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[2.2] Natalya Strafe Speedfarm [Updated 25 April 2015]

by last updated Apr 25, 2015 ( Patch 2.2 )
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Skills

  • Rain of Vengeance Dark Cloud
  • Vengeance Seethe
  • Smoke Screen Displacement
  • Strafe Drifting Shadow
  • Preparation Focused Mind
  • Companion Bat Companion
  • Blood Vengeance
  • Archery
  • Tactical Advantage
  • Ambush

Items

More Details

  • Legendary Gems

    • Boon of the Hoarder
    • Pain Enhancer
    • Wreath of Lightning

This setup has a lot of flexibility in your item choices. Most importantly, you need to get the 6pc Natalya bonus, what you do after that is pretty much up to your personal preferences. After having tested different options I found Gloves of Worship to be the best item to go along with it in T6 for endgame speed clears (1-2 min rifts), as you will obtain many shrines doing so. Other than that, you can just choose the items you find first, Hexing Pants obviously boosts your damage if you are still a little bit too weak, Pride's Fall helps a lot more with resources though (especially for spamming Smoke Screen). To use Cindercoat, you have to use the fire rune on Strafe. If you use two resource-items, you should not have any trouble to keep up perma Strafe no matter your rolls.

I recommend Avarice Band + Boon of the Hoarder because you gain a permanent 30% movement speed bonus as well as 30 yards pickup radius, which basically covers half of your screen. This lets you rush through the enemies without looking back at health globes, which are still needed once in a while to fill up your resources again. If you feel like you have enough resources, you can also drop this ring and maybe even use Focus & Restraint for some more dps.

For speed GRs (35-40), I recommend do use the Aughild's set along with the RoRG. It helps a lot with survival and also boosts your dps at the same time. You should definitely use a Stone of Jordan or Convention of Elements there as well, and consider other options for your third gem. There are many that go along with the Natalya set, most importantly the three mentioned and Bane of the Trapped, Zei's, Wreath of Lightning, Gem of Efficacious Toxin, Mirinae, Gogok, and Taeguk. Pain Enhancer is required, as it will deal a substantial amount of your damage. For the rest, it's up to you to experiment a little and find out what's best for your item, skill and group setup.

Paragon Priorities

Core

Movement Speed
Primary Stat
Maximum Resource
Vitality

Offense

Critical Hit Chance
Critical Hit Damage
Cooldown Reduction
Attack Speed

Defense

Resist All
Armor
Life
Life Regeneration

Utility

Resource Cost Reduction
Area Damage
Life on Hit
Gold Find

Paragon is pretty straightforward.

Core: Max movement speed, Dexterity

Offense: Double crit, CDR, IAS

Defense: Allres, Armor, Life, Lifereg

Utility: RCR, AD, LoH, Gold Find

Build Guide

[Introduction]

You might remember a video I made about a T6 rift clear in 44 seconds, which hyped many to play the "WW DH" in patch 2.2. Now, here is the guide to the build I used.

The general idea is to use Strafe to reset your cooldown of Rain of Vengeance, thus buffing your dps like crazy, and moving at insane speeds at the same time. With Smoke Screen - Displacement, Tactical Advantage, Boon of the Hoarder, Warzechian Armguards, etc. you can easily assume a permanent 150-250% movement speed bonus. The good thing about the Natalya set is that it increases all of your dps, including all of your skills, gems and conduit. It does not have a totally fixed item or skill setup, so you can experiment a lot with it to see what fits you best.

This build's purpose is only to farm T6 or low GRs effficiently, and not to push the rankings. In order to make Natalya's work for the latter, you have to come up with other builds. However, with some adjustments a Strafe Natalya build should be able to push into the 50s.

For some gameplay footage, consider watching the video. I've included a timeline in the description to let you jump to different parts quickly.


[Gearing]

Generally, you will want to use Natalya's Slayer and Calamity. The weapon with the highest damage per attack should be in your mainhand (left slot), as the Rain of Vengeance damage only takes this one into account. The other weapon should preferably have RCR and CDR (or maybe Bonus to Elites). You should also stack a little bit of toughness, the best spot is vitality on the helm, as Strafe bonus is not doing that much anyway. If you feel like you are dying to quickly, consider to also get vitality on your chest and possibly gloves or weapons.

For the different options to consider, see the item section above. Since there are not enough choices to add, I will also throw these items in: Profane Pauldrons, Sash of Knives, Convention of Elements, any immunity amulet. The general gearing strategy is to get enough RCR and CDR to get perma Strafe + perma RoV to work. With low paragon this might be a little bit difficult, but the build is really strong in T6, so with some less damage you should still be able to farm the lower torments very efficiently until you have good rolls on most of your items. Your gearing choices also depend a lot on your strategy, e.g. if you want to trade a few seconds here and there to pick up globes, you can also drop Avarice Band + Boon of the Hoarder and use other options, or if you really can't get any RCR items, you could go RoRG and add both Pride's Fall and Hexing Pants for lots of resources.

As for the amulets, I recommend using a Hellfire once you feel comfortable without an immunity amulet. Good choices for a 5th passive are: Hot Pursuit, Awareness, Sharpshooter or Single Out (for GRs).


[Skill Choices]

The skill setup above requires you to use either Rain of Vengeance or Strafe on your left mouse button, so you will have to use force attack to activate them. If you don't want to do this, you could consider swapping Vengeance with Shuriken Cloud to passively boost your dps a little. Shuriken Cloud can be used on left moust button as well and this lets you put both Rain of Vengeance on other (and more convenient) slots. In general, Dark Cloud is the preferred rune to use for Rain of Vengeance because it follows you around as you move, however you could also consider Shade with it's huge AoE. The rune choice in Strafe is not really relevant because most of your damage will come from RoV, so I suggest to just use Drifting Shadow if you are not using a K'mar Tenclip. In case you do, Icy Trail or Demolition are good options.


[Speed GRs]

For speed GRs, you should change a couple of items (see above). In general, you have to adapt to your party composition and clear speed, you can trade RCR for CDR or more damage if you feel like you're getting enough health globes, and also stack some more toughness because you might be a little squishy in tier 35-40. You should also try to let others soak the damage and not run in first, so keep an eye out for your supporters.


[Update 25 April 2015]

With some more experimentation going into this build recently, a few things have changed. If you are getting close to the high-end, it seems even better to use Focus and Restraint and drop any resource items altogether. Drop Vengeance / Chakram and use Evasive Fire - Focus. I recently shared my contribution to the T6 Rift Clearing Competition and managed to complete 10 runs in 21min and 17sec. I also used Wreath of Lightning instead of another dps gem, the damage boost from the rings is more than enough, I wasn't even using a Hellfire amulet and only had one ancient weapon. This build is strong enough to solo farm rifts in 4-player parties at almost the same speed (maybe +10 seconds per run), e.g.while the other party members are clearing bounties and just leech the RG in your rift. The same applies to speedfarming GRs, where you would still want to use Crashing Rain and some more toughness, but if you get your timing on Smoke Screen right, you should be able to survive up until tier 45 pretty well, at least a lot better than with the Unhallowed Essence builds.