The Demon Hunter has 3 escape skills, Vault, Evasive Fire, and Smoke Screen. In PvE, each is a viable option, and arguments can be made for any of them. However in PvP...I think that Smoke Screen stands out quite strongly.
Anyone who has played team PvP knows that target focusing and communication is one of the most important aspects to victory. Vice versa, surviving when you are the focus fired player is just as important.
Most of the evasion skills for each class are equivalent in terms of closing or creating distance between you and your enemy. One key difference between smoke screen and everything else is that with the other skills if you escape the opposing team can still choose to continue targeting you using either ranged classes or using their distance closing skills to match yours.
Smoke screen (runed indigo) should completely nullify you as a potential target, force the other team to change retarget, and for melee classes to close the distance to the new target. This process can take awhile, and can be the difference between winning and losing. It may even make smart teams put Demon Hunters very low on the priority list because they know they can't count on killing them.
Big Assumption: You will be completely invisible to opposition.
I'd say focusing won't be such a huge issue, because of the popularity of area of effect spells and crowd control spells.
At least I'm thinking that, in a 4v4, if 3 of them jump on top of our team's Witch Doctor (even a Wizard which has long range but has to get into a certain range to cast such spells) they're just ensuring it's a lot easier to hit them with a Meteor, or some AoE Crowd Control from the Witch Doctor.
But I can see that being very powerful as a "panic button".
Take into account that is costs 15 disc, which is what half of the total disc? So if you havn't used anything else that costs disc you can pop twice, but in reality it'l be only once, wait a bit, then use again. So yea runed indigo its a 4 sec invis, but it doesnt say it makes the DH immune, so aoe's could hit. Idk I don't think it's THAT overpowered.
If they can kill your witch doctor at the cost of taking 1 meteor. It's worth it. There will be focus firing, and it will be extremely difficult to escape the grasp of a team that's good at it, given that there are no snare immunity skills (besides WD spirit walk). A team that does 100% damage to 1 player will always beat a team that does 25% damage to 4 players. AoE will have it's place, but single target is king in PvP.
Heck, focus firing can do it's job even if you don't kill the target just by making him run. If you reduce your target's DPS you are ahead. Especially in this type of game where healing is limited.
If AoE becomes the method to stopping Smoke Screen, I'll gladly add vault in addition. Smoke Screen + Vault will make you truely un-traceable. Expensive? Yes. But if they target you, and you are able to pull off this combination, I think it's almost a guaranteed win for your team if all else is equal.
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Anyone who has played team PvP knows that target focusing and communication is one of the most important aspects to victory. Vice versa, surviving when you are the focus fired player is just as important.
Most of the evasion skills for each class are equivalent in terms of closing or creating distance between you and your enemy. One key difference between smoke screen and everything else is that with the other skills if you escape the opposing team can still choose to continue targeting you using either ranged classes or using their distance closing skills to match yours.
Smoke screen (runed indigo) should completely nullify you as a potential target, force the other team to change retarget, and for melee classes to close the distance to the new target. This process can take awhile, and can be the difference between winning and losing. It may even make smart teams put Demon Hunters very low on the priority list because they know they can't count on killing them.
Big Assumption: You will be completely invisible to opposition.
At least I'm thinking that, in a 4v4, if 3 of them jump on top of our team's Witch Doctor (even a Wizard which has long range but has to get into a certain range to cast such spells) they're just ensuring it's a lot easier to hit them with a Meteor, or some AoE Crowd Control from the Witch Doctor.
But I can see that being very powerful as a "panic button".
Heck, focus firing can do it's job even if you don't kill the target just by making him run. If you reduce your target's DPS you are ahead. Especially in this type of game where healing is limited.
If AoE becomes the method to stopping Smoke Screen, I'll gladly add vault in addition. Smoke Screen + Vault will make you truely un-traceable. Expensive? Yes. But if they target you, and you are able to pull off this combination, I think it's almost a guaranteed win for your team if all else is equal.