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I used the Natalya's Vengeance set without the ring, and a Balefire caster in the offhand. For the enchantress, I gave her a Thunderfury, lots of attack speed and the knockback, hex and ias abilities.

[DH Tier 64 solo - 13:33]

Hey everyone,

I came back after basically a ~4-week break, this is the result after a mere 14 tries: An incredibly disgusting rift featuring Cave of the Betrayer, Unburieds, one single elite pack, and obviously Stonesinger (Casualbuff multiplied by Streamerbuff).

Over the last couple of weeks I've been doing trials here and there and somehow managed to farm up 246 tier 64 keys and about 100 tier 65 keys. Should have done it the other way around I didn't really expect to clear tier 64, at least not that quickly, but somehow I did. Unburied + Goatmen rifts are about 1 in 40, so with those keys I could have expected to get 5-7 rifts with this combination, and sometimes they turn out to be really bad density or elite wise. The next goal is obviously going to be tier 65, but I will probably not push beyond, with my (comparably) lowish paragon and dps in general my hopes are very low for anything after that.

Enjoy the run!

Setup:
Fire RoV, 48.68 CDR (~56 with Gogok), Balefire with CDR + RCR, Pauldrons of the Skeleton King.

Passives:

Cull the Weak, Ambush, Steady Aim, Single Out, Awareness

"ZE are pretty gg" - can confirm

Quote from BlackParagon»

Bagstone, I request locking this thread. It is already derailing, with people comparing real-life murder to exploiting.

As for you Bag and you Wudijo, I honestly expected more. You two should know, more than all the casuals around, that despite endless grift keys, bots will net no advantage. I am not going to write an excerpt about it, all I say is, go over your own math on how the chances are to craft a GG item with the cube and factor in materials needed. Not even botting would net you enough materials (cache mats yes, but never enough souls) to gain all pieces, let alone a set. Maybe your weapon slot, but thats just that.

Also, I expected both of you to offer constructive, thoughtful advices on the matter of paragon grinding being the meta and with that, I don't mean capping paragon and thus effectively killing it right of were it stands. I honestly expected something more creative and more intelligent.

I had posted various ideas on how to solve or circumvent the problems end game players face, but it has fallen on deaf ears. I am not going to repeat them here, this is not the right thread for it.


Please, lock this thread. Before it completely derails to another hate-parade. That or start moderating, that's your job.

So I've been asked to contribute more to the discussion, please forgive me for not answering earlier as I am busy IRL. Since the topic of this whole thread is "leaderboards obsolete and meaningless because of cheats and bots", I want to go into some of the details that I mentioned briefly before already.

I want to begin by saying that following the principle of "Know your Foe", I consider myself quite knowledgable on these topics even though I have little first hand experience with them. My point of view comes from someone at the top end of the ladder, and some of these descriptions will be inaccurate for certain parts of the leaderboards below.

Bots:

In order to assess the influence of bots on this game, we first have to take a look at what bots actually do. AFAIK bots mostly play Raekor Barb, farm T6 and do low level trials for you (mid 30s, maybe up until the 40s). For anything else, bots are almost completely irrelevant. Since paragon farming is the most efficient way of progression by far (even when being heavily undergeared), these bots do not really contribute much to the current imbalances we are seeing. Yes, even the top players need to farm T6 here and there for the keys and death's breath, but trust me, it's almost irrelevant when compared to their total playtime. With my paragon of 1031 I'm on the far low end of top players and I have whole stacks of materials of all sorts, death's breath and forgotten souls included, I have hundreds of nephalem rift / trial / high GR keys and I could stop playing T6 altogether for weeks if I wanted. Someone who has double or more of my playtime will definitely not have any issues with anything related to T6, thus rendering bots completely useless for them. The top paragon guys usually invite players who open rifts for them, or just recycle their keys when they have to do trials, and you can farm enough trial keys for a whole day of speedrifting in only one hour even if you can not find anyone who opens rifts for you. The only thing were bots really excel without any risk for the botting player is white / blue materials and hellfire farming. Those players run one or multiple accounts with bots that farm rifts or keywardens all day, then let them drop the white / blue items in town, join and loot everything, or have them open infernal machines for them. In any case, as I already pointed out, top paragon players are not really short on materials, so the only real gain are the hellfires, which are irrelevant for some classes and generally don't take away too much time anyway (farming them legit will usually require 20-50 hours out of 600-1200 total hours over the course of a 3 months season).

It's a common misconception that top players are at the top because they are botting - in fact the top of the top would never bot because they know that Blizzard is likely going to catch them and that the bots will have very little influence on their overall character progression anyway. However, because bots are generally very detrimental to the game and they seem to have been causing issues for a long time, it's quite natural that many condemn their existence. To some extend, some (but not all) top clans also discourage the use of bots because of this, and I can give an example by quoting a part of our clan guidelines:
§1 Absolutely no botting. Any such offense will result in an instant removal from the clan without further discussion.

Obviously, with all the changes to adventure mode in 2.3, we are likely going to see a new age of botting, since regular adventure mode (rifts and bounties) will become a lot more valuable. This will make the situation a little worse, but given the facts that item progression is the least factor when it comes to leaderboards, that (thanks to the cube) rolling a perfect ancient weapon is going to become a 1-5 days instead of 1-5 months grind and people will have a lot more even playing field in general (at least in terms of item progression), we are already heading into the right direction, and bots are unlikely to have a meaningful impact in any way. If they do, I'm sure that Blizzard is going to issue ban waves again, or those botting players that reach top rankings will be exposed in other ways. Since Hellfire farming is going to become trivial as well, the only thing left for bots to farm efficiently are GR keys, which actually is going to become a huge part given the fact that we can't recycle keys anymore. We'll see how it turns out in 2.3, but I'm confident bots will stay a very small issue in any case.

Cheats:

Since there are no real cheats for an online-only game like Diablo 3, I will talk about THUD and macros here.

Third party applications are and have been infesting this game since the very beginning, most importantly a program called TurboHUD. While I (and probably many others) were unaware of even the existence of such programs for a very long time, THUD has been becoming more and more popular, especially after patch 2.1 and the implementation of leaderboards, because obviously people want to get every advantage they can. Apart from some quality of life changes, the biggest problem with THUD is that reveals the fog of war on your (mini)map for another 1-2 screens, and thus lets you plan out fights a little better in advance by showing you monster and pylon spawn positions. Given this information, we have to assess how much on an influence a program like this actually has, and here we have to look into the details. The best summary is, as so often, "it depends". For solo, most classes do not really care if they can see more of the map in advance (examples: AW Wizards, Barbs, Monks, Crusaders), since they are built around tankiness and mobility any way. Seeing what comes next nets only very little, if any advantage, and might save you a couple of seconds up to a minute per GR, depending on RNG. For the other classes (mostly DH and WD) that are build around controlling, avoiding and rapidly killing any monster, having this extra information usually provides a much larger benefit. Back in season 1 I have already had a discussion about THUD and decided to do an in-depth analysis of my landmark world first tier 45 run, and concluded that I could have saved 2 to 2.5 minutes using it (by being able to better decide on skipping, pulling more etc if I had known where exactly what type and number of monsters are). In groups, it's mostly up to the supporters to decide when to skip, when to kill, and when to run for pylons, and thus having THUD obviously helps. However, in groups the impact of THUD is actually really small unless you get terrible RNG (e.g. by inadvertendly pulling an knockback + electrified pack you could have avoided and thus failing the rift). It generally only alleviates the fishing a little, with very little impact on actual clear times and tiers.

It becomes clear that applications like THUD are taking away from the best players, as they generally make the high end gameplay a lot easier for others, and even an infallible player can always be better if he is using it. Blizzard has already implemented a lot of changes that reduce the impact of THUD (e.g. by removing long walks / turnarounds in GRs and fixing pylon spawn points, which you can memorize and then check independently), and more are to come (with the increased focus on tankiness in 2.3, thus rendering most of the extra information almost uselss). We're heading into the right direction, unfortunately Blizzard can't prevent anyone from using THUD direclty, but maybe they will continue to reduce the impact it has.

Macros are another big thing that can be categorized as cheating. They are heavily used for spammy builds such as support Crusaders with their laws, or Monks with Taeguk and Serenity in the past. Blizzard's ToS are against any automation of gameplay, and what it means is still up for discussion. Personally, I would never use a macro, as I don't like to lose control over my character, and I just generally seem unable to integrate automated actions into my own gameplay. Macros generally have very little influence on rankings, as they are used mostly for spammy things that don't require much timing at all, or sometimes even take away from efficiency doing so (e.g. some DHs macro the wolf companion to ensure the highest possible uptime, while in fact it takes away from their damage by activating it during walks as well). However, there are some instances where macroing becomes a bad thing, and that is mostly Support Crusaders and Wizards currently. Wizards need to get their rotation right to deal the highest possible damage, and some of them use macros to do that, effectively taking away a huge skill component of the build. For Crusaders, actually perma CCing elites and RGs can prove very difficult manually and makes up an even bigger part of the skillful gameplay that is required when doing so, enticing players to use macros for that and effectively removing a big skill component just like for the Wizards (probably even greater). Neverheless, macros are something that cannot be fought directly because even some hardware comes with them naturally, however Blizzard can balance the game around things that make macroing undesireable or useless, as we can already see happening. No more perma CC will probably make most macros (apart from spamming law / wolf) disappear, leaving little room to circumvent skillful gameplay with the use of macros, and even now being able to spam your buttons in the right order is not the only part of succeeding in a high GR.

Exploits:

There's a lot of debate about which things are okay and which are not, which should get people banned and which should not, and just generally when the limit is pushed to far. I think it's best to assess this issue by looking at which exploits we have already seen in the game. I might have missed a couple, but it should not matter.

0) The perma CC "exploit". Just for the sake of completeness, I decided to include this here as well. Perma CC is very likely unintended by Blizzard, but they have come to live with it for 3 full seasons, and are finally removing it now. Even though there is still a lot of debate going on about what exactly should have been done with it, I think we're heading into a good direction with some room for improvement. Perma CC has become a core part of team gameplay and strategies have evolved around it, and all of the rankings done with it are completely legit because just because of the fact that everyone has been using it, unhindered by the fact that most solo builds cannot use perma cc.

1) The leveling exploits (like Mira quest, Kulle quest). These kinds of exploits rarely had much of an influence. People are complaining that they have to do this boring quest over and over to get to max level efficiently, but even doing so they are not much quicker than others who level in different ways. These things were just an oversight and abusing them does no harm, you maybe save an hour or two and that's about it. Undoubtedly they should be fixed, but that's mostly for the sake of a fun leveling experience.

2) The trials exploit of season 1. For those unaware, near the end of season 1 (patch 2.1), people found out that you could heavily cheat trials by having players not accept a trial rift invite and then tp to a player using the banner in town, which effectively made a full 4-player party clear trials scaled for solo and lifted them 7-9 tiers higher. This is one of the more severe exploits, but word of it spreaded like wildfire and within a couple of hours and days hundreds of people had already done dozens of trials like this, effectively invalidating all the progress that top 3 and 4 player parties have been working on for months before by slowly climbing the tiers, figuring out new trial strategies and most importantly leveling up keys in successful rifts. At that point, there was almost no way to reverse the harm done, but it also had a lot of positive side effects: Many people had problems acquiring adequate solo keys, most importantly Barbs and DHs, and they finally had a way of doing so, which made Barbs clear tier 60 and DHs tier 55 on the top end, something that would never been possible without the exploit. This exploit effectively increased the competitive aspect of every leaderboard near the end of the season.

3) The Sever exploit of season 2. Quite heavily discussed by both proponents and opponents, this is not really what can be considered a gamebreaking exploit. If Blizzard ever wanted to fix it, they would have had the chance to do so for years already, since the DH Grimsever build has been known and publicly discussed since early vanilla, and in season 2 some ZE players have found ways to use this interaction in high level trials and greater rifts. They have spent weeks testing and working on the exact mechanics and execution, and have finally managed to reach several rank 1s on both the nonseasonal and seasonal leaderboards. Some of these rankings have and others have not been beaten over the course of the season, but in the end all of them would have been beaten if season 2 wouldn't have been exraordinarily short like it was. The Sever was and remains an enigmatic mechanic and many complained that the rankings were cheated, but in the end it was quite an honorable achievement of those players to push the highest potential rankings even higher with a completely new apporach, and one that was neither too overpowered nor broken compared to other builds in use at that time. Other innovations had a much bigger influence on leaderboards, such as the switch from monk support to crusader support mid season 1, which made 4man rankings go up by 3-6 tiers alone (more than the Sever, which was about +1-2).

4) The bloodshard exploit of season 3. This one is probably the one that has generated the most (negative) feedback and calls for punishment, and Blizzard finally has complied by issuing a one-week rollback for almost anyone who benefitted from this exploit. The punishment was harsh, but still adequate, with many of those being rollbacked accepting their fate and the reasoning behind it. In any case, the bloodshards farmed wouldn't have had much of an influence anyway - people were paying their hardly farmed GR keys for bloodshards and not getting any drops or experience besides the bloodshards. There were even some who tried it and decided to abandon the exploit because it was just not worth it, or others who considered it that way from the very beginning. In any case, even with the rollback, this exploit didn't have any influence whatsoever on leaderboards, as exactly those people that started S3 "one week late" have been on top again after a very short time, and even if there hadn't been any punishment at all, the bloodshards are just bloodshards and would have hardly had any influence on anything. Taking the example of DHs, farming a good ancient Krider will require anywhere between 2 to 5 million bloodshards on average, while people were getting 200 to 500k after maybe 3 days of abusing the exploit. That way, continuing like that wouldn't have been possible for an entire month even without any fix or punishment, and even then there would be no certainty to actually get the needed item for those players, effectively making them lose a huge chunk of experience. Ancient weapons are definitely a one of the most important aspects of character progression, but outside of that you don't really need many items after a certain point, and paragon farming remains the top progression priority no matter what.

5) The Death's Bargain exploit of season 3. This is the only really gamebreaking exploit we have seen so far, and it was punished accordingly. It's obvious that this one goes far beyond "clever use of game mechanics" and "gaining an advantage out of an oversight", and it outright destroyed the entire purpose of the game. The quick fix and the subsequent removal of the leaderboard time was good, and if anything like this ever happens again I expect Blizzard to do it again.

Paragons:

Since I already mentioned this in my other comment and above, I decided to include it here as well and lay out why I think that the current paragon system is the worst problem we currently have when it comes to leaderboards. As I have explained, most of the factors that come with bots, cheats and exploits prove to have little influence on the leaderboards, so little in fact that even as someone who obviously cares a lot about them, I'm not really mad that those things exist in the first place (as they can still be countered by playing better). However, when it comes to paragons, I see a lot of issues that prevent fair competiton.

Right now, there is no way of knowing if you're ever going to get the item upgrade you seek, but you can calculate exactly how much more damage you will deal after X hours of farming experience. Upgrading an nonancient to an ancient armor item will yield a 150-250 dexterity increase, which is about 1 to 2% damage. At paragon 1000, you can get the same just by farming experience for about one day, even at paragon 1500 it's about two days, but with the RNG involved you'll never be able to reach the same even if you could still use the bloodshard exploit. This is how broken paragons are right now, and it encourages all the top players to spend most of their time playing boring farming content instead of actually innovating new builds or pushing higher tiers, which is a lot more interesting to do and watch. We can even see some players with more play time on their leech characters than their respective main classes (including all the leveling, farming, gem upgrading and GR pushing) right now.

Obviously, as a grinding-oriented game like Diablo, people should be rewarded by playing more, and there is no harm in having someone who plays more (and more efficiently) than others has a stronger character overall. Many drops are about RNG, however you can estimate the required time investment to get to a specific point in character strength quite nicely because it all averages out. The issue arises when trying to compete on the leaderboards becomes futile because others have progressed so far ahead that there is literally no way you are ever going to beat them, no matter how well you play or how good of a rift you get. The paragon progression has become out of hand starting in season 2 and especially now in season 3, with certain players at the top having easily 30-40% more damage just because they have more mainstat even compared to players that already have high paragons (like 1000 and up). They are several tiers ahead just because of their mainstat, and there is no way to ever catch up with them because the required experience scales linearly after paragon 750, thus increasing the time investment per paragon only very slowly after that.

The thing is, the endless paragon progression system was designed back in a world where top end experience gains range between 2 and 6 billion XP per hour. Nowadays, people are getting 100-150b per hour, more or less 20-50 times more than that. It's quite obvious that this is bound to cause problems, as have been seeing for the last couple of months and basically the entire season 3. Paragon beats everything. There's no point in equipping your main character, just leech experience on a Crus or Monk all day and try to snap any crappy lootshared item you can get, it will be a better way to gear up your character no matter what. Not only that, but you can also use those paragons on other classes and not just the one you're trying to equip, effectively multiplying the fact if you are a multiclasser. There's no point in farming bloodshards, materials, leveling up gems, farm Hellfire amulets or do anything else besides leeching in speedrifts. Paragons beat it all.

We are already heading into the right direction with patch 2.3, however without any further changes this is still likely going to make the problem worse without further changes. Paragon imbalances will be curbed a little by sharing experience between all party members and forcing players into T6-10. No more key recycling will definitely help, but the experience gains are still very high, perhaps even higher than currently in spite of that. We're likely going to be speedfarming something like tier 53-58, where the shared experience for all will be more or less what a leecher gets now in 42-47, paired with 50% longer rifts and no trials the need to farm more T6-10 it will turn out to be not much of an hindrance for crazy experience farm. What's more, it we combine this with the implementation of the new Kanai's Cube, we can easily acquire very good gear and especially weapons now (100 rerolls via "reforge legendary" will yield 10 ancients on average, which should be good enough to get a weapon that is at least in an acceptable range of best-in-slot. 500 materials of all acts can be farmed in about 10 hours, 5000 forgotten souls can be farmed in 50-80 hours, 5000 death's breath can be farmed in 5-12 hours, with most of these times overlapping, and forgotten souls being generated passively). That's a very good change, because it evens out the playing field (just like we have seen with the DH leaderboards back in season 2, when everyone could craft a perfect weapon and didn't require many good rolls on top of that to compete). The priority from gambling weapons will most likely shift towards jewelry or set pieces, and thus making it easy to acquire next to best-in-slot of basically every slot. Now, though, the new problem arises: The end result will be that those players that have super high paragon but maybe not super crazy items right now will have both in 2.3, because they can easily reroll their ancient weapons to a very good one, and acquire the rest passively. These means that even with the new balance between leech and dps, those that play more will still have a ridiculously high damage advantage in greater rifts.

All of this is likely going to widen the gap even further instead of closing it. The only way to counter it is going to reduce the expected gains by paragons. Without a big rework of the entire system (which I expect to happen in the next expansion), this whole problem could be easily solved by changing the mainstat gain per paragon from 5 to 2. It would still allow a reasonable path of endless progression via mainstat gains, but it would definitely make the leaderboards a much more even playing field for everyone, and would encourage many more (not just top high end) players to compete on the leaderboards. In the past seasons, the paragons weren't that much of an issue because the overall paragon levels were a lot lower for everyone, with many people barely even reaching 800 in S1 and S2. Now, the leaderboards are completely getting wrecked by players that have 400+ more paragons than anyone else because they deal so much more damage. Even with only 2 mainstat per level, a 400 paragon advantage would still net 800 mainstat, which is more or less 6-7% damage, or half a tier. To me, this seems just about right by rewardung players with a lot of time investment adequately (on top of giving them better gear and more chances for getting a good rift), and still keeping the possibility for lower paragon players to keep competing.

The paragon disease is contributing a lot more to leaderboard imbalance than bots, THUD and any exploit combined. Bots are basically worthless with their low efficiency, THUD is maybe 0.5 to 2 tiers depending on class / group setup and I don't know of any exploit that could potentially have any influence whatsoever currently. In contrast, every 200-300 paragons (depending on class) will definitely make you jump one tier on the leaderboards, that's much worse of a problem in my book, and also one that can actually be dealt with easily.

Quote from mapleleafs791»

So i have one question. Why do you use ambush over steady aim? i could see ambush being better if you could one shot mobs but i figure at gr 60+ that is not the case. especially regarding the RG. 20% for the whole health of mobs seems better than 40% for 25% of the mobs health to me.

I'm just curious. If you could spread some insight into that decision i would love it.

Thanks for the vid+guide

You have 55 (RoV skill dmg) + 25 (averaged wolf) + 25 (averaged strongarm) = ~105% damage increased by skills. +20 from Steady Aim will be a ~9.5% increase.

Assuming uniform dps, Ambush is a pure multiplicative 7.9% damage increase, however in many cases it turns out to be much higher, beacuse in fact you are almost oneshotting monsters here and there. On tier 64, mob hp values are more or less as follows: Unburied 100b, Melee Goat 30b, Ranged Goat 25b, Darkmoths 25b, RG 1700b. With Ambush, you can definitely get your 15-20b crits from Crashing Rain alone, which means that you will basically kill the goats in one cast with a little luck. You will lose a lot of time if you have Steady Aim there. But even for the Unburieds, look at the following scenario: Average damage per Crashing Rain is 14b with Ambush, 10b without, and 11b with Steady Aim. Let's look at hp left after each cast:

Amb: (0) - 100, (1) - 86, (2) - 72, (3) - 62, (4) - 52, (5) - 42, (6) - 32, (7) - 22, (8) - 12, (9) - 2

SA: (0) - 100, (1) - 89, (2) - 78, (3) - 67, (4) - 56, (5) - 45, (6) - 34, (7) - 23, (8) - 12, (9) - 1

You can change the numbers a bit and the result will be more or less the same: You will need basically the same number of casts for the Unburieds, but you will need much less for the Goats. It's only on the long elite and RG fights that SA turns out to be a little better, but you will not clear a rift if you have to kill more than 3 or 4 (easy) elite packs, and for the RG 2-3% more hardly makes a difference. What's more, a power pylon will provide a much better value for Ambush, because the oneshot range greatly increases, and the value of Steady Aim is basically zero at +400% additive damage.

I have already posted most of this as a comment on this Reddit thread, but since the video is up now and I found out some more things since then, I decided to start a new one, and maybe spur some more discussion about these findings.

[Bane of the Stricken Testing + Mechanics]

Bane of the Stricken

Primary: Each attack you make against an enemy increases the damage it takes from your attacks by (1 + (0.1 x rank))%.

Secondary: Gain 25% increased damage against Rift Guardians and bosses.

Summary

• No cap.
• It stacks additively with itself and multiplicatively with other effects. [In the video I say additive but I goofed on one calculation there.]
• The number is bugged. I leveled it to rank 30, which means 4% per stack. In fact, however, it's 3% for me. So far, I couldn't confirm if a rank 0 gem (1%) doesn't stack at all (I don't have a spare gem).
• The secondary effect is multiplicative.
• It has an ICD, which with my limited means on PTR I estimated to be 1/3s.
• Only spells with a proc coefficient can proc it, however the proc coefficient itself is irrelevant, as long as the spell deals damage.
• The damage buff is hidden, and disappears when you switch zones. You can take the gem off and it stays though.
• If you hit multiple targets, only the first enemy hit will gain a stack, however the buff will not reset when attacking another target.
• Seems like it has the same logic as Focus and Restraint, or Natalya 2 piece: If you can proc one of these with a spell, you will also proc the gem (e.g. Sentry - Spitfire Turret and Sentry - Chain of Torment work, but other pets don't).

Comparing it to Bane of the Trapped makes their difference in strength strikingly apparent: At rank 80, BotT will add a 39% damage multiplier, which is why it's the most commonly used dps gem for high end content. With a rank 80 BotS (9% per attack) you will need 4.5 attacks to reach the same, which you can do at a rate of (presumably) 3 attacks per second. With some optimization, it will be possible to reach the same effect as a Bane of the Trapped after only 1.5-2 seconds fighting, effectively adding more and more damage for free after that.

Even if we assume this gem was additive to Damage Increased By Skills (which I mistakenly did in the beginning) and compare it (rank 80) to Taeguk (rank 80), we can see just how strong it is: With no further DIBS involved (which is unlikely enough already), Taeguk will be a 50% boost, so you'll need 5.5 attacks to get the same value, which is more or less 2 seconds. After breaking even at ~3-3.5 seconds, it's the same infinite damage again, and you don't even need to look at your buff bar to not drop the Taeguk.

Obviously, these two scenarios are single target comparisons, while high GR builds usually rely on heavy AoE spells. Nevertheless, due to the nature of the gem and the long fights at high tiers, it will stack up rather quickly even on multiple targets and will effectively make elite and RG fights much shorter (which is what usually takes away a lot of time in a GR). Taking the numbers from above and assuming uniform stacking on every enemy, it should break even with the Bane of the Trapped after approximately 2.5-3 seconds per target. Even with 5 targets, that's only 12.5-15 seconds, probably quicker because the fights will have to be set up first (pulling, F&R procs, debuffs etc.), not even considering the secondary effect for the RG.

In my opinion, it should be capped at a maximum of 10 stacks, which would still probably make it the go-to choice for basically any dps build in high end GRs already, but would contain the damage bonus in a somewhat balanced value. Since only the first target hit will get a stack, it could just ignore those fully-stacked targets after the cap, and instead go for the next one. The ICD is good, no cap is bad. It's not Furnace-1.0-bad, but it's heading into the same direction. Infinitely stacking damage is overpowered no matter what, especially considering it's multiplicative. Not only will it take away any choice in gemming (since this one might become even more mandatory than Bane of the Trapped), it will also throw season vs. nonseason completely out of balance. Blizzard, fix this please. Other than that, I think it's a pretty cool addition to the game and I'm excited to build my character and playstyle (especially positioning and targeting) around this gem.

Hi everyone, I just posted some stuff on the official PTR forums and decided to share it here as well, in case you don't frequent those and want to get a little overview of what things will look like in the next patch. It's mostly aimed at the devs, but for the curious, it will certainly be good enough I assume. Feel free to comment and add anything I might have forgotten, or ask me about anything that's currently going on on the PTR. I'm trying to stream here and there but generally I'm really busy IRL so I just quickly typed some things and left it like that. Also, I have recorded and cut a short overview and two high GR runs with both UE and Natalya if you want to check those out.

Copy&Pasting from the US forums:

Short introduction:
This post consists of two main parts, general feedback and Demon Hunter feedback specifically. In the latter part, I will comment on the skill changes, new and old items and in the end I will conclude with a short overall impression of the patch. So far on the PTR, I have played on Torment 8 and above and have pushed 2 and 3 player rankings alongside Crusaders and Barbarians, up to tier 66. I have cubed about 35 items and tested most of them, and generally I have high end gear, gems, paragon as well as rank 1 experience in all brackets and seasons.

General Part

Kanai's Cube:
Amazing addition to the game, exactly what was needed. It elegantly solves many problems (such as the mandatory power creep, making unused items useful, stash space) and sparks new theorycrafting ideas. It also evens out the odds for finding the much needed ancient weapons, perfect ring slots etc., and generally helps to equip your character. All in all a pretty neat feature, only thing I'd like to change is the visibility of cubed legendary powers. Currently, if someone asks me to show my build, I press one button and they can see everything. For the cube, I need to open the inventory, then click details, then scroll down, and it's not even showing the icons but only the text of the legendaries in use. I'd like to see it in another spot, maybe add it to the bottom or right of the skill window, or to the bottom of the inventory.

Hellfire Amulets:
Perfect change. I have calculated that in 2.3, Hellfire farming efficiency will more or less increase tenfold, which is more or less what I think it should be. Out of my experience, I have crafted about 700 Hellfire amulets since RoS release, about 20% of those had a socket, and 2 rolled with elemental damage + double crit + good passive, and maybe 15 with mainstat + double crit + good passive. However, it's just not worth it to do that because the amount of paragons you could farm in that time would be much stronger, on top of you getting other perks like crafting mats, items, and generally having more fun, all of which created the huge problem we had with uber bosses in the past. With the current system on live, you should expect to craft ~1000 amulets in order to have a reasonable chance to get one with the elemental bonus and passive you need, which means approximately 150-160 hours with a high end setup (10h keywardens, 5-6h ubers per 100 amulets). With the socket change alone, you would be expected to craft approximately 150-250 amulets for that. This seems about what players experience when crafting Hellfires on the PTR (sample size ~400).
Here are some calculations I did before the PTR was up: http://puu.sh/iM1Ix/75c6e2dd28.png. I don't know the exact drop rates, but I will go with the last column here (100% KW, 150% Uber drop rates), where you would spend ~50 minutes farming KWs and ~200 minutes farming ubers per 100 amulets, netting 2,5 minutes per socketed Hellfire (compared to ~400 minutes KWs, ~300 minutes ubers, 35 minutes per socketed Hellfire on live). On T10 the bosses might not die instantly like on T6 but it will be very close to that, for Magdha and Uber Diablo it won't matter much because most time is spent on the shield / sequences, so 2.5 minutes might seem a little optimistic, but optimized parties will get close to that. With some slacking involved, 3.5 min seems reasonable, and that's exactly the tenfold increase in efficiency I was mentioning. In any case it's pretty cool that the focus has shifted away from the keywardens, am I'm really looking forward to crafting Hellfires in 2.3. If you only want to have one with mainstat instead of elemental damage, you should be good to go with 10-20 crafts, which means 1-2 hours. Other than that, spending 20-50 hours for a perfect gg amulet per season sounds exactly like what it should be. Getting an elemental Hellfire is not based purely on luck anymore, thus closing the gap between lucky and unlucky people a little, and generally evening out RNG in this game a little, which is always a good thing.

Trials removal:
Almost uniformly applauded by everyone, including myself. Very good to finally see them go, better late than never. However, in addition to the other changes made to greater rifts, it creates a couple of new problems:

Greater Rift gem upgrading:
I don't really see a reason why failed rifts should not reward gem upgrades. It will make running high tiers even less rewarding (in addition to the XP / loot problems), and more or less remove 1% runs from the game. Other than T6, bounties and speedfarming lower tiers, running higher tiers for 1% gem upgrades is a lot of fun and resembles high GR pushing on live the most, and I'd be sad to see them go. It's a nice change in the activities you do ingame, and is at least close to mindless XP farming in efficiency (in terms of expected damage gains per time invested). Other than that, it feels really weird to finish a rift and have no options to select. Since higher greater rifts are a lot less rewarding (per time spent) in general, gem upgrades should really stay. In the end, you still need to complete the tier you want to run -1 at least once anyway, so paragon 100 people running around with rank 60 gems or the like is not going to happen.

Rift fishing:
Without trials, fishing for rifts will rise to new dimensions. Even with the current system on live, people are fishing 100-300+ rifts for solo clears, and this problem will become even worse. It's not fun to open and close rifts after 1 minute (as soon as you can see it's bad), or leaving the game immediately after encountering a reflect pack. Certain builds or very skillful players can save their run through situations like this sometimes, but in general, that's how it works and it's not very engaging, be it for the player of for those watching. Actually completing rifts has to be rewarded in one way or another, or people will just fish all day. The same holds true even more for groups, which previously haven't really been fishing at all (due to lack of keys caused by huge trial RNG), and pushing groups was a lot of fun because every key was precious (even failed ones for gem upgrades), and as a streamer even more so (since people like to watch that stuff and see if you can make it). With the system on PTR, group gameplay will become much like solo gameplay in terms of fishing if there are no incentives to not leave the game immediately. This has to change, otherwise we will spend more time in the menus than anywhere else.

Leaderboard profile snapshotting:
Honestly, I don't see many good reasons behind this change, and so far I haven't gotten an answer or seen any blue comments on this. While it may seem good at a first glance, it's likely to spawn an even more secretive behavior when it comes to new builds. People that theorycraft new things and manage to get a top ranking because of that will be completely ripped off, since now anyone can just go and take a look, fish a couple dozen rifts and beat it. Before, a lot of guessing and testing was involved for those who wanted to reach the same rankings, giving away the group / class setup usually was good enough to get people thinking. Also, it is very likely that high end solo and group players will just start failing their rifts on purpose to keep new builds hidden from the public until the last couple of days of the season. Other than that, the culture in random groups might evolve into something like "go copy r1 dude or you won't get invited", and additionally it will keep many casual players from testing their own things with the cube, because everyone will tell them "it doesn't work, look what top players use", effectively decreasing build variety and theorycrafting efforts across the board. It's not like top players generally don't share their builds, but sometimes they decide not to, or to wait a little, to actually get something out of their efforts. It also leads to the next point:

Greater Rift reward structure:
Through all of the seasons, there have never been strong incentives to run high greater rifts. While it's certainly fun to push oneself to the limits in solo or groups, it's usually the worst you can do in terms of farming efficiency. Even if you can consistently clear very high end tiers, the loot and bloodshards you're getting are almost worthless in comparison, and even XP is dragging behind. After a couple of test runs in a 2 or 3-man groups with highly unoptimized setups it seems like the new XP / speedfarm meta will shift to more or less tier 55, which means another ~10 tiers increase over last season. On the other side, it seems like the highest potential rift clears will be more or less what they are like on live for groups, meaning that the gap between farming and pushing has become significantly smaller, yet completing farm runs is several times quicker. At the very least, blood shards should scale indefinitely the higher you go, and the 1% gem upgrading should be put back in place.
Other than that, I'd also like to see season ending rewards for everyone on the leaderboards. It doesn't need to be a big thing, maybe a banner reward, or a new / recolored frame, or just some other minor vanity item that sets them apart, and then have it scale up a little bit (like top 1, top 10, top 100, top 1000). People shouldn’t become obsessed with the leaderboards, but just a small recognition would be nice to see. Like, anything.

Paragons:
Somewhat in relation to the last point, something needs to be done about the Paragon problem. It's fun to level up and know that your character has become just a little bit stronger, and people that play more should get something out of it. However, in the long run, it's not fun to compete with people that have 20-30% more dps with equal gear just from having more mainstat. This easily amounts to an advantage of 2-3 tiers (+1 tier is +17% monster hp, however you don't need 17% to go higher because of walking, setting fights up, pylons etc. From my experience, having about 10% more dps is enough to be the exact same rift on the next tier). In the end, the reward of playing more is also more and better loot drops, and generally becoming better at playing the game, which are factors that the paragon count alone doesn't reflect. It's probably a difficult issue to solve, since general changes to XP farming will apply to everyone, so if anything, this will change in the next expansion rather than a simple patch. Nevertheless, I think it should be addressed at some point, maybe by capping the mainstat gain (not paragons themselves) after a certain point, so that people wouldn't constantly feel bad when not farming XP like crazy (since it's the most rewarding way of progression, and with the changing speedfarm meta, even more so).

Greater Rift balancing:
The usual suspects (unburieds, zombies, etc.) are still too rewarding. With the changes to crowd control, everyone will just fish for easy melee rifts when pushing. Fishing is okay to a certain degree, but it shouldn't be the main part of getting a ranking, so better balancing is still required. Some map types are still very bad (biggest offenders are Westmarch Heights and Repository of Bones) and could need density buffs or reworks. In addition, it would be great to see more "environment effects", like those zombies coming out of the walls in Halls of Agony, or the return of at least a few destructible objects in greater rifts which could be used as a tactical advantage. Playing around these kinds of things while still dealing with all the monsters and elites running around would make for even more engaging gameplay. Also, pylon spawns need to be fixed. It's good that the pylon mechanics / exploits I explained in season 2 got fixed, however the new mechanic is clunky and feels very frustrating sometimes. Some map layouts just don't have enough pylon spawn locations to actually let you spawn at least 2 pylons, and even when you get a decent map you never know if you lost pylon no. 3 or 4 due to the "fix", or if they just didn't spawn. Adding more spawn locations to "bad pylon maps" should be an easy solution to truly fix the problem in 99% of the cases.

On another note, I think the unavoidable damage route is just fine, but reflect damage has become an even worse problem. It was bad before already since many builds had to chance to deal with it at all (due to delayed damage output, like Ball Lightning and Rain of Vengeance), now you never have a chance to actually shoot at reflect packs because there's always one monster which has the buff. The reflect damage needs to be heavily nerfed, or entirely removed. This affix has been causing issues and requiring reworks since vanilla, and it's just a very unpleasant mechanic in the game which should just not exist. I'm not entirely sure what we are intended to do against it after patch 2.3, I was running 300 million toughness in tier 60-65 and got totally obliterated within one or two attacks whenever a reflect popped up. At some point I was even running the new leech passive in addition to that but it barely made a difference. I'm not sure how this is going to work in tier 70+ (which is probably what the end of season rankings are going to look like for most solo leaderboards, and close to 80 for groups). My toughness was overkill for the tiers we were running, most of the time I was even surviving several hits without proccing Awareness, but reflect still remains an instakill. The same goes for the Crusader (Alkaizer) and the Barbarian (Empyrian) I was running with, both of which had even more toughness than me, and they could barely touch reflect either. Link to VoD: https://youtu.be/0Ru8j1YfnSo [Note to Diablofans: Same as above]

Rift guardian rebalancing:
It was about time.

Elite affixes:
I think reflect damage is considered a "known issue" already, so I'll focus on other affixes here. The nerf to Jailer makes survivability a lot easier, paired with a little tankiness to survive Thunderstorm it seems like it's in a good spot, however I'm unsure about very high tiers (75+). So far I didn't have a chance to test those, but it should be good enough to survive at least one hit even on high tiers. The changes to the Waller affix were much needed, I haven't really had a situation where I was getting completely stuck so far. Also, I noticed a lot of Missile Dampening packs, it seems like their prevalence got increased, which is a good thing. It's one of the more interesting affixes that you really need to play around.
Other than that, I'm sad to not see any new affixes in this patch. With the CC changes, I was hoping that this opportunity would not go unused. Just adding 2-4 new affixes would definitely keep things fresh a little in the greater rifts. Things like Arcane Enchanted and Poison Enchanted are perfect affixes that make fights interesting, give us more of those!

New Torments:
From my experience on the PTR, the new Torments are too unrewarding to compare to the lowers. You are significantly slower in T9 and T10 because you have to trade movement for dps, and so far the x2 experience multiplier compared to T6 doesn't really bring it anywhere close to greater rift farming. Same goes for the bounty caches, they should award a little more on T10, considering that splitfarming will be a lot less efficient and it will be very difficult to find people who can do that efficiently.

Demon Hunter Part

Skill changes

Spike Traps:
Reading this in the patch notes, I was really excited about this change. Playing Spike Traps was a lot of fun back in vanilla, but the skill has been completely forgotten after the heavy (unnecessary) nerfs in 2.0. It would be even better if we had a set dedicated to this skill, the items to work with it are already there. So far, it seems like the developers' intention is to use Spike Traps with Natalya, as it is the only set that buffs all of your damage. The flexibility of Natalya is remarkable and helps a lot with creative builds, however the Crashing Rain (~8000% wpn dmg every ~1.5-2s) affix just outshines anything you could potentially come up with, including the Spike Traps. The damage on the runes is a joke, and the effect of the cold rune is worthless with the CC changes. At least the lightning rune looks cool (both aesthetically and tactically) but it seems even weaker than the rest. So far, it seems like only the new seasonal weapon can save the Spike Traps.

Numbing Traps:
Well okay. Didn't seem like much of a problem to keep it up permanently anyway, but it might help a little. Numbing Traps also seems like a very strong passive to use in group play, but we just don't have reliable ways of proccing it currently. If the new Spike Trap weapon is not going to work for high end groups, we would have to settle with cubing the Helltrapper to make the passive work, or take something like Sentry on one of our precious active skill slots, both of which are very unreliable mechanics, which is especially bad for defensive skills like this. Maybe it's time for the Guardian Turret again.

New Leech Passive:
With all the incoming damage in greater rifts now, a healing passive sounds pretty good. It's scaling well, and the choice of making it scale off life per kill fits the theme. Nevertheless, if we consider the slots with can roll life per kill, we can see that its power is very limited: Jewelry, weapons, chest, belt, pants. The last three might be the best candidates to get the stat. No one is going to reroll a secondary on a Hellfire amulet, so getting it there is almost out of the question, same for weapon slots (UE needs discipline, Natalya likes it too, and rings are incredibly difficult to get right on the primaries alone, rolling the secondary like that on top of it is incredibly RNG as well. Assuming a high end main DH, it seems likely that it's going to be the 3 armor pieces and one lucky roll on the jewelry, which would make for ~26,000-31,000 life per kill, subsequently scaling the passive to ~37,000-41,000 life per hit (including the 18,700 baseline). Since we want to run a lot of toughness, and the best way for DHs to get toughness is ancient vitality on a couple of slots, we will probably be sitting at 700-1000k life, which means we would need 20-25 attacks to refill our life, or ~6-8 seconds. That sounds fairly decent and in line with other classes' healing capabilities. If we could outheal reflect with it, I'd take it, but it's nowhere close to that. With ~200m toughness I was hitting myself for 100-150k per reflect of Multishot, which has a proc coefficient of mere 0.18, procs again from the rocket, and in case of Dead Man's Legacy even four times per attack, effectively twoshotting me in tier 60+. In any case, it feels weird to craft a Hellfire amulet just to get the Leech passive, when instead I could get something like Single Out or Ambush, but generally it seems like something I would consider using, depending on how necessary recovery will be at the high end. It would be great if good players could set themselves apart by lowering toughness and recovery to push their dps without being forced into heavy tanking builds due to reflect.

Other Skills

Shadow Power:
Since we focus on surviving incoming damage now, Shadow Power becomes an interesting choice again, but it's not quite there yet. Night Bane and Shadow Glide have sufficient utility for low end content, Blood Moon and Well of Darkness could need slight buffs. In the end, most will probably go with Gloom anyway, like always. I think it would be a good idea to give the skill a baseline Illusionary Boots effect. Even with Shadow Glide, we are significantly slower than Smoke Screen – Displacement, and definitely slower than any Vault rune, and taking two defensive skills doesn't really fit into many builds right now. It would fit the theme and would not be too overpowered, but it would let us skip a monster here and there if we really need to. On top of that, adding in a small baseline effect of the Gloom rune (or maybe even all runes, which could then be heavily improved by the corresponding choice) like 15% damage reduction would probably good enough to make other runes interesting for high tiers.

Vengeance:
Seethe should be baseline. It's the only rune that is ever used, and even then it's very little return on investment with the incredibly long cooldown. In case we don't get a set to go with this (really cool) skill, a couple of buffs certainly won't hurt.

Multishot:
Honestly, I don't know why the runes didn't get a proper rework when UE was introduced. The only viable choice for basically anything is Arsenal. Cold is used here and there for Iceblink synergy (e.g. Ball Lightning builds), but in general all of the other runes are trash. Now that UE and especially Multishot are going to be used so much, I'm really disappointed to see no changes at all to this skill. Maybe even rework Arsenal a little and make the skill deal more damage to 1-3 targets, or make an item like that (like Nilfur's). Right now, Arsenal is doing 360% + 600% weapon damage against 1-3 targets, which is just miles ahead of any other rune with their 360% / 460% only. Arsenal is a really cool and balanced rune, but I'd like to be able to choose the other ones to if I decide to go for some utility, or make them have some other effects. There's much being done about the single target problem, but without a rework, we will always use Arsenal and only Arsenal, all of the other choices are pretty much worthless (apart from maybe Torments where you could oneshot stuff with Full Broadside or something). Anything that alleviates the single-target problem would certainly help, and maybe let us take a look at the other runes. Nevertheless, a rework / buff to all of them (minus Arsenal) would certainly help.

New Items

New Multishot Bow:
Really well-crafted addition to the set because it solves many problems at the same time. Perfect! Vaulting is sufficiently cheap to be able to keep up with the group and retain enough mobility in T6-10, so Danetta's are not required, and it lets you dodge many things in high greater rifts without losing too much damage as well. Spamming low-cost Multishot is fun, with the added attack speed bonus you feel like a machine gun. With its high RCR and legendary effect, it will obviously become the go-to choice for Multishot, but overall the power level feels adequate. Nevertheless, I was expecting to see a weapon like this for Cluster Arrow, not for Multishot. A weapon tailored for Cluster Arrow that is good enough to bring M6 back to the table would be a nice addition, as right now it seems like the Multishot bow will also be the best weapon to use if you intend to run M6. I'd like to see M6 being viable, and after a full season of not playing the set, it's definitely time to bring it back, maybe in S5.

New Generator Belt:
Works well for Multishot / Cluster Arrow builds, the 3:1 RoV Natalya cycle and whenever you run a resource-heavy build in general. Refilling hatred becomes a lot of fun with the added attack speed, and the bonus damage might spark some new build ideas (like the Buriza + Hungering Arrow build in 2.2). However, so far it doesn't work with Kridershot. This is probably intended, as lightning UE is a very strong build, but without perma CC and the new reflect damage in place, it's seriously falling behind compared to other options, and Blizzard should consider making it work in synergy with the bow. Other than that, it feels weird to use it in conjunction with the Multishot bow, which adds 40% attack speed for that skill, but when switching back to a generator you only get a 30% boost. The numerical dps difference wouldn't be too huge if the belt was set to 40% as well, or at least able to roll that high, and it would definitely smooth out the Multishot playstyle a lot. Maybe set both items to 35%?

While we're at it, I'd really like to see generators being useful besides "regenerate most hatred possible", which is also the reason why so many people run Evasive Fire – Focus. With the new cc changes, we have the perfect opportunity to bring more utility to some of the generators, and maybe keep only 1-2 pure dps runes on each. Most Hungering Arrow runes could need a rework, and if all the generators would be buffed to 5 hatred baseline, people might consider running utility runes over pure 6-7 hatred runes. At the very least, buffing the proc chance on Bola Shot – Bitter Pill is in order, given that the reason for its weakness is long gone. Also, I don't understand why Bola Shot – Freezing Strike scatters in such a huge cone, it was perfectly fine back when it was still a poison skill. Skills like these or Cold Grenade or Evasive Fire – Hardened are exactly what we need, if they weren't regenerating so little hatred.

New Generator Bracers:
Much needed item with the new changes to perma CC and the focus on survivability / tankability. It really helps to keep the DH alive, and combined with the new belt, options like Reaper's Wraps become less required anyway. Currently the bracers feel a little too mandatory, but if there are no plans to further increase DH survivability in any meaningful way, they seem to do the job well. Nevertheless, again it doesn't work with Kridershot so far. Even if the Ball Lightning builds shouldn't become mandatory for pushing (which I hope they won't), it should work with the Krider effect, otherwise this bow will probably be completely forgotten, and most build opportunities made possible by the cube will go to waste.

New Spike Trap Hand-Crossbow:
While we don't have access to this yet, I'm not sure what to think about this new crossbow. Of all the sets we would have to go with Natalya to actually get anything out of Spike Traps, and Natalya heavily relies on smooth RoV cycling (which also does crazy amounts of damage). I'm not sure how the Sticky Traps will behave in the end, numbers-wise it seems at least worth trying depending on exact mechanics (e.g. will the Sticky Traps jump back and forth indefinitely between two targets? I can't imagine that, but it's more or less the kind of power level we would need), but I have a feeling we are going to be disappointed.

Old Items

Embodiment of the Marauder:
This set could need a couple of buffs. In the end, it will all come down to Cluster Arrow anyway, since there is not really a point in running Multishot or Elemental Arrow with it. It just feels and looks so cool when you have 5 sentries shooting Cluster Arrows at your enemies from all directions. In any case, it's far too weak. We need one extra passive and the quiver effect, and then also the Ballistics or Grenadier depending on rune choice. Also, the Boar Companion doesn't even come close to the UE or Natalya damage reductions, but considering the pets can tank for us a little bit, that should be fine. Seeing one or two new items that go along with it would be awesome (maybe a Tall Man's Finger like item which lets us build one monstrous sentry that follows us around like a tank?)

The Shadow's Mantle:
I'm disappointed that we have seen no rework of this set. Patch 2.2 brought sweeping changes for basically any class because of the new set, instead Demon Hunters get basically nothing. While it's true that we have been blessed in the past, seeing that this one is not getting reworked honestly surprised me. The legendary items we're getting are cool and feel well balanced already, however they don't offer entirely new playstyles, they rather just fix things (like hatred and survivability). After seeing the changes to Spike Trap, I was hoping that the Shadow's Mantle would go along with it. Or, given the name of the set, I was hoping to finally see a melee / knives / ninja oriented set for the DH (maybe even let us wield a special dagger in the offhand with it). Or maybe a reworked Shadow Power + Vengeance set similar to Akkhan's.

2-piece weapon set reworks:
While many other classes have seen their weapon sets reworked, Demon Hunters have not been touched, but that's fine. Danetta's has its uses and should not be changed. It's not top tier GR stuff, but it's used for everything that requires you to be quick, and is generally good utility, especially now that we have the cube. However, seeing new weapon sets in the future would be amazing: Why not Bow + Quiver for example?

Chanon Bolter:
I haven't tested it specifically, but I was told it does work even after full DR on crowd control. Not sure if this is intended, but since it has its own cooldown, it makes sense, and actually the diminishing return affect it would make it completely useless anyway. Since the game has become very fast-paced, especially in groups, the cooldown on the taunt could be reduced a little to bring more group utility to the table.

Wojahnni Assaulter:
Neat idea, but there's nothing to support the item. It could work just fine with Natalya, at least in the old perma CC meta, if it could produce some kind of overlap between the attacks. Maybe increase the maximum stack size slightly and let them drop off by 1 per second instead of removing it all after moving. This would let us cast RoV and dodge things here and there while keeping the damage high. Other than that, the Rapid Fire skill could need some baseline AoE effects (maybe make the pierce baseline), but the Bombardment rune should do fine if there should ever be a buff to this weapon.

Omryn's Chain:
I really like this build since it has been introduced, but it's just plain useless. High greater rift pushing is the only sufficiently slow-paced environment it would work in, but it needs some offensive capabilities for that. I think adding a random rune effect either on the affix or on every proc would make for a good idea. Or, what I like best, is having it cycle through all the runes: We would get the 80% slow, followed by the 2sec immobilize, followed by two pretty much worthless runes, and in the end we get the precious 10% crit chance. After that, it starts anew. Since Natalya doesn't really want to use Vault and UE loses damage doing so, it seems like a balanced choice that would make for interesting itemization and gameplay decisions.

Envious Blade:
It's a really fun item to use (cube) and could potentially spark many cool speedbuild ideas, if it only wasn't that clunky to use. The fantasy of having a really strong first strike against an unwary enemy has something to it, but in actual gameplay, it's just not really working out. Especially in parties you always have someone damaging the enemy, like a support running in front of the group, and then it's at 98% and the effect won't work anymore, or you have a random environment effect damaging the monster, or you wolf companion hits it once, or it gets damaged by a random tick of Wreath of Lightning etc. If the threshold was set to 90% hp, it would definitely increase the viability of the weapon / cube effect.

Shi Mizu's Haori:
We have seen a full season of exploiting this item (100% crit Monk in trials) already, and before that it has never been and after that probably never will be used again. The mechanic is very cool but far too clunky to use, I suggest to change it to directly scale with hp, e.g. starting at 100% hp you gain 5% crit chance (so that actually dodging and surviving doesn't feel incredibly unrewarding), and then scale up to +50-70% the closer you get to zero hp. I'm sure a change like this would open up a lot of interesting build choices for basically all classes, and breathe some fresh air into the armor slots department, which usually is dominated by Cindercoat, Hexing Pants and the like.

Odyssey's End:
With a free Calamity for everyone (thanks to the cube), the 20-25% damage boost is far too low. I think changing it to 30-35% would make using the Entangling Shot sufficiently rewarding and at least make people consider it over Calamity. It only works on 2-4 targets for a very small time frame with only one specific skill, while Calamity is applied on everything on the first hit with any ability and lasts for basically the entire fight without needing you to think about it. Buffing the bow is definitely justified.

Rimeheart:
This weapon needs to be reworked. Freeze is basically banished from the game now, and even considering a permanently frozen target the damage is atrociously low. I suggest to make it work with chilled targets, or tie it to casting a cold spell instead.

2h Crossbows:
All of the special crossbows could need a buff, especially the Hellrack. It's a very exciting effect, and with the CC changes, things like this should be promoted a little by bypassing the crowd control resistance, and maybe adding a useful damage effect on top of that.

Reworked Izzucob:
Well, it's better than nothing, and at least adds something to a previously worthless weapon, which is always a gain. It might fuel some knive-heavy build fantasies along with the Sash of Knives, so I guess it has its uses, and might be a cool item to find in low end content.

Oculus Ring:
Other than on followers and some support classes I have never seen this item in use. If anything, it should proc on hit, not on kill, and then have a sufficient uptime. For solo, it's just too weak, even if we could have it for 100% of the time, however for groups it might become viable, and would enable semi support / semi dps roles.

St. Archew's Gage:
I was toying around with this item a little bit, thanks to the cube. I'd really like to make use of it, however its one-time-only mechanic is super clunky and just plain terrible. We need a way to reset the effect in long fights, similar to the Molten Wildebeest gem, I wouldn't mind seeing a nerf on the amount absorbed to compensate.

My overall impression of patch 2.3 so far

I think the game is heading into a good direction. Farming content is going to become a lot more fun with Kanai's Cube and more class diversity, and high end greater rift pushing is a lot more engaging and challenging than before, especially in groups. Removing RNG from item drops is also a very good idea to even out the competition and prevent frustration from unlucky players. The crowd control changes will shake up group play and will require further rebalancing of the rifts and especially the reflect affix. In any case, high end content should be more rewarding to narrow the gap between speedfarming and pushing, and rift fishing needs to be addressed.

Demon Hunters specifically seem to be in a fairly good spot right now, but will probably be a lot more difficult to play than most other classes. As such, they should be rewarded for doing well by being able to dish out good dps and bringing sufficient party buffs. Depending on what the devs want the solo and group end-of-season clears to be like, I think DH is neither undertuned nor overtuned right now. Natalya seems to fall behind UE a little bit with the new Multishot bow, but it will likely remain a viable endgame choice competing with the set, we'll have to wait for a fix to Leoric's Crown and the new Spike Trap weapon. Depending on changes to the new generator items, we might also see lightning again, and M6 is still far behind. In any case, group play has a much higher skill cap, both in terms of survival and dps. For the latter, cycling Focus and Restraint, Taeguk, Convention of Elements and possibly even Hexing Pants all at once is lots of fun and really requires you to be on your toes, I'm looking forward to doing that on live.

As usually, I'm not going to bother with farming too much on the PTR, since it just takes too long and takes away from other things I could to on live or IRL. It would be much easier if we could just get all the items from Kadala with a 100% legendary rate and infinite blood shards or something. Still, I want to push solo and groups a little more (which is difficult enough at 250ms latency), and I will report back again at a later point, probably after we have seen the next iteration of greater rift changes and the new S4 items.

Hey everyone,

last night Empyrian and I rose up to the challenge to try the very unusual combo of Barb + DH in 2 player. The main difference to the regular Wiz/DH + WD/Crus setups is the missing permanent CC both during the rift and for the rift guardian, which makes for very exciting gameplay because it requires a completely different level of coordination during the runs. One thing that many people complain about is the need for perma CC to be able to reach high rift tiers in groups, and this may be a first look at what things will be like after it will finally be removed in patch 2.3. Obviously many more things will change (as we will probably also see a rebalancing of damage taken inside GRs, as well as massive power creep to make sure we can go higher after the patch than we can do now, and obviously all the new class sets and items), which will make things completely different in the end. Nevertheless, both of us can only encourage everyone to go and try out some unusual combos like this, it's a lot of fun to play, and a very refreshing experience in general.

Even if it is not top notch, I guess that ~tier 60 can be done with basically any class combination in 2man (this one was pushed to 63 already by DutchFreak and Xemio on the EU servers a couple hours later). Considering that the top clears will probably cap out at ~68/69 this season, this is likely not going to be rank 1 material, but it's certainly viable to push into the mid 60s. We only did a couple of runs and in almost all of them we (could) have spawned the RG with a couple of minutes left, going for a more aggressive setup (e.g. running fire RoV instead of cold) will tremendously shorten fight duration in easy rifts, and in the end you can always gamble for a Stonesinger + Power Pylon and kill it off in 2 min even at tier 65 or something. We're definitely looking forward to push higher at a later point and see where we will cap out with it.

Both of us streamed and recorded the run, so you can watch it from both point of views. Enjoy: Barb PoV | DH PoV

Barb Profile | Empyrian's Livestream

Spreadsheet demonstration

Spreadsheet download

[Introduction]

Hi everyone! So you might remember my post back in the beginning of 2.1.2 where I outlined why the physical element is superior to cold for the M6 CA build, and which also helped to spark the whole Taeguk + Hexing Pants meta. Back then I used a spreadsheet that I had created to math out the differences between each build and compare different item and skill choices. Now, I have updated it for 2.2.0 and polished it, so that it is in a state that can give approximate results for almost any situations and rift layout, including runtime, buffs, cooldowns, number of enemies, number of elite packs, area damage procs etc., and I also decided to release it for public use this time.

I have also uploaded a video on my Youtube channel where I go over the how the spreadsheet works and how I concluded my results here if you want to check that out. Obviously it's a little bit difficult to model everything in a spreadsheet like this, and not all of the numbers are exactly accurate. Other than that, just reading this post should be more or less enough to give you an understanding of relative strength of the builds and item preferences.

When it comes to the actual damage values in the spreadsheet, I have tried to model fights versus different amounts of monsters and the fact that you will not hit everything all the time. This was done by assigning a share of your total time spent in the rift to each monster group size and then calculating approximate values for total damage done per skill use for every increment. I feel that the numbers I used are a little bit too generous towards large groups for your average rift but should be more or less adequate for very dense dream rifts (remember we're talking about "optimization" here). Also, I divided the sheet dps by 1 million to make the numbers more readable. No matter if my "rift calculation" is correct or not, you will still have the exact same stat weighs (other than area damage obviously) because those are not influenced by it.

General assumptions for the spreadsheet are a high-end character with the following stats:

• Paragon 800
• Rank 70 gems
• 11000 dexterity
• Max rolls on everything
• Dex, CC, CHD, socket on Hellfire and rings
• Full glass cannon

I have also run the numbers on a lower geared character, but the relative strength of the builds / item choices won't really change if you just have lower dex / gems / weapon damage etc, just the total damage done decreases. If you have really crappy items (e.g. you miss 2-3 full RCR or CC rolls and have vitality instead), the missing stats will obviously become more desirable. For every other setup the following numbers are what you can expect to see in the game as well.

My general conclusion is that this time around, there are many "if's" because the numbers are fairly close, and a lot will depend on your rift composition. To give you a couple of examples, getting a power pylon will decrease the benefit of Calamity and Marked for Death but favors Balefire and crossbows. Similarly, a channeling pylon will favor the faster weapons. For Windforce, you want to have rifts with big monsters that can be knockbacked, for Leonine you want to have very dense rifts where you can get insane area damage procs.

[Convention of Elements + Hexing Pants vs. Focus + Restraint]

It's pretty clear that Focus + Restraint win by a large margin. For the record, other combinations than CoE + Mr Yan / Pride's / Cindercoat are not even worth considering if you don't want to use F+R (yes, Manald Heal is shit for UE). In the updated version of the spreadsheet, I added Convention of Elements (assuming a flat multiplicative 50% damage increase, yes you can time it, but you will also have a lot of wasted procs because you might just kill stuff in 1-2 seconds with nothing left on the screen) instead of a Stone of Jordan, which makes double Unity even worse (20-30% less than CoE). Depending on setup, F+R are about 25-40% stronger than any other combinations (50-80% more than double Unity + Hexing Pants). Since we have less resources to work with, F+R favor fast weapons with high dps, which makes crossbows seem to be about 5% worse than Bows and 10% worse than Balefire / Calamity if you have equally rolled weapons (meaning relative to the maximum possible roll, a 3000dps crossbow will still be more or less on par with a 3000dps Calamity). Because we don't use Pride's Fall / Hexing Pants anymore, we will have to regenerate a lot more, thus putting more emphasis on attack speed rather than passive reg, companion use or globes.

[Slow weapons vs. fast weapons]

So back in my old post I was talking about how strong bows and Calamity seem to be, however in practice they have never turned out to be better (or were just about even) and everyone still went with crossbows (also due to easy availability of near perfect rolls by crafting Arcane Barbs). Well, first of all I found and corrected something in the spreadsheet that was favoring faster weapons by a few %, but most importantly it comes down to how effectively you can spend your passively generated hatred. Imagine the following scenario: You don't have any hatred regen, no Templar, no health globes and no skills that regenerate hatred; what's left is the hatred you regenerate from shooting generators and nothing else. Let's say you need to cast two generators in order to cast one spender, so you can cycle 2 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 1 indefinitely. In this scenario, your attack speed will not have any influence whatsoever on the cycle, and the only metric that will define your damage is weapon DPS. Since this is not a realistic scenario, it is all about how you can spend the leftover hatred from all the things I have excluded before. The higher the share of this passive regen, the better the slower weapons become (since they have better damage per hatred spent ratios). You can see an example of this in the video.

[M6 Cold vs. Phys]

For those of you who still want to run M6 for whatever reason, you should know that you are deliberately lowering your potential by 1-2 tiers, it just can't keep up with the other builds, and even for nonseason there is a stronger UE non-lightning build. Still, it has some better defensive value, mostly because your companions help you here and there and because you can kite enemies offscreen a lot easier if you can watch your sentries shooting at them from a distance, plus reflect is easier to deal with or you can hide behind a corner and still deal damage in dangerous situations.

Iceblink brings the cold Cluster build a lot closer to the physical build, to the point where they seem more or less the same. Cold has a higher luck range if you get only few and easy elites and Stonesinger, while physical should be more consistent. I guess that on 56+ the rift guardian will be a huge problem for cold, so physical might pull ahead regardless, also keep in mind that pylons used on the RG will be a lot more effective with physical. Enforcer, Gogok and BotP are still crap (7-12% worse) and if you want to play M6 on nonseason you should really stick to the Taeguk. With Iceblink, you should always use Spitfire Turret.

The best passives to use are Awareness, Ballistics, Custom Engineering, Cull the Weak, Night Stalker (5th). I strictly recommend using a Hellfire Amulet with this set because all of the passives are very strong and you don't want to miss any. Other options for the 5th passive are (in that order): Steady Aim, Single Out, Ambush, Archery.

For groups, Cluster Bombs might still have a spot if you have someone who can spawn many globes for you, but it will probably not outperform either UE fire or lightning.

My current estimate is that M6 (Cold or Phys) will clear tier 56-59 solo.

[Unhallowed Essence Fire]

All of the special bows (Windforce, Leonine, Odyssey) seem to be about on par with Calamity / Balefire and they all bring their own strengths. For Windforce, using Steady Strikers or Strongarm should be about equally strong. Leonine can shine in dense rifts with lots of slow monsters, however you probably want to use sentries to reliably proc the slow. Odyssey's End might shine at the top end (56+) because it can speed up your RG kill enormously, but will be a lot more difficult to use during the rift (since you want to use sentries for slow and use Mortal Enemy). Cluckeye only has a marginal damage bonus, but the added benefit from the stun is also nice to have.

Other than that, the 1h Crossbows seem to be the strongest options raw dmg wise. Given equal rolls, Calamity and Balefire are more or less the same, if you have fire% on your amulet Calamity wins out by a few %, also keep in mind that in groups you will buff others with Calamity as well. Also, a somewhat hidden champion might be Kridershot with Immolation Arrow + Mortal Enemy + Ess of Johan. It's behind numbers wise, but I feel that it is underrated in the spreadsheet and it could turn out to be insane if you can play it well.

In addition to Evasive Fire - Focus, Multishot - Arsenal, Preparation - Invigoration and Vault - Tumble, it seems preferable to use Companion - Bat + Vengeance - Seethe for crossbows, Bat + Marked for Death - Mortal Enemy for Bows and Caltrops - Bait the Trap + Mortal Enemy for 1h crossbows. All of the choices are pretty close (within 1-5%, except Seethe for fast weapons), so you can experiment a little. If you want to run fire in groups, Bait the Trap and Mortal Enemy should be the best for every weapon type.

For nonseason, Chakram with Spines of Seething Hatred presents a viable alternative (1-2 tiers lower than DML, and about the same level as the strongest M6 setups). I have only done the numbers for the fire Chakram, but the cold one should be more or less the same (plus you can use Iceblink instead of Polar Station). For crossbows, you can also use Chakram - Shuriken Cloud and macro it to cast automatically all the time. I have tried it manually and managed to cast it about 100 times per minute for an extra 400 hatred, in a full rift that's 6000 hatred and is more or less the same In general, for the generator-heavy builds (Chakram / Elemental Arrow), dropping all RCR in favor of better damage stats (IAS, Elite, AD) is preferred (up to 2-3% more dps per item). Chakram specifically profits a lot from the higher attack speed of one-handed crossbows, which makes it the only case where you prefer a regular 1h over a crossbow.

As for passives, the best to use are: Awareness, Cull the Weak, Ballistics, Night Stalker. 5th passive is Steady Aim or Ambush, they are really close. Ambush is behind by about 2% with a 60% DML affix and might become better because you will deal slightly more damage in reality, especially when enemies don't have much life, and you will also profit a lot more from power pylons. At the high end, it might be preferable to use Single Out because you will have to spend a lot of time on the RG.

My current estimate is that UE Fire will clear tier 57-60 solo.

[Unhallowed Essence Lightning]

It comes to no surprise that the UE Lightning build with Kridershot is a clear winner dps-wise. Due to the nature of the Ball Lightning skill it is very hard to model so the numbers are just a very rough estimation and don't take into account different monster sizes etc. I have done the numbers for a Hellfire Amulet and an Ess of Johan with equal rolls, funny enough they are basically exactly the same (0.1% difference). Since there are so many variables to it I didn't try to exactly reproduce its damage capabilities, but the numbers seem about right compared to M6 and UE fire (approximately 60-100% stronger). I have a feeling that the Ess of Johan is vastly underrated in the spreadsheet and will eventually pull ahead because you have a higher luck range and can get insane area damage procs if you manage to pull a lot of monsters. Also, this build is likely going to be one where you can see a really noticeable difference between season and nonseason because of the Iceblink gem (should be approx. 5-15% stronger). The increased potency of the slow is going to yield a lot of damage (which I calculated very conservatively) because of more ticks (on top of easier kiting), frees up another skill slot and requires you to cast a MS only once every 3.5 sec (Iceblink duration) instead of 3 sec (Taeguk duration). With Taeguk, you should use sentries to proc the slow (% chance to slow secondary on pants helps) and add Marked for Death - Contagion to it. With Iceblink, I think Rain of Vengeance - Flying Strike could be a good choice (especially with Ess of Johan), otherwise you can push the limits with Caltrops - Bait the Trap. Be aware that actually finishing a rift in time will require tremendous amounts of RNG. You will need to fish a lot of rifts to actually find one where all the stars align (good monster types, easy packs, good RG, good pylons). Since Blizzard has removed basically all of the defensive abilities this build relied on in the past, M6 and UE fire are a lot more consistent.

In high-end groups, a lot of the time will be spent on the rift guardian. Iceblink will have no more additional value because of a better slow, so what is left is solely the 10% crit chance which is a little bit underwhelming by itself. I suggest to use BotP, since you generally have a higher incentive to kill elites in group runs and will get more procs. At the high end you will spend a lot of the time on the RG, which is why you have to maximize your damage there, which makes Single Out pretty much mandatory. The 15% elite bonus from BotP is very close to a high Taeguk even without the proc. Also, you should not have higher than 55% sheet crit chance if you run with a Crusader because you will cap out at 100% (20% Judgment, 25% Single Out, 10% Bait the Trap). My numbers suggest that a high-end DH will deal approximately 15-25 billion dps on a typical RG.

A perfect Thundergod's Vigor is close to a perfect WH (0.5-2% off) depending on your crit values, and for solo a Strongarm with secondary rerolled to knockback is likely preferable.

The best passives to use are Awareness, Cull the Weak, Steady Aim, Single Out, Ambush (5th).

My current estimate is that UE Lightning will clear tier 60-62 solo.

[Natalya]

Unfortunately I couldn't include the Natalya set in the spreadsheet, the most important reason being that we don't even have a finalized build for it yet. In the last couple of days people have made huge progress (up to tier 55), so there are some good builds already, however I think there is still a lot to discover and that some of the set's potential is still unused. I'm very excited to try it out myself once I can start pushing solo, I have lots of ideas that want to be tested. For now, it's best to just keep all of your good Natalya pieces and anything that might go with it.

However, I can still state what there is to know about Natalya currently: F+R seem preferable. Strafe + a generator is very good to reduce the cooldown of Rain of Vengeance, you can hold down your force attack button, keep strafing and hit your generator button manually whenever you can. Cooldown is a very strong stat, a lot stronger than e.g. RCR for other builds. N6 works for any damage including gems and conduit pylon, both N4 and N6 are multiplicative bonuses and also work for your Crashing Rain belt. The belt summons a crashing beast (very short visual effect) with a small AoE effect that looks similar to one of the Stampede rune at the position of your cursor and uses the same element as your selected RoV rune. Both Crashing Rain and RoV (and Fan of Knives) use only your main hand (left weapon slot), so you don't need %damage (or any damage roll at all if you don't care about generator / Strafe damage) on your offhand.

My current estimate is that Natalya will clear tier 57-62 solo.

[Reroll preferences]

Here is some general information about what you look for on your items (if it hasn't been specified before already).

• Generally, you get RCR on every item you can, excluding jewelry, and add area damage on shoulders.
• On rings, Avg Dmg instead of CC or dexterity is about 4-5% weaker on crossbows and up to 1-4% better on 1h crossbows, and more or less the same for bows. Keep in mind that in parties you will probably cap crit chance on the RG with Single Out, Bait the Trap and Judgment. RCR is also an option for crossbows (1-2% weaker).
• For the UE builds you can basically drop any CDR because it is almost useless. Only take it if you want to go full glass cannon (and even then having some more toughness might be helpful for Plagued and Desecrator). Removing all of the CDR (gem, paragon, shoulders) is a 1-2% dmg loss with Bat Companion, 3-4% if you use both Bat Companion and Seethe. I recommend to drop it completely if you use MfD and Caltrops.
• Elemental damage is better than dexterity or CC on amulet, up to 5-10%. Probably even a 15% roll is preferable. Ancient dex value might be close.
• IAS instead of RCR is an option for 1h crossbows (1-2% weaker) and preferred for Kridershot and Spines of Seething Hatred.
• Dropping Multishot damage on quiver for hatred / elite / area damage is a 3-6% damage loss. Dropping RCR for hatred is a 0.5-2% damage loss (keep in mind you can vault more with RCR).
• Steady Strikers / Lacuni Prowlers can be better than Reaper's Wraps if you don't get many globes.
• For UE lightning, I recommend elite bonus as your last primary, especially for groups. Area damage is fine as well.

[FAQ]

Q: Dafaq is this sh*t? You can't math everything out.

A: Take it or leave it.

Q: What are additive and multiplicative damage bonuses, and how do they work?

A: Additive means that stacking more of the same damage bonus (e.g. "Damage Increased By Skills" in the extended sheet tab) will have diminishing returns. If you have 0% bonus and add 20% to that, you will deal 20% more damage. If you add another 20%, you will only deal 140/120 = 16,67% more damage relative to that. There are different damage categories that are additive within itself but multiplicative as a whole. For DHs, the relevant calculations go like this (exclude those that you are not using):

((Weapon Min Dmg + Avg Min Dmg) + (((Weapon Max Dmg + Avg Max Dmg) – (Weapon Min Dmg + Avg Min Dmg)) / 2)) [Average Weapon Damage] x ((100 + Dexterity) / 100) x ((CC / 100) x ((100 + CHD) / 100) + (1 – CC / 100)) x (1 + Elemental Bonus / 100) x ((Steady Aim (20) + Skill bonuses (generally 45) + Taeguk (((10 + (Rank / 2)) / 100) x expected uptime) + Calamity (20) + Hexing Pants (25) + Strongarms (20-30) + Bane of the Powerful Proc (20 x expected uptime) + Marked for Death (15 or 20) + Archery [Bow] (8) + Power Pylon (300) + almost any party buff) / 100) [Visible and hidden "Damage Increased By Skills"] x Cull the Weak (1,2) x Ambush ((1+(1/((0,25/140)+(0,75/100))-100)/100)) x (1 + Bane of the Trapped / 100) x (1 + Zei's / 100) x (1 + (Elite Damage on gear + Bane of the Powerful Passive) / 100) [If fighting Elites] x Focus (1,5) x Restraint (1,5) x (1 + Convention of Elements Bonus / 400) x (Skill Weapon Damage / 100) = Average Damage per Hit

Bait the Trap, Iceblink, Archery, Sharpshooter, Single Out, Judgment are just added to the CC / CHD numbers. CC can exceed the 75% cap with those skills and vanilla SoJ bonuses.

For skills that are not your main spender, you have to divide by (1 + your full "Damage Increased By Skills"), subtract (Skill bonuses / 100), and then multiply it by the remainder.

For skills that are not your main element, you have to divide by (1 + Elemental Bonus / 100).

Attack speed is Weapon Speed x (IAS on Weapon / 100) x ((Combined IAS bonuses from gear and paragon + Gogok + Law + Voodoo) / 100).

For M6, add "x 6" for personal damage, and "x 5 x (1 + Sentry Bonus / 100) / (1 + Elemental Bonuses / 100) x (1 + (Elemental Bonuses x Enforcer Bonus) / 100)" for sentries.

For UE, add "x (1 + (current discipline x 15 / 100)) x (1 + 20 / 100)", for Multishot, add "x (1 / ((1 – DML Affix / 100) + (DML Affix / 200))" to Multishot damage, "x 2" to the rockets of Arsenal, for Ball Lightning, add "x (100 / Meticulous Affix)" to Elemental Arrow damage.

For N6, add "x 5", for RoV, add "x 2"

Q: For UE, is it ever worth to reroll anything other than +max discipline if the item doesn't have it?

A: No.

Q: What is the Iceblink duration, and how does it work?

A: Duration is 3.5 seconds and it works multiplicatively (60% slow x (1 + Iceblink Bonus / 100)) for up to 75% slow on rank 50. OP stuff. Purely damage-wise, it is a few % behind Taeguk, however this doesn't include the fact that you don't have to waste some hatred here and there to keep up the buff and that it will be a lot easier to pull more monsters, so I added a flat 5% damage increase on top of the 10% CC and this made Iceblink come out on top.

Q: Which gems should I use?

A: Bane of the Trapped and Zei's cannot be debated. For solo, add Iceblink (season) or Taeguk (nonseason). As a rule of thumb, you can drop Taeguk once per elite pack, otherwise use Bane of the Powerful. For groups, adding Bane of the Powerful is generally the best choice. For T6, Boon of the Hoarder will outrun Bane of the Trapped. For speed runs, Bane of the Powerful is the best third gem.

Q: Why Vault over Smoke Screen?

A: Smoke Screen was crap before and now has become even crappier. It's easier to use for most affixes, but you have very little mobility and can neither skip enemies nor rush ahead and pull more, effectively slowing down your progression. Especially with the Unhallowed Essence set we will be skipping a lot more than with M6 because we have so much more discipline to spend, which further favors Vault. In addition to that, given correct timing, you can evade every attack in the game save for Vortex (about half of the time) and Molten (ground effect) if you don't use Tactical Advantage.

Q: How will I get high keys for solo runs?

A: Last season you could get up to tier 52 keys in solo trials, I guess now it should be up to 56-58 (but it will be very difficult and inefficient). If you have trouble with that, just join a community (e.g. "High Level Trials" on EU).

[FAQ Part 2]

Q: Should I use a nonancient Kridershot with lightning over another ancient weapons?

A: I would not recommend to do so. Lightning requires huge RNG to complete a high-level greater rift. If you enjoy the play style, you can definitely do that, generally using a nonancient weapon will be a 2-2.5 tiers loss, which puts lightning more or less on par with the fire setups (with ancient weapons). For groups, a nonancient Kridershot probably will still outperform anything else (excluding Natalya).

Q: What procs the slow?

A: I assumed different skills for different setups and just took the numbers that showed the highest results. In general, Iceblink + Evasive Fire should be enough to proc the slow on the most important targets. Keep in mind that because Evasive Fire does not pierce, you will have some trouble to slow large monster groups, however you will also see another added benefit of having more area damage procs because you always slow the closest enemies first, thus effectively stackign them up as they follow you. For Taeguk setups (nonseason), I assumed Polar Station to proc the slow, just like for the Chakram and Immolation Arrow setups.

Q: I have a 3300 Arcane Barb and a 3300 Calamity with the same dex and discipline values, which one should I take?

A: In this case it's pretty clear that the Calamity is better, the reason being that you lose one primary on your Arcane Barb. For the spreadsheet, I always assumed you would have RCR on your weapon, a 3300 AB obviously has Dmg + IAS, which is worse than RCR. All of the differences assume equally well rolled weapons as a % of the maximum rolls. Having a 3000 dps Arcane Barb and a 3000 dps Calamity with equal stats will favor the AB because your Calamity rolled like crap.

Q: I have a 3200 dps Bow and a 3100 dps Crossbow with almost equal stats, which should I use?

A: The crossbow. Generally, your Bow has to have about 5% more dps to break even, Calamity and Balefire are pretty close if they have a only a little more dps as your crossbow. To be safe, I'd use them if they are 50-100 dps higher.

Q: Should I roll +3 discipline or 10% damage on a weapon? How about +3 discipline vs. 15% Multishot on a quiver? Isn't it +45% damage?

A: In both cases you will not want to roll discipline to a higher value. The discipline damage bonus is additive with itself, i.e. if you already have 75 discipline (1125% damage bonus) and you make it 78 (1170%), you will only see a 4% damage increase. Same goes for Multishot damage, which is also additive with itself and other "Damage Increased By Skills"-type buffs (see calculation above), but you will have much less of that, so adding 15% will have a much bigger impact. 10% weapon damage is a flat 10% increase to all of your damage.

Q: Is it worth to dual-wield if you can't have a DML on nonseason?

A: An offhand weapon would have to yield at least 30-40% more damage, which is very difficult to get. You can try, but I haven't run the numbers and I can't see it being better than DML, but it could be more or less equal to some M6 setups if you have really good weapons (like Ancient Balefire and Ancient Calamity).

Q: What about Frost Arrow for Kridershot?

A: I haven't run the numbers for that, but generally I would assume that it is a little bit behind the crossbows, but still usable if you like to.

[FAQ Part 3]

Q: What are the maximum weapon rolls?

A: With 10% damage only: 2h Crossbow 3160 dps, Bow 3432 dps, 1h Crossbow 3436 dps.

Including 7% attack speed: 2h Crossbow 3382 dps, Bow 3673 dps, 1h Crossbow 3676 dps.

Q: Which skill setups do you think are the best for fire UE depending on weapon type?

A: Baseline: Evasive Fire - Focus, Multishot Arsenal, Preparation - Invigoration, Vault - Tumble

Crossbow: Companion - Bat, Vengeance - Seethe

Bows: Like Crossbow, or Caltrops - Bait the Trap, Marked for Death - Mortal Enemy

Odyssey's End: Entangling Shot - Justice is Served, Sentry - Polar Station, Marked for Death - Mortal Enemy

Leonine Bow with Iceblink: Bola Shot - Freezing Strike, Caltrops - Bait the Trap, Companion - Bat. Rain of Vengeance - Flying Strike could also be a good choice because you can use it right after you get a good pull.

Leonine Bow without Iceblink: Bola Shot - Thunderball, Sentry - Polar Station, Marked for Death - Mortal Enemy

Kridershot with Ess of Johan: Elemental Arrow - Immolation Arrow, Sentry - Polar Station, Marked for Death - Mortal Enemy

Kridershot without Ess of Johan: Elemental Arrow - Frost Arrow, Caltrops - Bait the Trap, Marked for Death - Mortal Enemy

1h Crossbows: Caltrops - Bait the Trap, Marked for Death - Mortal Enemy

For nonseason, you cannot use Iceblink, so you will have to slow with Templar, Caltrops, Sentry - Polar Station or Entangling Shot (for those combinations where it's not specifically listed).

Q: What is the damage difference between a 50% and a 60% DML, given equal stats?

A: Going from 50% to 60% on the DML affix will be approximately a 7,15% damage increase, about 8% with ambush.

Q: What is the damage difference between a 30% and a 40% Meticulous Bolts quiver, given equal stats?

A: Going from 40% to 30% on the Meti affix will be approximately a 33,33% damage increase. The slower, the better.

[TL;DW] - The spreadsheet is only a spreadsheet and no dynamic simulation after all, so results are a little bit skewed. I did my best to eliminate any errors and tried out many different combinations to find out what is best. The number displayed at the end is an estimate of the total damage done, not dps. If you want to use the spreadsheet for your own character, never edit any of the greyed out numbers, and keep in mind that the standard settings are for solo GRs. Many things are automatically included, however some things are only rough approximations (most importantly area damage) and don't take breakpoints or pylons into account. If you want to model specific situations (boss fights, longer / shorter rifts, group buffs etc.), you should edit the parameters accordingly and just manually add the buffs to your stats.

[TL;DR] - UE lightning > UE fire > M6 (Natalya probably somewhere in between) with perfect items and RNG. Focus & Restraint cannot be beaten by anything. Given equal rolls, new meta favors faster weapons because a higher share of your total hatred is produced by your generator casts. In solo rifts, Iceblink is the best third gem to use along with BotT and Zei's, for nonseason Taeguk can produce more or less similar results but is harder to use (for UE lightning, Iceblink is strictly better and a Ess of Johan will likely outperform a Hellfire). For UE fire, your weapon preferences are Calamity > Balefire > Kridershot = Windforce = Leonine = Odyssey's = Cluckeye > Regular Bow > Regular Crossbow. The 1h crossbows and special bows all are very close numbers-wise and you will see difference mostly depending on how well you can use their affixes to your advantage. Kridershot + Ess of Johan + Immolation Arrow might be underrated in the spreadsheet and could turn out to be the strongest UE fire setup. For M6, always use spitfire turret if you have Iceblink. The new meta has brought cold and physical a lot closer together, Etrayu has become the go to weapon for cold, however RG will be a huge issue in high GRs so physical might still win out at the top end (with a Calamity). Natalya might be added to the spreadsheet in the future, I left it out because there is still no finalized build yet.

Feel free to add anything I might have missed in the comments, or feedback me about my spreadsheet.

Cheers, wudijo