Actually this kind of build doesn't seem so bad on low density
Yeah it's just way worse than any other build, long walks cause you have no vault, no smoke sreen spam cause you dont get much discipline, not many helltrapper procs if you use helltrapper, and also much more sensitive to reflect damage (cause no smoke screen spam). But yeah, "it doesn't seem so bad".. xD
Obviously shitty rifts are shit, but are you really setting up 5 sentries in order to kill 2-3 monsters instead of outright skipping them with a frostfire build?
Actually I managed to beat tier 44 solo (rank 1 on EU again^^) last night using a Kridershot, it seems to be worthwhile and is a lot easier to use compared to the Helltrapper. You can watch the run here: http://www.twitch.tv/wudijo/c/5196566
Supposedly we will see a lot of lightning DHs on the leaderboards very soon, given the fact that I did tier 43 on my first and 44 on my second try. Eventually, I think that Kridershot could actually be better than Helltrapper if you manage to reach the 4.154 bp, but I doubt there will be anyone around who could achieve that, as it requires to have max rolls on ALL of your items basically.
About the Overwhelming Desire: Apparently it seems to have an internal cooldown, and even then it's only a 35% damage boost on a single target, while I can get ~20% via Steady Aim by using Hellfire. And the only situation where there is a single target is the occasional yellow elite and the RG, which can't be charmed I guess.
Obviously I farmed them before the nerf, as this run happened before 2.1.1. In solo trials, I can get above my previous limit now, but I haven't found a way to get to 45 consistently yet. In some way the trials have become even more random, and I'm probably just lacking the items to do that. As was specified in the OP, I had 11 keys at my disposal when I started the 45 runs.
Edit: Last night I was showcasing a variation of this build using Kridershot instead of Helltrapper, and it went unexpectedly well. I managed to beat 42 at 13 min (good density keep depths) on my third try and barely missed it on the others (meh density and long walks). Actually this kind of build doesn't seem so bad on low density, it just excels at high density more than the rest.
The thing is. Some builds makes you jump up 2 levels when you are lucky, some makes you jump up 5 or even 10(raekor barbs). check my #54 reply.
Indeed, this is exactly one of the underlying factors that contribute to the build's success. The lightning DH has - purely hypothetically - the possibility to go far beyond anything a frostfire DH could even dream of, because if you get the right monster types in the right area at the right density, you can increase your overall dps by enough to be able to beat it. If we still had the old trial system, I guess that highly geared people like gabynator would have beaten 46 or 47 already, now that everyone is running lightning. I believe this build could potentially go up to 48 without, and to 50 with a conduit. We'll probably never see this though because the odds are so incredibly small and the keys are so difficult to get (if at all anymore).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but your character sheet shows 52% IAS, you have 15% from your gem, that's 67%, you need 67.4% to reach 4.15386 with a 45% TnT. Unless the legendary gem is not additive to your 52% IAS and the gem gives you 74.8% IAS, you're not reaching 4.15 mate.
I use enchantress for 3% extra IAS exactly for this reason. In a party without a WD I use a RoRG with 7% attack speed and cdr, as I don't have one that has rolled a natural socket (or 7% IAS and a useful damage stat).
Concerning Kridershot: Fun for normal T6 rifts, probably not so good for greater rifts. It will only ever be useful in a party with a WD when you could try to reach the 4.154 bp using Gogok and Pain Enhancer, and even then I doubt it will be competitive. You will have an easier time surviving though, as you have far more discipline to spend. You probably could even spam smoke screen on RG then.
TrueColdkil is making a valid point here, and one that I might have addressed only marginally before. It was a lucky rift, and I hope blizzard will at least somewhat reduce the RNG during the next season (considering they changed trials in a way that is intended to slowly climb up the tiers to even get a shot at setting a new record may be a good sign after all), so that you can expect to see a clearer competition then.
On what held me back on the other runs: bad RNG obviously. I don't remember all of the rifts exactly, just prior to the succeeding run I hit a blue blood clan shaman pack in a narrow a1 cave layout, where skipping was not so easy. I actually managed to deal with the reflect damage this time, however they just kept putting their shield on each other and well, gg. One run before that I got a really good first level, ahead in time at about ~50% progress, then went on to see a tower of the damned layout full of scavenging tunnelers. Before that I was in a cave again, fallen everywhere (which are pretty good monsters imo), and I hit three elite packs at once, which generally is like heaven, but not if they have reflect and electrified and you can't hit smoke screen in time because of that.
Generally you'll just need a somewhat good density, not too much bad luck on the packs and some type of monsters that provide good progress, just as blood clan, fallen, grotesques, zombies, skeletons, tremors, mallet lords, oppressors and sometimes even things like barbed lurkers depending on layout.
I think that even if I could manage to get to the 4.154 breakpoint without the use of the Gogok of Swiftness gem, I'd probably still use it because of the cdr. Trying to get it on other items will cost you far too much in terms of dps, even counting in another gem (which would probably be Smite or Poison gem). It's not worthwhile to gear up on attack speed that much if you keep using the Gogok of Swiftness gem, as you will get to 15 stacks very easily. As I specified in the initial post already, 10% damage, 7% attack speed is best on the weapon. Getting additional cooldown reduction on shoulders and the quiver will suffice.
For normal rifts: I have tried using a Kridershot + 3 sentry at the 2.842 breakpoint while changing Marked for Death to Vault, and including Tactical Advantage. It seems to be fairly good, I can run T6 at 4m toughness (with Awareness), and it's a lot of fun. I have done it on stream at some point already, might do again, but I can't see it surpassing the general frostfire builds simply because at the top end, everything on the screen basically dies instantly and you will want your shots to actually reach the enemies before that. Kridershot lets you spam Ball Lightning all day, which in turn lets you Vault and Smoke Screen all day.
Concerning the density issue: Of course I fish for good rifts, but if you actually watch me doing rifts on stream, I'm progressing past 30-50% almost every time before I decide to start a new game. This build is not really reliant on having huge amounts of monsters ALL of the time, you will just need to reach a certain treshold depending on your remaining resources. It doesn't work so well in empty rifts, but as was already mentioned, you can't get a rank in those either.
About Custom Enginneering: Obviously I don't use it as a passive as it is on my Hellfire Amulet, yet it is mandatory, which is why I included it in the skill calculator. I use Steady Aim as my 5th passive in solo, and Ambush in party.
Edit: Yes, reflect packs are really difficult to beat. Usually I just skip those or drag them along until I find more monsters to survive. I decided to kill the yellow pack in the beginning only because I encountered the blues just at the same time, and in hindsight, with a little bit better gameplay, I wouldn't have needed to die several times there. If you discount the time lost there, you can see that even without Erethon a 45 rift like this is very much feasible.
Another thing: I actually feel like I need less RNG on my rifts, as I can basically survive any monster type regardless of how dangerous they are, with only few exceptions. So while a zombie rift is really great to progress quickly, I can still get comparable results in a rift of this density (almost) no matter which monster types I get.
Hello everyone, this is Wudijo. After beating greater rift tier 45 as a solo Demon Hunter last night, I want to introduce you to the build and items I used to do it, since its mechanics seems to be fairly unknown to many.
Disclaimer: After trolling people with my poison Chakram / Spike Trap build for a full day (I really enjoyed those guys who believed it, though), I guess it's time to resolve the mystery about what really went down on this run. So here it is:
Most of you probably have already heard of the Meticulous Bolts quiver and the potential lightning builds that arise when using it. Ever since blizzard announced this quiver on the 2.1 ptr I wanted to create a build that revolves around lightning and M6, and after some experimentation, I believe I have found the optimal build for solo play in high grifts, which basically comes down to something I like to call “Meticulous Punishment”.
The idea is to keep up hatred regen via Preparation – Punishment and spam shots nearly incessantly. Because the ball lightning is moving slower, it hits the targets more often, thus dealing more damage and generating more procs. Like this, you can use the Helltrapper one-handed crossbow found in Act V bounties, which allows you to offset the loss of Bombadiers Rucksack by spawning up to two more sentries nearly instantaneously upon entering a fight. The second benefit of these procs, and perhaps even more importantly, is the huge amount of discipline that you can regenerate using the Night Stalker passive. This doesn’t work so well on single targets, however on huge packs of 10 or more monsters you’ll basically need just one or two shots in order to refill all of your discipline, which in turn lets you chain smoke screen nearly indefinitely. You will need to tightly manage your resources in order not to run out of hatred or discipline, because otherwise you will most likely be dead at the spot. Aside from the effectiveness of this build, it’s also great fun as well, as you are forced into attacking actively yourself and not rely on sentries entirely. It’s a really engaging play style that offers a most welcome variation to the Demon Hunter class.
The biggest downside to this build is the huge amount of internet traffic and graphical clutter it creates, which oftentimes leads to gigantic lags. With a fully stacked Gogok of Swiftness gem I am sitting at around 42% cooldown reduction, which sometimes still is not enough to ensure a permanent uptime of smoke screen in really intense situations even though you’ll just need 25% theoretically (2.0 sec CD, 1.5 sec duration). This issue becomes even bigger when playing in a party. It’s still good in two player parties for the most part, but after that it becomes worse really quickly, leaving the build basically unusable in four player rifts. Even at night time, we sometimes encountered massive lag spikes of up to 2 minutes, including disconnects and game crashes. The same problem arises even in solo when fighting electrified packs, as they spawn such huge amounts of lightning bolts that basically the whole screen gets covered not only in your but also in their blue light show, and the game stops reacting to anything you do, leading to instant death. It might work a little bit better now that electrified cannot proc as often anymore, but it remains to be seen.
The items:
The two most prominent items of this build: Meticulous Bolts and Helltrapper. Other than that, you will want to use a Lacuni or Steady Strikers, a Witching Hour, Hellfire or Xephirian Amulet as well as the typical M6 + TnT.
As you can see, I have fairly suboptimal items mostly, and there’s still much room for improvement. Optimally, the weapon would have %dmg, %ias and dex, and the quiver 30% travel speed, %elemental arrow, %crit, %cdr, dex and +max disc. Additionally, I have a really bad Hellfire Amulet, okayish SoJ and a bad RoRG, losing out on ~150% critical hit damage (by dropping crit chance on rings), but I can’t seem to get any better ones. The reason why I recommend a Xephirian Amulet is because of the aforementioned laggy situations, and it could really help you survive on electrified packs, even though I haven’t tried it myself.
All in all, counting in an ~10% increase in dps by a better weapon, ~10-15% increase by a better quiver and another ~10-20% increase in sheet dps by having better stats on items, I see this build going up to 48 solo without pylons in a near-perfect rift like I had one (assuming perfect gameplay and next to no deaths). Add in one or two pylons and the game is on; I’m fairly excited to see where this will end.
The run:
With the advent of leaderboards and me consistently getting top rankings, I naturally got many requests from friends and clan mates to stream them, so a few nights ago I actually rebooted my stream that I once set up when DH in Torment 6 still was really underrepresented. The run was done live on stream und you can watch it there as a highlight. I also streamed my rank 1 two player rift, however at that time I wasn’t aware of the option to save my broadcasts automatically to twitch. It’s saved to my hard drive but I can’t seem to upload it, gladly taking any advice here.
For those of you who are curious: I had 11 keys in total, 4 of which I used until I managed to complete the 45 rift within 15 minutes, which was – to say the least – kind of unexpected for me and made me freak out a little towards the end (especially with Awareness gone on a boss that can oneshot you nearly instantaneously). I got a very very lucky rift, including neverending masses of zombies in an okayish layout (A5 Labyrinth). Some nasty reflect pack early on and a split up pack of blue archers nearly cost me the rift, but I was able to make it past those and actually beat it after encountering Erethon as the rift guardian. Just see for yourself
Actually I managed to beat tier 44 solo (rank 1 on EU again^^) last night using a Kridershot, it seems to be worthwhile and is a lot easier to use compared to the Helltrapper. You can watch the run here: http://www.twitch.tv/wudijo/c/5196566
Supposedly we will see a lot of lightning DHs on the leaderboards very soon, given the fact that I did tier 43 on my first and 44 on my second try. Eventually, I think that Kridershot could actually be better than Helltrapper if you manage to reach the 4.154 bp, but I doubt there will be anyone around who could achieve that, as it requires to have max rolls on ALL of your items basically.
About the Overwhelming Desire: Apparently it seems to have an internal cooldown, and even then it's only a 35% damage boost on a single target, while I can get ~20% via Steady Aim by using Hellfire. And the only situation where there is a single target is the occasional yellow elite and the RG, which can't be charmed I guess.
Profile | Twitch | Youtube | Twitter | Recruitment: Zero Empathy are looking for the best players in Europe
Edit: Last night I was showcasing a variation of this build using Kridershot instead of Helltrapper, and it went unexpectedly well. I managed to beat 42 at 13 min (good density keep depths) on my third try and barely missed it on the others (meh density and long walks). Actually this kind of build doesn't seem so bad on low density, it just excels at high density more than the rest.
Profile | Twitch | Youtube | Twitter | Recruitment: Zero Empathy are looking for the best players in Europe
Profile | Twitch | Youtube | Twitter | Recruitment: Zero Empathy are looking for the best players in Europe
Concerning Kridershot: Fun for normal T6 rifts, probably not so good for greater rifts. It will only ever be useful in a party with a WD when you could try to reach the 4.154 bp using Gogok and Pain Enhancer, and even then I doubt it will be competitive. You will have an easier time surviving though, as you have far more discipline to spend. You probably could even spam smoke screen on RG then.
Profile | Twitch | Youtube | Twitter | Recruitment: Zero Empathy are looking for the best players in Europe
On what held me back on the other runs: bad RNG obviously. I don't remember all of the rifts exactly, just prior to the succeeding run I hit a blue blood clan shaman pack in a narrow a1 cave layout, where skipping was not so easy. I actually managed to deal with the reflect damage this time, however they just kept putting their shield on each other and well, gg. One run before that I got a really good first level, ahead in time at about ~50% progress, then went on to see a tower of the damned layout full of scavenging tunnelers. Before that I was in a cave again, fallen everywhere (which are pretty good monsters imo), and I hit three elite packs at once, which generally is like heaven, but not if they have reflect and electrified and you can't hit smoke screen in time because of that.
Generally you'll just need a somewhat good density, not too much bad luck on the packs and some type of monsters that provide good progress, just as blood clan, fallen, grotesques, zombies, skeletons, tremors, mallet lords, oppressors and sometimes even things like barbed lurkers depending on layout.
Profile | Twitch | Youtube | Twitter | Recruitment: Zero Empathy are looking for the best players in Europe
For normal rifts: I have tried using a Kridershot + 3 sentry at the 2.842 breakpoint while changing Marked for Death to Vault, and including Tactical Advantage. It seems to be fairly good, I can run T6 at 4m toughness (with Awareness), and it's a lot of fun. I have done it on stream at some point already, might do again, but I can't see it surpassing the general frostfire builds simply because at the top end, everything on the screen basically dies instantly and you will want your shots to actually reach the enemies before that. Kridershot lets you spam Ball Lightning all day, which in turn lets you Vault and Smoke Screen all day.
Profile | Twitch | Youtube | Twitter | Recruitment: Zero Empathy are looking for the best players in Europe
Concerning the density issue: Of course I fish for good rifts, but if you actually watch me doing rifts on stream, I'm progressing past 30-50% almost every time before I decide to start a new game. This build is not really reliant on having huge amounts of monsters ALL of the time, you will just need to reach a certain treshold depending on your remaining resources. It doesn't work so well in empty rifts, but as was already mentioned, you can't get a rank in those either.
About Custom Enginneering: Obviously I don't use it as a passive as it is on my Hellfire Amulet, yet it is mandatory, which is why I included it in the skill calculator. I use Steady Aim as my 5th passive in solo, and Ambush in party.
Edit: Yes, reflect packs are really difficult to beat. Usually I just skip those or drag them along until I find more monsters to survive. I decided to kill the yellow pack in the beginning only because I encountered the blues just at the same time, and in hindsight, with a little bit better gameplay, I wouldn't have needed to die several times there. If you discount the time lost there, you can see that even without Erethon a 45 rift like this is very much feasible.
Another thing: I actually feel like I need less RNG on my rifts, as I can basically survive any monster type regardless of how dangerous they are, with only few exceptions. So while a zombie rift is really great to progress quickly, I can still get comparable results in a rift of this density (almost) no matter which monster types I get.
Profile | Twitch | Youtube | Twitter | Recruitment: Zero Empathy are looking for the best players in Europe
Disclaimer: After trolling people with my poison Chakram / Spike Trap build for a full day (I really enjoyed those guys who believed it, though), I guess it's time to resolve the mystery about what really went down on this run. So here it is:
Most of you probably have already heard of the Meticulous Bolts quiver and the potential lightning builds that arise when using it. Ever since blizzard announced this quiver on the 2.1 ptr I wanted to create a build that revolves around lightning and M6, and after some experimentation, I believe I have found the optimal build for solo play in high grifts, which basically comes down to something I like to call “Meticulous Punishment”.
The build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#RjkVXS!XiUc!aaYZZ
The idea is to keep up hatred regen via Preparation – Punishment and spam shots nearly incessantly. Because the ball lightning is moving slower, it hits the targets more often, thus dealing more damage and generating more procs. Like this, you can use the Helltrapper one-handed crossbow found in Act V bounties, which allows you to offset the loss of Bombadiers Rucksack by spawning up to two more sentries nearly instantaneously upon entering a fight. The second benefit of these procs, and perhaps even more importantly, is the huge amount of discipline that you can regenerate using the Night Stalker passive. This doesn’t work so well on single targets, however on huge packs of 10 or more monsters you’ll basically need just one or two shots in order to refill all of your discipline, which in turn lets you chain smoke screen nearly indefinitely. You will need to tightly manage your resources in order not to run out of hatred or discipline, because otherwise you will most likely be dead at the spot. Aside from the effectiveness of this build, it’s also great fun as well, as you are forced into attacking actively yourself and not rely on sentries entirely. It’s a really engaging play style that offers a most welcome variation to the Demon Hunter class.
The biggest downside to this build is the huge amount of internet traffic and graphical clutter it creates, which oftentimes leads to gigantic lags. With a fully stacked Gogok of Swiftness gem I am sitting at around 42% cooldown reduction, which sometimes still is not enough to ensure a permanent uptime of smoke screen in really intense situations even though you’ll just need 25% theoretically (2.0 sec CD, 1.5 sec duration). This issue becomes even bigger when playing in a party. It’s still good in two player parties for the most part, but after that it becomes worse really quickly, leaving the build basically unusable in four player rifts. Even at night time, we sometimes encountered massive lag spikes of up to 2 minutes, including disconnects and game crashes. The same problem arises even in solo when fighting electrified packs, as they spawn such huge amounts of lightning bolts that basically the whole screen gets covered not only in your but also in their blue light show, and the game stops reacting to anything you do, leading to instant death. It might work a little bit better now that electrified cannot proc as often anymore, but it remains to be seen.
The items:
The two most prominent items of this build: Meticulous Bolts and Helltrapper. Other than that, you will want to use a Lacuni or Steady Strikers, a Witching Hour, Hellfire or Xephirian Amulet as well as the typical M6 + TnT.
My items: http://imgur.com/Xh8HPkg,mWafQ1H#0
My stats: http://imgur.com/Xh8HPkg,mWafQ1H#1
As you can see, I have fairly suboptimal items mostly, and there’s still much room for improvement. Optimally, the weapon would have %dmg, %ias and dex, and the quiver 30% travel speed, %elemental arrow, %crit, %cdr, dex and +max disc. Additionally, I have a really bad Hellfire Amulet, okayish SoJ and a bad RoRG, losing out on ~150% critical hit damage (by dropping crit chance on rings), but I can’t seem to get any better ones. The reason why I recommend a Xephirian Amulet is because of the aforementioned laggy situations, and it could really help you survive on electrified packs, even though I haven’t tried it myself.
All in all, counting in an ~10% increase in dps by a better weapon, ~10-15% increase by a better quiver and another ~10-20% increase in sheet dps by having better stats on items, I see this build going up to 48 solo without pylons in a near-perfect rift like I had one (assuming perfect gameplay and next to no deaths). Add in one or two pylons and the game is on; I’m fairly excited to see where this will end.
The run:
With the advent of leaderboards and me consistently getting top rankings, I naturally got many requests from friends and clan mates to stream them, so a few nights ago I actually rebooted my stream that I once set up when DH in Torment 6 still was really underrepresented. The run was done live on stream und you can watch it there as a highlight. I also streamed my rank 1 two player rift, however at that time I wasn’t aware of the option to save my broadcasts automatically to twitch. It’s saved to my hard drive but I can’t seem to upload it, gladly taking any advice here.
For those of you who are curious: I had 11 keys in total, 4 of which I used until I managed to complete the 45 rift within 15 minutes, which was – to say the least – kind of unexpected for me and made me freak out a little towards the end (especially with Awareness gone on a boss that can oneshot you nearly instantaneously). I got a very very lucky rift, including neverending masses of zombies in an okayish layout (A5 Labyrinth). Some nasty reflect pack early on and a split up pack of blue archers nearly cost me the rift, but I was able to make it past those and actually beat it after encountering Erethon as the rift guardian. Just see for yourself
Enjoy: http://www.twitch.tv/wudijo/c/5173975
Edit: Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emwZ5zPOW3M
Edit (23/10/2014): Here's a video guide for the Helltrapper lightning build:
Twitch Link: http://www.twitch.tv/wudijo/c/5343481
Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehvaQpc-oIA
TL;DR - Go farm Helltrapper, get a Meticulous Bolts quiver and run lightning asap. It’s fun and op as f*ck. Keep it coming, guys and gals!
- Wudijo
Profile | Twitch | Youtube | Twitter | Recruitment: Zero Empathy are looking for the best players in Europe