I just crafted some sage pieces for my HC seasons alt DH and recorded a T8 run with one of my builds. Was trying for about 12 minutes, but ended up as 11 minutes instead since I didn't use a timer, just looked at in game clock. Uploading the video to youtube now. I ran this build in the past at some point very comfortably in T10 on a more properly geared seasons DH. Build is likely capable of over T10 in the right gear, but I switched builds before really trying.
Got 126 DBs, though 21 were from a blue gob. So 105 DBs from non-goblins, plus some wasted time killing and looting the blue gob. I also left 2 DBs on the ground, lol. Would be pretty close to 120 DB in 12 minutes, which is what you got with shadow/sage-FoK.
Just for reference, I only started HC like 4 days ago this season, and the run is on is my HC alt. So the character is pretty poorly geared:
- 0 ancients
- 0 augments (obviously)
- 531 paragon
- 7700 dex, lol
- A lv60 or so bane of trapped, and 2 other crappy gems, i think lv25 on both
- I have a wasted passive and cube item (awareness passive and Gunes because I'm playing HC. HP doesn't even dip in T8, but better safe than sorry).
As an additional note, I haven't played this for a while. So as you can see I run into walls, backtracked like half a map running into a dead end, shoot facing the wrong direction, missing prep on cooldown a bunch of times, etc. And even with poor gameplay and awful gear it still performs just as well as the builds that were posted here.
I agree with everything you say. But would you be so kind to share those other, more efficient DH Sage's builds? I have time at some point in the future I might try them out and add videos, at least of TX/T11 (I found the T8/T12/T13 videos to be pretty useless and only did them to highlight that T8 is good for lower paragon/worse gear and gems, and T12+ is almost always worse in terms of efficiency because of the Sage's implementation of "+1" instead of "*2").
I just took the best Sage's builds I could find in our DB, and other DHs I talked to told me their weren't better ones. So if you say there are... well, where are they? ;-)
Finding the builds and sharing them should be a job for streamers and youtubers. I mean I don't know which DH's you've talked to about sage sets, but I know at least 3 different setups that perform both better and easier for me than the 2 DH builds in this thread. Not to mention they all have quite a few variations to them for adjustment to different difficulty, and T11 and 12 really doesn't drop efficiency in decent rolled gear with at least one of them. That's just from casually testing out sage setups over the past few seasons when I need to farm DBs, there's probably quite a few more builds, likely even ones better than the ones I've found. There just needs more people to look for them.
Anyways, I'll upload one of the setups later to at least have a reference point that there are better setups, but probably won't upload the others. Will leave those to the streamers and youtubers to find
I'd be curious to see your 168 DB build and like to try that myself. The builds aren't outdated, the issue simply seems to be that the top DH builds/sets do not allow good combination with the Sage sets. I talked to some DHs and they said that basically Sage's is okay-ish for the beginning, but once your UE gear is good enough to clear T11+ it's just so much faster and better that it's not worth it to use any of the clunky builds I tested.
Also keep in mind that "testing your own build" means that you have more experience with it and play it much better than someone else who just takes a build, slaps items/skills on, and gives it a go (that's why I labeled this "brainless comparison"). I didn't work on my playstyle for an hour or so for every build, I treat every build with the same disrespect
In the end all of this is just a sample comparison and not the definitive truth. Just helped me to see how many different builds there are and test some of them; I ended up playing some of those recently but just picked the one that I liked with regard to playstyle, even if I sacrifice a few percent efficiency. After all, it's a game...
Hmm, I personally think the issue is a lack of testing and experimentation, because I have used sage setups with DH in T11 earlier in the season without feeling clunky doing so. Also clunky comes by design, as should be obvious with setups that require more CD and/or resource management.
There will always be some "testing of builds, items, and variations" since I like to design my builds myself. Even my GR pushing DH M6 setup is fairly customized, which had a GR92 clear earlier in the season (rank 4 at the time, rank 3 after people got banned, lol) despite being a solo player and thus under paragon, gem level, etc. While I never really polish builds like I did back when I was youtube'ing, I do at least enough basic testing to see if it works and if some obvious variation is clearly better.
As for playing builds better, I think it's questionable. How well a build is played in large part depends on how easy it is to play a build. Another major factor is just how compatible players are with the style. Like I've played shadow/sage way more than 12 minutes (more like hours) a few seasons back, and can say that you play that build better than I do based on your 12 minutes of gameplay. As far as builds goes, even for speeds GRs and speed T13s there are other builds (along with variations as well) that I prefer over the standard UE that most players seem to run, probably in part because I'm actually pretty bad at playing UE. I don't think build compatibility is really universal, different players are likely to excel in different builds.
Don't get me wrong, I like the compilation of what you did. It's just that as a DH player I can't help but notice that the builds submitted by DH feel old and lacking. There are at least a few other DH sage builds that IMO are more fluid, easier, faster, and capable of higher torment. Some of which already existed in previous seasons.
I simply think D3 has a lot more viable builds and variations for DBs, speed GRs, pushing, etc than most people realize.
The 2 DH builds chosen in this seem pretty sad. I think maybe just too outdated. Maybe we no longer have streamers/youtubers updating players with new builds, though at the same time it does let players go out and actually design their own builds. I timed some sessions at 12 minutes each on my seasonal DH with one of my DB builds and have gotten to as high as 168 DBs without killing goblins. Setup might not have even been that optimized either since I had never timed runs on it before back when I was using it. Fairly sure most of my setups I've used over the past couple seasons would at least beat that 120 in 12 minutes. Wonder how long till a streamer will start working on builds and find a similar build to any of the ones I use.
On another note, i didn't even hit 600DB/hour rates like you're getting when I tried playing shadow/sage back in the day. It's like the hardest build to play, lol.
I also think the rift makes more than a 12% difference, especially with ingeom setups. Maybe I just suck really bad at running into dead ends, but some rifts are way better than others.
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Too casual to upload anything new these days.
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I just crafted some sage pieces for my HC seasons alt DH and recorded a T8 run with one of my builds. Was trying for about 12 minutes, but ended up as 11 minutes instead since I didn't use a timer, just looked at in game clock. Uploading the video to youtube now. I ran this build in the past at some point very comfortably in T10 on a more properly geared seasons DH. Build is likely capable of over T10 in the right gear, but I switched builds before really trying.
Got 126 DBs, though 21 were from a blue gob. So 105 DBs from non-goblins, plus some wasted time killing and looting the blue gob. I also left 2 DBs on the ground, lol. Would be pretty close to 120 DB in 12 minutes, which is what you got with shadow/sage-FoK.
Just for reference, I only started HC like 4 days ago this season, and the run is on is my HC alt. So the character is pretty poorly geared:
- 0 ancients
- 0 augments (obviously)
- 531 paragon
- 7700 dex, lol
- A lv60 or so bane of trapped, and 2 other crappy gems, i think lv25 on both
- I have a wasted passive and cube item (awareness passive and Gunes because I'm playing HC. HP doesn't even dip in T8, but better safe than sorry).
As an additional note, I haven't played this for a while. So as you can see I run into walls, backtracked like half a map running into a dead end, shoot facing the wrong direction, missing prep on cooldown a bunch of times, etc. And even with poor gameplay and awful gear it still performs just as well as the builds that were posted here.
Video added:
https://youtu.be/wkCejDcEduw
Build guide added (Maybe incomplete, will fix it later if there issues):
DH - M4/Sage - Multishot DB Farming
Anyways, I'll upload one of the setups later to at least have a reference point that there are better setups, but probably won't upload the others. Will leave those to the streamers and youtubers to find
There will always be some "testing of builds, items, and variations" since I like to design my builds myself. Even my GR pushing DH M6 setup is fairly customized, which had a GR92 clear earlier in the season (rank 4 at the time, rank 3 after people got banned, lol) despite being a solo player and thus under paragon, gem level, etc. While I never really polish builds like I did back when I was youtube'ing, I do at least enough basic testing to see if it works and if some obvious variation is clearly better.
As for playing builds better, I think it's questionable. How well a build is played in large part depends on how easy it is to play a build. Another major factor is just how compatible players are with the style. Like I've played shadow/sage way more than 12 minutes (more like hours) a few seasons back, and can say that you play that build better than I do based on your 12 minutes of gameplay. As far as builds goes, even for speeds GRs and speed T13s there are other builds (along with variations as well) that I prefer over the standard UE that most players seem to run, probably in part because I'm actually pretty bad at playing UE. I don't think build compatibility is really universal, different players are likely to excel in different builds.
Don't get me wrong, I like the compilation of what you did. It's just that as a DH player I can't help but notice that the builds submitted by DH feel old and lacking. There are at least a few other DH sage builds that IMO are more fluid, easier, faster, and capable of higher torment. Some of which already existed in previous seasons.
I simply think D3 has a lot more viable builds and variations for DBs, speed GRs, pushing, etc than most people realize.
The 2 DH builds chosen in this seem pretty sad. I think maybe just too outdated. Maybe we no longer have streamers/youtubers updating players with new builds, though at the same time it does let players go out and actually design their own builds. I timed some sessions at 12 minutes each on my seasonal DH with one of my DB builds and have gotten to as high as 168 DBs without killing goblins. Setup might not have even been that optimized either since I had never timed runs on it before back when I was using it. Fairly sure most of my setups I've used over the past couple seasons would at least beat that 120 in 12 minutes. Wonder how long till a streamer will start working on builds and find a similar build to any of the ones I use.
On another note, i didn't even hit 600DB/hour rates like you're getting when I tried playing shadow/sage back in the day. It's like the hardest build to play, lol.
I also think the rift makes more than a 12% difference, especially with ingeom setups. Maybe I just suck really bad at running into dead ends, but some rifts are way better than others.