all other builds.
Hatred Spenders
Hatred Spenders with cooldowns aren't exactly additive with other hatred usage rates. You can't fire off two attacks at the same time, so if you use RoV on cooldown in an EA build you are really only spending an extra 30H every 30 seconds. So, RoV costs a max of 1H/s and FoK costs a max of 1H/s as well.
More importantly, though, your estimate of 1 APS doesn't cover any real world situation at all. I threw together a spreadsheet to compare different weapon setups, but it also illustrates the ranges for attack speeds with these setups (without a Frenzy Shrine): https://docs.google....V2Z5aVhWZFczVWc
Here I'm looking at only attack speed and +damage modifiers from gear (+% damage from dex and skills is on top of this, but it effects all setups equally). In all cases I've assumed the top level 60 items with average base weapon damage and average quiver automod damage.
The first block of data is base values with no additional stats from gear. The second block is with max stats from gear. Next I show which gear pieces with what mods are used. Finally I threw in some tables that isolate each stat to see if the relative positions of the item setups change by focusing on one stat and no others. In nearly all case, the setups from best to worst are:
2h xbow + quiver
2h bow + quiver
1h xbow + quiver
1h xbow + 1h xbow
1h xbow + shield
The only case where this doesn't hold is the final one with max +damage but no attack speed improvements of any kind. In this case 2h bow takes the lead with dual wield right behind, but all setups besides the shield are very close. The most interesting result to me was the poor performance of the dual wield combo. It turns out that the 15% IAS bonus stacks additively with other IAS from gear rather than multiplicatively and that IAS on a weapon effect only that weapon. A quiver can have up to 17% IAS, beating out the dual wield bonus. The one thing that keeps dual wield from falling hopelessly behind is that fixed +attack speed on a weapon applies to both weapons when dual wielding, giving that setup the possibility of an extra +0.25 attacks per second affix.
Back to the weapon speed issues, here is the possible range of speeds for each setup (numbers in parens are max speed with a Frenzy Shrine):
2h xbow + quiver 1.10 - 3.84 (4.36)
2h bow + quiver 1.40 - 4.53 (5.14)
1h xbow + quiver 1.60 - 5.99 (5.67)
1h xbow + 1h xbow 1.84 - 5.40 (6.14)
1h xbow + shield 1.60 - 4.54 (5.21)
The slowest possible attack speed is a 2h xbow with no speed modifiers at 1.1 APS. If you want to use a 2h bow or 1h xbow then you can't get any slower than 1.4 and 1.6 APS respectively. With full attack speed gear, a dual wield setup can get up to a whopping 6.14 APS with a Frenzy Shrine and even a 2h xbow with that gear level has 3.84 APS without a shrine. Even with a 10H/attack skill, that's going to be 38.4H/s required which isn't quite sustainable even with max hatred regen gear, companion, passives, and Prep, and a Templar.
Now, obviously we shouldn't expect to hit the absolute max attack speeds, and a non-MS build can actively avoid those attack speed boosts (at the potential cost of overall dps), but it doesn't seem at all unlikely to hit 2.0+ APS. As gear improves, a non-MS build is going to have to focus more and more on hatred generation to support itself. You do, however, always have the option of switching to MS as your primary attack, which can support itself even at a whopping 6.14 APS * 15H = 92H/s (you'd have to mash that Prep button every 1-2 seconds, but with over 30D/s from MS if you're hitting 5 targets at this speed, you can certainly afford that).
That's all well and good if all you want to do is spam an attack skill, but what if you want to do other things like Vault around a lot, drops lots of Caltrops, go invis all the time with Smoke Screen, or try to keep Shadow Power up as much as possible for 20% leach and 65% damage reduction? Even if you can get enough passive hatred regen and a slow enough attack speed to not need Prep, you are still limited by your natural Discipline regen. Multishot lets you get so much more Discipline than you could get any other way. Perhaps this is a different build--max Discipline defensive/utility that just happens to not require hatred generators, instead of a no hatred generator build that just happens to generate a ton of Discipline for defensive/utility use--but either way, it seems like a great way to build the DH.
All other classes have to choose between the higher base DPS of a 2h weapon or the extra stats of dual wielding (or 1h + offhand). The DH gets the best of both worlds with a 2h weapon + quiver (higher 2h base dps plus double stats). If you had a 1h xbow + quiver and could magically convert that 1h into a 2h bow/xbow while keeping its same stats, then you would almost certainly see a dps increase. And since my napkin math puts dual wield and 1h + quiver at roughly the same dps, I expect 2h + quiver to be the top dps setup for most Demon Hunters.
2h xbow, 2h bow, and 1h xbow do scale differently with different stats. +damage is more beneficial for faster attacking weapons but on the other hand, straight +attacks per second is more beneficial to the slower weapons. If you stack straight up damage, then a 1h xbow will be your best weapon, but if you have an even mix or stack +attacks per second then the 2h xbow will come out on top. (+% attack speed and damage effect both equally, so they don't impact this comparison).
Understanding these sorts of trade-offs is important if you want to pick the right gear, no matter what stats happen to spawn. If you find a great 1h xbow and/or you want to use a shield for better defenses, then you should try and focus the rest of your gear on +damage and don't worry too much about +attacks per second. If you have lots of +damage and not much +attacks per second, then you probably want to pickup a good 1h xbow. If you have a good 2h xbow, then you want to focus on +attacks per second and worry less about +damage, if you have a good 2h bow you probably want to focus on a good balance of the two stats, etc.
That's my thinking, hence the MS build I posted above. MS does less damage per target than Elemental Arrow, but it should hit more targets due to its cone AoE instead of line AoE and/or its easier to line up your shots with. The real kicker, though, is it should give you pretty much unlimited Discipline to play with if you're shooting big packs with a decent attack speed. And Diablo is all about mowing down hoards of demons, so this is definitely my top build right now.
If you really want to use a 1h xbow and are shooting for max dps with the setup you can either get a 15% attack speed bonus from a 2nd equal hand xbow or the +damage automod from a quiver. A level 60 quiver can get up to +90 damage (average), which isn't quite enough to equal dual wielding with perfect +damage in all your other slots, but it should be fairly competitive.
Obviously you could get lucky with 1h xbow drops, but with equally good items a 2h + quiver is always going to be the highest dps setup end-game. If you want to use a shield or really want an extra slot worth of resource affixes, then you have to give up some dps when dropping down to a 1h xbow.
Yeah, I would prefer either a shield or a second 1h xbow over a quiver, but you can do it if you want.
Yup. They are a bit strange though, since you can equip them with a 2h crossbow or 2h bow as well as with a single 1h hand crossbow. Neither of the 2h options can have hatred regen or max discipline, so you need either 1h xbow + quiver + cloak or 1h xbow + 1h xbow + cloak to get the maximum regen.
Anyway, this is the build that I'm thinking about using: http://us.battle.net...halQ!aYf!bYZbYY
The core of the build is obviously:
* Multishot w/ Supression Fire
* Preparation w/ Punishment
Even without anything else, this pretty much lets you constantly spam MS as long as you hit 2+ enemies each time. Beyond this, everything else is really optional, but here's why I chose what I did:
Perfectionist - Multishot has the potential to generate a lot more Discipline than we need, so we're going to focus on ways to take advantage of that Discipline. Think of Perfectionist as +25% Discipline generation and it fits right in with this theme.
Vault w/ Tumble - Great for general movement between fights, repositioning during combat, and running away if things go badly. Tumble plus Perfectionist lets us Vault for only 4D. With base regen that's a Vault every 4 seconds and with a Templar while solo it's every 2 seconds. This is well within the 6 second window of Tumble and gives us great mobility. This mobility should make it reasonable to forgo slows/snares without too much difficulty.
Tactical Advantage - If we're going to be vaulting a lot it only makes sense to take this passive. While solo Vault can be used every time the debuff runs out allowing great distances to be traversed in a short time. This should help to track down those champion/rare packs that drop that loot we really want without wasting too much time in between.
Shadow Power w/ Gloom - This is where we take advantage of all the Discipline that we can generate with MS. With a 1.5 attack speed and hitting 5 targets per shot that's 7.5D/s. Including base regen, that's enough to keep Shadow Power up constantly while still using Prep as needed. This gives us the option to stand and fight with 20% leech and 65% damage reduction or Vault to safety.
Hungering Arrow w/ Scatter Shot - MS's main weakness is its relatively low single-target damage. Hungering Arrow averages ~177% damage per cast and Scatter Shot should increase that to ~300% damage per cast (assuming after the first split each arrow becomes a normal Hungering Arrow that can't split again, but still has a 35% chance to pierce). MS is sustainable on as few as 2 targets, and there are other single-target Hatred Spenders we could have picked, but Hungering Arrow does at least as much dps and has the extra utility of being able to shoot around corners and easily hit things that are off screen. Even if it cost hatred instead of generating it, it would still be a good pick here (the generated hatred will likely just be wasted). It also opens up more options for single-target fights.
Companion w/ Ferret Companion - The last spot could be just about anything. If CC is needed, swapping Caltrops in here would be a good idea, but if you can manage without, then the Ferret should make it so you don't have to run over to every pack of mobs that you just mowed down at range with MS. Companion scrolls are gone for everyone but the DH, so we're going to take advantage of that.
Steady Aim - Really anything could be plugged in here, but this seems like the best dps increase starting out. Once I scraped together some crit on gear I'd probably switch this one out for Archery with a 2h crossbow (with 50% crit chance that's about a 25% damage increase that doesn't go away if enemies are nearby). If Perfectionist ends up being overkill then we can grab both.
Skill Swaps
Marked for Death w/ anything - For boss fights this will replace Companion. There are several good runes to choose from and specific boss mechanics will probably determine which to use in each situation.
Impale w/ Impact - For any bosses that are stunnable (I think this was working on the Skeleton King) this will be a great way to lock them down. If its truly a single-target fight, then this can replace MS. If there are some adds with the boss that MS would be helpful in clearing then this can replace Preparation. We'll be using Hungering Arrow between Impales and minion waves anyway, so hatred shouldn't be an issue in these cases. If we keep Prep in the build we can swap the rune to keep the Discipline flowing for Shadow Power without our MS spam.
Sentry w/ Guardian Turret - For those really tough situations this provides a little bit more damage reduction. It applies to all party members, so great for groups in particular. If you have people to tank a boss for you this could be a good replacement for Vault.
Well, I did say "According to the latest patch data". Its certainly possible things may change or that not all of these mods are actually enabled (I'm not sure if anyone has figure out how affixes are marked as enabled or not in the data files). As for conflicting data, I'd actually be interested if you could point me to any conflicting sources. I worked with the guy who runs d3inferno while we were initially figuring out the formats for a lot of the data files and while I'm pretty sure he's parsing them correctly, seeing conflicting data would help me to improve my own understanding of how the data files work.
In any case, there's definitely no discipline regen or max hatred affixes in the game right now and only a few skills even have the possibility of having their costs reduced, which was the main point I was trying to make.
This assumes you are only attacking once per second. With a 2.0 attack speed, Multishot cost would increase to 30H/s for example.
Again, you are discounting attack speed, but in this case faster attacks will work in your favor. A 2.0 Multishot will be generating 10D/s for you if its hitting 5 targets each.
With Multishot+Suppression Fire, Preparation+Punishment, and Perfectionist or Vengeance, you are resource positive while hitting 2 targets per shot at any attack speed. Once you include base hatred regen, a 2.0 speed Multishot could sustain itself at 2 targets without either passive and with a little regen on gear and/or not spamming 100% of the time you could support an even higher attack speed.
Another interesting note: I was testing some other stuff earlier today and noticed that it took around 26-27 second to fully recharge my hatred. This means that the base regen rate is more like 4.75H/s now. (Discipline looks like 1/s still).
According to the latest patch data, not all of these mods are actually available.
Resource_Max_Bonus (http://www.d3inferno..._Max_Bonus.html)
* You can get +Discipline, but not +Hatred
* Available on Hand Crossbows, Quivers, and Cloaks
* Maximum value is +15 Discipline (+45 total possible while dual wielding, +30 total otherwise)
Resource_Regen_Per_Second (http://www.d3inferno...Per_Second.html)
* You can get Hatred Regen, but not Discipline Regen
* Available on Hand Crossbows, Quivers, and Cloaks
* Maximum value is 3.33 per second (10.00 total possible with a 1h xbow, 6.66 total otherwise)
Power_Resource_Reduction (http://www.d3inferno..._Reduction.html)
* Chakram: 1-2 per item, 5 slots max => -10 hatred max (free Chakram)
* Impale: 1-3 per item, 5 slots max => -15 hatred max (10 hatred Impale)
* Strafe: 1-2 per item, 5 slots max => -10 hatred max (5 hatred Strafe)