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I was busy the last couple of days, so the replies had to wait a little.

Quote from Soultrainindahood»

Damage Range on Helltrapper. Does this mean that you'd rather skip the vitality and have damage on yours?

Edit: Also, do you know why some of the top dh's in china are still using the fire version of the build? The 72 run is even using sentry - polar station. I wonder if this could be good.

Quote from Amokhamster»

Great job as always Wudijo. Very much appreciated.

Sadly though the lightning version of this build including Fulminator in the cube wont really work for us console players. You simply cannot use the sword in the cube. For whatever reason. I hope that gets fixed rather sooner than later.

Quote from aiahiced»

Now that's what you call an in-depth guide, thanks for the good read Wudijo! I know that monk is this patch's flavor, but every now and then i try to push my old N6, is the hell trapper really a game changing off hand? because sadly, i salvaged two ancient hell trappers. haha!

Edit: And also, is Pauldrons of the Skeleton King better? Because i'm currently using an ancient profane pauldrons and i have a non-ancient Pauldrons of Skeleton King, does the affix of PSK proc a lot?

Quote from ognava»

Is there any chance cubing crashing rain and wearing thundergods would ever outscale hexing pants in the cube? I feel like the 15% lightning could potentially be stronger because of the massive amount of additive damage from taeguk and % rov damage, then again you'd lose hatred/disc regen.

Quote from TaresPL»

Great job wudi. Too bad almost no one will care because except for us "maniacs" no one plays DH

I guess, I will have to check the helltrapper for my runs

Quote from GaloGalo»

Special from players like me (Hardcore players ). Anyway nice to read something like that.
You think this setup with some modifications can be viable on HC mode?
Some assumption how this build can look for HC...? I know for sure we should change a bit our gear like on Gloves we should search for Vita instead of CDR etc.
Also can You upload that speadsheet?

Hey everyone,

since the initial season rush is over and I've had some time to do more relaxing things lately, I decided to look a little bit more at the details of the lightning RoV DH. There's been a lot of discussion about which stat rolls you want to have, which passives and even gems to use, and especially which offhand weapon to use. I hope this stuff helps a little in case you decide to push the DH leaderboards this season. I've done a lot of testing with interesting results and created an excel sheet to crunch the numbers for the different options. After polishing the tables a little I decided to share them here. Keep in mind that many of these numbers are rough approximations and educated guesses based on my experience with the build, and most of them can not be applied the same way in every rift because of different layouts and hit box sizes (especially Area Damage / Fulminator). Also, prepare for a lot of numbers.

[Picture 1 - Stats] (http://puu.sh/kHWc9/b26e7858c2.png)

These stats are the same I have in my solo setup, minus a lot of dexterity, crit chance and critical hit damage (I made sure to not kill my testing dummies but kept relative values the same). 39% lightning damage, 53% RoV bonus, rank 80 Taeguk (I have 76 currently but I expect it to be 80 soon). The sheet itself is a little bit more complicated because I kept adding things here and there without tidying it up all the time, hence I have these multipliers etc (e.g. I wasn't stacking Taeguk for my tests but just calculated the difference).

[Picture 2 - Fulminator Tests] (http://puu.sh/kHWf5/a66fba2822.png)

First I did some tests on Fulminator proc rates. I knew it has a 100% proc chance already (tested it with lightning Chakram, which has a 0.5 proc coefficient and I got a proc on every other attack). RoV - Shade has a proc coefficient of 4% and ticks 20 times in 5 seconds. I wanted to see how often it would proc and stay on the target after a single cast. Since RoV lasts 5 and Fulminator 6 seconds, I always just cast RoV and waited until it was gone, then checked if the buff was active (obviously it can be overwritten by multiple RoV ticks). First I tested 200 casts with only one RoV, then 100 casts with 2 RoVs (3:1 cycle time is approximately 2.2 seconds, so I lost 1.2 seconds from the first casts that are invisible in the results). The proc rates were much better already, and this is considering that I weren't casting any more RoVs in a full 5 seconds after the second one. Like this, I conservatively estimated Fulminator uptime to be around 90% from RoV casts alone when you keep fighting constantly. Most likely it's slightly more in real scenarios.

[Picture 3 - Damage Tests] (http://puu.sh/kHWmw/7236e29890.png)

I then proceeded to collect some data on damage numbers with my setup (300 CHD). I was especially interested in some of the cubable melee weapons and the gems, however - as expected - they all turned out pretty horrible. (Fun Fact: It took me 10 minutes to notice the first Rimeheart proc). Nevertheless, I found out some interesting things: Most procs will always deal damage accord to the active weapon when procced, even if the initial attack used the other one. For those that follow the DH leaderboards a little, you might have noticed that I used a statstick Helltrapper (http://puu.sh/kHVcn/fc21611df3.jpg) for my Tier 70 run, which for some reason currently is a very rare thing to do. The concept of statsticks was way more common last season in the Stampede meta, since RoV and CR scale only off your mainhand damage and your generator + Strafe generally contribute very little to your overall dps. This hasn't really changed, and the only entirely new thing that entered the arena was the Fulminator in the cube (which would get procced by your mainhand anyway), so it seems weird that people do that. However, due to the testing I did it's quite obvious that opposed to my tier 70 run, using a statstick offhand is not really an option for DHs currently. RoV scales only off your mainhand and as such you would expect that Fulminator also always uses your mainhand (unless you're attacking with lightning Bola / Strafe), however it you keep attacking while the RoV is still ticking, and happen to proc Fulminator exactly when your offhand is active, it will only deal ~1/5 of the damage until procced again when your mainhand is active (which averages out to ~3/5 of the damage you'd have if you had a damage roll on your offhand). It's also worth noting that some of these effects snapshot your Damage Increased By Skills buffs, e.g. Wolf companion (not debuffs like MfD however). With 46% CDR, your Wolf will have a cooldown of 16.2 seconds, averaging out to a 18.52% additive damage boost. Due to the snapshotting mechanic, it will be 26.79% for RoV if cast without delay. Snapshotting doesn't work for Fulminator though.

The last piece was calculating the damage I deal in real scenarios. I've tried to imitate my spreadsheet from the Physical Cluster days, but I made the calculations a little bit more sophisticated this time. I scaled the numbers up to a time frame of 2.2 seconds (approximately one RoV cycle), weighed them with different hit chances and included Area Damage + Fulminator procs, adjusted for different amounts of targets. Here's what this looks like:

[Picture 4 - Damage Table] (http://puu.sh/kHWyE/eb140dec3c.png)

In the end I summed it up, added the Wolf multipler (flat 9% bonus), and approximated the uptime of slow effects to multiply the damage dealt a final time. I decided to add Wolf and Slow at the very last stages because both Calamity and Helltrapper would influence these numbers, and it is exactly at this point that they do so. Again, keep in mind that these are not perfectly accurate numbers, I also didn't 100% optimize very minor things (e.g. Evasive Fire numbers are slightly off for less than 3 targets).

The last steps were to multiply this table and add in the different special effects of Calamity, Valla's Bequest, Helltrapper and Demon's Demise. I also added an overview of the damage share of the individual attacks, depending on the amount of targets. I decided not to try to average out my total dps in real scenarios, however that is quite easily done by weighing time spent fighting X numbers of targets. Here are the tables:

[Picture 5 - Calamity Table] (http://puu.sh/kHWJF/a49964840e.png)

[Picture 6 - Valla Table] (http://puu.sh/kHWMo/9cc8d61ecf.png)

[Picture 7 - Helltrapper Table] (http://puu.sh/kHWQc/3619b94fb9.png)

[Picture 8 - Demon's Demise Table] (http://puu.sh/kHWSZ/2c8bc21c2f.png)

All of these numbers seem to match my personal experiences quite nicely. The 'Fulm Loss' table is the expected damage loss from using a statstick offhand versus a damage offhand (which ranges around 8-13%).

[Picture 9 - Damage Overview] (http://puu.sh/kHXuG/1ba48b5889.png)

I've also made a quick overview of the totaling numbers of each weapon to quickly compare them. You can see that numerically, Calamity and Helltrapper are quite close, and the other options are dragging behind. I have a feeling that I underrated the Helltrapper though, and especially in big density you will benefit much more from it (with better slow uptime and Spike Trap procs reducing your RoV CD, which the numbers don't reflect at all).

In any case, I found these results to be sufficient to make all the relevant decisions when approaching my next pushes, and especially end-of-season pushes.

Here's what I learned from this:

• Helltrapper is the best choice. You will have the most single target damage (around 8-12% more than Calamity due to sentries, important for ns), and you will have the highest slow uptime (due to Caltrops). It also lets you use Numbing Traps, which is probably one of the strongest passives to use. I strongly recommend to use one with 9 or 10% proc chance.
• Calamity is pretty nice and a close second behind Helltrapper. Especially good if you're not running Cull the Weak and Bane of the Trapped (the world first tier 70 clear was done like that, not recommended in my opinion as you will lack damage on 70+).
• Valla's Bequest is total garbage and I absolutely do not understand why the Chinese keep using it. Strafe will deal around 4-6% of your total damage with it, as opposed to 0.5-1.5% (up to 9% on single target, but Valla doesn't matter there). It will help you keep monsters engaged in the fight but RoV should do a good enough job at that already.
• K'mar Tenclip is not really worth looking into, all you get is Icy Trails which I found to be really underwhelming. Caltrops from Helltrapper will do a much better job here.

Additional findings:

• Ancient offhand is a must.
• All the weapon choices are pretty close to one another, they differ by maybe 5% (not considering perks like Numbing Traps), which is also the reason why seemingly all options are viable.
• Damage range + Life on Hit + CDR + Dex on the offhand is the way to go. You can drop the Leech passive and take another one instead, giving you Numbing Traps or 8-10% more damage from Ambush / Steady Aim for a mere 9-13% toughness loss.
• Fulminator will deal around 10-15% of your damage on 5 targets, 17-22% on 10 targets, 25-35% on 30 targets. There's no other viable option for the cube.
• Dropping CDR on gloves in favor of ancient Vitality is an option, only recommend if you have a CC / CHD / CDR ring though. Dropping ancient Dexterity from the ring should be a 5-7% damage loss for a 10-17% toughness boost.
• With enough targets around, the Spike Trap procs on Helltrapper will let you run a "2.5:1 cycle" (going for 1-2 double ticks on Strafe, or alternating 3:1 and 2:1). Works especially well with Bolas - Thunderball.

Some more info unrelated to these tests:

• I'm strongly convinced that Smoke Screen - Special Recipe in combination with Perfectionist is going to be the strongest setup, defensively. The uptime of Smoke Screen with the Displacement rune is just too low, especially on large pulls you will not survive well enough. Like that, you don't need a lot of downtime on the SS until you can activate Focused Mind again, you just need to squeeze out a couple of seconds here and there. Adding Tactical Advantage will severely boost your survivability, as you can keep dodging things quite easily for a full 2-3 seconds before using SS again. Playstyle-wise, you should never waste your time on single or few monsters, but rather keep pulling more. If you can't survive, stack more toughness or lower tiers until you get better. Surviving is the biggest issue but making huge pulls is very rewarding and the only way to beat higher tiers. I also recommend to only play at night time - it's incredibly frustrating finally getting this gg Cathedral / Silver Spire / Arreat / Halls of Agony map and then lagging out and ending up leaving the rift. You won't lag very often, but with the density required for very high tiers you will, and doing so will result in instant death (just like messing up any of your Smoke Screen casts will).
• Related to that, I'm convinced that Strafe - Drifting Shadows is the best rune to use. Not only will you get slightly more Fulminator procs, but also will it make you survive much better with the added 25% movement speed. Using a Helltrapper, you will proc the Caltrops as you move anyway, and it lets you move around big packs and pull more much more easily.
• On nonseason, Single Out is a must to kill the RG in less than 5-6 minutes. Since you're running way lower tiers than season you shouldn't have the same toughness issues anyway. You want to use Trapped, Taeguk and Zei's (instead of Stricken) there.
• For those asking, I expect DH to end up at around 75-77 solo. What it will look like exactly will depend on who is going to push it mostly. My bets are on the Chinese as most skilled EU / NA DH players currently seem extremely unlikely to end up at high enough paragon for rank 1 pushes, and offclass players seem unlikely to go for DH rankings at the end of the season (due to heavy gear requirements and lack of practice). To give you a perspective, I'm currently at P1250 and expect to clear 72 with around 100-250 keys. I expect top players to use around 1000-3000 keys (depending on whether it's a botter or not) for their end of season push. Judging from my paragon right now, my maximum in a gg rift with a gg conduit with that amount of keys would be around 74, assuming I never fail a rift because of my own mistake. You can add one tier for every 250-300 paragon and maybe another tier for all the gem levels I'm missing (83 / 81 / 76 vs 92+ / 92+ / 92+).

Cheers

Reserved

Hey everyone,

I'm starting this thread to gather the information I have to share in one place, and to give all Demon Hunters a place to visit and read up on any important information. Unlike some of my older posts, I will include what basically are four full guides on different builds all centered around the Unhallowed Essence set. In the past two weeks I have been playing with the set quite extensively and I feel that I know pretty well what we can expect to be (close to) optimal setups by now. The written parts are all basically done already, the videos are in the making (rendering takes ages on my PC and interferes with streaming), so I will add them over the course of the next couple of days. The post is going to have five parts:

1) Tier 65+ Speed GRs
2) 2.5 Min T9 Optimized Speedfarm
3) Solo GR Pushing
4) Krider Ball Lightning
5) Additional UE Information

Each part will go into the details of Basics, Items, Gems, Cube, Gameplay, TL;DR and FAQ. There will be some overlap here and there because each part is supposed to work as a standalone guide, I tried to minimize this as much as possible. So far, the first part is done completely, the others will be added soon. I wanted to get the Speed GR part out as soon as possible because we can already see the meta settling and I think that DHs are currently underrated in that regard. Enjoy the post!

Part 1: Tier 65+ Speed GRs

DHs in Tier 65+ Speedruns

Let's start this off with what probably is the most important part of every season, farming Speed GRs. Currently, it seems like Tiers 63-68 will be within the comfort zone of most fully decked out players to strike a good balance between XP, loot and key efficiency for this season. I know that some NS groups are going up until the mid 70s but these are thoroughly optimized setups of coordinated and good high paragon players and DHs will probably not have a spot in there, so we'll stick to only the regular stuff here.

Basics:
In Speed GRs currently, the most common setups involve one Support/Leech Barb (for defense), one Support/Leech Monk (for lifereg and pulling) and two DPS. Demon Hunters have a hard time competing with Barbs and WDs for the dps spots, seem about equal to Uliana Monks and ahead of Vyr's Wizards and Crusaders of any type. As such, we are kind of in between – however DH usually is one of the mechanically most challenging classes which might deter many from trying it, and many are still stuck in a mindset of "DH = oneshot". In any case DHs actually have a chance to compete with the stronger classes because of the ongoing issues with Area Damage, it works for any DH multiplier save for Focus and Hunter's Wrath. The belt is almost irrelevant, so the loss from Focus cuts off 33% of the area damage value, however it still remains the most desirable dps stats for groups while it doesn't work with crucial multipliers for Barbs (HotA bracers) or just straight out kill the servers due to lag (WDs). Funny how a gamebreaking bug actually improves class balance. In addition, it seems like the most efficient parties will run with only one "real" dps and one SWK Palm Monk, so the former will be occupied by you as a DH. As such, you will be the only damage dealer to pop the Palms and kill the RG, thus we specialize on doing exactly this.

The build itself is pretty straightforward with some minor modifications to standard setups. Preparation – Invigoration, Vault, Wolf Companion and Multishot Arsenal are a must-have. To add to this, I use Marked for Death – Mortal Enemy and Entangling Shot – Justice is served. The reason for these two spells is that Mortal Enemy regenerates hatred according to the proc coefficient of spells used, which is 1.00 for ES and 0.33 for EF. Like this, you generate 6 + 4 = 10 per cast with ES, and 7 + 1.33 = 8.33 for EF, given you hit the marked target. Since the SWK monk just blows up stuff and MfD – Contagion will almost never spread before that, there's not really much of a reason to go for another rune, and we can squeeze out some more RG dps with this combo. As for the passives, Awareness / Cull the Weak / Ballistics are pretty much mandatory, I recommend Ambush as the fourth and Single Out as the fifth. Night Stalker or Steady Aim are also appropriate.

Items:
Full UE set, F/R, Yang's, DML, Wraps of Clarity, Hunter's Wrath, Hellfire. Optimize toughness and area damage, the rest is basically irrelevant or just not worth taking. I recommend to go for more vitality early on and keep reducing your toughness more and more in favor of dps once you get more familiar with the playstyle and your group, and keep some of the vitality items to swap them in if you have bad supporters. For optimized endgame clears, you will probably only use one vitality item out of those that don't have a spot for it anyway (Weapon / Quiver / Gloves / Helm), and I recommend to go for it on the helm as the 15% Multishot damage is not going to beat the 20-24% Area Damage you can get on other slots. Other than that, go full defense on Shoulders / Chest / Pants / Belt, generator damage rolls and the hatred regeneration are basically irrelevant. Boots and Quiver should still have 15% Multishot. Rings and Hellfire should have ancient dexterity and double crit, or even better ancient average damage (rings) / elemental damage (amulet) instead of dexterity.

Cube:
For optimal dps, we don't really have many choices: Calamity in the weapon slot, Cindercoat in the armor slot, Convention in the jewelry slot. None of these options are really debatable. Calamity is much better than Odyssey's even though we already use Entangling Shot, however both the uptime and damage amplification are deplorable, and Calamity stacks with the Marked for Death skill (it applies a completely separate unruned version of the skill, however you can have only one MfD and one Cala active on a target at a given time). Cindercoat is an overall pretty good damage boost, the only other option would be Hexing Pants, however its value is greatly diminished in group setups due to all the additive damage buffs (and it's much easier to play, and doesn't work for discipline / Vault). Convention is the biggest factor here by far, probably the Multishot DH is the build that benefits most from this, I assume that the effective damage increase is somewhere around 70-100% for this ring (200% with 25% uptime = 50% average, but we time our nuke with it).

Gems:
Bane of the Trapped, Zei's Stone of Vengeance, Bane of the Stricken. For nonseason or setups that kill many elites and have 2 damage dealers for the RG, you can replace the latter with Bane of the Powerful. Other than that, there's not really much to say about the gems, these are the strongest by far, try to maximize Zei's when possible and have others apply the slow for you.

Gameplay:
Surviving in Speed GRs is the probably the main issue, and also why I mentioned stacking vitality until you're familiar with everything. Doing well on a DH is going to be very difficult this season because we lost a lot of our utility and dps advantages to other classes. Stay close to your supports to benefit from Ignore Pain and the Monk's passive heal. Lower the monsters' hp, wait for the Palms, then blow them up and move on. Don't stay back and try to finish off monsters for more than 3-5 seconds, rather just move on after the EPs have gone off. Try to synchronize your nuke with your Convention cycle, and make sure you have enough hatred (usually around 50-70% is enough) and the Focus buff up to nuke for 4 seconds without stopping. Sometimes it can be beneficial to not dodge a dangerous attack on purpose to not lose precious time on the nuke, without Convention we usually have a hard time killing things, and you can only pop the Palms on weak targets (e.g. Stingers, little spiders, maybe Winged Assassins and Lacunis if density is good). Make sure you never blow up the EPs too early (before everything has been stacked), as it's usually the Monk who clears the rift and if you lose too many targets you might not be able to clear the rest yourself. Don't hesitate to run in front of the group here and there to pull more monsters when your CoE is down or when you have Conduit, and in very dangerous situations try to stay alive using repeated Vaults. When you have long runs where you lose a lot of discipline, try to weave in a couple of generator casts here and there to stay high in resources so that you can go for a quick nuke in between when CoE come up. On the RG, Mortal Enemy is almost enough to keep you at full hatred all the time once DML kicks in, just remember to use your generator once in a while.

Variations:
If you don't have a SWK Monk but rather a regular second dps, use Evasive Fire – Focus and Marked for Death – Contagion. The rest stays basically the same, with the exception that you don't have to time your nukes as precisely because there are not EPs anymore, so just nuke whenever you can (especially with Convention). Witching Hour can be a replacement for Hunter's Wrath, it usually nets slightly higher damage overall at the cost of two defensive primaries. If you feel like you have too much toughness and can't replace vitality with AD on other items yet, use WH.

TL;DR:
Equip UE + Yang's + DML + F/R + Hunter's Wrath + Wraps of Clarity, stack AD + Vitality, use Trapped / Zei's / Stricken, cube Calamity / Cinder / Convention, aim for 6-8 min runs. Stay close to your supports to survive, nuke with Convention up, pull more and aggressively when it is not. If you play with a SWK Monk, make sure to not pop the EPs too early and time your nukes accordingly.

FAQ:
Q: Where can I learn more about proc coefficents?
A: Here: http://www.d3maxstats.com/skills/
Some of it might be outdated, specifically I've heard about nerfs to Immolation Arrow. The rest remained unchanged for several patches now as far as I'm aware. You can test exact proc coefficients with the use of the 1h weapon Hack or by attacking reflect damage targets (e.g. Siegebreaker), they scale linearly with it.

Q: Area damage is THAT strong?
A: Yes, it is. Here's a table (including the bugged Focus multiplier): http://puu.sh/k7B1b/850fbd0d79.png

Q: I'm not quite there yet for 65+, what about lower tiers?
A: DH works fine for lower tiers, survival obviously is much easier and the impact of Ambush / DML are much bigger.

Q: I have trouble aiming with Entangling Shot, what's the difference to Evasive Fire?
A: It's difficult to tell exactly, but the difference is not very big and you can safely change to EF without losing a lot.

Q: I'm struggling with survival, how do I do it?
A: The three main reasons why DHs are dying in Speedruns are probably the following:
1) Bad Support players.
2) Too little vitality.
3) You're not dodging dangerous attacks well enough.
Try to figure out what's the problem and work on it, as I mentioned playing the DH is not going to be a cakewalk.

Q: Can I replace Vault with Smoke Screen? What about going for SS instead of MfD?
A: Not recommended. Speed GR groups skip a lot in patch 2.3 and you will get stuck everywhere without Vault. Dropping MfD and keeping both SS and Vault is a big damage loss but might be a good idea if you struggle a lot. I'd recommend the cooldown rune, it doesn't cost any discipline and one SS cast every 5 seconds should be good enough.

Q: How does UE compare to Nats?
A: From my testing I can say that Nats seems slightly weaker in Speed GRs right now. I will revisit testing at a later date when I have more optimized Natalya pieces and some additional ZEcret stuff, maybe it will work out then. So far, I'd recommend to go with UE for Speedruns. You can still use both sets for Torments and solo pushes just fine.

Q: What about high GRs (75+)?
A: Doubtful that DHs will be able to keep up with the other classes, the only reason why we can compete is the timely nukes with Convention and the massive downtime there is between pulls in Speed GRs. In high GRs, fights are much longer, effectively taking away from the advantages of the DH. So far, it seems that Ball Lightning will be stronger than Multishot anyway, but my money is on Natalya for the highest clears (of those that involve DHs).

Q: I don't have an ancient Yang's yet but a really crazy crossbow, what should I use?
A: Nonancient Yang should beat any other perfectly rolled ancient weapon.

Q: SoJ and Manald Heal roll +discipline, aren't those better than F+R?
A: No. 81 + 20 = 101 discipline. 101 / 81 = 24.6% increase.

Cheers

The reason why I am included in the groups is because I make the groups. To be honest though, it's difficult to get people to play with you, and I can only play DH because we're still very early in the season and not everyone is used to fully optimized group setups yet. DH can perform quite well as a dps in speedruns (around tier 60) but loses out after that. Best results I had so far were in SupMonk / SupBarb / DmgBarb / DH and SupMonk / SupBarb / Hybrid XP/Palm SWK Monk / DH groups, regular Uliana's Monk as the second dps works fine too, SupWD instead of SupBarb is also good if your party can survive (mostly suited for tiers slightly below 60). So far, Multishot seems to work best for speedruns, I've tried Natalya and Ball Lightning a little and they are okay but difficult to optimize, I need many more items to make them work. Especially Ball Lightning seems to have some potential in higher GRs, we've cleared 67 in 8:30 with it. It's a little bit less consistent regardless and definitely loses out in bad rifts.

Hey guys,

I'm getting lots of questions about area damage on my stream, so I figured I'd make a quick post here for people to see. Yes, it is still bugged, but not as much as many people think. I have done some testing on all the relevant multipliers availabe to DH and found that it works for everything but Focus and Hunter's Wrath. Here's my verification.

It's pretty funny when you think about it, almost every class uses F&R right now, so everyone suffers from the same loss, however almost any other class that is not DH most likely suffers even more because they might have other damage multipliers that do not work (I don't know which exactly as I don't care about specifics), yet DH is still so far behind in damage. Seems like at least the bug contributes to the overall class balance a little, without it we'd stand no ground.

Anyway, what this means: Area damage is still a highly valuable primary stat, even if you lose 33% of its effect to the bugged Focus ring. For pure dps, I recommend to use it on the shoulders, weapon, quiver and gloves (priority in that order) for UE and on shoulders, offhand and perhaps a ring (if you can replace something like dex) for N6. Keep in mind that for Torment farming and certain solo builds area damage is almost useless.

Cheers

Mad hax, can confirm

The Armageddon build also was my favorite back in S3. Currently I'm running UE but that's mostly because it's much easier to gear for compared to this, I'll definitely check it out. Fan of Knives seems like a pretty good addition to me, Desolacer uses it mostly to nuke down elites instantly, which is what creates the most trouble. If I was to run the build, I'd try to go with that but use Obsidian Ring instead of Convention. The other option would be to include a generator, cube RoRG and go Focus + Restraint. I don't like Convention so much because you need consistency in farming torments, not random bursts, you want to oneshot anything at all times. Depending on the setup you can choose to run either T7 or T8, and in groups perhaps T9 (but you need to stay close to your teammates, which is something this build does not really like).

Quote from LeeYun»

Wudijo, will you play other classes in S4? (just my curiousity)

Just a short heads up, I have updated my 2.2 Natalya Strafe Speedfarm guide to 2.3 and reworked it a to fit the new meta a little better. I think Multishot farming builds are being covered enough, and Desolacer already took care of the Armageddon build as well. Not sure if there's enough interested for more details about Marauder, so I will rather focus on greater rift pushing guides for UE and N6 more, because there's still a lot of work to do.

[2.3] Natalya Strafe Reloaded

Quote from TrueColdkil»

Just a thing that came to my mind right now: reflect damage now reflects the same damage type we deal to the mob. Given that, wouldn't an "insert the elemental damage we deal" here make us also immune to reflect damage aswell?

Bad part is that we have fire/cold/lighting/phisical skills, and apart thunderstorm, other element affixes are not that dangerous. Ideally we want a poison/arcane/lighting immune amulet.

A lightining build is possible but lighting RoV isn't that good.

Well then, this was done with the lightning build


I have only tried 3 rifts, overall it feels pretty cool to play. You can rush in very aggressively and stack monsters up, definitely a fresh experience compared to last season. The thing is that for the higher tiers that won't work well anymore, I'm basically decked out on toughness as much as possible (~40m with Taeguk / Wraps of Clarity / RoV, plus I was wearing an Eye of Etlich), and even then I get oneshot here and there. If we're aiming for 70+, probably the fire builds will be a little better.

Quote from Seifa»

I'm kinda sad that Cold RoV isn't that good anymore, i liked that it was both easy to aim and provided a good amount of CC that i need playing solo, while Stampede makes my gameplay miserable by knocking enemies back so much.

Now i'm trying Anathema and i noticed, as Wudijo said, that its damage is insane but its hit box is so small.... Shade, why are you so bad, you were my favorite RoV rune in 2.0

Yeah cold was my favorite by far, too bad. Really looking forward to pushing groups with Anathema though!

Damn, quoting seems bugged today.

@Dunkelvieh: The biggest issues with ES are that it has a travel time and needs to be precisely aimed at the target, and even then it's only 2 targets for 2 seconds (if you're using the hatred rune). Even with how clunky the reliance on the Enchantress turns out to be sometimes, it's just the overall better choice.

@jamesworkshop: Sick screen I gotta try my legacy Buriza with a cubed Leonine's

DH Tier 66 Solo (15:25)

So it is finally over: 4 months and 13 days of preparation with 3 weeks of pushing all led to this moment, my (failed) masterpiece of Season 3. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making the video (both the runs and the editing). I spent quite some time to find fitting music choices, and then went with these four songs by Audiomachine (see on YT link). I feel that they very accurately fit into the scenery and the course of the rift, especially the last one. I also included a nice little compilation of a couple of my runs in the beginning to pay my homage to the Unburied (accompanied by OraK's 'Unburied Family' Song), sadly the only monster type that DHs can fish for a rank 1 attempt (but they make up for it with their cuteness!). In case you're curious, I accumulated about 630 hours of play time in S3, and spent roughly 70-90 of those in trials, and 60-90 in solo attempts.

Short backstory:

After another evening of pushing for a couple of hours, I managed to find this incredible rift: Unburied / Silver Spire, with only three elite packs. Even though it might not seem like that sometimes, clearing the rift indeed required very intense concentration in many situations. The two pylons I got (Power + Conduit) both proved almost entirely useless. I engaged a yellow Unburied pack I needed to skip early on (which is something that is very difficult to do, even more so on an open-space map like Silver Spire, you can see it followed me very far in the beginning). The two blue packs I killed both had a dangerous oneshot affix (Vortex / Jailer), and in one case I had no Awareness up, which means that I could not afford to fail my timing on a single RoV / Smoke Screen cast. I feel that I could have barely done it any better.

Even though for DHs it's usually entirely about the rift and very little about the RG, it seems that this time it was almost the other way around. I spawned it with an incredible 4.5min left, my best time since basically ever (including S1 and S2). It was a horribly long fight (engage at 11:49, kill at 16:42 = 4min 53sec, 7.33b dps), Perendi moves a lot and spawns dozens of adds, I lost the Single Out and the slow proc from my enchantress' Thunderfury very often, which really made the fight drag on and on. I haven't fought all RGs on 66 so it's difficult to tell exactly, but generally my kill times are within 3.5 to 4.5 min (Stonesinger would be around 2-2.5min), I even defeated Man Carver once in close to 5min. Perendi is very easy but I knew that he is on the longer side of fights, I fought him once with the cold build, which took about 8.5 minutes on 65, and like that it stayed uncertain until the very last moments whether I would make it or not. With my mind completely focused on the RG I had mixed feelings of desperation and determination, something that I tried to emphasize with my music choice for the fight. My heart was pumping and I was trying everything to squeeze any last point of damage; most importantly by delaying my Smoke Screens as much as possible and even taking an Awareness proc on purpose to have more discipline for Caltrops, but unfortunately it just wasn't enough. The timer ran out at 98/2148b hp left (~4.5%), and even finishing off this little took an eternity as I was losing my focus and everything started to turn into chaos.

All in all, I had a blast in Season 3, and even though I didn't quite make it it in the end, I feel proud of my accomplishments and want to share my run. I have opened about 800 rifts on the tiers 65-67, about 250 of those with the cold build and the remaining 550 with fire. I got about 15-20 Unburied rifts, I lost count at some point. When I started pushing, I expected to require about 200 keys for tier 65, and 500 for 66, and never intended to try 67 with my low paragon. I did it anyway with a couple of failed trial keys, and even got a ~3 min time advantage + power pylon for boss once in a Teddy / Cave of the Betrayer rift (with cold). Other than that, I had four tier 66 rifts which would have been a 65 clear, and I failed tier 66 by less than 2 min three times (= 300 more paragons would seal the deal). Out of all those runs, I never found a single rift that I could have beaten with my combination of items / gems / paragons, meaning I never failed one of them to anything besides RNG (which should be your ultimate goal if you want to improve in the game). The 15min 25sec clear definitely was my closest attempt, but even after rewatching it several times I am convinced I could not have done it 26sec quicker. In any case, I had lots of fun in my three weeks of pushing (that started off with my tier 64 clear with merely 2 hours invested, after I had been on a break for more than 4 weeks), and I hope my viewers who supported me and chanted the Stonesinger song for me so diligently had the same.

I'm looking forward to pushing again in Season 4, obviously on my DH

If you are interested in further information about solo DH in patch 2.3, here are my recent post about Natalya RoV and a first glimpse at how fire UE will look like in patch 2.3 (to be continued). Also, if you want to see those, my tier 66 run with cold and my successful tier 64 run (Rank 4 EU).

It has been explained already for the most part, and I think it goes like this:

Step 1) Convert set item to quickly get into T6+

Step 2) Upgrade rares to get the build-defining legendaries

Step 3) Reforge said legendaries until they're perfect, and when you have surplus materials, repeat step 2.

Still, I'm amazed at how balanced the two different options seem to be when looking at the endgame gear grind, and I'm excited to try it out myself on live.