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.
@Puppet_Master69,
Here is a good rule of thumb I use: When your BotP buff starts falling off w/o killing minions of yellow packs then its time to swap to Pain Enhancer. For anything below that, use BotP. For 4man's where you are the RG killer, always equip Stricken. Stricken will not be needed for any solo runs however. I hope this helps. Good luck!
tried BoS. HUGE dps loss. got like -5 lvls in solo rifts. just scrap it and run PE instead
yes it does help thank you
@dsxy,
I have different gear for different duties. I try not to use my best gear for farming t13 or speed GR's. This is necessary because I play in HC and have learned the hard way how a random dc or game lockup can and will ruin your efforts from over 100 hrs of play. With that in mind, I normally run t13 or speed GR's with between 800k - 900k hp and resistances all the time above 1k (w/o boar). For pushing 4man GR's I drop my hp down to about 650k in order to stack enough damage and attack speed to be effective at RG killing. Even then I maintain at least 1k AR.
A 80 GR clear with only 700k DPS is very good, extremely good in fact. In order to go much higher it will be necessary for you to gain more DPS though. Fortunately it is not hard to gear a shadow impale DH to north of 2 mil DPS after a good deal of farming. Once this is done, clearing 90+ is within reach. I will say that ultimately you want to get your AR and hp up high enough that esoteric can be swapped out for a damage gem. No hurry though, just farm up gear/para/augs until you're strong enough to make the transition. Also as I stated in the guide, make sure to stack some life after kill, as it will greatly improve your survivability in higher GR's. Good luck and happy hunting!
@dsxy,
Your hp is very low. I see that you are missing vit on several pieces of gear, try to beef up your vit when u can. As obvious as this is, your quiver is missing elemental damage. When gearing allows try to maintain close to 1k AR. All these things will improve as you get better drops. Just keep at it, with enough time invested in farming up gears, you will be fine. Good luck!
@BigJohnnasty
Sorry if this has already been asked, but what gems did you use on the armor? I've seen some similar builds going all resistance, whereas some still say use emeralds for dex? What do you recommend?
@Sean0529,
I normally recommend placing all diamonds in the chest and pants. This is especially true for HC, but it has a lot of merit even in SC. The reason behind this recommendation is that the dexterity that an emerald gives is generally small, especially as you gain paragon and start to augment gear. Diamonds on the other hand add quite a bit of AR to what would be a small base AR w/o them. For instance w/o diamonds in chest and pants AR would be typically around 600. With this much AR as base, 78 AR added from a diamond would increase AR by 13%. Dexterity with lower paragon and no augments might be around 8k. With a base of 8k, 280 dex from an emerald would increase dex by 3.5%. As you can see the increase in damage from an emerald is small compared the the increase in damage mitigation from the added AR of a diamond. In my book gaining over 3 damage mitigation for a loss of 1 damage is a bargain. It will allow you to possibly gain more damage elsewhere, when the trade is not so much in favor of defense.
Hi there. So I have a couple of questions as I've decided to really commit to this build for season 10 (PS4). I got a primal Holypoint Shot with +20 Pysical and +15 Companion Damage. In all other respects it was perfect (rolled with crit chance). Rather than ruin it by rolling to Lightning I rolled Companion to Impale and have changed to Impact rune (for solo).
My own tests with this rune have been very good, and I've achieved my highest clear with it (a 93 -top is currently 96). I'm interested in your thoughts on running physical and also whether Impact or Grievous Wounds is the way to go. I'm assuming Impact will proc my strong arms even if I don't vault into them. I was thinking Impact for solo and Grievous wounds for group. What is the main reason for Ricochet? I assume it is the better hatred management rather than more damage. Lastly, I'm running BOTP as my 3rd gem but I'm thinking of swapping to Stricken and rolling +Elite Damage instead of Impale on the Quiver. My reasoning is as I get higher the guardian is going to become a problem and by rolling +Elite on the quiver I'll still get an elite multi even without BOTP. Thoughts?
ps. I'm not going to talk about the 35% Gold Find it rolled in one of the secondaries..
pps. I see from the previous comments BOTP or Pain Enhancer are favoured over Stricken for solo. I'll give it a couple of runs (I have mine at 94 currently) and will probably quickly come to the conclusion it is not viable for solo pushing. Still, I'm not convinced +Impale is best on the quiver. Given I have it on Helm and boots, maybe +Elite or Area Damage might be better..
@Quidam67,
You absolutely did the right thing in rolling impale on the quiver. For physical I would run Grievous wounds. You are correct, Ricochet's advantage is only in hatred management. Ricochet will help you keep hatred full more often, especially in lower difficulties. However when running in a group as a RG killer, it does not matter much which element you run. As a result, I recommend that for that purpose just use the rune of impale that matches your most GG elemental gears. I would only use Stricken for groups where you are the RG killer. Otherwise I typically run BotP for speedy runs and PE for higher difficulties. I would not replace Impale with elite damage on the quiver. Impale damage on the quiver gives bonus damage to all mobs, not just elites. Especially when pushing, killing some trash when in dense packs is crucial to get enough progress to finish the GR in time. I would say that area damage on the rings and or shoulders would be useful for solo pushing, but I would not replace impale damage on the quiver for it though.
Awesome thoughts, and this is pretty much exactly the conclusions I have come to as well. btw, for solo pushing I've had no issues using a physical impale rune. Vault into mob, hit as many of them as I can before they start doing any damage, and I've had no problems keeping at full hatred. I've also achieved my best clears with the new quiver (cleared a 93 in under 12 minutes) so it's a keeper!
ps. I have not tried Pain Enhancer much, initially I didn't feel like it was as good as BotP so never bothered with it again, but now that I'm hitting the limits and my gear is already mostly well optimised, I will go back and run a few grifts with PE again. I do notice that almost everyone on the leaderboards on console is using BotP.
Just noticed PE is physical. Am I right in assuming it will therefore be subject to my +40% Physical I have on bracers and quiver? Seems like a nice synergy, even though I do realise the main purpose is the AS
@Quidam67,
Yes the bleed from PE would benefit from the 40% physical damage bonus on your gear. Its a token bonus though as the bleed effect is quite small compared to the damage from impale. Every little bit counts though. BotP and PE are both viable for solo pushing. It boils down to personal preference as to which one to use. Good Luck!
I see you have thrown in the towel on the grenade build hey? Hard not to when you see how ridiculous shadow is now! I started playing on Xbox with a buddy and this is the same build I am running on there atm. So much fun. Only about 2 days in and I'm 1 shotting everything. 58 out of the top 60 clears on Xbox right now are with shadow lol. One guy with marauders and one guy with grenades in the mix somewhere.
Hope you are having better luck with the RIPS this season!
@Beotrix,
Long time no see my friend. Trust me, I am still fond of UE Danetta's Grenades. For certain tasks, its superior to Impale. Impale though, as you alluded to, is just so good at higher level content, so tanky, mobile and the damage on elites is really fun. It might seem like a small thing, but for me its big, maintaining the UE 4p bonus was a pain. With Impale its such a luxury to not have to worry about that anymore. Missed you a lot this season. Come back to PC and check out the good things we are doing, I think you will like it.
Yeah, I may. I was annoyed when they announced primal ancients as being 30% better than ancient. Thought the whole stacking RNG on top of RNG ON TOP OF RNG....... was just ridiculous. But after learning that it is now just a perfect stat ancient, I'm a little more OK with that now.
On the XBOX side of things, it's only been a few days and I just started to do some GRS tonight basically. Just did a 57 in 3:30 and my gems are only lvl 35 lol. I may just try and push to 70 tonight so I have a chance at primals. Does it have to be Solo 70? Not that I know anyone to group with on Xbox yet anyway haha.
@Beotrix,
Yeah I agree that if Primal Ancients had of rolled with 30% better stats it would have been bad. As it is now though, Primals actually remove some RNG from the game, as its normally very easy to roll what you want when you get one. Yes you have to solo a 70 before Primals will start to drop for you.
I did get my internet fixed btw and have not had any RIPS from dc's since. The game has locked up a few times though (screen just froze, had to alt-F4 to close D3). Was having this issue early in the season when using 32 bit, but ever since switching to 64 bit, its been stable with no screen freezes. I had my first 'legit' RIP on live since the end of season 7 the other day. We were pushing 106 for rank one 4man, and pulled too big a pack in festering woods, the game lagged out and my DH Ripped. It sucks, lost some good gear/augs/gems, but its early in the season and there is a lot of time to recover. I suppose if you have to go, best to go out swinging. In any case, hope to see you soon, take care.
Where does knock back come into play here?
i dont see where Strongarms come into play here
@BNNLeon,
With the rattling roll rune of vault, mobs will be knocked back as well as stunned for 1.5 sec after they are vaulted through.
I'm struggling to think of a technical reason why this isn't possible, other than the fact that I've never seen anyone do it. For sure the Hatred Refund is a legendary power so it can be cubed, and as far as I know there is no rule that prevents you using Impale with a 1 handed cross bow, but maybe there is since Bliz introduced the Shadow Melee set?!?
ahh, I've just discovered it is because of the shadows set bonus. you must be using a melee weapon