Build Guide
Theory/Background - (The Why)
Patch 2.6.1 brings 300% to 375% Impale bonus damage to Karlie's Points and raises the 6p bonus of Shadow's Mantle from 40k to 50k. With these 2 buffs, this build should be able to clear approximately 11 tiers higher than prior to this patch. This build is made possible by the Holy Point Shot quiver. With this 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 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. When pushing high GR's in 4man groups the Single out passive should be used and replace FoK Bladed Armor with Marked for Death (either Contagion or Valley of Death). Nemesis bracers are an excellent alternative to Strongarms 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.
The ricochet (lightning) rune of Imaple is best used for lower level content where mobs die quickly such as T13 or speed rifts. The reason for this is that with ricochet there is a chance to have hatred returned on the first cast of impale. The overpenetration (cold) rune for impale is best used for higher level content such as pushing solo GR's when using the Pain Enhancer gem. The reason for this is that overpenetration's piercing impales can apply the PE's bleed to a larger amount of mobs around you. With this increase in the number of bleeding mobs withing 20 yds, your attack speed will be higher. That being said the difference is small. So if you have much better lighting gear than cold, then use ricochet even for pushing solo. In 4man meta group play where the DH is the RG killer, it's less important which rune of impale is used (though all things being equal, cold is better due to the piercing knives' ability to better aggro mobs). Therefore for meta, use the rune of impale that matches the element of the best gear you have.
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 Heart, 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.
Sand Dwellers (when sanding) and spinning Dervishes will reflect impales which can and will proc/rip not only the DH but the entire party. Please be very careful around these mob types and make sure not to fire into them especially when in a party.
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 500 mil at low paragon. That's awesome toughness for a dps class with no support. 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 85'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 efficient. 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.
This build seriously needs a buff in damage. I can survive anything while standing on hazards that can one shot my other characters but the damage is a little weak on startup
Hello mate,may i ask why did u leave Shadow Power's rune empty?
If you need defense I would stay with Numbing Traps and Leech along with Wolf. Both Leech and Numbing Traps offer more defense than Boar does, while Wolf offers nearly as much offense as Ambush does. Overall your setup looks solid. Good luck and have fun progressing with the build.
Love this build, Ive been very lucky as ive gotten a perfect rolled primal coe and gloves. Having so much fun, however I thought it was worth a mention that the Chain of Shadows can not roll AR as a priority. Dex-Vit- Armor are the 3 I believe. Thanks so much for your effort in putting this guide out.
Hey, great build !
I am playing D3 again this season after having stopped for some years. I wanted to play HC and try a class that I didn't know from before, so DH it was.
Since it is the seasonal set I have naturally been trying this, and honestly I like it a lot, so thanks for putting this together.
I am a fairly casual player so my gear is still lacking but I have been able to clear GR90 in HC so this is a good start. I'd have a couple questions for you :
I haven't seen this discussed very much, but how important is the impale damage % on the karlei's point compared to other stats (like damage range) ? I do have a fairly good ancient karlei with nice rolls, but only a mere 321% impale. Should I favor a weapon with less stats or worse damage roll but with a higher impale % ? I don't really know if 1% on the karlei's provides as much damage as 1% impale damage on say the boots for instance.
Regarding the gear in general, I have noticed that I tend to favor defensive stats (AR in particular) way more than other players, I get a sense of safety when I have high AR but maybe this isn't that useful in the end ? I am procing awareness in 88+ GR even with my stacked defense and I am I guess afraid to go full dps (for example I have enchanted AR on gloves).
I think i know the answer but will this be holding me back ?
Here is my armory link if you have spare time to give me feedback : https://eu.diablo3.com/en/profile/hihu-2738/hero/105922711 (it may show visage of gunes in cube which I only use for speedruns / torment XIII)
Best !
AR is super important for Impale, its not just your imagination. That being said you probably don't have to have much more than 1000 resists for each element type. Its also Important to have enough hp too. As you gain more armor from augments and paragon you can afford to have less hp, but at lower paragon you will probably want 900k or more. Once your paragon is high and have many augments then 700k can be sufficient. If you still need more survivability, then use both the Numbing Traps and Leech passive instead of Ambush.
I would suggest that you have critical hit chance on you amulet and if possible elemental with dual crit (Trifecta). You also want to have dual crit on you gloves too. Its best to have cdr and area damage on you shoulders. In fact you need to have at least 2 area damage rolls on gear and preferably 3 rolls. 2 rolls of area damage on gear with paragon would give near 90% area damage. 3 rolls would be near 110% area damage. The reason area damage is so important is because Impale has very little area effect as its a single target skill. Area damage is a must in order to clear the highest tiers of GR. If possible try to get Impale the quiver. Try to get a few more life after kill rolls too, as it would translate into life on hit from Shadow Power and Leech. These changes will make a large impact your Impale DH. Good luck with the build and the rest season 13.
Thanks BigJohnasty
The clarification on impale bonus % makes a lot of sense, I really had no idea how the bonuses were calculated, this will help me in choosing the correct weapon.
As far as AR goes, I am right now sitting at 1700 on my lowest resists, so yea, a bit much. But my general understanding was that my effective life would be higher this way (e.g. 600k life at 1700 would be the same than say 900k life at 1200, the numbers are totally random and just here to explain my idea), but I probably have pushed too much on the damage reducers and not enough on the vit.
I am already using Numbing traps but I will try your other suggestions at comfortable GR levels (80+ and incrementing) to see how it goes. I will also try to prioritize gear based on your suggestions but this is ultimately dependent on drop luck
Thanks a lot for your time and input !
Best
Hi BigJonasty,
Can you speak to 2 things?
1 - Can you talk about how much AD is necessary to use with PE?
2 - Also, it seems many builds are now using numbing traps instead of leech with lpk. Did you find leech with lpk more effective than the 25% damage reduction from numbing traps? Also, do numbing traps only proc for monsters hit by your fan of knives? Or any type of slowing?
yeah yeah ¬¬ !!!!!! STUPID BUILD!!!!!
WITH 21309478982374912 OF DEX EVEN MY BUTT MAKE A BUILD.... ¬¬
YOU HAVE TO DO A BUILD FOR PLAYERS NOT FOR MOTHER FUCKERS THAT SPEND 1212735617 YEARS PLAYING THIS SHIT.... AND GET 348572342 OF PARAGONS... ¬¬ DAMN STUPID ASSHOLES....
POGCHAMP BUILD
I have have always felt that the numbing traps passive has been a very viable substitute for the leech passive. After much play and careful consideration I now think that numbing traps is preferable to use in place of leech. I made this change to the build guide. Numbing traps gives 33% increase damage mitigation and therefore 33% more effective health recovery as well. Leech forgoes the incoming damage mitigation for roughly 50% more health recovery. Numbing Traps is procced by any slowing effect you apply, not just fan of knives. The slowing aura that is applied to mobs that are within 15 yds from the bane of the trapped gem procs Numbing Traps, so does the activation of shadow power which slows mobs within 30 yds. I hope this helps with the build.
This may very well be the last response to a comment made on one of my diablofans build guides as it seems diablofans will be archived tomorrow. I do wish you the best of luck with the game and the build going forward.
I feel a great deal of sadness as a result of diablofans being shutdown and going into archive mode. Even before I became a registered user I would frequently use the site to find out the latest diablo 3 news and rumors. Diablofans has been so helpful to me and so many others that going forward I am not sure how it's loss will be mitigated.
I have had such a great time creating build guides on diablofans and interacting with and helping others however I could. I first created this build guild while exploring the changes made during the ptr prior to season 10. It was a labor of love and I have worked hard refining it and responding to comments ever since. To this day this build is one of my favorites in all diablo 3. I want you all to know I really appreciate the support you have given to me and my guides. I will always remember with great fondness these times. I will continue to play and enjoy Diablo 3. I hope that you all will do the same. If you ever need to get in touch with me, I play on the America's Server and my battletag is BigJohnasty#1114. Thanks again and lets keep this game going. Take care and best of luck to all of you.
I love this Shadow Assasin build, I'm going to rebuild my character according to your skill choice. Happy Wheels