Rating
+52

Meticulous Lightning (& "ice"; soloed grift 38 sofar) DPS Marauder.

by last updated Oct 11, 2014 ( Patch 2.1 )
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Types: Lightning, Cold, Attack Speed

Skills

  • Bolas Thunder Ball
  • Elemental Arrow Ball Lightning
  • Cluster Arrow Dazzling Arrow
  • Sentry Polar Station
  • Smoke Screen Healing Vapors
  • Companion
  • Awareness
  • Perfectionist
  • Cull the Weak
  • Custom Engineering

Items

More Details

Build Guide

Introduction.

I have been testing this build since i heard about the cache drop rate buff and got myself a baller helltrapper (i think 10% chance to proc is highly recommended); the ball is so slow that even with low proc rate, it will strike enough times to proc your weapon and drop the sweet extra sentries/traps, which will make up for the loss of bombardier's rucksack.
This quiver is in fact so strong, that you can run t6 without any sentries. My current build kills elites with 1 or 2 sentries (if well positioned) in less than 5 seconds and feels much stronger than the normal cold ca/fire multishot/missiles sentry; with the bonus that you can (must) fire your weapon.

Description and strategy.

This build is all about positioning, since the lightning balls will move slowly, you will have to put them in the face of your enemies in an angle that will hit as many as possible. Your shots are very precious, the more you hit the more it will proc helltrapper sweet hability, ball lightning with this quiver has a special proc rate since it will hit many, many times on each shot. Keep in mind that the weapons generated through Helltrapper will follow you in map transitions, which is very sweet. Since you are not only focusing on dodging this build is much harder, but also much funnier, try to micro (look for animation cancel/stutterstep) to help your positioning in battles. Smoke screen and discipline on: soj, helltraper and quiver will help a lot for survival.

The skill generator is not so important, i prefer bola shot because of 6 hatred, but the proc rate is lower than entangling shot for single targets, which won't matter if you are spamming enough lightning balls. The sentry is polar station to sinergy with cull of the weak, that is why this build has the sweet taste of 2 elements instead of only 1, just like in many diablo2 builds; but it can be changed alongside the passive.

Paragon points priority:

Core: +-15% movespeed (10% extra from companion) > hatred > dex.
Offense: Atack Speed>CC=CHD>Cooldown.
Defense: Life%>AllRes>Armor>regen.
Utility: RcR>Loh=AoeDamage>GF (you can prioritize gold for t6 normal rifts)

Gear Stats Priority:

Helmet: Socket (life%)> Vit/ElementalArrowDamage = CC.
Shoulders: Sentry%> Vit> Life%=RCR>AllRes.
Torso: 3 Diamonds, Sentry%> Vit/EliteDamageReduction. (secondary: 7% ranged dmg reduction)
Legs: 2xEmeralds/Diamonds, vit, all resist/550+ armor.
Boots: ElementalArrow%>Vit>AllRes
Gloves: CC > CHD > IAS/vit (i love the 730+ vit rolls)
Amulet: CHD > CC = Socket. I think elemental immunity (arcane-jailer?- freeze are the worst atm) hellfire ammy, bt, travelers pledge...
Rings: Socket> CC=CHD. (Soj = more discipline, you can also use the Unity + Immortal Merc Combo, maybe wyrdward?)
Waist: (Defensive): Blackthorn (rorg + bt amulet) Life%>Vit>AllRes (Ofensive) Witching hour (dex/vit/ias/crit) / ThundergodVigor Life%>Vit>AllRes
Wrist: 20% Lightning>CC>IAS>Vit>Allres
Weapon: 10% damage > 7% IAS=RCR=CDR=Vit. Secondary: 10% proc on hit sentries, spiked trap, caltrops + DIscipline.
Quiver: 20%IAS=10%CC>Sentry% (or elemental arrow damage, i don't know which is better in this case)>Vit. Secondary: Discipline.
Dont forget about Dexterity! xDDD
Legendary GEMS > Bane of the Powerful, Bane of the Trapped, Enforcer... Maybe Simplicity Strenght if it synergises with Kridershot.

Pros:
Possible higher than average cold/rocket damage build Dh.
Very funny, smooth and quick pace, won't let you get sleepy on grifts.
Easy to get pass the 2.83 aps breakpoint for sentry, which i don't know if matters much because ball lightning has 0 shot cooldown anyway.
Dazzling arrow has 100% stun, so yeah, "permabash" bitch3s!
Will proc nightstalker (use this instead of perfeccionist/cull of the weak if you need more smokescreens)/loh frequently, high discipline due to Dh classic items (handbow, quiver and soj). Obs: testing it, there are momments when you get infinite discipline regen through this.
Cooldown reduction is not so important (only 3 sentries to put down through skill), focus on more life% on shoulders and helmet, for example... In fact, Can put 5 sentries down faster than the average cold dh even without cooldown reduction.
Can stack shitloads of vit and life% because smokescreen will heal you 15% total at a time.
Has one more "free" passive slot (no need of shooting stars).

Cons:
Need high ias to proc sentries.
Need a good roll on helltrapper (which is easier now due to ~99% legendary drop on t6 caches, thanks blizzard)
Harder to position yourself/your sentries and to avoid damage while doing so.
Vulnerable to reflect damage elites since your ball lightnings will keep hitting for long after you shoot them.
May be unlucky and not proc the extra sentries, which is unlikely for long battles if you are doing it correctly.

I have seen people with uskand and Kridershot for this build, which i don't think will surpass the extra 2 sentries and overall higher damage of handbows (since ballightning is 100% spammed on sentries, i don't see the need for crossbow's high base damage), but it will help you with act 5 t6 farm, use Warzechian Armguards/UnityCombo + Vault and tactical advantage to speed the bounty farming proccess, also split farming is harder but doable.
Also a reminder that it seems that rerolling mainstat on soj is better than removing CC or CHD.

Edit*: i stopped playing for a while because of stress (freaking kitchen work + bad rerolls on mystic destroyed my money, need greed realm :'(( ) and now i cant install back, but i will try to do it again with more patience now, and if i manage to, will do a video, in the meanwhile, if anyone has a nice gameplay video of this build, just post it in the comments and i will put it here if i see.
https://imageshack.us/i/exgYHiULj
Grift 38 soloed easily, game seemed easier after i switch my 50% gf to AE on paragon points.
The maps (and reflect damage, just watch it and learn its timer) are the main problem, guess its the same for everyone.

Congratulations to wudijo for the meticulous punishment build, i've only theorized about permanent smokescreen (LF), but i forgot about it and never had the time. I knew that meticulous had more potential. It's only a shame that the lag kills the build in some situations, fucking blizzard FIX IT!
Wow, it seems that using this build as base Gabynator just wrecked solo lvl 49 grift with permanent invulnerability and infinite resources.
Suck it blizzard, we dh's just broke your retard mana system.