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.
@BigJohnasty i was wondering when you have time can you make a Diablo Planner build for this for solo and group it would help me out so much
@jarod_od.
Leveling the Pain Enhancer past 25 is not required. There is no harm in doing so, but it will perform perfectly well if leveled to only 25. Good luck in pushing into those higher tiers!
@Puppet_Master69,
Right now is the beginning of the season and I am consumed by playing it atm. After this initial burst in season 10, when I get some time, I'll look into getting that done. In the mean time, I hope that you are enjoying the season so far.
o i have these this build i got my Season Journey done fast thank you so much
Thnx, mate! Clear 80 GR now ~10 min with para 560)
Am progressing really well with this build. Thanks for keeping it up to date and answering all the questions. +1
@Preadcher Studios,
You're most welcome, its my pleasure.
wonder why phys impale is such huge dps loss on single targer if it suppose to crit more
@Nightingale,
Grievous Wounds does not deal less damage than the other runes of Impale to single targets, in fact it deals more. However the amount of damage added is very small. The way the rune works is that it increased the critical hit damage of the base 750% weapon damage of impale and has not impact on the 40,000% additional weapon damage from the Shadow 6p. So for example for easy math lets assume that 330% crit dmg is equal to 60% increase in overall dmg. With this assumption the final impale dmg would be 750x1.6 + 40,000 = 41,200. The dmg from any of the other runes would simply be 750+40,000 = 40,750. Therefore using Grievous Wounds would give a 41,200/40,750 = 1.011 or roughly 1% increase in overall impale dmg to a single target. That is the good side of the rune, the bad is that both Ricochet and Overpenetration offer the utility of applying impale to more targets, which results in more reliable and abundant hatred refunds from your Karlie's Point. It is because of this utility that most choose to use Lightning or Cold impales. I hope this clarifies the pros and cons of the various rune choices we have at our disposal. Good luck and happy hunting!
One question if you find a better dawn then the karlei´s point is it ok to use it ?
@korg0th,
Unfortunately the Karlei's Point must be worn because the 2p bonus of Shadow Mantle requires a melee weapon, otherwise a dawn would be much better to wear as it rolls a higher damage range.
Mate, what about 24% AD on weapon instead 10% damag?
@jarod_od,
I would go with 10% damage over 24% area damage. The reason is that most the time trash killing is not a priority, elites and the RG are. As such I feel you would get more mileage out of the flat 10% bonus damage. Good Luck!
Great guide I'm having a lot of success with this build on PS4 seasons. Couple of questions.
If I have to chose, would I go for crit chance or Impale Damage on Helmet? Next, when running in a group are Lacunis favoured over Strong Arms? I was wondering if Strong Arms would proc as much given the amount of cc'ing the healer/barb are doing. Cheers. ps. I would have around 55% crit chance if I rolled Impale on helm and 30% total Impale (have it on boots as well).
@Quidam67,
I typically favor Impale damage over crit chance on the helm. In a group, you will not be using the rattling roll rune for vault, but rather tumble instead. This is for 2 reasons for this. One, using rattling roll would make the mobs cc immune faster which would reduce the effectiveness of the barb and monk pulls. Second, chain of shadows will not be used for high end 4man GR's (Witching Hour is used instead) and therefore its important to preserve discipline, which tumble helps to facilitate. As a result there will be no mechanism whereby you personally knockback mobs to proc the Strongarms bracers, so they would not offer any utility. Lastly as the designated RG killer, building Stricken stacks faster is of the upmost importance and Lacunis aid in this noticably. I hope this clears this up a little for you. Good luck and happy hunting. ;-)
On a traveler`s pledge, 10% crit or 20% lightning?
@Nawell,
It depends on how much Lightning damage bonus and Critical Chance you have. The lower you are in either will increase the chance that its the better of the 2 to roll. Try to have at least 1/10 crit chance of your crit damage. If your crit chance will drop below that threshold I would suggest that crit chance is better to roll.
Great guide!
Thanks.
@Tyrraxius,@Evilbox,@Halloknaap,
Thanks guys, I'm really glad you all are enjoying the build. I'll do my best to keep the build guide up to date and if there is anything I can do for you, let me know. Good luck and happy hunting!
1. When not running higher GR, replace the Pain Enhancer with the following:
2. For speed runs use Bane of the Powerful.
3. For pushing high GR in a 4man, use Bane of the Stricken.
1. what GR is to high you think to replace this ?
2. what hegh level GR is for Speed runs you think ?
3. how high GR should i start wearing Bane of the Stricken ?
just wondering like a little clue it would help me out when to replace gems