Build Guide
Theory/Background - (The Why)
This build is made possible by the newly revised Holy Point Shot quiver. With the new quiver, impale will throw 3 knives instead of one. Each knife gains the 6p bonus damage from the Shadow Mantle Set. Currently its also possible, if positioned very close to a mob, to land all 3 buffed impales on a single target. So for instance the RG will take 3x the damage from impale than it does w/o the Holy Point Shot if standing very close while attacking it. This is an awesome change. This will greatly increase the effective damage output for impale. Not only that, all 3 knives will return the amount of hatred that is listed on your Karlei's Point dagger. Now with up to 3x the refunded hatred, it is no longer necessary to have a generator, while staying at near full hatred most of the time. This allows using and taking advantage of the Aquila Cuirass chest in the cube for 2x toughness.
Gearing/Game Play - (The How)
Make sure to have at least 36.7% cdr for permanent Vengeance. The required cdr can be accomplished with cdr rolled on one piece of gear, 15% cdr from the Gogok of Swiftness, a diamond in helm and 10% cdr in paragon. Tactical Advantage passive is desirable to use for speed runs. Use Leech for soloing higher GR's. Numbing Traps can be used to buff group toughness if needed. Single out should be used when pushing high GR's in 4man groups. Nemesis bracers are an excellent alternative to Strong Arms and are recommended for speed rifting. For pushing GR's in 4 man's, Lacuni Prowlers can be used for increased attack speed to better stack Stricken. For bounties there is no better choice than the Warzechian Armguards. For pushing high GR's with supports, wear an SOJ and cube the Convention of Elements for more damage, since the with supports the Elusive Ring may not be needed.
Try to stack life after kill on chest, belt, pants, jewelry and weapon if possible. Life after kill works beautifully with this build. Shadow Power will add 50% of your life after kill to life on hit, the leech passive adds another 75%. Together you will have 125% of LoK as LoH. This is a huge gain in health recovery, allowing for safe passage while playing very aggressively.
Note that if you play at a game difficulty where you are one shotting mobs, it will result in running out of hatred because there will be no opportunities for hatred refunds from Karlei's Point. Some examples of where you might run into this would be power leveling friends or running fast low level GR's to level gems. In order to mitigate this problem so you don't run out hatred, run Seethe instead of Dark Heard, replace Cull the Weak with Blood Vengeance and replace Aquila Cuirass with Visage of Gunes in the Cube.
Make sure to spam Vengeance, bladed armor and wolf when off cooldown. The constant activation of these skills can be achieved by num locking them. Beyond that, all that is required is to cast impale to attack and vault for mobility. Its really that simple. You do need to make sure to impale every 2 sec in order to have free vaults. I personally use vault actively to stun elites and RG's to interrupt their special attacks. This can be be extremely helpful in surviving nasty fights. Note that while vaulting you enter into a smoke screen like state that renders you invulnerable to incoming damage for the brief time you're traveling from point to point. Make sure to keep the elusive ring buff up at all times. This can be done by vaulting or casting shadow power. If you find yourself placed particularly well, as in next to an elite that you are impaling, casting shadow power to proc the elusive buff is preferable to vaulting if you can face tank well enough to stay in place. Note that this build requires hunting and killing mainly elites, especially for speed runs, but higher GR's will require gathering up and killing large packs of trash also. Just make sure to take advantage of the oculus circles when doing so.
Summary/Wrap Up - (The Results)
The build is very simple to play and a hell of a lot of fun. It gives insane mobility, good damage and high survivability. In fact fully self buffed with all dps gems and nems, its not uncommon to exceed a toughness of 600 mil at low paragon. That's awesome toughness for a dps class with no support. I have tested this build on the PTR for patch 2.5.0 in HC. In Season 10 with 1.07 mil sheet dps I cleared a GR 82 in 9:43 on the first attempt. This build can be used to compete for pushing the highest GR's for both solo and group play. For speed farming it is superb. GR 75's are taking under 4 min to clear (with 2 mil+ dps). Normal rifts are fast and fun. Split farming 4man T13 bounties is very doable once geared well. In short the build will do everything you need and want within Diablo 3.
I have thoroughly enjoyed playing and testing out this build and I hope you will find as much enjoyment with it as I have. Please leave a comment below if you have any questions. Please Upvote if you find this guide useful. Thanks.
Thanks. hope they dont nerf it then. However I have another question. You seem to be the only guy here that is using FoK Bladed Armor. Why is that? Why not Valley of Death instead of the wolf. it has the same effect and no cool down.
I use FoK Bladed Armor for the 40% armor buff. If you do not feel you need this extra toughness you can use either Marked for Death or Caltrops - Bait the Trap. Marked for death is a viable substitute for wolf if you prefer to use it.
@damnjoni,
While Illusionary boots do offer a great utlity, its not worth giving up Aquila Cuirass for them, nor would I give up COE. It is true that it is difficult at times to position yourself next to an elite whenthere is massive trash mobs crowding them. That being said, with practice you can estimate the loaction that you will vault to fairly well and in so doing place yourself where you want even in a crowd.
I have found that Leech gives more personal health recovery than numbing traps does, especially if you stack life after kill as I recommend doing. That being said numbing traps benefits the group, so if its needed, at least one DH in the group using numbing traps can be helpful for the party. For solo pushing I only use leech.
@Leafeator,
Yeah I love the build too, its highly effective with low gearing/para/gems. As far as follower goes, I prefer the enchantress, because of the attack speed, dmg and amor buffs. The play style is one of just hunting elites and leaving trash alone. In fact if there is too much trash around the elite, it makes it hard to target the elite properly. When playing this build, all you do is vault off to find elites, kill them and vault to find the next pack. Not everyone prefers this play style, but it is highly effective and makes for quick rifting.
@demonhuntergre,
The Holy Point Shot quiver with the new legendary power giving impale 3 knives instead of one will start dropping when patch 2.5.0 goes live. My best guess would be that the patch will go live within a month. If you want to see the quiver in action, go onto the PTR and you can try it now.
Blizzard just announced the close of Season 9 will be March 17. Season 10 will start on March 31. Shadow Assassin DH here we come, WOOT!!!
@navexed,
Yes, patch 2.5.0 is looking like a great patch. I think this build will have a place in high gr groups next patch especially in HC where its tankiness will really shine. I agree there are a few variations that can be done to change up the build depending on your needs. I even go over several variations in the write up, giving suggested changes for different circumstances. All in all I'm very excited to play this build in season 10.
@Yorindesarin,
Lets say you have 52 million toughness standing in town w/o shadow power. Once you buff with shadow power (35% DR from gloom) your toughness would increase to 80 mil. Then after buffing with vengeance, dark heart (50% DR), your toughness would further increase to 160 mil. Finally with the elusive ring buff (60% DR), your toughness would be 400 mil. This I would suspect is on the low end of what you would expect to see with this build. If you find that you are even below that, you should make sure to use diamonds in your pants and chest and stack more AR on gears along with possibly putting some paragon points into vitality. Another option is to use boar instead of wolf, which will further increase your toughness.
@Yorindesarin,
I am having a problem editing comments for some reason. On my previous reply I forgot to include bladed armor which should increase toughness by about 26%, so with that buff, the final toughness would be just over 500 mil in that example.
Seeing your toughness results, suggests to me that you are not using Vengeance, Dark Heart for the 50% DR (you're most likely using seethe). The elusive ring buff will show up in your sheet toughness and so will all the other buffs. As a general rule your final self buffed toughness will be approximately 10x that of your starting unbuffed toughness.
I would strongly recommend that you increase your unbuffed toughness, 22 mil is very low, even for softcore. This build is a melee spec and therefore can't be played effectively as a glass cannon. By stacking toughness, it will allow you to be very aggressive and in the end increase your overall effective damage output.
@Yorindesarin,
Yes it would be useful to have diamonds in your chest as well. It's precisely when you have a low base AR that diamonds yield the biggest positive impact on your toughness. The loss in damage from losing the emeralds will be quite small compared to the toughness gained from wearing diamonds.
On the damage side, note that I recommend the pain enhancer gem for its ability to increase your attack speed. Also its only mandatory to have the pain enhancer leveled to 25 in order to gain its secondary property. Leveling it higher does add a very small amount of supplemental damage but its quite small, so do not be concerned about not having a high level PE. I would only start using the PE in higher GR's where the benefits are realized the most. in speed runs where you kill quickly, the PE is not as useful. For speed runs I recommend using the bane of the power instead.
Note this build is for patch 2.5.0 and requires the newly buffed Holy Point Shot quiver. The 2 additional knives make a huge difference and therefore this build would be significantly less effective without it.
@Hyperborea,
The shadow set buffs grenades much less than UE does. Even with its much higher multiplier, its necessary to use simplicity strength, depth diggers, hunters wrath and the hellcat waistguard in order for grenades to deal competitive damage. With Shadow Mantle, grenades will simply not deal a significant amount of damage no matter what gear/skills you incorporate. Therefore I would not recommend using grenades with the hellcat waistguard with this build.
They gave us a means to remove the generator for Shadow Impale by the addition of the revised Holy Point Shot, which I applaud very much. This allows for an uninterrupted flow of impales, and frees up a skill slot for something more beneficial. My personal preference is to play it like this. It would be necessary to use a generator if you wanted to wear Focus and Restraint. The downside of this would be the loss of either the COE or elusive ring. As such this setup would only be usable for speed runs due to either lack of damage or toughness depending on which ring is sacrificed. In these low to mid tier GR's, the damage output of Endless Walk with COE is more than enough to efficiently clear. In the end it boils down to personal preference, but mine is not to use a generator with this build.
@Hyperborea,
I'm glad that you found the guide helpful, its been a pleasure to work on it. Yes, I know what you mean about betting burned out and losing your hunger to play. That is why I have cooled my heels on the PTR, now that I've fully tested and pushed this spec to its limits. It will be super fun to start the new season with this to look forward to. Good Luck in season 10!
Thanks for the guide and videos! I really appreciate you taking the time to try different scenarios. Can you comment on how this will play vs the wizard in speed farming?
This season the DH clears great solo but in 4 man T13 it gets left in the dust by the wizards. Mind doing some 4 man testing @T13 and/or low GRs for speed?
@Kavika,
I didn't get a chance to test much with 4 Shadow DH's, but I did many 2 Shadow DH GR 80's. The average times were 4.5 min with one clear in 3:51. Archon wizards have the advantage of infinite archon stacking and fairly good aoe, but lack toughness and their effectiveness is more dependent on RNG. The Shadow Assassin DH's weakness is aoe, but it brings many advantages to table. It's insanely tanky and therefore one of the very few dps builds that is not dependent on supports when clearing GR 80-90+. Shadow DH's can cross buff each other with wolf and boar companion, numbing traps, guardian turret and marked for death. Finally the Shadow Assassin DH has consistently good results, with fishing only required very close to its ultimate wall.
Note Manald heal procs for channeling skills are being reduced by 25% in patch 2.5.0. That being said, lightning archon wizards will still be a force. The Shadow Assassin DH will offer something that is not only different, but is competitive and a hell of a lot of fun to play. I personally will be playing it in Season 10. Give it a try, I have a feeling you may like it. Good luck and have fun in Season 10!
@BigJohnnasty,
First, just wanted to say thank you for all the work you put into these guides. I've used your Danetta's guide a lot, and it is always nice to see a guide with a leaning towards HC players.
I'm very excited to use this build once the patch hits, and I have a couple of questions for you:
- Some other guides I've seen recommend Strongarm Bracers because of the Vault-Rattling Roll skill that can proc it. I notice that you recommend Nemesis Bracers. Do you have any thoughts on Lacuni Prowlers? They come with Attack Speed, which brings me to my next question...
- Would you recommend Attack Speed or Area Damage? Posts I've seen on this topic seem to indicate that Attack Speed is preferable, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus on it.
- As it turns out, I have a full Ancient set of Shadow gear already (benefits to always keeping Ancient gear, being non-seasonal, and having bank toons). However, I can only get my sheet toughness to 61 mil without buffs (but with the Aquila Cuirass cubed). This means at best I can get to roughly 530 mil toughness. I compared the gear you used on your GR 82 no augment clear to mine, and I still can't figure out how you have so much higher sheet toughness. I've got diamonds, the enchantress, I've got roughly 1000 more VIT then you, but your recovery is WAY higher then mine, as is your resists, despite me having close to the same All resist on gear that you have. Any thoughts as to how you have a 26 mil sheet toughness advantage? I know this may be impossible without comparing gear, but I feel like i'm missing something obvious.
In any event, super excited to try this build out. Hopefully Blizzard lets it go as is. thanks again for all your work!
@BrownieMix,
I'm really glad that you have found these build guides helpful, it's been a pleasure to work on them. Strong Arm bracers are an excellent choice to use in lieu of Nemesis bracers. I also listed them as an recommended alternative in this build guide. The reason I recommend Nems is that this build requires hunting and killing of elites almost exclusively. Elites spawned by pylons are always yellow packs which are the most favorable kind of pack for this build. A lot of progress can be gained quickly by these free elites, especially when spawned from a favorable pylon. The only exception to this is when dervish minions are spawned which nearly requires you to abandon the spawned elite pack (because of the broken reflect missile mechanic which will instantly proc your cheat death passive and therefore for HC anyway, really not worth fighting imo).
Strong Arm bracers on the other hand will give you bonus damage as you alluded to after vaulting thru mobs. I find using Strong Arms to be most useful when clearing the highest GR's, while Nems have a clear edge in speed runs. Either are a fine choice, my recommendation is for you to try both and see which you prefer to use the most. As for Lacunis, they add at most 7% ias which is not much especially if you are using the Pain Enhancer gem. The only time I see value in wearing Lacunis is when someone else is already using Nems, Strong Arms and you don't need the toughness that can be gained from Ancient Parthan Defenders. The clearest example would be in a pushing 4man group where the Shadow DH is the designated RG killer. There Stricken would be used instead of PE and the increase in attack speed would help build stricken stacks faster.
Increased attack speed would be preferable to area damage if you were gearing to be the RG killer for pushing high GR's in a group. When using PE, especially in solo GR's I would prefer area damage over ias.
I was using the boar companion in that GR 82 which increases AR by 20%. Most likely this is the source of the increased toughness you observed. If more toughness is needed in lieu of damage, I have found it best to use wolf over boar, but to use numbing traps instead of ambush instead. With this setup you lose very little damage over boar with ambush (~8% vs ~10% bonus dmg) but gain twice the bonus toughness (33% gain vs 16.5%). Another tip, if there are several DH's in the party, one using wolf, one boar, one with marked for death, the the 4th DH can use guardian turret to buff everyone's toughness by an additional 33% while inside the guardian turret bubbles.
I feel that Blizzard will allow this build to make it to live as is and I share your excitement to play this build in patch 2.5.0. Its nearly here, good luck with the build and have fun in Season 10!
Thanks for taking the time to reply! I'm just about sold on going DH
for the first time. I wasn't thinking you'd test 4 DH's for farming
just what farming feels like with 4 people in the game. I prefer
playing with clan mates whenever I can but I'd hate to be left in the
dust by the wizards again!
@Kavika,
The mobility of this build is very good. I think you should be able to keep up no matter what other builds are in your party, wizards or otherwise.
@df987,
I hope you have fun with the build. Good Luck in Season 10!