In S2 I've decided to try the popular DH (didn't play it since D3V release) and found myself completely ineffective. That's my armory (please, don't laugh, I know that my toons are pretty bad 8-))
Yes, I know that I should get M6 and steamroll everything, but that became an unexpected trouble to me. With my current setup I can barely handle T3 rifts in reasonable time, so I'm very slow on getting legendaries. Is it just my bad playstyle or is M6 really a key to everything? What do you think, can I squeeze more from what I have or should I continue stubbornly grind T3?
The main reason of asking is that S2 is gonna end rather soon. I don't expect much fun in remaining time of S2, but if I make some obvious mistakes, I wanna know about them before S3 starts and be ready.
Ok, I looked over your build. There are some inconsistencies in your build.
You have 2 High Power Skills in your skill bar. Those being Rain of Vengeance and Cluster Arrow.
RoV is strictly a cool down spell. And CA is spammable until you run out of Hatred. I don't have a problem with you using either skill, but each skill weakens the other in general. You really want to focus on a single source of powering your skills. To decrease down time on RoV, you will need to roll Cool Down Reduction. To decrease down time on Cluster Arrow, you will have to roll Resource Cost Reduction. So you might be spreading yourself thin trying to gear for both these skill. I would Drop of the 2, most people go with Hatred Based skills because you can find hatred generators in many forms. You are using quite a few. Entangling Shot is a generator, but I find it odd that you are using the Night Stalker passive for the +4 Hatred bonus. So you are netting 3+4 or 7 Hatred per cast of ES. I find this odd, when you could get +6 by switching to the Justice is Served rune. This would allow you to use a more offensive passive and gain some Damage output. I would suggest you do get rid of RoV. You have a lot of Discipline, so you might want use Marked for Death: Mortal Enemy to gain both Hatred and Damage Output.
The biggest inconsistency I see is your use of Damage bonuses. The Boar is physical, ES:Chain Gang is physical CA: Shooting Stars is physical and RoV is physical. So the 20% buff on your bracers might be warranted, but the use of the Boar is question able. The Bat has the same damage but would add Hatred that your build suggests you are lacking. The other odd thing is that you are using Shooting Stars. This isn't a bad choice in Rune but if you aren't using Ballistics you are losing out on the 100% Rocket Bonus. You would get a significant increase in Damage by just swapping your ES rune with a slight hit in Hatred generation and switching out Night Stalker for Ballistics.
I like that you are stacking Zei's Stone with Steady Aim. Both stack with your skills thereby increasing your damage per cast. But using Pain Enhancer over Bane of the Trapped seems wrong if you are using Cull the Weak and ES. I think you were thinking that it stacks well with Physical Damage but damage directly from the gem doesn't stack with you skills bonuses, so I would swap the gem, as well.
Believe it or not, I think you are actually going to have a hard time replacing your yellow amulet. It's socketed and is responsible for an 81% damage buff to your sheet damage. But your rings are much the opposite. You would be well served in rolling off Attack Speed for Crit 44.5% is respectable crit chance, so if you should try to get your Crit Damage up to 445% Crit Damage. CC on Rings if normally preferable over CD, but I'm betting you are starved in overall CD in meeting the 1:10 standard. CC is preferable because using the CC to CD ratios, max is 6%CC and 50%CD. So the there is a slight imbalance toward CC, as well, much easier to roll to max.
It also seems like you have plenty of Vit. So more HP, this is all Vit does. If you hover above your HP Globe it says it all. You lose it all you die. Well, it also seems like you are low on Resistance. It's generally better to mitigate damage than have more HP to lose. So you might roll off Life % in you Chest for Resist All. You have 23% from your Helm Gem, that's more than enough HP Bonus.
Another thing you need to consider is the Skill Bonus attributes on your gear. Right now I only see ES on your quiver. A quiver is a crazy place to roll on Skill Bonus. This is because all skills are available and it could end up costing a lot of crafting mats and gold to roll a better skill. Since it's yellow, I'd just look through your drops for something better. Ideally you want skill bonus attributes to be on your spenders not your generator. Right now you're buffing your smallest output of damage. You want to buff your highest output sources of damage. This will knock down the Elites and GRG faster. So look for a better quiver with a buff to your spenders. You have a yellow, even one with smaller CC is will probably be better if it had RoV or CA damage buffs.
GLHF Keep playing and you can get the GR 35 Conquest.
Thank you very much for your help, my friends! Especially CrayZ1430 for his detailed analysis!
I know that my gear is of a starter level, I'm working on it, got my first Mara piece yesterday (after almost 30 hours of playing and spending about 10k shards only on gloves with 0 result (not counting 2 TnTs which were crappy and useless for me) I was really delighted to see Mara gloves drop from a barrel 8-). The main question was if could i get higher with this gear by improving my skills to increase my chances of finding better items. And yeah, it seems I have a lot to learn about DH, he's very different from my WD, Wiz and Monk experience.
Some questions to CrayZ1430:
-Hatred spenders: I like to use MS and CA and understand that my spenders should be the main source of damage. The only reason for RoV to be onboard is Nat's 4-set bonus that greatly reduces its CD time, so it's semi-spammable (about every 4-5 seconds if I'm on T2 and kill everything fast enough). It's getting worse in T3-4 since I don't have enough firepower. So my way of fighting now is "run to mobs->RoV->Vault back->CA all the way". Sorry for not havin Ballistics, Cull The Weak left from my experiments with Cold EA, I'll set it instead of Stalker. Do you think that even with such a reduced cooldown I should remove RoV from skillbar? What will be a good replacement - Marked for Death maybe?
-Generator: yep, I see my flaw here. Thought about getting more enemies debuffed by ES using Odissey's End legendary affix but it's not worth it. I'll change my rune to +Hatred. and replace the passive. Boar is here instead of Bat because of Resistance bonus - I'm on HC and didn't masted DH yet so survivability is still an issue for me. If I die than I won't be able to improve my damage and skills, right? 8-)
-Damage Mitigation: another flaw , but this time the one I know about. Since my gear is rather bad, I'm just too greedy to spend my Souls on rerolling it knowing that I will replace Nat's items with Mara ASAP. Do you think that rerolling low-end legendaries will really improve my performance? I'm not experiencing troubles with survival now but i'm trying to get some overshoot in order to prepare for T5-6+.
So, thank you very much one more time, I'll try to bump my skills and gear up and report. The question now is what will be the most efficient way of farming for me until reaching end-game? Doing GRifts from lvl1 to lvl 18 takes 40-50 min for me and gives me 2-3 legs per hour (incl. Kadala) - I take it's a low efficiency compared to what other people get. But still I have my gems to level up. So which option is better: GRifts up to 18-20, Slow T3-T4 rifts (about 15 min per rift) of fast T2 ones (4-5 min per rift)?
Thank you for your help and let all your rare drops be Ancient!
Well, thank to everyone's help, I managed it through GR 18 at last and feel ready for something higher 8-).
Just as I thought, several build tweaks and improvements in playstyle increased my efficiency even without gear changes, I'm starting to get into this DH thing. I've meditated over my Leg Gems for a bit and tried to calculate, what will be better in my case: low-level BotT or Pain Enhancer? It seems that I'm dealing about 1200-1300% weapon dmg every second (RoV+CA). So BotT will increase this amount by, say, 20%, resulting in ~1500%, while Pain Enhancer adds 400% dmg/sec resulting in 1600%-1700%. It will definitely change when turrets will appear at the stage, but my calculations show that PE is better for low-level builds. Am I missing something?
By the way, it seems that we are missing a good mid-game DH guide. There are lots of advices and thoughts upon M6 but very little infirmation about how to get there (I remember a good step by step WD beginner guide in this forum that helped me a lot).
HC only, no other way! What are we looking for the game to give us, if not a difficult task and bursts of adrenaline? Playing SC means you just can't lose - then why play the game at all? While GRs are not nearly competitive between players (RNG rules over the skill), HC gives you another challenge - not in the field of gear and reaction, but in the field of courage and determination.
HC also resolves the frequent question of "I completed my M6/Jade/Raekor/whatever set using almost perfect items, everything around dies, dunno what to do now, don't want to grind for 1% increase in dmg..." and so on. You got good gear - time to test its limits and limits of your skills! And if you lose - you really lose, so that starts to mean something! Go, try, die, start again - it's a game about grinding, isn't it? And if you don't like grinding - what are you doing there for so long in the first place?
Getting killed on HC (not via disconnect, of course) gives me a strange pleasure, a knowing that I went as far as I could, some kind of personal achievement. I know that being a casual player I will never reach those heights that top players conquer, I've got not enough free time for that kind of diving into the game (family, job, etc.), but at least I reach my personal limit - and that is already something. Next time I'll try harder and go some further - so the interest for the game persists.
I'm gonna say a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who responded to my noobish questions! Today I got past GR 24 and stopped at GR 25 (or T6, if anyone likes that kind of difficulty staging), so now I see some good drops! The crucial change in my gear was obtaining 2 Mara pieces that gave me a good meat shield and an extra source of hatred. The major improvement in my gameplay, though, came with playing skills and build tweaks guided by CrayZ1430's advices. Bow to you, man, you've returned to me the interest in DH that I started to lose 8-).
So now I can officially confirm that getting to T6 with DH does not require M4 or M6 but it will not be easy without them. From my experience I can say that playing DH in mid-game without M6 it much more challenging than WD, Wiz or Monk mid-game without top sets.
Too bad that I can't stably play multiplayer games because i have to set my game on pause rather often and unpredictable. Noone will want to just sit and wait for me 8-). So good luck, fellow DHs, hope to return here with endgame-related questions or, maybe, even my own noopish opinions
Wow, didn't notice that you were playing HC. You're awfully brave to play with tumble. It's effective, but, Smoke Screen gets you out of more trouble. I would definitely recommend the Healing Vapors Rune. SS has the ability to get you out of Jail. Where as Vault you are stuck in jail. Not much you can do about wallers without Kulle-Aid, but if they can't see you they tend not to throw down additional walls to stack up. I noticed you have a lot of Discipline, probably from Nat's, so that will help your survivability. I know Vault plays faster, but, you have to watch out for using it for speed over getting out of trouble. It's very effect to get the distance bonuses though. Not sure if you actually know that how these 2 skills work, but, you are for invulnerable while the skills are active. So Vaulting you are safe, but you have to be moving. This is why jailers can get you killed. You can't move. With SS, you're like Frodo Baggins putting on the Ring, the jailer doesn't even know you are still there, so you sentence in jail is suspended. If you are looking for Speed, Krem's belt is better solution than fast forwarding with Vault. You'll probably lose Black Thorn's buff, but the only viable set that you can match up with that set is the Shadow one which keeps you alive, but, gives very little damage buffs. So, you are going to have to give up Black Thorns at some point.
To be honest, I wing the Mid-Game. I play the drops. Ok, since you are HC, it make a little more sense why you went with Pain Enhancer. I've played around with most of the Gems. It just seems that Pain Enhancer doesn't build enough damage as you progress. But you're right, it's a gem that does better upfront, but increments slower than the other gems. Tox still seems better in the long run. As far as the Defensive Gems go, don't even bother with Moratorium, you will lose your character. I got mine up to the 25 Rank. I think that extends the duration to about 6 seconds. Then you get a great buff that fails 90% of the time. Great, you die 6 seconds later. The new seasonal gems are much better. As an Armored class, the Resist (All but physical) seems best, but I actually have no experience with it. Healing I've tried, but, you can get over confident wearing it. You heal so fast, but a 1-shot is a 1-shot. But ground effect you don't have to worry about much.
Regarding the Boar, I don't think much of the taunt. The wolf while technically doesn't draw any body and distract, he is more aggressive and tends to keep them further away with a bigger hit box. I guess what I'm saying is that since he's bigger, he blocks better and from futher away. If you get the Cloak of the Garwulf, you get three wolves and they can actually keep monsters from getting past doors. And the Wolf Howl is awesome. So I'd go with Wolf over Boar.
I still stand by the resist all comment over the additional life. There are limited sources for resistance and you run out at Paragon 200. And I don't think gemming to get more is worth it. You get armor and damage with Dex, so, why would you do that.
Getting back to the midgame. I think you're on the right track, just a little unfamiliar with the the Runes and Passives. Just try to familiarize yourself better with them and look them over when you get something new. There quivers that let you generate hatred with Chakrams. Your yellow quiver sucks, so, that may be useful. I wouldn't get rid of your bow, you need that to proc your damage buffs, but, Chakrams will deal more damage and it pierces so it will clear out mobs faster. Regarding, RoV. I think it's weak. The CD is too long. I was playing in the PTR and the upcoming changes address this. They kind of over did it. I had RoV up almost 100%. But, for season 2, it's weak. With you probably no going to risk swapping out a Diamond into your helm (I know, I have a HC Crusader that wears one) it doesn't make sense to rely on a CD spell. Oh, if you ever go with Chakrams, ignore what I said about SS, use Vault. You want to burst those things out and then run. Using Chakram is about positioning your DH so that everything is lined up for max damage. Vault is particularly useful for this. I will state that Archery is more than useful with a bow. Xbows get a Crit bonus, but Bows get damage on every cast whether Crit or Not.
I see you switched over to Ballistics, so you should know the other Rocket Skills are Mulitshot Arsenal and Spitfire Sentries. You should look into incorporating these if it fits for that 100% buff. The 2.1.1 build for M6 had rockets on everything. The Ballistics buff might be the best single buff in the game.
2. roll critchance on ur rings. Unless ur profile is bugged you got those rings drop with sockets. reroll life per hit ro critchance or critdamage on royal ring, that lifeperhit gonna do you nothing trust me. Same for nat, losing that 450 vit vs gaining that crit stat, its gonna help you stay alive more
Some kind of bug in BNet armory, both ring sockets are rerolled so I can't get CC or CHD there. Farming for new RoRG with that but still no success.
3. Rain of vengeance is a crappy 0 damage ability, you if you by any chance have a stone of jordan, take it, drop the nat ring, the 3 set is nice, the 4 set is unnecessary.
4. if you want to use cull the weak then you can just pop in some sentries instead of rain. (polar station)
Don't have SoJ still but got second Unity yesterday with my monk, gonna replace Nat's ring. All for survival in HC! But if i had no Unity then: i hav a yellow +dex/6CC/47CHD/socket ring giving me nice 11% boost in sheet dmg. Will it be stronger than almost constant 500% damage per second from RoV and why? RoV cooldown is not an issue for me, it is reduced to something like 6-7 seconds and I intended to use it till M4 acquisition. Will more sheet dmg + Marked for Death (or anything) instead of RoV be better? Cull the Weak is triggered by Entangling Shot anyway; tried Ambush before, felt like Cull the Weak gives more stable damage boost when facing fat guys like RGs.
6. Aye, grab a friggin highest green gem for ur weapon and reroll attackspeed to 10% dmg.or if you ae bathing in ramaladnis you can reroll socket to 10% and add a socket, if thats ur plan fine.
Sure, just spent all my emeralds on armor, didn't gather enough for bow. Gonna fix it today, though. I don't have a Gift yet, but looked over my Bow stats and decided that it's not worth gifting, so gonna roll 10% dmg instead of IAS.
Wow, didn't notice that you were playing HC. You're awfully brave to play with tumble. It's effective, but, Smoke Screen gets you out of more trouble. I would definitely recommend the Healing Vapors Rune. SS has the ability to get you out of Jail. Where as Vault you are stuck in jail. Not much you can do about wallers without Kulle-Aid, but if they can't see you they tend not to throw down additional walls to stack up. I noticed you have a lot of Discipline, probably from Nat's, so that will help your survivability. I know Vault plays faster, but, you have to watch out for using it for speed over getting out of trouble. It's very effect to get the distance bonuses though. Not sure if you actually know that how these 2 skills work, but, you are for invulnerable while the skills are active. So Vaulting you are safe, but you have to be moving. This is why jailers can get you killed.
Tried both Vault and SS and Vault appeared to me as a very effective safe tool (in case you're not frozen or stunned, but a good DH should learn to avoid these, right?). First of all, yes, it DOES break Jailer effect, even the message "Jail Broken" or something like that appears. Got Kulle-Aid yesteday, so Wallers are now a lesser problem. The main advantage of Tumble for me is that with my amount of Discipline I can jump for 4-5 seconds non-stop, while being invulnerable, as you said. Even when stuck between Walls I just can Vault on one space waiting for them to fall off. And it's always ready, no cooldown. Maybe on higher difficulties I will shift to SS if i will see Vault ineffective in getting me out of troubles. Or, maybe, with next DH after this one bites the dust.
The new seasonal gems are much better. As an Armored class, the Resist (All but physical) seems best, but I actually have no experience with it. Healing I've tried, but, you can get over confident wearing it. You heal so fast, but a 1-shot is a 1-shot. But ground effect you don't have to worry about much.
I'm looking at Resistance Gem with mild interest but for now the damage output was my main issue. I'll think about it after M6 assembly. It seems that regen doesn't mean much for DH since you are always trying to NOT get hit, so yeah, 1-shot is 1-shot anyway and you can always jump from ground effects (Plagued is pain in the *ss because of long duration but the damage is not that dangerous if you do not stand in it for a long time).
I still stand by the resist all comment over the additional life. There are limited sources for resistance and you run out at Paragon 200. And I don't think gemming to get more is worth it. You get armor and damage with Dex, so, why would you do that.
It seems that you can't have both AllRes and Single res on one item, can you? There is no AllRes roll variant for my cloak. Anyway, it seems that I should go away from Nat's set even before Marauder's completion as people here are convincing me that RoV is non-efficient. Got Ancient cloak yesterday with 114 AllRes that shoots rockets to the attackers - are these rockets affected by Ballistics? Because then it would be nice 1500% wep dmg retaliation
There quivers that let you generate hatred with Chakrams. Your yellow quiver sucks, so, that may be useful. I wouldn't get rid of your bow, you need that to proc your damage buffs, but, Chakrams will deal more damage and it pierces so it will clear out mobs faster.
Still the only Leg Quiver I've got is the one that slows down Ball Lightning - it's fun but wasn't that effective for me, CA does the job better. Am I right that with that quiver you should use Chakram as a primary attack?
Well, enough words, gonna return to my hunt for Mara pieces. Thanks again, I owe you a beer!
Well, bad news for me, got killed at last at GR 25. Bad luck, 2 packs of Fast Mortars, one with Horde affix. Tried to run away but didn't manage it <_<.
Well, may be this time I will try to write a brief guide how to get through the first hours of a fresh DH. Noob writing for newbies, yeah, that's cool. At least, now I know the skills bit better.
So, good luck to everyone, I'm starting a new life!
That's a shame, R.I.P. I normally play SC but I do have a HC barb, and the first time they died it was upsetting. It was rather undignified too, an arcane sentry in whimsyshire did me in!
I was going to caution you about that cloak that shoots rockets, I have read that it can get you killed if a reflect damage mob reflects the rockets back at you... not sure if this is still the case or if it's been fixed. But either way I guess it's too late now!
It's OK, as I wrote higher, I find a feeling of completeness in HC R.I.P.ing. Now I'm more familiar with DH limits and will not be that reckless next time. New toon is already on the way to his own M6, and I have a feeling that he will be more lucky
I find it amazing you even went for Tier 25 without full Marauders. Well there's one way to learn. Trial by fire. Anyway, tough break on your fallen character. I'm glad you seem to be in good spirits about the death. At least you have the Paragon. I hope you ranked up your Gem of Ease. It'd be fun 1 shotting everything with a Crafted Legendary. Oh, not sure if you know this, but, Ancient weapons have a unique ability to roll with 30-40 level reduction. This is the actual range. Ancients with level requirement reduction can not roll with 28 level reduction it's out of range. So it might be worth your while to craft until an ancient with a socket spawns. I've always wanted to try out that bow with the crit damage or even the one with elite damage. Keep getting Kridershot Drop. I really like Elemental Arrow, so, maybe next season I'll give it a go. This season, I got my bow to drop before I even had enough Forgotten Souls to begin crafting for Ancient weapons. About your legendary quiver, don't use it. Reflect will kill you. The Lightning Builds I've watched VODs on always include Deaths to finish the rift. And these were before they patched out permanent Smoke Screen. If reflect spawns as an Elite affix you are standing in a room full of things that will kill you and there is nothing to do but wait for your death sentence. Anyway, seems like you having enough fun, so I'll leave it at just good luck.
P.S. You asked about passives. Ambush will probably be popular with the new Dead Man's Legacy in the new patch. So you get 40% damage buff with the passive until 75% health, the quiver allows a double hit with Multi-Shot around 50-60% health. Until the patch, you basically have half damaged monsters chasing you around the screen. Some people like Singled Out for Greater Rift Guardians. Almost everybody uses Cull the Weak in tandem with Zei's Stone. Grenadier used to be great with Cluster Arrows, but a 10% buff is low compared to Gem Damage and I'm pretty sure the 20% area increase is useless. Most have dropped Grenadier for trying to get both Elemental and CA bonuses on their gear. CA can roll on 3 slots, and Elemental on at least that many. It lost favor when cold became the way to proc Cull the Weak and Zei's. CA is normally Grenades with SS & Maelstrom being the exceptions. Custom Engineering is required with M6 or any other Sentry build. The other ones tend to be used only early when you are defenseless without decent gear.
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Hello, guys!
In S2 I've decided to try the popular DH (didn't play it since D3V release) and found myself completely ineffective. That's my armory (please, don't laugh, I know that my toons are pretty bad 8-))
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Disasterrr19-2709/hero/54791447
Yes, I know that I should get M6 and steamroll everything, but that became an unexpected trouble to me. With my current setup I can barely handle T3 rifts in reasonable time, so I'm very slow on getting legendaries. Is it just my bad playstyle or is M6 really a key to everything? What do you think, can I squeeze more from what I have or should I continue stubbornly grind T3?
The main reason of asking is that S2 is gonna end rather soon. I don't expect much fun in remaining time of S2, but if I make some obvious mistakes, I wanna know about them before S3 starts and be ready.
Thanks in advance, wish you some good loot!
Ok, I looked over your build. There are some inconsistencies in your build.
You have 2 High Power Skills in your skill bar. Those being Rain of Vengeance and Cluster Arrow.
RoV is strictly a cool down spell. And CA is spammable until you run out of Hatred. I don't have a problem with you using either skill, but each skill weakens the other in general. You really want to focus on a single source of powering your skills. To decrease down time on RoV, you will need to roll Cool Down Reduction. To decrease down time on Cluster Arrow, you will have to roll Resource Cost Reduction. So you might be spreading yourself thin trying to gear for both these skill. I would Drop of the 2, most people go with Hatred Based skills because you can find hatred generators in many forms. You are using quite a few. Entangling Shot is a generator, but I find it odd that you are using the Night Stalker passive for the +4 Hatred bonus. So you are netting 3+4 or 7 Hatred per cast of ES. I find this odd, when you could get +6 by switching to the Justice is Served rune. This would allow you to use a more offensive passive and gain some Damage output. I would suggest you do get rid of RoV. You have a lot of Discipline, so you might want use Marked for Death: Mortal Enemy to gain both Hatred and Damage Output.
The biggest inconsistency I see is your use of Damage bonuses. The Boar is physical, ES:Chain Gang is physical CA: Shooting Stars is physical and RoV is physical. So the 20% buff on your bracers might be warranted, but the use of the Boar is question able. The Bat has the same damage but would add Hatred that your build suggests you are lacking. The other odd thing is that you are using Shooting Stars. This isn't a bad choice in Rune but if you aren't using Ballistics you are losing out on the 100% Rocket Bonus. You would get a significant increase in Damage by just swapping your ES rune with a slight hit in Hatred generation and switching out Night Stalker for Ballistics.
I like that you are stacking Zei's Stone with Steady Aim. Both stack with your skills thereby increasing your damage per cast. But using Pain Enhancer over Bane of the Trapped seems wrong if you are using Cull the Weak and ES. I think you were thinking that it stacks well with Physical Damage but damage directly from the gem doesn't stack with you skills bonuses, so I would swap the gem, as well.
Believe it or not, I think you are actually going to have a hard time replacing your yellow amulet. It's socketed and is responsible for an 81% damage buff to your sheet damage. But your rings are much the opposite. You would be well served in rolling off Attack Speed for Crit 44.5% is respectable crit chance, so if you should try to get your Crit Damage up to 445% Crit Damage. CC on Rings if normally preferable over CD, but I'm betting you are starved in overall CD in meeting the 1:10 standard. CC is preferable because using the CC to CD ratios, max is 6%CC and 50%CD. So the there is a slight imbalance toward CC, as well, much easier to roll to max.
It also seems like you have plenty of Vit. So more HP, this is all Vit does. If you hover above your HP Globe it says it all. You lose it all you die. Well, it also seems like you are low on Resistance. It's generally better to mitigate damage than have more HP to lose. So you might roll off Life % in you Chest for Resist All. You have 23% from your Helm Gem, that's more than enough HP Bonus.
Another thing you need to consider is the Skill Bonus attributes on your gear. Right now I only see ES on your quiver. A quiver is a crazy place to roll on Skill Bonus. This is because all skills are available and it could end up costing a lot of crafting mats and gold to roll a better skill. Since it's yellow, I'd just look through your drops for something better. Ideally you want skill bonus attributes to be on your spenders not your generator. Right now you're buffing your smallest output of damage. You want to buff your highest output sources of damage. This will knock down the Elites and GRG faster. So look for a better quiver with a buff to your spenders. You have a yellow, even one with smaller CC is will probably be better if it had RoV or CA damage buffs.
GLHF Keep playing and you can get the GR 35 Conquest.
Thank you very much for your help, my friends! Especially CrayZ1430 for his detailed analysis!
I know that my gear is of a starter level, I'm working on it, got my first Mara piece yesterday (after almost 30 hours of playing and spending about 10k shards only on gloves with 0 result (not counting 2 TnTs which were crappy and useless for me) I was really delighted to see Mara gloves drop from a barrel 8-). The main question was if could i get higher with this gear by improving my skills to increase my chances of finding better items. And yeah, it seems I have a lot to learn about DH, he's very different from my WD, Wiz and Monk experience.
Some questions to CrayZ1430:
-Hatred spenders: I like to use MS and CA and understand that my spenders should be the main source of damage. The only reason for RoV to be onboard is Nat's 4-set bonus that greatly reduces its CD time, so it's semi-spammable (about every 4-5 seconds if I'm on T2 and kill everything fast enough). It's getting worse in T3-4 since I don't have enough firepower. So my way of fighting now is "run to mobs->RoV->Vault back->CA all the way". Sorry for not havin Ballistics, Cull The Weak left from my experiments with Cold EA, I'll set it instead of Stalker. Do you think that even with such a reduced cooldown I should remove RoV from skillbar? What will be a good replacement - Marked for Death maybe?
-Generator: yep, I see my flaw here. Thought about getting more enemies debuffed by ES using Odissey's End legendary affix but it's not worth it. I'll change my rune to +Hatred. and replace the passive. Boar is here instead of Bat because of Resistance bonus - I'm on HC and didn't masted DH yet so survivability is still an issue for me. If I die than I won't be able to improve my damage and skills, right? 8-)
-Damage Mitigation: another flaw , but this time the one I know about. Since my gear is rather bad, I'm just too greedy to spend my Souls on rerolling it knowing that I will replace Nat's items with Mara ASAP. Do you think that rerolling low-end legendaries will really improve my performance? I'm not experiencing troubles with survival now but i'm trying to get some overshoot in order to prepare for T5-6+.
So, thank you very much one more time, I'll try to bump my skills and gear up and report. The question now is what will be the most efficient way of farming for me until reaching end-game? Doing GRifts from lvl1 to lvl 18 takes 40-50 min for me and gives me 2-3 legs per hour (incl. Kadala) - I take it's a low efficiency compared to what other people get. But still I have my gems to level up. So which option is better: GRifts up to 18-20, Slow T3-T4 rifts (about 15 min per rift) of fast T2 ones (4-5 min per rift)?
Thank you for your help and let all your rare drops be Ancient!
Well, thank to everyone's help, I managed it through GR 18 at last and feel ready for something higher 8-).
Just as I thought, several build tweaks and improvements in playstyle increased my efficiency even without gear changes, I'm starting to get into this DH thing. I've meditated over my Leg Gems for a bit and tried to calculate, what will be better in my case: low-level BotT or Pain Enhancer? It seems that I'm dealing about 1200-1300% weapon dmg every second (RoV+CA). So BotT will increase this amount by, say, 20%, resulting in ~1500%, while Pain Enhancer adds 400% dmg/sec resulting in 1600%-1700%. It will definitely change when turrets will appear at the stage, but my calculations show that PE is better for low-level builds. Am I missing something?
By the way, it seems that we are missing a good mid-game DH guide. There are lots of advices and thoughts upon M6 but very little infirmation about how to get there (I remember a good step by step WD beginner guide in this forum that helped me a lot).
HC only, no other way! What are we looking for the game to give us, if not a difficult task and bursts of adrenaline? Playing SC means you just can't lose - then why play the game at all? While GRs are not nearly competitive between players (RNG rules over the skill), HC gives you another challenge - not in the field of gear and reaction, but in the field of courage and determination.
HC also resolves the frequent question of "I completed my M6/Jade/Raekor/whatever set using almost perfect items, everything around dies, dunno what to do now, don't want to grind for 1% increase in dmg..." and so on. You got good gear - time to test its limits and limits of your skills! And if you lose - you really lose, so that starts to mean something! Go, try, die, start again - it's a game about grinding, isn't it? And if you don't like grinding - what are you doing there for so long in the first place?
Getting killed on HC (not via disconnect, of course) gives me a strange pleasure, a knowing that I went as far as I could, some kind of personal achievement. I know that being a casual player I will never reach those heights that top players conquer, I've got not enough free time for that kind of diving into the game (family, job, etc.), but at least I reach my personal limit - and that is already something. Next time I'll try harder and go some further - so the interest for the game persists.
BTW, GR 19 done, GR 20 gonna be this evening 8-)
Hello again, my friends!
I'm gonna say a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who responded to my noobish questions! Today I got past GR 24 and stopped at GR 25 (or T6, if anyone likes that kind of difficulty staging), so now I see some good drops! The crucial change in my gear was obtaining 2 Mara pieces that gave me a good meat shield and an extra source of hatred. The major improvement in my gameplay, though, came with playing skills and build tweaks guided by CrayZ1430's advices. Bow to you, man, you've returned to me the interest in DH that I started to lose 8-).
So now I can officially confirm that getting to T6 with DH does not require M4 or M6 but it will not be easy without them. From my experience I can say that playing DH in mid-game without M6 it much more challenging than WD, Wiz or Monk mid-game without top sets.
Too bad that I can't stably play multiplayer games because i have to set my game on pause rather often and unpredictable. Noone will want to just sit and wait for me 8-). So good luck, fellow DHs, hope to return here with endgame-related questions or, maybe, even my own noopish opinions
Wow, didn't notice that you were playing HC. You're awfully brave to play with tumble. It's effective, but, Smoke Screen gets you out of more trouble. I would definitely recommend the Healing Vapors Rune. SS has the ability to get you out of Jail. Where as Vault you are stuck in jail. Not much you can do about wallers without Kulle-Aid, but if they can't see you they tend not to throw down additional walls to stack up. I noticed you have a lot of Discipline, probably from Nat's, so that will help your survivability. I know Vault plays faster, but, you have to watch out for using it for speed over getting out of trouble. It's very effect to get the distance bonuses though. Not sure if you actually know that how these 2 skills work, but, you are for invulnerable while the skills are active. So Vaulting you are safe, but you have to be moving. This is why jailers can get you killed. You can't move. With SS, you're like Frodo Baggins putting on the Ring, the jailer doesn't even know you are still there, so you sentence in jail is suspended. If you are looking for Speed, Krem's belt is better solution than fast forwarding with Vault. You'll probably lose Black Thorn's buff, but the only viable set that you can match up with that set is the Shadow one which keeps you alive, but, gives very little damage buffs. So, you are going to have to give up Black Thorns at some point.
To be honest, I wing the Mid-Game. I play the drops. Ok, since you are HC, it make a little more sense why you went with Pain Enhancer. I've played around with most of the Gems. It just seems that Pain Enhancer doesn't build enough damage as you progress. But you're right, it's a gem that does better upfront, but increments slower than the other gems. Tox still seems better in the long run. As far as the Defensive Gems go, don't even bother with Moratorium, you will lose your character. I got mine up to the 25 Rank. I think that extends the duration to about 6 seconds. Then you get a great buff that fails 90% of the time. Great, you die 6 seconds later. The new seasonal gems are much better. As an Armored class, the Resist (All but physical) seems best, but I actually have no experience with it. Healing I've tried, but, you can get over confident wearing it. You heal so fast, but a 1-shot is a 1-shot. But ground effect you don't have to worry about much.
Regarding the Boar, I don't think much of the taunt. The wolf while technically doesn't draw any body and distract, he is more aggressive and tends to keep them further away with a bigger hit box. I guess what I'm saying is that since he's bigger, he blocks better and from futher away. If you get the Cloak of the Garwulf, you get three wolves and they can actually keep monsters from getting past doors. And the Wolf Howl is awesome. So I'd go with Wolf over Boar.
I still stand by the resist all comment over the additional life. There are limited sources for resistance and you run out at Paragon 200. And I don't think gemming to get more is worth it. You get armor and damage with Dex, so, why would you do that.
Getting back to the midgame. I think you're on the right track, just a little unfamiliar with the the Runes and Passives. Just try to familiarize yourself better with them and look them over when you get something new. There quivers that let you generate hatred with Chakrams. Your yellow quiver sucks, so, that may be useful. I wouldn't get rid of your bow, you need that to proc your damage buffs, but, Chakrams will deal more damage and it pierces so it will clear out mobs faster. Regarding, RoV. I think it's weak. The CD is too long. I was playing in the PTR and the upcoming changes address this. They kind of over did it. I had RoV up almost 100%. But, for season 2, it's weak. With you probably no going to risk swapping out a Diamond into your helm (I know, I have a HC Crusader that wears one) it doesn't make sense to rely on a CD spell. Oh, if you ever go with Chakrams, ignore what I said about SS, use Vault. You want to burst those things out and then run. Using Chakram is about positioning your DH so that everything is lined up for max damage. Vault is particularly useful for this. I will state that Archery is more than useful with a bow. Xbows get a Crit bonus, but Bows get damage on every cast whether Crit or Not.
I see you switched over to Ballistics, so you should know the other Rocket Skills are Mulitshot Arsenal and Spitfire Sentries. You should look into incorporating these if it fits for that 100% buff. The 2.1.1 build for M6 had rockets on everything. The Ballistics buff might be the best single buff in the game.
Again Good Luck
2 deizen:
I've really got Mara gloves and shoulders yesterday and crafted a new quiver - everything else is the same
Some kind of bug in BNet armory, both ring sockets are rerolled so I can't get CC or CHD there. Farming for new RoRG with that but still no success.
Don't have SoJ still but got second Unity yesterday with my monk, gonna replace Nat's ring. All for survival in HC! But if i had no Unity then: i hav a yellow +dex/6CC/47CHD/socket ring giving me nice 11% boost in sheet dmg. Will it be stronger than almost constant 500% damage per second from RoV and why? RoV cooldown is not an issue for me, it is reduced to something like 6-7 seconds and I intended to use it till M4 acquisition. Will more sheet dmg + Marked for Death (or anything) instead of RoV be better? Cull the Weak is triggered by Entangling Shot anyway; tried Ambush before, felt like Cull the Weak gives more stable damage boost when facing fat guys like RGs.
Sure, just spent all my emeralds on armor, didn't gather enough for bow. Gonna fix it today, though. I don't have a Gift yet, but looked over my Bow stats and decided that it's not worth gifting, so gonna roll 10% dmg instead of IAS.
Thank you for advices!
2 CrayZ1430:
Tried both Vault and SS and Vault appeared to me as a very effective safe tool (in case you're not frozen or stunned, but a good DH should learn to avoid these, right?). First of all, yes, it DOES break Jailer effect, even the message "Jail Broken" or something like that appears. Got Kulle-Aid yesteday, so Wallers are now a lesser problem. The main advantage of Tumble for me is that with my amount of Discipline I can jump for 4-5 seconds non-stop, while being invulnerable, as you said. Even when stuck between Walls I just can Vault on one space waiting for them to fall off. And it's always ready, no cooldown. Maybe on higher difficulties I will shift to SS if i will see Vault ineffective in getting me out of troubles. Or, maybe, with next DH after this one bites the dust.
I'm looking at Resistance Gem with mild interest but for now the damage output was my main issue. I'll think about it after M6 assembly. It seems that regen doesn't mean much for DH since you are always trying to NOT get hit, so yeah, 1-shot is 1-shot anyway and you can always jump from ground effects (Plagued is pain in the *ss because of long duration but the damage is not that dangerous if you do not stand in it for a long time).
It seems that you can't have both AllRes and Single res on one item, can you? There is no AllRes roll variant for my cloak. Anyway, it seems that I should go away from Nat's set even before Marauder's completion as people here are convincing me that RoV is non-efficient. Got Ancient cloak yesterday with 114 AllRes that shoots rockets to the attackers - are these rockets affected by Ballistics? Because then it would be nice 1500% wep dmg retaliation
Still the only Leg Quiver I've got is the one that slows down Ball Lightning - it's fun but wasn't that effective for me, CA does the job better. Am I right that with that quiver you should use Chakram as a primary attack?
Well, enough words, gonna return to my hunt for Mara pieces. Thanks again, I owe you a beer!
Well, bad news for me, got killed at last at GR 25. Bad luck, 2 packs of Fast Mortars, one with Horde affix. Tried to run away but didn't manage it <_<.
Well, may be this time I will try to write a brief guide how to get through the first hours of a fresh DH. Noob writing for newbies, yeah, that's cool. At least, now I know the skills bit better.
So, good luck to everyone, I'm starting a new life!
That's a shame, R.I.P. I normally play SC but I do have a HC barb, and the first time they died it was upsetting. It was rather undignified too, an arcane sentry in whimsyshire did me in!
I was going to caution you about that cloak that shoots rockets, I have read that it can get you killed if a reflect damage mob reflects the rockets back at you... not sure if this is still the case or if it's been fixed. But either way I guess it's too late now!
Good luck to you!
It's OK, as I wrote higher, I find a feeling of completeness in HC R.I.P.ing. Now I'm more familiar with DH limits and will not be that reckless next time. New toon is already on the way to his own M6, and I have a feeling that he will be more lucky
rule#1 on hardcore, always have a backup set:D, best of luck next time!
Season 7 Hardcore Demon Huntard #14 @ GR78
Unhallowed Essence Multishot Guide
I find it amazing you even went for Tier 25 without full Marauders. Well there's one way to learn. Trial by fire. Anyway, tough break on your fallen character. I'm glad you seem to be in good spirits about the death. At least you have the Paragon. I hope you ranked up your Gem of Ease. It'd be fun 1 shotting everything with a Crafted Legendary. Oh, not sure if you know this, but, Ancient weapons have a unique ability to roll with 30-40 level reduction. This is the actual range. Ancients with level requirement reduction can not roll with 28 level reduction it's out of range. So it might be worth your while to craft until an ancient with a socket spawns. I've always wanted to try out that bow with the crit damage or even the one with elite damage. Keep getting Kridershot Drop. I really like Elemental Arrow, so, maybe next season I'll give it a go. This season, I got my bow to drop before I even had enough Forgotten Souls to begin crafting for Ancient weapons. About your legendary quiver, don't use it. Reflect will kill you. The Lightning Builds I've watched VODs on always include Deaths to finish the rift. And these were before they patched out permanent Smoke Screen. If reflect spawns as an Elite affix you are standing in a room full of things that will kill you and there is nothing to do but wait for your death sentence. Anyway, seems like you having enough fun, so I'll leave it at just good luck.
P.S. You asked about passives. Ambush will probably be popular with the new Dead Man's Legacy in the new patch. So you get 40% damage buff with the passive until 75% health, the quiver allows a double hit with Multi-Shot around 50-60% health. Until the patch, you basically have half damaged monsters chasing you around the screen. Some people like Singled Out for Greater Rift Guardians. Almost everybody uses Cull the Weak in tandem with Zei's Stone. Grenadier used to be great with Cluster Arrows, but a 10% buff is low compared to Gem Damage and I'm pretty sure the 20% area increase is useless. Most have dropped Grenadier for trying to get both Elemental and CA bonuses on their gear. CA can roll on 3 slots, and Elemental on at least that many. It lost favor when cold became the way to proc Cull the Weak and Zei's. CA is normally Grenades with SS & Maelstrom being the exceptions. Custom Engineering is required with M6 or any other Sentry build. The other ones tend to be used only early when you are defenseless without decent gear.