So I think vengeance and rapid fire could be the next big DH upgrade. WE already have the wohjinni and would really love to take advantage of it. Shadow's Mantle could really use a rework. Rapid fire is a tough build because of staying stationary but a few tweaks could really put rapid fire at the top. Here are my ideas:
Add a few pieces to The Shadow's Mantle and change the set bonuses.
Helmet
- The Shadow's Mask
- Rolls Dexterity & Socket
- 4 Random Magic Properties
Shoulder
- The Shadow's Advocate
- Rolls Dexterity & CDR
- 4 Random Magic Properties
Quiver
- The Shadow's Tremor
- Rolls Dex, AS, and 20-25% RF damage
- 5 Random Magic Properties
2 Piece Bonus
- Reduce the cool down of Vengeance by 9 seconds for every second of channeling rapid fire stacks up to 5 times.
- Shadow Power gains the effect of every rune.
4 Piece Bonus
- Primary skills that generate resources have 100% increased damage for 10 seconds after channeling rapid fire. This effect stacks up to 5 times for every second of channeling rapid fire.
6 Piece Bonus
- While Vengeance is active increase rapid fires attack speed by 30% and damage by 500%. For every second channeling rapid fire reduce the initial hatred cost by 5. Stacks up to 4 times.
A few items to compliment the Shadow Mantle rework.
Sin Seekers
- Rolls Dex, AS, & CHC
- 4 Random Magic Properties
- Rapid fire gains the effect of the High Velocity rune
New Shoulders
- Rolls Dex & AR
- 4 Random Magic Properties
- Primary skills that generate resources now generate 7 hatred and 1 discipline
Just an idea. With the new belt and bracers in 2.3 this build could up well and offer some great damage. Would be fun to play.
I like the thought, but I'm not sure that increasing damage alone is enough to make someone consider this set. I think you have to do some things to make it tough enough to allow for people to feel safe in standing still while channeling. It could be the most powerful set ever, but if I can't stand still long enough to ramp up the damage, then it is worthless.
That is why shadow discipline gaining the effect of all rune is good because you get gloom and increased life regen. Also the new bracers in 2.3, Wraps of Clarity, provide up to 35% damage reduction combined with Glooms 35% damage reduction plus the 32k life per hit from the blood moon rune, plus the 30% IAS from the set to increase the hits, and the 80% slow effect from the night bane rune and 30% increased movement speed from the shadow glide rune the set would have solid defense. With the Well of Darkness rune the cost is reduced 10 to increase up time I feel the survivability is enough.
I don't think more defense would be necessary but testing would have to be done. If more were needed a tweak to one of the Vengeance runes could be a possibility. The Side Cannons rune provides 3% healing per enemy hit with the side cannons. We could tweak that rune to provide 1.5% healing and add .5% damage reduction per enemy hit. Then it is not overpowered because no rockets and it is an option for defense for players that feel they need more defense.
The point that is not going to work does not depend from the damage or the survivability, as you can tweak numbers to get the desired result.
The two major issues with Rapid Fire are:
- initial channelling cost: this penalizes movement extremely. Suppose that you have to fight an arcane/thunderstorm pack - every few seconds you have to stop channelling to get away from bad stuff and a continuos start/stop cycle will drain us way more hatred than standing still, for lower damage. Very inefficient.
- movement itself: standing still to channel Rapid Fire is just going to slow us no matter what. Speed farming is completely out of question, and on high GR time is a factor that needs to be considered. Plus,, given how stuff tend to oneshot you no matter what reached a certain level, standing still is the last thing you want to do.
Also, there are other issues like the fact RF is a purely ST skill, which has some use against rift guardians but is near to useless in any other environment; the only rune giving it some AoE is Bombardment, but the aiming of the skill is terribly clunky.
I have actually leveled in Vanilla up to P100 my DH with Shadow Power/Rapid fire. Due to how life on damage snapshotted when you channeled skills (like in you got the 35% damage to hp running even when the skill dropped until you kept channeling) i just ran around getting the most mobs i could and then kept channeling RF until everything died. It worked, but it was nothing near the most efficient way to do it.
Rapid Fire needs a redesign before becoming viable. First of all it needs the inital cost removed as for other standing/channeled skills (Disintegration, Bats) to make movement less penalizing. Also Velocity rune should be either 100% chance or baseline with a 50% chance. Bombardment aiming speed should be greatly increased.
And after all of this, you still will have to stutter-step to make use of it.
Definitely agree with the initial cost and I tried addressing with the set bonus but your idea is much better. The issue of ST would help with Velocity being armed. The rockets from Vengeance and Fire Support rune would help with multiple target damage. Agreed though RF is better ST but I think I put in enough to help with the ST issue.
With 4 piece bonus I presented you could get 500% from your generators plus depth diggers in the cube and possibly simplicities strength with Bastion's will and you could use Evasive Fire - Covering Fire (I presented the shoulders for this problem) rune and really get a decent amount of damage when not channeling. It would probably take a rework of the time like maybe 167% damage that stacks up to 3 times every second of channeling or 250% 2 times. It would have to be tested to find the balance.
I agree RF definitely is not the showcase skill but ramping up generators and making vengeances uptime viable a really good build could come from this.
I was just thinking about a Shadow's Mantle rework and this came to mind. It would need testing to tweak the nuances but I think it could be viable.
So I think vengeance and rapid fire could be the next big DH upgrade. WE already have the wohjinni and would really love to take advantage of it. Shadow's Mantle could really use a rework. Rapid fire is a tough build because of staying stationary but a few tweaks could really put rapid fire at the top. Here are my ideas:
Add a few pieces to The Shadow's Mantle and change the set bonuses.
Helmet
- The Shadow's Mask
- Rolls Dexterity & Socket
- 4 Random Magic Properties
Shoulder
- The Shadow's Advocate
- Rolls Dexterity & CDR
- 4 Random Magic Properties
Quiver
- The Shadow's Tremor
- Rolls Dex, AS, and 20-25% RF damage
- 5 Random Magic Properties
2 Piece Bonus
- Reduce the cool down of Vengeance by 9 seconds for every second of channeling rapid fire stacks up to 5 times.
- Shadow Power gains the effect of every rune.
4 Piece Bonus
- Primary skills that generate resources have 100% increased damage for 10 seconds after channeling rapid fire. This effect stacks up to 5 times for every second of channeling rapid fire.
6 Piece Bonus
- While Vengeance is active increase rapid fires attack speed by 30% and damage by 500%. For every second channeling rapid fire reduce the initial hatred cost by 5. Stacks up to 4 times.
A few items to compliment the Shadow Mantle rework.
Sin Seekers
- Rolls Dex, AS, & CHC
- 4 Random Magic Properties
- Rapid fire gains the effect of the High Velocity rune
New Shoulders
- Rolls Dex & AR
- 4 Random Magic Properties
- Primary skills that generate resources now generate 7 hatred and 1 discipline
Just an idea. With the new belt and bracers in 2.3 this build could up well and offer some great damage. Would be fun to play.
I like the thought, but I'm not sure that increasing damage alone is enough to make someone consider this set. I think you have to do some things to make it tough enough to allow for people to feel safe in standing still while channeling. It could be the most powerful set ever, but if I can't stand still long enough to ramp up the damage, then it is worthless.
That is why shadow discipline gaining the effect of all rune is good because you get gloom and increased life regen. Also the new bracers in 2.3, Wraps of Clarity, provide up to 35% damage reduction combined with Glooms 35% damage reduction plus the 32k life per hit from the blood moon rune, plus the 30% IAS from the set to increase the hits, and the 80% slow effect from the night bane rune and 30% increased movement speed from the shadow glide rune the set would have solid defense. With the Well of Darkness rune the cost is reduced 10 to increase up time I feel the survivability is enough.
I don't think more defense would be necessary but testing would have to be done. If more were needed a tweak to one of the Vengeance runes could be a possibility. The Side Cannons rune provides 3% healing per enemy hit with the side cannons. We could tweak that rune to provide 1.5% healing and add .5% damage reduction per enemy hit. Then it is not overpowered because no rockets and it is an option for defense for players that feel they need more defense.
The point that is not going to work does not depend from the damage or the survivability, as you can tweak numbers to get the desired result.
The two major issues with Rapid Fire are:
- initial channelling cost: this penalizes movement extremely. Suppose that you have to fight an arcane/thunderstorm pack - every few seconds you have to stop channelling to get away from bad stuff and a continuos start/stop cycle will drain us way more hatred than standing still, for lower damage. Very inefficient.
- movement itself: standing still to channel Rapid Fire is just going to slow us no matter what. Speed farming is completely out of question, and on high GR time is a factor that needs to be considered. Plus,, given how stuff tend to oneshot you no matter what reached a certain level, standing still is the last thing you want to do.
Also, there are other issues like the fact RF is a purely ST skill, which has some use against rift guardians but is near to useless in any other environment; the only rune giving it some AoE is Bombardment, but the aiming of the skill is terribly clunky.
I have actually leveled in Vanilla up to P100 my DH with Shadow Power/Rapid fire. Due to how life on damage snapshotted when you channeled skills (like in you got the 35% damage to hp running even when the skill dropped until you kept channeling) i just ran around getting the most mobs i could and then kept channeling RF until everything died. It worked, but it was nothing near the most efficient way to do it.
Rapid Fire needs a redesign before becoming viable. First of all it needs the inital cost removed as for other standing/channeled skills (Disintegration, Bats) to make movement less penalizing. Also Velocity rune should be either 100% chance or baseline with a 50% chance. Bombardment aiming speed should be greatly increased.
And after all of this, you still will have to stutter-step to make use of it.
Definitely agree with the initial cost and I tried addressing with the set bonus but your idea is much better. The issue of ST would help with Velocity being armed. The rockets from Vengeance and Fire Support rune would help with multiple target damage. Agreed though RF is better ST but I think I put in enough to help with the ST issue.
With 4 piece bonus I presented you could get 500% from your generators plus depth diggers in the cube and possibly simplicities strength with Bastion's will and you could use Evasive Fire - Covering Fire (I presented the shoulders for this problem) rune and really get a decent amount of damage when not channeling. It would probably take a rework of the time like maybe 167% damage that stacks up to 3 times every second of channeling or 250% 2 times. It would have to be tested to find the balance.
I agree RF definitely is not the showcase skill but ramping up generators and making vengeances uptime viable a really good build could come from this.
I was just thinking about a Shadow's Mantle rework and this came to mind. It would need testing to tweak the nuances but I think it could be viable.
Imagine this with the new S4 Gem (Bane of The Stricken).