Disclaimer: After trolling people with my poison Chakram / Spike Trap build for a full day (I really enjoyed those guys who believed it, though), I guess it's time to resolve the mystery about what really went down on this run. So here it is:
Most of you probably have already heard of the Meticulous Bolts quiver and the potential lightning builds that arise when using it. Ever since blizzard announced this quiver on the 2.1 ptr I wanted to create a build that revolves around lightning and M6, and after some experimentation, I believe I have found the optimal build for solo play in high grifts, which basically comes down to something I like to call “Meticulous Punishment”.
The build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#RjkVXS!XiUc!aaYZZ
The idea is to keep up hatred regen via Preparation – Punishment and spam shots nearly incessantly. Because the ball lightning is moving slower, it hits the targets more often, thus dealing more damage and generating more procs. Like this, you can use the Helltrapper one-handed crossbow found in Act V bounties, which allows you to offset the loss of Bombadiers Rucksack by spawning up to two more sentries nearly instantaneously upon entering a fight. The second benefit of these procs, and perhaps even more importantly, is the huge amount of discipline that you can regenerate using the Night Stalker passive. This doesn’t work so well on single targets, however on huge packs of 10 or more monsters you’ll basically need just one or two shots in order to refill all of your discipline, which in turn lets you chain smoke screen nearly indefinitely. You will need to tightly manage your resources in order not to run out of hatred or discipline, because otherwise you will most likely be dead at the spot. Aside from the effectiveness of this build, it’s also great fun as well, as you are forced into attacking actively yourself and not rely on sentries entirely. It’s a really engaging play style that offers a most welcome variation to the Demon Hunter class.
The biggest downside to this build is the huge amount of internet traffic and graphical clutter it creates, which oftentimes leads to gigantic lags. With a fully stacked Gogok of Swiftness gem I am sitting at around 42% cooldown reduction, which sometimes still is not enough to ensure a permanent uptime of smoke screen in really intense situations even though you’ll just need 25% theoretically (2.0 sec CD, 1.5 sec duration). This issue becomes even bigger when playing in a party. It’s still good in two player parties for the most part, but after that it becomes worse really quickly, leaving the build basically unusable in four player rifts. Even at night time, we sometimes encountered massive lag spikes of up to 2 minutes, including disconnects and game crashes. The same problem arises even in solo when fighting electrified packs, as they spawn such huge amounts of lightning bolts that basically the whole screen gets covered not only in your but also in their blue light show, and the game stops reacting to anything you do, leading to instant death. It might work a little bit better now that electrified cannot proc as often anymore, but it remains to be seen.
The items:
The two most prominent items of this build: Meticulous Bolts and Helltrapper. Other than that, you will want to use a Lacuni or Steady Strikers, a Witching Hour, Hellfire or Xephirian Amulet as well as the typical M6 + TnT.
My items: http://imgur.com/Xh8HPkg,mWafQ1H#0
My stats: http://imgur.com/Xh8HPkg,mWafQ1H#1
As you can see, I have fairly suboptimal items mostly, and there’s still much room for improvement. Optimally, the weapon would have %dmg, %ias and dex, and the quiver 30% travel speed, %elemental arrow, %crit, %cdr, dex and +max disc. Additionally, I have a really bad Hellfire Amulet, okayish SoJ and a bad RoRG, losing out on ~150% critical hit damage (by dropping crit chance on rings), but I can’t seem to get any better ones. The reason why I recommend a Xephirian Amulet is because of the aforementioned laggy situations, and it could really help you survive on electrified packs, even though I haven’t tried it myself.
All in all, counting in an ~10% increase in dps by a better weapon, ~10-15% increase by a better quiver and another ~10-20% increase in sheet dps by having better stats on items, I see this build going up to 48 solo without pylons in a near-perfect rift like I had one (assuming perfect gameplay and next to no deaths). Add in one or two pylons and the game is on; I’m fairly excited to see where this will end.
The run:
With the advent of leaderboards and me consistently getting top rankings, I naturally got many requests from friends and clan mates to stream them, so a few nights ago I actually rebooted my stream that I once set up when DH in Torment 6 still was really underrepresented. The run was done live on stream und you can watch it there as a highlight. I also streamed my rank 1 two player rift, however at that time I wasn’t aware of the option to save my broadcasts automatically to twitch. It’s saved to my hard drive but I can’t seem to upload it, gladly taking any advice here.
For those of you who are curious: I had 11 keys in total, 4 of which I used until I managed to complete the 45 rift within 15 minutes, which was – to say the least – kind of unexpected for me and made me freak out a little towards the end (especially with Awareness gone on a boss that can oneshot you nearly instantaneously). I got a very very lucky rift, including neverending masses of zombies in an okayish layout (A5 Labyrinth). Some nasty reflect pack early on and a split up pack of blue archers nearly cost me the rift, but I was able to make it past those and actually beat it after encountering Erethon as the rift guardian. Just see for yourself
Enjoy: http://www.twitch.tv/wudijo/c/5173975
Edit: Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emwZ5zPOW3M
Edit (23/10/2014): Here's a video guide for the Helltrapper lightning build:
Twitch Link: http://www.twitch.tv/wudijo/c/5343481
Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehvaQpc-oIA
TL;DR - Go farm Helltrapper, get a Meticulous Bolts quiver and run lightning asap. It’s fun and op as f*ck. Keep it coming, guys and gals!
- Wudijo
3
Agreed. And that's the first (if not only) reason why RoS is way better than vanilla : getting rid of that idiotic AH allowed the players to focus on the important part, aka playing the game.
A fresh start appeals to a large number of people, especially when there are rankings. Lots of people used to (and some still do) play D2 ladders, for that exact reason.
Don't like it? That's your right, just don't play them. Don't get it? Your loss. Finding it stupid? Your problem
I for one enjoy the opportunity to restart a new character from scratch, without the accumulated items of god knows how many patches, and the season journey has been a welcome addition to that. The objectives are reasonably challenging and definitely achievable for a casual, non-competitive player - heck, I wish my managers could be half as good when they define my SMART objectives!
2
I don't play continuously, but I tend to return at each season beginning, spend about a month completing the season journey, and usually carry on for a week or two before boredom sets in (or, in season 4's case, until my HC pet doctor got nuked because I've gotten a tad careless).
Is the game perfect? Nope. Is it getting richer with every patch? Yup. Every suggestion that might improve the game, or endgame, or lack thereof, is good to take, and should probably be taken directly to Blizzard. On the other hand, feeling entitled to this or that kind of endgame will only lead to failed expectations and disappointment.
1
None of this addresses the real issue, which is, how in hell are we supposed to manage all the item sets with so little space?
Basically, if you want to play more than 3 classes, you need to have mules. That's not just bad design, that's plain idiotic.
Diablo is fun when you smash things or burn them to ashes. Diablo is not fun when you spend your time deciding which of your hard-earned items you're going to throw away.
If I want to spend some time cleaning house, I've got more than enough to do at home ...
1
Made my day!! Thank you
1
T10 in 3 mins is best done in a group in open areas, where everyone can go their way. If you don't have a regular group, you might have some luck in public games. I did it while farming public T10, found a good group willing to try it, and we got an excellent rift a couple tries later.
I did it myself, though I'll admit it's mostly because I couldn't be arsed spending time asking on public channels.
1
I disagree with the people who think getting to GR60 solo can be done:
- easily (or very easily)
- in 50 hours
- by a casual player
I'm sure really good players can do it easily in 50 hours.
A casual player devoting all of his resources to that single objective might conceivably achieve it, but not easily (or they're definitely not a casual player).
To chime in with the above post, I consider myself a "serious casual". I'm a middling player skill-wise, but I look up builds, guides and optimize my gear, and it took me about 80 hours to complete the season journey with my U6 monk, at around paragon 560. I couldn't have done it in 50 hours (in part because of poor drops), let alone easily.
1
Armor : Kadala + drops
Weapons : cube to get a specific weapon (upgrade rares to legs with DB and reroll targeted legs with FS) + drops
Rings : drops + occasionally Kadala
Amulets : hellfire crafts
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They came with the collector's edition of D3 (vanilla).
1
And I still haven't had a single goblin portal, no hoarding for me!
1
Also, as I said, I don't have a Tasker yet, and my Krider is 2.2k dps. Obviously, I'd like to have a perfect Krider or Etrayu, but I've never had a decent roll for either of those, so saying I should get one doesn't really help me make the best of what I do have.
Lastly, I haven't played all that much since 2.1 came out, and I already got 2 gifts. Of course, RNG is RNG, but I seem to have an easier time finding gifts than good weapons, so I'm not gonna let it rot in my stash too long