Items
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Head
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Shoulders
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Amulet
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Torso
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Wrists
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Hands
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Waist
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Legs
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Feet
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Rings
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Weapon
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Offhand
Kanai's Cube
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Dawn
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The Cloak of the Garwulf
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Convention of Elements
Hello, timoseewho here, your fellow loyal DH'er:). I started DH back in Season 1 and never looked back since. I play strictly hardcore for the thrill and am currently #42 with a GR74 clear using this particular setup. I've adored Marauders for its inherent tankiness and playstyle and am super glad it's back. Why cold as opposed to the wildly popular physical? Find out below!
My profile is http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/timoseewho-1824/hero/73874175
The Marauders set was introduced way back in Season 1 and was probably the most overpowered set to date, at that time. To sum it up, the set basically allowed the sentries to fire whatever spenders you had on your bar without you having to press ANYTHING. In other words, all you had to do was set up the sentries in a room, leave the room, and just have the sentries go nuts on whatever was in the room while you AFK'ed. Right now we actually have to hit buttons for the sentries to shoot as well, so there's that.
Unfortunately, there's not much wiggle room for this build with the only exception being the amulet, especially if you're looking to push the boards (the added toughness from Zoey's Secret / Wraps of Clarity is invaluable. There have been variations involving The Traveler's Pledge / Compass Rose, but it doesn't compare to this.
We are in the golden ages of DH where we can take even more hits now, so embrace it.
Acronyms
AD - Area Damage
AR - Resistance to All Elements
BotT - Bane of the Trapped
CA - Cluster Arrow[
CA% - Cluster Arrow % (skill)
CDR - Cooldown Reduction
CHC - Critical Hit Chance
CHD - Critical Hit Damage
CtW - Cull the Weak
EF - Evasive Fire
HfA - Hellfire Amulet
IAS - Increased Attack Speed
Life% - Life %
OS - Open Socket
RCR - Resource Cost Reduction
SA - Steady Aim
Sentry% - Sentry % (skill)
TotH - Thrill of the Hunt
ZSoV - Zei's Stone of Vengeance
Gear
Manticore (Crossbow) - Damage% / Dexterity / Vitality / CA%
The Manticore is what will give you the resource reduction needed to spam and added CA% for damage. There is no Marauders without the Manticore. The vitality is nice especially if you have an ancient one for the higher bound. Other options for damage can be either CDR, AD, or Elite% in place of vitality. I didn't state OS here, because ideally you get that through a ramaladingdong's gift.
Bombardier's Rucksack (Quiver) - Dexterity / Vitality / IAS / CHC / CDR / Sentry%
This is what gives you the added oomph with the passive. Again, this is another area where a vitality roll is nice to have if rolled ancient barred you have all the right stats elsewhere. It's not a bad idea to have CDR here to help you achieve better Vengeance uptime. Don't break a sweat if your Sentry% rolled on the low end here.
Marauder's Visage (Helm) - Dexterity / Vitality / CHC
With the immense amount of CA% you're getting from the Manticore, the value of CA% on the helm greatly devalues, making CHC a much better option. Of course there's nothing wrong with having both CA% and CHC, but I do like to keep the vitality if it came with.
Marauder's Spine (Shoulders) - Dexterity / Vitality / AR / CDR
A good place to squeeze CDR into for Vengeance uptime. The rest is straightforward! RCR and Sentry% are also viable stats to have here, but their value has gone down drastically with the CA% on the Manticore and Sentry% on the Rucksack.
Marauder's Carapace (Chest) - Dexterity / Vitality / AR
The chest offers a little bit of flexibility with AR being interchangeable with Life%, Sentry%, or even an Elite Reduction %. However, I tend to use the chest as a purely toughness slot.
Wraps of Clarity (Bracers) - Cold% / Dexterity / Vitality / CHC
A great piece to have and can be kept up relatively easy since it shares the same timer with Focus/Restraint and is triggered with a generator. The Cold% is pretty much required especially IF you don't have Cold% on your neck piece, along with the CHC.
Marauder's Gloves (Gloves) - Dexterity / Vitality / CHD / CHC
If this happens to roll ancient, don't hesitate to keep the vitality and make sure you have CHD and CHC on this. If non-ancient and it came with CHD/CHC already, getting some CDR out of this slot is also viable.
Zoey's Secret (Belt) - Dexterity / Vitality / AR / Life%
An excellent belt to have, made for Marauders, and shouldn't be overlooked at all. You want to have as high a % on the passive as possible due to the scaling with pets.
Marauder's Encasement (Pants) - Dexterity / Vitality / AR
Much like the chest, another place where I heavily invest my toughness into. There's no point getting in that extra EF damage here, very bad trade-off.
Marauder's Treads (Boots) - Dexterity / Vitality / AR / CA%
Both a good source of toughness and damage with the CA%. The Movement% over AR is an option, but remember to take that into account when plugging in your paragon points.
Hellfire Amulet (Amulet) - Cold% / CHD / CHC / OS
There's no excuse to not have a HfA by now. The passive must be either of the 4 listed above OR a 5th viable passive like Archery, Ambush, or SA. It may be quite difficult to get a neck with CHD, CHC, AND the Cold%, so dexterity instead of Cold% is perfectly fine, just make sure the passive isn't complete trash!
Focus/Restraint (Rings) - Dexterity / CHD / CHC
A very good set, essentially doubling your damage. The ring slots aren't a bad place to squeeze in the CDR needed for Vengeance uptime. If you get ancient rings with CHD and CHC, you may want to consider turning the dexterity to damage.
Skills/Passives
I consider the CA, Vault, and Vengeance runes being mandatory with EF and Sentry's runes being a little more flexible. You can opt for Hardened and Guardian Turret (if you happened to get a great HfA, but with a TotH passive, allowing you to free up a Sentry rune). Hardened is fairly popular but I still prefer the extra hatred that comes with Focus and its synergy with Cold%.
The passives you want are Awareness to keep you alive, Custom Engineering for added sentries, Ballistics for immense amount of damages with Maelstrom, and CtW for the 20% multiplier. Some other decent passives are Archery, Ambush, SA, or TotH (consider these for when you craft your HfA).
Gems/Augmentations
ZSoV and BotT are both awesome legendary gems due to the nature of their damage being multiplicative. I like to use Bane of the Stricken over Taeguk since I personally don't like keeping up those stacks, but I think both are viable for sure. While you're playing solo and using Taeguk, you can hit esc as you enter a new zone to pause the game and prevent stacks from dropping during a long loading screen.
You want to use emeralds everywhere except for the helm where you want to plug a diamond in to help with Vengeance uptime. It's also fine to use diamonds in the chest/pants for some toughness. It's fairly obvious that you want dexterity for augmentations.
Cube Passives
Dawn is what gives you the chance at getting 100% Vengeance uptime so there's no argument here. The Cloak of the Garwulf is REALLY good if you have a high % Zoey's (more wolves, more reduction, more win). The overall damage reduction from Garwulf with a high Zoey's is still lower than if you cube Visage of Gunes, but the Garwulf is up 100% of the time (good if you don't have 100% Vengeance yet) AND once you see those wolves up front tanking and damaging for you, you won't be able to give them up anymore. Convention of Elements is a huge source of damage, with immune necks being the only thing I'd replace it with if anything at all.
Paragon Priorities
Core
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Movement Speed
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Primary Stat
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Maximum Resource
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Vitality
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Offense
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Cooldown Reduction
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Critical Hit Damage
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Critical Hit Chance
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Attack Speed
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Defense
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Resist All
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Life
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Life Regeneration
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Armor
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Utility
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Resource Cost Reduction
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Area Damage
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Life on Hit
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Gold Find
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Core
First thing, get your Movement to 25%, remember to take into account the 10% from Marauders bonus AND boots if you have some on them. Afterwards, just dump it all into dexterity.
Offensive
Make sure to get the CDR necessary to help with Vengeance uptime (usually requires all 50 points), then maintain a 10:1 CHD:CHC ratio. For instance, if you have 350% CHD, you want to aim for ~35% CHC. IAS is mediocre at best.
Defense
Dexterity already gives armor so no need to worry about that. I like to have AR/Life%, then some regeneration for downtime recovery. Normally, AR is the go-to toughness stat and if you desperately need some, you can always plug diamonds in your chest/pants, no shame in that.
Utility
The added RCR is nifty as well as AD, both are fine investments. Life on Hit is a good third place. If you had to choose, AD/elite% (next to CHD/CHC) are better offensive stats than RCR due to the amount of hatred you're gaining now with Vengeance uptime, Manticore's innate RCR, and not to mention, Companion.
Build Guide
Assuming cubed Dawn, 12.5% CDR from Flawless Royal Diamond in helm, and 10% CDR from paragon points, you'll need an additional 21% CDR from gear to achieve 36.66% CDR, which is enough for NEAR 100% uptime on Vengeance. Absolute 100% uptime on Vengeance will require 24% CDR from gear (3 slots with max 8% CDR). Vengeance is AWESOME, you become immune to crowd control (bye bye vortex), get all that hatred regeneration with Seethe, and the synergy with Marauders' 6-set is added bonus.
There are a few reasons why I've gone with cold instead of physical for this build, the reasons being that it provides some sustain, better area damage, and further synergizing with EF and Sentry. Physical with Cluster Arrow has great single target damage and synergizes with Companion/Vengeance nicely as well, both are viable in my opinion.
Again, I'll just go over some things you want to be looking out for:
- Make sure to go into cold Elements with enough hatred to spam 5-6 CA's in a row, which is ~80+. Also, remember to fire off an EF prior to entering that window to get both Focus/Restraint and Clairty buffs.
- Take full advantage of the cold Elements rotation by only firing CA's.
- Do not stop spending your hatred and avoid being capped on hatred unless you're going into cold Elements.
- Learn how to herd mobs from room to room, even if that means going forwards 2-3 rooms to gather them up. You want to round up a nice clump of mobs on top of a sentry and blow them up during cold Elements.
- Use your Companion for when cold Elements comes around or before tagging a conduit pylon. Remember that you can use your Companion for slows as well for sticky situations!
- Keep in mind to always have a sentry on top of the Rift Guardian, elites/champions, or clump of mobs to trigger CtW/BotT. IF you happen to get a guardian who teleports/jumps on top of you from time to time, try to make a triangle with you, the guardian, and 4 sentries, so when it teleports on you, you can go to where it initially was and drop a new sentry on top of it. This only works in big maps unfortunately. Keeping track of sentries and when you placed them can be a little tough, but just make sure 1 on top of guardian and 4 away.
- You always want to have your Vengeance on cooldown and plant down 5 sentries as fast as you can as you enter a new zone and just drop new ones as you feel like you're out of range of the previously dropped sentries. Don't get in a bad habit of constantly dropping sentries, it's not a bad idea to have a couple charges stockpiled up.
Some notes below:
1. The damage multiplier with ZSoV and Sentry is individually calculated for each sentry.
2. The element type of your base damage does NOT matter (ie. getting it to X-Y Cold Damage will not benefit you in any way whatsoever).
3. There are a few viable ways to provide for BotT/CtW, which are Iceblink, Sentry:Polar Station, Entangling Shot and TotH. I do not recommend using ES as the aim required is a hassle. I've chosen to go with Sentry:PS because it adds a bit of damage and is easily maneuvered. Using TotH kills off a damaging passive, but gives you the possibility of more toughness through Guardian Turret. Iceblink is on a similar boat as TotH, but instead of a passive, you're giving up a damaging legendary gem.
Ps. Do not neglect your follower as a geared follower can really help provide for your BotT/CtW. The ideal follower setup is Thunderfury, Freeze of Deflection (if Templar), The Ess of Johan, Wyrdward, Oculus/Justice Lantern(if Templar), and the undying relic. You want as much AS/CDR on follower gear, more often than not, in place of damage stats like CHC/CHD. I have opted for the Enchantress for more crowd control and longer leash range. The Templar provides more healing, but resets too easily (approximately the 20-25 yard range), rendering it useless. Lastly, Bul-Kathos's Wedding Band does NOT proc Templar's Intimidate ability. Getting your hands on a Thunderfury and FoD can be tricky. You can either upgrade rares or simply ask for them when you do rifts with classes who have these items as part of their natural loot table (ie. Barbarians and Crusaders).
Pps. Feel free to add me at timoseewho#1824 to help you out with enchant choices or what have you.
Ppps. Push your limits, but stay safe bro's!
timoseewho out!
update: got a GOD rift on 75 until Perdition showed up, let's just say he wasn't nice, rip
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