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Quote from Jeesusbeams»

Terrible. Probably want to go UE in group play?

Quote from Joking101»

I love the use of Gogok. Gogok means we can use 8% CDR on shoulders, 15% from gogok, 65% on dawn, 12.5% from helm and 10% from paragon and get 100% uptime on Vengeance. This means that in total, we have free slots on gloves and the compass rose to stack attack speed or area damage in addition to crit chance and crit damage. Plus, it gives us great additional attack speed. I really like it as a choice.

I'm planning to run WD this season, nice to see a good old Zuni build doing well.

However i'm going for a slightly different setup, it will dpend if i canget every drop.

Quote from Alka»

Ballista's mitigation is mostly useful for close encounter and melee damage as in LON or N6 builds. UE4pc distance requirement will reduce the benefit to ranged damage only. Other offhand options - maybe the good old Calamity could make much more sense. Or the sticky trap xbow could be added for some AoE but I wouldn't keep my hopes high for it :D.

Too bad we don't have sets/skills that cope well with sticky trap as i used it on first iterations of the shadow set and it was awesome to have, but the damage was severely lacking.

Anyway, back on topic: i'm quoting only this because quoting everything is not feasible.

UE4 dmg reduction works in a very specific way: you get the buff as soon you don't have anyone in a 10yd range and it lasts 8 second. This means you just have to vault away once every 8 seconds to keep the buff up indefinitely even facetanking stuff.

The power of the Ballista shields is that the dmg mitigation is insane and lets us have a much more reliable usage of Awareness since missing that juicy 30% dmg reduction melee characters have make the skill trigger from basically everything at high GRs. Also given this EW set becomes much more reliable to use since we don't actually need to move that much around (napkin math done, i estimated a movement time similar to my crusader while covering slightly more ditance due to more uses of vault compared to the Horse).

Point is: now we know that dw is better and AS looks a very nice stat to stack. Hence WH belt and LP bracers are more appealing. Can we stack enough toughness to survive higher levels without recurring to other defensive items? We can choose between Aquila and the bracers, but definitely Hunter's Wrath belt will be mandatory as will be Depth Diggers. Hence RoRG aswell will be - which is nice since it comes with baked AS we won't need to roll out.

Getting already on the second step: legendary gems. SS is a must with the buff and provides really nice healing. BotT looks like again the bestest one evah.
We have left one slot, so we could use:
- Zei: works like Steady Aim, so free damage as HA travels very far by itself
- Stricken: with high AS setup and the fact We will definitely cube/use Cirri every DA can count for multiple stacks, and in any case Vengeance flow of strikes will keep it raising very fast
- BotP: it's being buffed and listed as multiplicative, plus adds damage reduction against elites. May be the choice if we find we need more survivability on high levels without sacrificing too much damage.

EDIT: belt slot can roll 15% HA damage. Too big to pass over it - and given how WH has still 4 rolls available, we're looking for some serious tradeoff of toughness for damage (ideal rolls would be DEX, AS, CHD, HA dmg%).

@Alka: would really like to see a video of your build in action. Too bad i don't even have the rings to test it by myself.

Quote from Joking101»

Thoughs?

Eh, i didn't mention i am tryong it on live and not PTR because it's actually the worst case scenario for the build. I'm running GR53 to be on the safe side of completing it and checking the clear times to see if i am improving the build or not.

Current setup is on sig - just check the DH; it's far from being optimized, so there are great margins of easy improvements.

- i think UE is our best bet for a generator/HA build. Best synergy out between skills, set bonuses and complementary legendaries. Tough LoN may be a really nice option, it all depends on what we can stack with it.

- dual wield setup looks more and more the best choice. Reasoning: 1hand xbow can roll +disc which will be double as powerful in 2.4.1; Dawn is required; Fortress Ballista shields are insanely good. Equipped Buriza is not an option since you're passing over 12 points of discipline; may be worth running with 1hand xbow + Cirri and cube the second xbow

- MS:Wind Chill is more convenient than expected; ran with MfD:Contagion and while the damage buff was really nice having an aoe slow+15% CC on a single button click is even better, both in solo and party. Would try to go the long run and ditch a couple of CHC rolls on gear since we have 15% from the skill. It also helps quite a bunch for aoe so i don't think i can go back playing without it.

- passive skills wise, we don't actually have many that can boost our HA damage, directly and indirectly. I'm running F/R + hellfire because of no really better options, but also given my playstyle i think that EW is definitely better. If anything, it lets us use RoRG and equip DD while keeping an Aquila cubed. I am currently not using DD which is a great if not mandatory damage increase for the build.

I think we're onto something. Don't know how high we can push with this, but it's definitely fun trying.

Ok, i tried cubing the Cirri instead of the Buriza for my dual wield setup and it's definitely much better. I've seen higher numbers overall and generally the damage is much more consistent than using Buriza.

I have also to try the said above Buriza/Cirri + cubed dawn setup and see if it performs better, though given the fast playstyle of UE dual wielding is more appealing for me.

Quote from soulzek

Also, the game was incredibly difficult. Hell was challenging, but not impossible, you just had to take your time.

What.

Hell was normal mode with just more beefy monsters. Inferno was challenging in the sense you had multiple immune monsters and some builds had a pretty much bad time. But it wasn't challenging. It was slow to progress further - from leveling to get gear (until you traded or duped). It's actually fun how people praise D2 are the top notch ARPG of all time.

Disclaimer: i played years of D2, i love it and i still play it every once in a while. It truly is an awesome game.

However people forget how things actually worked. Every season was ridden with bots running high level open games and how everyone basically jumped into them and followed them for fast xp/farming. How the market was flooded by duped and bot-farmed items. How every season leaderboards was dominated by RUSSBarb and GERBarb which were a collective of many plauyers running the same account 24/7 by sharing it.

And especially how 99% of the people weren't even running to level 99 during seasons, meaning they didn't farm actually a lot (reaching around 80 was pretty much simple stuff - it's like doin 700 para in D3 season compared to 2k+) . Most people ran whatever build they found fancy at their pace.

The main point is: D2 didn't have a constantly difficulty-increasing endgame. Inferno boss runs and Uber-tristram was the end of it. Getting more stuff wasn't needed, and more gear meant faster farming of the same difficulty environment.
It's the same as now saying that GR stop at 65 - the more paragon and better gear you get, the faster you complete it. Different builds can manage to do it, with different times - but since no one knows how much does it takes to everyone (in a D2 timeline) multiple builds are playable.

Unfortunately now we have leaderboards which show clearly which build goes farther - and everyone pidgeonholes himself into that. If everyone runs the same build, it's because everyone does so.
Season journey is not an issue. Cookie cutter comps and builds are made for the sole purpose of being the #1 on leaderbards. Something 99% of players cannot even dream to as it happened with RUSSBarb and GERBarb.


So my point is: instead of blaming the game that is failing you, ask yourselves why you are playing the game. If you're not having fun, then why you're still playing it? there are a lot more ARPGs around that may suit your needs.
It's not like that shouting in a non-official forum would bring any change. It's not a "if we are loud enough we can change it" thing.

PS: i fully agree on the itemization part. I think that the entire "sets make builds" approach is really boring, stale, and doesn't let players make important choices. Together with leaderboards, it's what's crippling the game the most.
Well, there is Paragon ssystem too that needs a revamp, but sets and itemization is a top priority issue imho.

Great post and definitely worth the read.

Would like to know whuch build/gear setup you ran with M6 - a d3planner link would be awesome. Nice find about the Satchel, i just assumed that 2 guaranteed pierces per shot were definitely best (as they actually are on paper) but the OCD makes them definitely worse.

I'm juggling with a UE dual wield build - i can switch the cube from Buriza to Satchel and see if it improves. Fortress ballista shields are freakin awesome.

No patch still on live, with current setup (low level gems, not even DD used as i don't have them) i can easily do 52 with consistent times (range from 7 to 10 mintues, because GR desntity is still a clusterfuck).

Want to try replacing F/R with EW (while keeping MS for aoe and slow/crit buff) and eithe cube or equip RoRG to use DD and Aquila, which helps with the low toughness. Likely to equip RoRG as to keep CoE in cube for max legendary effect.

Anyway, a UE Buriza/Satchel + cubed Dawn looks promising. Satchel increased chance to pierce is applied after the Buriza pierces, so the combo will work with no issues.

Quote from hikkebleat»

Is it better than thud?

Is it considered a cheat by Blizz? No one banned for it?

Quote from Iperish90»

You guys are fkn awesome, I love your opinions, (no trolling, actually serious) agreeing the flaws and also the fact that auction house were in fact broken, which I agree already but I just seem to disagree them completely removing it tho?

Thing is, I really don't like how they keep scaling every classes. Back in season 1, I remember clearing something like GR 50 and felt proud but right now it's on 95.... That's ridiculous lol.

Quote from Joking101»

I would love to give it a shot but I don't actually have an Ancient Fortress Ballista. Still searching for one on my regular character. As for the ninth cirri and proc rates, I'm gonna do some testing with break points, buriza and the satchel to figure out the most optimal way to maximize pieces. Since each piece increases damage, I want to output the most arrows that piece the most times. That's what really does the insane damage. Not how hard they hit but how many times they pierce. I'll do some testing and see if I can figure out what setup causes the most pierces. However, it is worth noting something about the interaction between the Buriza and Hungering Arrow. Hungering Arrow pierces turn back on themselves to hit the same mob twice. Buriza pierces do not double back. Buriza is stronger for AoE, as they will only double back when HA itself procs. I am not 100% certain on this, but when I do my testing I'll figure out how it works and what is the most optimal setup. Again it sounds like with the catch on attack speed, it might be stronger to look at another set.

Quote from Joking101

My first results were very promising. I cleared a 70 with ease, leaving over 2 minutes remaining. Next I swapped the gloves and turned them back to regular gloves, and I tried using a SoJ. I also had the idea to test it out and I was curious how it would perform. It did similarly, and I realized after this run I should probably stop using the Multishot.

Quote from Grugore»

I don't know how you cleared level 70. I tried this build, and it took almost 14 minutes to clear level 55. The build I'm using did it in 7 minutes. And you're giving up a lot of damage by not using dead mans legacy. I also don't know why you're using etrayu instead of Yangs.recurve. I question the use of some of your passives too. I'm also wondering how you survived without unity. Just my opinion.

Small questions (as i wanted to try a similar build and i shared my d3planner in other posts):

- no Vengeance? Swapping Etrayu to Dawn and using venegance instead of MfD brough my damage and toughness up but quite a bunch.

- i'd try EW set too - this way i can equip CoE and use RoRG in cube, letting me equip either DD or Aquila for the same damage and additional free toughness.

Anyway you tested it way more than me for sure

Nice to have the start right after the 25th vacation