Keep in mind too, that Roland's is NEW, it was intended to compete with AK's, but it just can't, because they fail to see the damage + toughness explosion you get from 100% uptime in Champion, that in order to compete, they'd have to bump rolands down to 4 pc, redesign invoker to give you crazy toughness, and add 10% damage to each of those sets. That's the only way it could compete.
Roland's total DPS bonus is so much better than Akkan's it's not evena contest. The reaosn Roland's is bad is because it requires using a build that is melee, not because the DPS bonus isn't competitive.
Roland's provides quadruple DPS with Shield Bash or Sweep. Roland's would be plenty competitive if melee wasn't suicide after rift level 31.
Since when is DOUBLING your attack speed QUADRUPLING your damage?
The 100% on shield bash does not DOUBLE shield bash, it's additive. Shield bash does 700% +300% your block chance. Rolands makes it do 800% + 300% your block chance, and doubles your attack speed, so it gives you double damage +100 weapon damage. Also the 100% damage bonus on sweep attack does not enhance the damage of shield bash, so it's not 200% multiplicative damage + Double attack speed. It's 100% additive damage + double attack speed, which pretty much enhances your damage by ONE THIRD, instead of 400% which is quadruple.
1/3rd is 33%, Akarat's Champion gives you 20%, having Perma Champion gives you 20% damage all the time [13% less than rolands] but gives you UNLIMITED resource, and frees up a skill slot on your bar since you don't need a generator. Running around with a 3900 dps Fate of the Fell, with a 20% permanent damage bonus and a 20% virtually permanent damage bonus from shield glare [since you have 55.8% CDR it's up all the time + a hellfire with towering shield, it's 100% uptime] FAR EXCEEDS that 13% extra damage while you have resource. Lets not forget that running around in Ak's lets you have perma prophet, which gives you around 30 million toughness ALL THE TIME AND also brings you back from the dead once every 30 seconds.
Akhans = 20+20=40 100% up time, Rolands = 33+20=53 25% uptime. The 40 is ALL THE TIME, the 53 is just when you have an enemy under shield glare and have all 5 stacks on the bash.
Roland's can't even come close to the DPS output, the only time it did, was when the Attack Speed was bugged on Heart Slaughter in PTR, which allowed rolands to ramp up to 9 attacks per second with that slow ass 2 hander. They fixed that before they launched the game. When you look on the Grift leaderboards and see the top 3 saders wearing Roland's, they are just HIDING their gear, they aren't using Roland's. Nobody is, because it sucks.
Rolands would be amazing with IAS everywhere, if you had a 3.0 attackspeed before Roland's doubled it, you'd be sitting pretty, the problem is, you can't have good damage with attack speed on gear, and all the fast one handers have broken low damage.
Now, If you're attacks per second were 6.0, i'd concede you'd need less damage to advance, because you're hitting way more often, so on hit procs would be better, but in order to have any kind of toughness with rolands, you need to have around 50k LoH, and you can't use Laws of Valor - Invincible to do it, since you need to use Unstoppable force so you don't run out of wrath.
So the problem with rolands is, you need to have IAS/Crit Chance/Crit Damage/Mainstat/Cooldown Reduction/50k LoH and you still need to somehow cram in toughness stats and 3 sockets on your jewelry. It requires WAY too many stats to even match AK's damage from Akhan's set + FoTF, and when I say way too many, what I mean to say is -- It's UNOBTAINABLE. There is currently 0 way to make it work.
I'm currently sitting on 2 entire sets of Rolands with a pretty beast heart slaughter and a perfect Piru Mirella and it can't even come close to matching the damage of me running around in Champion with 6 seconds down time using LIGHTNING Fist of the Heavens - Fissure. Not even CLOSE, and the damage I do with this funky off build is enough to steam roll T6 like it's normal mode, and this is just a FRACTION of the damage that I could do if I min/maxed towards Holy Shotgun. [Which I'm doing, I have a 3900 DPS FotF/Hellskull, ready to go -- I just need to hit the break point on CDR so I don't run out of wrath.]
Roland's DPS output can't even come within 30% of the damage output, let alone "Quadruple." You don't understand the game,and have NO idea what you're talking about. Which is EXACTLY the case with everyone saying M6 is "Fine."
You're all NOOBS.
You obviously don't know how skill damage bonuses work. +100% skill damage is a x2 multiplier.
Double damage.
Double attack speed.
4x total DPS.
Call me when you try it and find out that you're wrong.
When you get 15% to "x" skill, you aren't taking the skills damage and multiplying it by that percentage, you are enhancing the skills percentage by THAT percent.
So again, Shield bash does 700%, adding 100 more makes it 800%, not 1400%. I have it, it SUCKS. It doesn't even come close to the Damage output of Infinite Champion + Shotgun with Infinite resource. It's.not.even.close. My crits with Fist of the Heavens are 15 million, switching to a better damage 2 hander over my ONE HAND DARKLIGHT AND stacking physical, my crits on a skill with a HIGHER base damage were LOWER because AC wasn't on.
Shield Bash was critting for 8 million with a 39% physical damage heart slaugher with 3508 dps, with 20% physical bracers, critting for LESS than 2.1k DPS darklight and 20% lightning damage, because of Champion.
And double a SHIT attack speed is STILL a shit attack speed.
GG, noob.
Now show me a Rolands build that's using a 3993 DPS Fate of the Fell. You can't compete, I'm getting more DPS out of my weapon then you are gaining with 100% attack speed.
I have the entire set twice over, nearly 3 times over and some pieces 5 times over. I have Ak's too. I compared them.
I have a heartslaughter with 3500 damage and 29% physical. Rolands sucks.
Uh, yes they do shoot all 3 at once. if they didn't, equipping multishot would LOWER your DPS.
Watch them, everysingle shot is a Multishot/FrostArrow/Cluster Arrow. You may have difficulty seeing the individual skills because cluster arrows graphic is modest, but if you look at any target, you'll see they are ALWAYS in a "white" cloud, that's caused by the graphic of frost arrow.
They always shoot all 3, always, and if you only have 2 spenders on, it will always shoot both AND a regular pea shooter turret arrow. They DO NOT alternate. If they alternated, you'd be better off with ONE spender, the HIGHEST one.
Nope, sentrys have a rotation based on aps breakpoints.
except that post is 100% wrong. It says at the top "Sentry attacks at fixed attack speed when using 3 hatred spenders"
But it doesn't. Take off your tasker and theos, put down ONE sentry and watch it shoot. Put on Taskers and watch it speed up.
The entire post is wrong because it's based on a fallacy. They may have TINY internal CD's, but they are so small that they might as well be shooting "All at once" they are all shooting before 1 attack per second is finished, giving you the same DPS output as if they shot all at the same EXACT time.
Go ahead, load in and test it, come back and apologize.
Those same people are saying Buriza is the best weapon, yet nobody who did 42 used a buriza to do it. Wonder why? Because his math is wrong.
You might wanna stop just "Believing" what other people post, test/try stuff out, look with your own eyes and confirm what's true and what's not. The cycle rate on the skills is at the alleged "break point" just by using a bow instead of a crossbow -- at this "rate" they are all shooting in under 1 attack per second, giving you the total DPS in 1 second, not changing your Damage Per Second ANY.
Also, do you know what a break point is? Because those guys don't. A break point is the bare minimum of X stat before Y becomes possible. I.E. Akarat's Champion has a Breakpoint on CDR, which is roughly 55.8%, once you reach that much CDR, you can cast it before it expires.
If you read that thread to completion, they recommend you NOT use 3 spenders, but that's clearly proven wrong by the leaderboard as well as by independent testing. Their whole hypothesis is flawed.
But you know, you can say I don't know how it works all you want -- and believe someone else because he posted "Pretty graphics" even though the leaderboard clearly shows he's incorrect, which makes him wrong, and NOT know how the class actually operates.
Sentries also ONLY shoot the first 3 spenders on your bar. Once you have 3 spenders on your bar, they no longer shoot "Bolts." This guys graph clearly shows the rotation on the turrets shooting 6 spenders, which isn't even possible. He shows the rotation as C M B B M B B M C B M B B M B B /repeat, but in the LIVE game, it's CMF/CMF/CMF/CMF it never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, shoots bolts, and it no longer shoot more than the first 3 you put on your bar, so if you put a 4th spender it won't ever fire the one selected 4th. It also DOESN'T shoot ALL spenders, just the ones from "Secondary" and Multishot/Cluster Arrow from Archery. You can try to put on Fan of Knives - Knives Expert which is a spender that cost 30 Hatred and it won't ever fire, even if it's the only spender on your bar.
My guess, is this is homework from the PTR build and no longer applies.
I am indeed correct, that post on "APS Breakpoints" is from March, 1st PTR build of 2.1.0. As such, it's NO LONGER relevant as they changed how the bonus works.
So. WOMP WOMP WOMP, you lose. If you have eyes you could see that you were wrong, just load up your DH and drop a single turret and watch it.
And still regardless, that's X 5 the output of a DH without M6 or 5 turrets, with no resource limit. It's OP.
Also, with around 44% CDR, you can drop a turret every 1.8 seconds or so. With 55% CDR you'd be down to just a tad over one second.
So every second you literally add 100% of your total damage to your total damage output up to 5 "stacks" as it were.
So running M6 takes a DH's total output and multiplies it by FIVE. That's Pentadamage, fuck quad damage, or double damage, it's fucking PENTADAMAGE. And to top it off, as if pentadamage wasn't enough, they have NO RESOURCES so they can face blast non-stop 100% of the time, which is going to increase the damage output by MORE than FIVE HUNDRED PERCENT OF YOUR TOTAL DAMAGE OUTPUT.
To put that in perspective, if you could do 100 million damage per second for 5 seconds, you'd do 500 million damage and then be on an empty tank. If you could do 100 million damage per second, with M6 and a Rucksack, you're doing 2.5 BILLION damage per second for UNLIMITED SECONDS.
How is that not OP? And it's actually higher than that, because that's NOT accounting for shooting THREE spenders, that's accounting for ONE. So reality is you'd be doing around 9-10 BILLION damage per second for unlimited seconds with M6, vs a Demon Hunter that could do 500 Million in 5 seconds and be empty and out of resource. The percent the M6 makes you stronger is RETARDED.
It's pretty much common sense that if you have 5 turrets that can shoot the three most powerful skills you have unlimited and at full damage, that you'd never be able to compete without it. EVER. Since without it, you can only shoot ONE SKILL at a time and on a limited reserve before you ran out of juice.
So again, I reiterate, anybody who think M6 DOESN'T need a nerf and that the DH base DOESN'T need a BUFF, is a NOOB. Flat out. You suck at this game and just copypasta best builds off the internet. You're the SAME crowd that always gravitates to the OP builds and then cries "Blizzard should make EVERYONE OP and LEAVE ME ALONE."
Straight NOOB mentality.
You're also the same crowd that cries that they made the game easier, yet are happily steamrolling extremely hard content with bugged/poorly designed builds that are OP. T6 isn't any easier now than it used to be, better gear has been gotten/created, and some of that better gear is OP like Mara 6, which is why the game feels "Easy" now.
Keep in mind too, that Roland's is NEW, it was intended to compete with AK's, but it just can't, because they fail to see the damage + toughness explosion you get from 100% uptime in Champion, that in order to compete, they'd have to bump rolands down to 4 pc, redesign invoker to give you crazy toughness, and add 10% damage to each of those sets. That's the only way it could compete.
Roland's total DPS bonus is so much better than Akkan's it's not evena contest. The reaosn Roland's is bad is because it requires using a build that is melee, not because the DPS bonus isn't competitive.
Roland's provides quadruple DPS with Shield Bash or Sweep. Roland's would be plenty competitive if melee wasn't suicide after rift level 31.
Since when is DOUBLING your attack speed QUADRUPLING your damage?
The 100% on shield bash does not DOUBLE shield bash, it's additive. Shield bash does 700% +300% your block chance. Rolands makes it do 800% + 300% your block chance, and doubles your attack speed, so it gives you double damage +100 weapon damage. Also the 100% damage bonus on sweep attack does not enhance the damage of shield bash, so it's not 200% multiplicative damage + Double attack speed. It's 100% additive damage + double attack speed, which pretty much enhances your damage by ONE THIRD, instead of 400% which is quadruple.
1/3rd is 33%, Akarat's Champion gives you 20%, having Perma Champion gives you 20% damage all the time [13% less than rolands] but gives you UNLIMITED resource, and frees up a skill slot on your bar since you don't need a generator. Running around with a 3900 dps Fate of the Fell, with a 20% permanent damage bonus and a 20% virtually permanent damage bonus from shield glare [since you have 55.8% CDR it's up all the time + a hellfire with towering shield, it's 100% uptime] FAR EXCEEDS that 13% extra damage while you have resource. Lets not forget that running around in Ak's lets you have perma prophet, which gives you around 30 million toughness ALL THE TIME AND also brings you back from the dead once every 30 seconds.
Akhans = 20+20=40 100% up time, Rolands = 33+20=53 25% uptime. The 40 is ALL THE TIME, the 53 is just when you have an enemy under shield glare and have all 5 stacks on the bash.
Roland's can't even come close to the DPS output, the only time it did, was when the Attack Speed was bugged on Heart Slaughter in PTR, which allowed rolands to ramp up to 9 attacks per second with that slow ass 2 hander. They fixed that before they launched the game. When you look on the Grift leaderboards and see the top 3 saders wearing Roland's, they are just HIDING their gear, they aren't using Roland's. Nobody is, because it sucks.
Rolands would be amazing with IAS everywhere, if you had a 3.0 attackspeed before Roland's doubled it, you'd be sitting pretty, the problem is, you can't have good damage with attack speed on gear, and all the fast one handers have broken low damage.
Now, If you're attacks per second were 6.0, i'd concede you'd need less damage to advance, because you're hitting way more often, so on hit procs would be better, but in order to have any kind of toughness with rolands, you need to have around 50k LoH, and you can't use Laws of Valor - Invincible to do it, since you need to use Unstoppable force so you don't run out of wrath.
So the problem with rolands is, you need to have IAS/Crit Chance/Crit Damage/Mainstat/Cooldown Reduction/50k LoH and you still need to somehow cram in toughness stats and 3 sockets on your jewelry. It requires WAY too many stats to even match AK's damage from Akhan's set + FoTF, and when I say way too many, what I mean to say is -- It's UNOBTAINABLE. There is currently 0 way to make it work.
I'm currently sitting on 2 entire sets of Rolands with a pretty beast heart slaughter and a perfect Piru Mirella and it can't even come close to matching the damage of me running around in Champion with 6 seconds down time using LIGHTNING Fist of the Heavens - Fissure. Not even CLOSE, and the damage I do with this funky off build is enough to steam roll T6 like it's normal mode, and this is just a FRACTION of the damage that I could do if I min/maxed towards Holy Shotgun. [Which I'm doing, I have a 3900 DPS FotF/Hellskull, ready to go -- I just need to hit the break point on CDR so I don't run out of wrath.]
Roland's DPS output can't even come within 30% of the damage output, let alone "Quadruple." You don't understand the game,and have NO idea what you're talking about. Which is EXACTLY the case with everyone saying M6 is "Fine."
It is OP because DH is such bad class that he needs 3 of his skills fired for free by 1-5 static turrets. If you still can't see how badly designed this is I just feel sorry for you. Don't understand me wrong I like the idea of sentries using skills but how it works right now is just terrible and is just the result of blizzard poor balancing job like always. something like this would be fixed in torchlight 2 in under a month by the community if it had to come this far. If they can't at least buff the numbers on all the bad skills in 2 month than I believe the skill fixing was done by a lonely intern in his break time.
If you still didn't realize that Blizzard's approach to balance in d3 is not simply increasing low numbers then it is i who feel sorry for you. Your argument is invalid... I can claim the same basically about every class if we look specifically at high GR gameplay. DH is not underpowered because it has m6... it's overpowered because it has m6... It's like saying that monk is performing crap because it has flying dragon and that if it wasn't for that weapon then monk would be total garbage which is true but it proves that flying dragon is good and not that the monk in itself is a crappy class.
Edit: And @Yuhanz no wtf is this bullshit sentries don't fire all 3 spenders together every time...
Quite the contrary. Flying dragon IS good, but not all monks HAVE to use a Flying dragon. Where ALL DH HAVE to use M6 or they can't Grift.
Do you see the difference? It's the same as Crusader, every crusader HAS to use AK's or they can't Grift.
What makes Saders not as bad though is, they have MULTIPLE builds that are top Grift. They can build Firelight/Phalanx/Shotgun/Captain America, all four VERY different builds. This is possible because the Crusader weapons/Shield combos allow for synergy with AK's. The fact that they MUST wear AK's is STILL a problem.
But jump over to barbs, who are doing Grift 40 now, and look -- you have Jumpy Barbs, you have Raekor Barbs, you have Immortal Kings + Raekor barbs, all barb sets are usable at higher Grift levels. Demonhunter can't use Nats, can't use Shadows and can ONLY use M6. Why? Because M6 is OP, and the DH without M6 is UP. It's by far the WORST class in terms of balance right now. I'm sorry if you think everyone running around with the same 5 skills and not even shooting a bow is a "Variable, diverse, and fun" way to play the game.
I want to use Strafe, but I can't -- because STRAFE SUCKS. I want to use FAN OF KNIVES, but I can't, because FAN OF KNIVES SUCKS. A barb can use Leap/Earthquake/Avalanche/WW/WotB/Bash/Frenzy, etc -- why? Because NONE OF THEM SUCK.
You see yet? There most definitely IS a problem with M6, the problem really stems from the fact that WITHOUT M6 the DH sucks.
Not only do DH HAVE to use M6, but they also HAVE to use Bombadiers Rucksack, they also HAVE to use Etrayu or Unbound Bolt. Neither one of these changes the build or the playstyle, they play exactly the same, just with more damage. They also HAVE to use a RoRG to wear, you guessed it, ANOTHER MUST HAVE PIECE, Tasker and Theo. They also have to have 3 jewelry sockets and all HAVE to use the same 3 gems, Bane of the Trapped, Bane of the Powerful, and Enforcer.
They all also HAVE to use Slavebonds for the 5 affixs, so they can have extra toughness to survive a 1 shot, and they also HAVE to have a great Countess Julias Cameo with a socket. They also NEED to use the Unity with the follower can't die item, or an SoJ with a party.
They also HAVE to use a Witching hour. So you see, this leaves them ZERO slots to change ANYTHING. No other class has this problem.
Every demon hunter looks exactly like this, or are on their way to looking exactly like this;
Maras Helm
Maras Shoulders
Maras Chest
Maras Pants
Maras Boots
Countess Julia's
RoRG
SoJ/Unity [depends on solo or group] Tasker and Theo
Slave Bonds
Witching Hour
Bombadiers Rucksack
Etrayu/Unbound Bolt
There is ZERO room to deviate and be "different." This is hands down, the best build. Change the gloves cut your damage tremendously. Take off the RoRG, cut damage tremendously. Take off Rucksack, cut damage tremendously. Take off Unity, cut solo survivability tremendously. Take off Slave Bonds, lose the all resist, cuts back on your much needed toughness tremendously. Take off Julias and you're one shot by jails because you can't have 20m toughness. Where is there ANY options? There aren't any, because M6 is OP, and the DH without M6 is garbage. There is no inbetween.
It's not about DH outperforming other classes, it's about demon hunters not having any other options. DH isn't out far and a head of other classes, they are all closing the gap. Best DH is at 42. Best Crusader 41. Best Wizard 41, Best Witch Doctor 40, Best barb 40. Best Monk 38.
So they are all close, but when you look at how they get there, DH's all do it the same, while everyone else has options. Wizards also don't really have "Options" because they just wear both Rashas and Firebirds.... but see they can do that because Firebirds has 7 pieces.
WD is kind of hurt too, but this is already being worked on, Wall of Zombies is being redesigned completely, and then the Helltooth set is getting changed with it.
Why is it that everyone knows all the other classes need help, but nobody wants to admit the DH is in a bad place? Is it because you all realized how easy and powerful playing a DH is, so you rolled the OP class? I can smell it in your posts.
Uh, yes they do shoot all 3 at once. if they didn't, equipping multishot would LOWER your DPS.
Watch them, everysingle shot is a Multishot/FrostArrow/Cluster Arrow. You may have difficulty seeing the individual skills because cluster arrows graphic is modest, but if you look at any target, you'll see they are ALWAYS in a "white" cloud, that's caused by the graphic of frost arrow.
They always shoot all 3, always, and if you only have 2 spenders on, it will always shoot both AND a regular pea shooter turret arrow. They DO NOT alternate. If they alternated, you'd be better off with ONE spender, the HIGHEST one.
"x 5, since you have five sentries, and that's 5,500% weapon damage x 20% x 30% = 8,580% weapon damage PER VOLLEY and this is just using ONE spender, the turrets use all 3 and they don't alternate, they fire all three every volley."
@Laokin you can confirm this?
Yep. Thing is though, that's not single target damage. It's actual effective damage. When you get down to a single target, Frost Arrow isn't hitting 11 times, it's hitting once... so to a single target we're in the realm of 9,000-16,000% weapon damage per volley, but when running Grifts, it's about how fast you kill everything preceding the Rift Gaurdian.
There is a reason when you look at the demon hunter ladder, that the lowest on the board is Grift 37 at rank 1,000. Crusader at rank 1,000 is at 31. Even though the best geared Crusaders can do 40/41 the average crusader is WELL below the average DH, that's because the 6 piece IS that strong.
They confirmed it in the last QA, although blizzard devs were being super modest about "potentials." They said "We can buff skills, but no matter how much we buff skills [like frozen orb] it's never competing with the 2500-6000% damage bonuses of the set items. So going forward we're going to create new sets that can compete, rather than buffing skill damage, next DH set will be based on multishot."
DH's is well above and beyond that range, that's the problem. Get rid of the rucksack, delete the item out right and it becomes pretty sensible, although it's still highlighting the fact that the DH hits like a wuss.
Then they confirmed that all the sets with 4 pc bonuses that actually have 6 pieces are going to get a 6 pc bonus. Doing this breaks the useability of the 4 pc sets that only have 4 pieces, like Shadows Grasp and Raekor.
What they need to realize is, the 6 piece sets with 4 piece max bonuses and the 4 piece sets should be designed together in tandum, rather than adding a 6 piece OP bonus to Immortal Kings/Nats/Inna's/Zuni's/Rasha's they should be looking at buffing the off sets and the 4 piece bonuses on vanilla 6 piece sets, so using both of those = a 6 piece set like Mara's.
Invoker should be reworked to be the rolands support pieces, the rolands set bonuses should be granted at 4 pieces. 4 piece bonus should look like this:
"Sweep Attack does 100% more damage
Shield Bash does 100% more damage
Each hit with shield bash or Sweep attack adds 20% damage for 3 seconds, stacks up to 5 times"
And the invoker set needs to enhance that to a level that can compete with 100% perma Akarat's Champion 6 pc AK's.
Otherwise all those off sets which are rather cool are just going to get phased out and never used -- this is a design flaw.
If they make a multishot set like they plan on, it'll have to exceed M6, but that'll be down right impossible to do, because if you're NOT using M6, you need toughness that you can't get. This is the major problem with Rolands, outside of the other problem that Rolands just cannot, absolutely cannot, out DPS AK's with 100% up time on Champion.
Keep in mind too, that Roland's is NEW, it was intended to compete with AK's, but it just can't, because they fail to see the damage + toughness explosion you get from 100% uptime in Champion, that in order to compete, they'd have to bump rolands down to 4 pc, redesign invoker to give you crazy toughness, and add 10% damage to each of those sets. That's the only way it could compete.
Adding a "Support piece" isn't going to "fix" the damage/toughness explosion of AK's. This is the same exact scenario as M6. You don't need 22 million toughness on a demon hunter who can blast at 25,000% weapon damage without even being in the room. How can any set compete with this without being absolutely ridiculous?
The end result is, the game becomes easy sauce; because the sets give so much raw power, that it's not about "Which Item do I use, what build, what items do I need to enhance this build, and so on" it becomes, do I want to be a Zoohunter? Okay, M6. Do I want to use Multishot? Okay multishot set.
It makes the item game even MORE stagnate than it was before. Because you have to wear 6 pieces to get these bonuses, even an RoRG doesn't help much, because it only allows you to sub out ONE piece of the set.
RoRG was cool and awesome because people were wearing 3/4 sets at a time, but when you make the sets all 6 piece, and make the 6 pc bonus a MUST HAVE, you take away the ability to use multiple sets at once, essentially destroying the use of the RoRG at the same time.
M6 IS OP, it's not relative to other classes, it is relative to other DH options, therefor, the demon hunter needs some skill buffs. If we buffed the base damage on the skills, the M6 would scale with that, and be OP relative to ALL classes. That's the problem with M6. Has NOTHING to do with Greater Rift design and everything to do with Demon Hunter design, solely.
M6 is fine the way it is. Its not like equip M6, find Bombardier´s and grab a decent 2h X-Bow from stash -> Auto finish GR35+ in time. The real issue is how bad blizzard designed greater rifts.
Mara 6 is NOT fine the way it is. It's SUPER OP, here is the break down;
You're going to use, Cluster Arrow/MultiShot/Elemental Arrow/Wolf Companion/Ballistics/Cull of the Weak/Custom Engineering.
With Mara 6 and a RuckSack, you get 5 turrets, that shoot all three spenders at the same time, with no cooldown or resource limit.
So what's that mean in terms of raw numbers?
Maelstrom is 550% weapon damage plus the 5 rockets per volley, each rocket dealing 450% weapon damage + 100% Weapon damage from Ballistics.
That's 1,100% weapon damage, and maestrom procs Cull of the Weak for an additional 20% damage, and then you have Wolf companion that gives you 30% more damage ontop of the cull of the weak.
x 5, since you have five sentries, and that's 5,500% weapon damage x 20% x 30% = 8,580% weapon damage PER VOLLEY and this is just using ONE spender, the turrets use all 3 and they don't alternate, they fire all three every volley.
Then we have Frost Arrow, which does 330 x up to 10 [since it hits up to ten targets each] for 3,300% weapon damage per shot, x 20% x 30% = 5,148% weapon damage, x 5 for each turret = potentially 25,740% weapon damage per volley, ON TOP of the 8,580% weapon damage from maelstrom.
So JUST using frost arrow and Maelstrom with Mara 6 and a rucksack, we're already outputting 34,320% weapon damage PER SHOT.
Now add multi shot which can hit everyone on the screen for 360% weapon damage + 300% weapon damage + 100% weapon damage from ballistics * 3 since it shoots 3 rockets. This is 1560% weapon damage x 20% x 30% = 2433.6% weapon damage per volley.
This takes Mara 6 + Rucksack up to 36,753.6% weapon damage PER VOLLEY, NOT counting +% to sentry damage, +% to cold damage, or +% to fire damage, not counting +% damage against elites, or the +% pet damage you get from enforcer, or the +% attack speed you get from Tasker and Theos.
By the time you add all that in, you're in the realm of ~45,000% - 60,000% weapon damage PER VOLLEY. This doesn't even count ANY of the damage that the actual army of 8 pets is doing. So you have the ~45,000% - 60,000% weapon damage x almost 2 a second + actual companion damage, and we all know they hit for millions too.
So the problem is 100% the 6 piece bonus on Mara combined with the fact that the demon hunter has piss poor hatred regen and all their good spenders are inefficient. Without Mara 6, you can't shoot more than 3 cluster arrows in succession without being empty. With mara 6, you can shoot 5 at once without spending any resource.
Is the discrepancy getting clear yet? The Demon Hunter is in the WORST place of all the classes, because without the over powered Mara set, it's useless piss poor weak. They made the Demon Hunter viable through one set of gear, they didn't do any skill tuning. What they need to do, is disable Mara 6, buff the DH skills until it can do GR 40 and then come up with a new 6 piece that is supplementary and not OP. Or just remove the Turrets cast your spenders out right, move the "you gain all companions" to 6, and add something less powerful for the 4 piece.
As it stands now, nothing can even come close to Mara 6, nothing will ever come close to Mara 6 unless they are even more ridiculous than Mara 6, because if you take the turrets away [say for the new multishot set they are working on] then multi shot has to do triple output x 5, in order to compete, so the 6 piece would have to say "Increase Multishot Damage by 72,000% weapon damage."
That's absurd, we all know it, the problem is -- that's how much damage people with Mara 6 are doing in ONE volley.
Another fix for it, is to make the Sentries cast your spenders with reduced damage, like 60% less damage this doesn't for instance just subtract 60 from 330, we take frost arrow at 330% and deduct 60%, we don't just do 330 - 60 = 270% from the sentry, we do 330 x 60% = 198, 330 - 198 = 132% weapon damage. And to cap it at 2 spenders instead of 3. This would force people to actually play the game, rather than drop turrets and hide in the other room, it would also allow other builds to be viable provided they had support pieces for those builds. So going forward, this gives the devs the room to create new sets and Legendary items that would allow other builds to compete, but until there are new items in the game, if you applied my "massive" nerf to Mara 6, it'd STILL be hands down leagues and ladders better than any other build in the game, simply because you have 5 extra demon hunters in your pocket at all times [sic; turrets].
It's clear that the spenders AND generators on DH hit for too little, so the only way for them to output enough damage to climb greater rifts, is to give them all of that on unlimited resource x 5. The solution should be to make it so you can do that much damage out of just the DH without 5 turrets.
Mara 6 is lazy design. Run Mara 6 next to Natalya's w/ shadows grasp -- now this is an ideal combination, because nats is 4 piece and Shadows is 4 piece, which lets you wear them both, which gives the natalya's setup better toughness [that it would need if it didn't have the companion army] but the damage output is TENS OF THOUSANDS of percent lower, and it shouldn't be.
Natalya's + Shadows should = Grift 40, but it doesn't, you'd be lucky to hit 26, and Torment 6 is = to Grift 25.
Blizzard thinks the way to solve this problem is to make Nat's have a 6 piece bonus that is also ridiculously strong, but the problem with that is, it renders the shadows grasp set useless[since you can't wear 5/3] which is required to get the toughness to survive at the higher grift levels when you don't have companion tanks and turrets that do damage WHILE you kite. You will have to stop and DPS which is going to garauntee enemies will DPS you, so without the extra toughness [35% damage reduction] and LoH [32,185] and the Slow [80%] + Movespeed [30%] and with the Discipline reduction + Nightstalker you get 100% uptime on Shadow power, you get from shadows grasp, you're going to be dead in the water.
Mara 6 needs to be redesigned, the DH needs it's resource per damage ratios balanced, needs it's generators to deal adequate damage and then Natalya's 4 piece needs to be buffed, rather than JUST reduce the cool down, it should increase the damage output or give you access to all the runes for every cast, like Rasha's meteors.
The way the game is balanced now is T6 can be done in Legendary Gear, but Grifts and T6 on Farm status requires Sets. I'm cool with this curve, but that means there needs to be many, many, many, more sets for each class to support build diversity, but if the set is = to 70,000% stronger, the gap is WAY too large, it just means the character class itself is weak.
The crusaders have a similar problem right now, Ak's vs Roland's, Roland's sucks right now, because having Perma Akarat's Champion = such a huge EDPS boost + a super Etoughness boost [running prophet takes me from 11m toughness to 24 million add a monk to the party and I'm at 42 million] that the measly double attack speed from rolands set can't even come close to competing. Blizzard has acknowledged this and said that their probably will be a support piece added for Rolands, but they already have 2, they have the Piru Mirella and the Golden Flense + rolands is a 6 piece. If Rolands was a 4 piece, they could get away with adding more support pieces -- but as it stands, not really sure where they think people can equip this "Support" piece.
P.S.
Combine the insane damage output of Mara 6 x 2 with 2 other support characters and we're full circle back to "Support Monks with 0 damage and explosive palm that did 92% of the enemies health in damage on kill." Because nobody else has even close to the damage output of Mara 6, this is why every 4 player group has 2 DH's and 2 Supports, because the supports can add even more flat damage buffs to those demon hunters,
I.E. Monks with Overawe + 16% more damage taken from all sources, or Crusaders with Shield Glare for +20% more damage taken from all sources, which is WAY MORE than +16% damage, since the damage they take is based on your actual damage hits at the END of the calculation, instead of at the beginning.
So, if you have a crusader, run it with some people running Mara 6 who can grift at 35+, don't even fight, just run around and shield glare. When you shield glare, you'll notice that everything almost instantly explodes with the exception of guardians, but since they have so much life, you get to see how much damage stacking the glare does for them, as the life bar will drain at a much Accelerated rate.
This is why all 4 party that get 42+ have monks or crusaders, because they provide raw toughness bonuses + damage through enemy debuffs. It isn't because they are also doing "Sick" damage. There is just nothing that can compete with that composition... why? Because DH are WAAAAAY over powered, but ONLY because of Mara 6, take that away and they are DRASTICALLY under powered, and that's the real problem in a nut shell.
Demon Hunters are super weak and cannot do damage or stay alive without Mara 6. Without Mara 6, they are the worst class in the game, with Mara 6 they are the best class in the game, there is too much swing from one set of gear, this is broken.
You can't fix it without nerfing the set. If you buff the skill damage and leave the set alone, it'll do exponentially more damage in curve. If you don't buff the skills, Mara's will ALWAYS be the only option. So this isn't a case of "Buff everyone else don't nerf us!" because buffing demonhunter builds that don't use maras will only make maras better than it is now, buffing other classes would then just create this problem on 4 other classes making the game essentially boil down to "Get x Set, win the game, use any other set, lose the game."
If you buff all the sets in the game to Mara levels, then you just end up with gear explosion at 70 -- My character is "Broken" until I get "X" set, and then my character is godly. There is no smooth progression of power this way unless they made these sets extremely, extremely rare, but then what happens is -- players get frustrated because they played for 300 hours and didn't get it, and homeboy rolled a new character and has only played him for 60 hours and he's winning the ladder.
So they all have to be common enough, which means that the classes themselves have to all be strong, and the sets have to amplify certain builds a small amount, rather than a massive amount, this way the stats on the gear matter more rather than the set bonus automatically added superficial power that is magnitudes stronger than the stats on your gear in value.
In other words, the absolutely only way to fix this problem is to Nerf Mara 6, and buff the DH to compensate. This will change how it's played but not actually "Nerf" anybody. You'll be achieving the same power, but most of it will be from your skills and gear stats, rather than most of it being from the set bonus. Set bonus is supposed to be a bonus, not the base. Right now Mara 6 is more than a bonus.
Holy Shotgun is one of, if not the best proven performing build for crusader. That weapon IS the only weapon for that build, and it's a pretty solid roll. I've concluded, you've no idea what you're talking about.
Right now, there are essentially 3 choices, Emperion Spear [with roland set, because it has 6 primary after the gift.] Fate of the Fell, and Darklight. That's it for viable weapon choices... I suppose Gryf/Jak Captain America is probably viable, but it's not going to out perform the other 3 options.
LPWS is an insanely strong stat. Put the gift in it, try it out with the LPWS before the re-roll. You can get the 55.6% CDR elsewhere and have 100% uptime on AC, so putting it on one of the best in slot weapons is a mistake.
No contest really.
The reason? a FotF with maximized damage can be 4,000 dps. You already have the 10% damage. My FotF is 3600 without the 10% damage, after 10% damage it'll be ~3990 which is way better than 3600.
Since I started ROS I had 100m now it's down to 1mil.
Rerolling just blows my gold and I need crafting meterals so I can't sell my yellow items.
Is there anyway to make good gold per hour nowadays?
Yeah I gotta say this is poor management. I came in at 220million and I'm down to 149 million. I went down to 138 million, stopped spending for a day, got all the way back up to 160m, re-rolled a couple items, back down to 145 million.
You just have to set a budget... "I'm not gonna go lower than "x"" and when you hit that, put a freeze on all your spending. It really isn't hard to make gold in this game, what you're doing is trying to rush to the best in slot gear, just have some patience and understand that you might have to put your spending on a hold for a little.... Just pretend the mystic doesn't exist for a couple day and tell me what your gold shot up to.
P.S.
Gold find help enormously, I by happenstance have over 130%. Without a goldskin/goldwrap/averice band/gladiator gaunts or a socketed helm with an emerald in it.
I do have all that stuff in my chest though, but I never feel like I need to put it on because my gold generation is pretty good as is.
When your gold is low, sell everything to the vendor, convert your bloodshards into gold by selling the non-legs. Once your gold is back up to your goal amount, then start breaking stuff down for matts. Then re-roll again. However, under NO circumstance should you re-roll until you're broke. That's just foolish.
Punish hits with your weapon auto attack. The attack animations for melee on crusader are weapon swing and shield hitting.... they alternate.
Even on zeal/slash some of the hits come from the shield. Just pointing that out. Also Smite isn't a shield attack either, this isn't DII. Smite throws a holy beam from the mainhand. [Yes it looks whack.]
Thanks for the reply. I'll defenetly take these things into consideration moving forward
Whatever you do, don't take the previous posters advice on picking up "Armor" rolls. All resist and armor are identical stats with one exception, All resist is 10x greater than armor.
I.E.
380 armor = 38 All resist. The ratio is 10:1. The only time you should use an armor roll is if you're a monk using OWE. You can't roll All Resist as a primary if you have a single resist as a secondary. So if you're a monk, the best mitigation is Armor roll + single resist. Any other circumstance AR is always the better stat.
Also, when people say they have 1 million DPS, they generally mean without buffs, they are usually talking about profile page. I was 1,080,000.00, now I'm 875k, but the difference between my 1 million dps kit and my 875k kit, is that my 875k kit has 51% to lightning skill damage, which brings my real effective flat un buffed DPS to 1.3 million [which is obviously greater than 1 million] even though it only shows at 875k. However, with Laws of Valor, I'm still over a million in my inventory paper sheet -- this puts my actual in game effective damage to around 1.5 million dps.
So you don't need as much toughness as most people think as long as you have a solid way to replenish your health quickly. You only need just enough toughness to soak a couple hard hits and enough healing to fill up before you die. It's a balancing game.
2 Handers are super disproportional to one handers on the crusader. This is what makes it a must have.
It's no fun, because it restricts build diversity by saying 2 handers are blatantly better than one handers, but in order to use a 2 hander, you won't be able to keep up with your friends in a coop game.
It's counter-intuitive to multiplayer. No passives should GIVE you a penalty, getting penalties isn't fun -- using a passive to NEGATE a penalty is fun, this then makes the passive an option.
So how do we fix Heavenly Strength? It's very simple actually -- we make it a bonus instead of a boon. How do we go about doing this? We make it so Crusaders can wield 2 handers and a shield without the passive. Without the passive, we can have a movement speed penalty.
So what should heavenly strength do then? Well, first of all, it has to narrow the gap between 2 handers and one handers to enable 1 handers to still be a viable choice.
The new Heavenly Strength should read like so;
Heavenly Strength:
1 Handed - 18% increased damage
2 Handed - Removes the movement speed penalty
Crusader has no damage passives outside of Holy Cause. Holy Cause, while being an interesting passive, is very specific -- not only is it very specific, but it's damage buff isn't calculated the same as any other damage buff in the game, in terms of passives.
The key here is, all the other passives take your sheet DPS and multiply it by x%. Holy cause takes your weapons holy damage roll and multiplies that by 10%. Giving a much smaller buff than all other classes, this is to be expected though, since the crusaders buff is using 2 handers in 1 hand, but what about 1 handed crusaders? They have no effective DPS buff that is comparable to any other classes, nor can even come close to closing the gap between 1 hand and 2 hand weapons.
So doing this accomplishes a couple of goals...
It makes playing with a 2 hand fun, so we can finally keep up with the people we're playing with. It also makes using 1 handed weapons viable in terms of competitive damage, even at 18% you'd still be doing less than you do with a 2 hander, but the gap would close up nicely, the attack speed and increased wrath generation should make it viable for using high cost no CD wrath spenders. While 2 handers would focus on high damage CD skills because of poor wrath generation. Higher % weapon damage skills scale better with 2 handers too, giving the crusader an extreme variety in build diversity.
It also makes heavenly strength an optional passive. If you want high damage, but don't want to use it, you can stack a 4th defensive passive without sacking your damage, instead -- you're capping yourself at 10% movespeed. This would be ideal for trying to chug through higher torment levels, or doing uber runs etc.
Also doing this, doesn't require you to redesign "The Hell Skull" shield that allows you to move at full speed with a 2 hander. That shield now frees up a passive for you, allowing you to alter your build [build changing legendary] it actually becomes a viable shield, whereas right now -- it's useless, since you'd definitely be better off with Akarat's Awakening.
Redesigning this passive to function in this way, essentially out right fixes the crusader in terms of design and diversity. He still needs some number tweaks, some looking into CD reductions and another look at some passives like Finery.
I think Finery should also add a 2.7% damage reduction for each gem that's socketed. You can have 11 sockets. 2.7*11=29.7% damage reduction. Most people will probably rock around 7 gems giving you 18.9% DR.
Having sockets in ammy's and rings sacrifices too much damage, even having a socket in the helm causes you to suffer damage or toughness. So I think this is also a fair way to get some DR back... since the Crusader doesn't have that 30% built in baseline.
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When you get 15% to "x" skill, you aren't taking the skills damage and multiplying it by that percentage, you are enhancing the skills percentage by THAT percent.
So again, Shield bash does 700%, adding 100 more makes it 800%, not 1400%. I have it, it SUCKS. It doesn't even come close to the Damage output of Infinite Champion + Shotgun with Infinite resource. It's.not.even.close. My crits with Fist of the Heavens are 15 million, switching to a better damage 2 hander over my ONE HAND DARKLIGHT AND stacking physical, my crits on a skill with a HIGHER base damage were LOWER because AC wasn't on.
Shield Bash was critting for 8 million with a 39% physical damage heart slaugher with 3508 dps, with 20% physical bracers, critting for LESS than 2.1k DPS darklight and 20% lightning damage, because of Champion.
And double a SHIT attack speed is STILL a shit attack speed.
GG, noob.
Now show me a Rolands build that's using a 3993 DPS Fate of the Fell. You can't compete, I'm getting more DPS out of my weapon then you are gaining with 100% attack speed.
I have the entire set twice over, nearly 3 times over and some pieces 5 times over. I have Ak's too. I compared them.
I have a heartslaughter with 3500 damage and 29% physical. Rolands sucks.
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NERF MARA 6, BUFF DEMON HUNTER BASE = BETTER DIVERSITY SAME GRIFT DEPTH.
Nobody is pissed off that DH is at 42, we're pissed off because M6 is bad design.
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But it doesn't. Take off your tasker and theos, put down ONE sentry and watch it shoot. Put on Taskers and watch it speed up.
The entire post is wrong because it's based on a fallacy. They may have TINY internal CD's, but they are so small that they might as well be shooting "All at once" they are all shooting before 1 attack per second is finished, giving you the same DPS output as if they shot all at the same EXACT time.
Go ahead, load in and test it, come back and apologize.
Those same people are saying Buriza is the best weapon, yet nobody who did 42 used a buriza to do it. Wonder why? Because his math is wrong.
You might wanna stop just "Believing" what other people post, test/try stuff out, look with your own eyes and confirm what's true and what's not. The cycle rate on the skills is at the alleged "break point" just by using a bow instead of a crossbow -- at this "rate" they are all shooting in under 1 attack per second, giving you the total DPS in 1 second, not changing your Damage Per Second ANY.
Also, do you know what a break point is? Because those guys don't. A break point is the bare minimum of X stat before Y becomes possible. I.E. Akarat's Champion has a Breakpoint on CDR, which is roughly 55.8%, once you reach that much CDR, you can cast it before it expires.
If you read that thread to completion, they recommend you NOT use 3 spenders, but that's clearly proven wrong by the leaderboard as well as by independent testing. Their whole hypothesis is flawed.
But you know, you can say I don't know how it works all you want -- and believe someone else because he posted "Pretty graphics" even though the leaderboard clearly shows he's incorrect, which makes him wrong, and NOT know how the class actually operates.
Sentries also ONLY shoot the first 3 spenders on your bar. Once you have 3 spenders on your bar, they no longer shoot "Bolts." This guys graph clearly shows the rotation on the turrets shooting 6 spenders, which isn't even possible. He shows the rotation as C M B B M B B M C B M B B M B B /repeat, but in the LIVE game, it's CMF/CMF/CMF/CMF it never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, shoots bolts, and it no longer shoot more than the first 3 you put on your bar, so if you put a 4th spender it won't ever fire the one selected 4th. It also DOESN'T shoot ALL spenders, just the ones from "Secondary" and Multishot/Cluster Arrow from Archery. You can try to put on Fan of Knives - Knives Expert which is a spender that cost 30 Hatred and it won't ever fire, even if it's the only spender on your bar.
My guess, is this is homework from the PTR build and no longer applies.
I am indeed correct, that post on "APS Breakpoints" is from March, 1st PTR build of 2.1.0. As such, it's NO LONGER relevant as they changed how the bonus works.
So. WOMP WOMP WOMP, you lose. If you have eyes you could see that you were wrong, just load up your DH and drop a single turret and watch it.
And still regardless, that's X 5 the output of a DH without M6 or 5 turrets, with no resource limit. It's OP.
Also, with around 44% CDR, you can drop a turret every 1.8 seconds or so. With 55% CDR you'd be down to just a tad over one second.
So every second you literally add 100% of your total damage to your total damage output up to 5 "stacks" as it were.
So running M6 takes a DH's total output and multiplies it by FIVE. That's Pentadamage, fuck quad damage, or double damage, it's fucking PENTADAMAGE. And to top it off, as if pentadamage wasn't enough, they have NO RESOURCES so they can face blast non-stop 100% of the time, which is going to increase the damage output by MORE than FIVE HUNDRED PERCENT OF YOUR TOTAL DAMAGE OUTPUT.
To put that in perspective, if you could do 100 million damage per second for 5 seconds, you'd do 500 million damage and then be on an empty tank. If you could do 100 million damage per second, with M6 and a Rucksack, you're doing 2.5 BILLION damage per second for UNLIMITED SECONDS.
How is that not OP? And it's actually higher than that, because that's NOT accounting for shooting THREE spenders, that's accounting for ONE. So reality is you'd be doing around 9-10 BILLION damage per second for unlimited seconds with M6, vs a Demon Hunter that could do 500 Million in 5 seconds and be empty and out of resource. The percent the M6 makes you stronger is RETARDED.
It's pretty much common sense that if you have 5 turrets that can shoot the three most powerful skills you have unlimited and at full damage, that you'd never be able to compete without it. EVER. Since without it, you can only shoot ONE SKILL at a time and on a limited reserve before you ran out of juice.
So again, I reiterate, anybody who think M6 DOESN'T need a nerf and that the DH base DOESN'T need a BUFF, is a NOOB. Flat out. You suck at this game and just copypasta best builds off the internet. You're the SAME crowd that always gravitates to the OP builds and then cries "Blizzard should make EVERYONE OP and LEAVE ME ALONE."
Straight NOOB mentality.
You're also the same crowd that cries that they made the game easier, yet are happily steamrolling extremely hard content with bugged/poorly designed builds that are OP. T6 isn't any easier now than it used to be, better gear has been gotten/created, and some of that better gear is OP like Mara 6, which is why the game feels "Easy" now.
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The 100% on shield bash does not DOUBLE shield bash, it's additive. Shield bash does 700% +300% your block chance. Rolands makes it do 800% + 300% your block chance, and doubles your attack speed, so it gives you double damage +100 weapon damage. Also the 100% damage bonus on sweep attack does not enhance the damage of shield bash, so it's not 200% multiplicative damage + Double attack speed. It's 100% additive damage + double attack speed, which pretty much enhances your damage by ONE THIRD, instead of 400% which is quadruple.
1/3rd is 33%, Akarat's Champion gives you 20%, having Perma Champion gives you 20% damage all the time [13% less than rolands] but gives you UNLIMITED resource, and frees up a skill slot on your bar since you don't need a generator. Running around with a 3900 dps Fate of the Fell, with a 20% permanent damage bonus and a 20% virtually permanent damage bonus from shield glare [since you have 55.8% CDR it's up all the time + a hellfire with towering shield, it's 100% uptime] FAR EXCEEDS that 13% extra damage while you have resource. Lets not forget that running around in Ak's lets you have perma prophet, which gives you around 30 million toughness ALL THE TIME AND also brings you back from the dead once every 30 seconds.
Akhans = 20+20=40 100% up time, Rolands = 33+20=53 25% uptime. The 40 is ALL THE TIME, the 53 is just when you have an enemy under shield glare and have all 5 stacks on the bash.
Roland's can't even come close to the DPS output, the only time it did, was when the Attack Speed was bugged on Heart Slaughter in PTR, which allowed rolands to ramp up to 9 attacks per second with that slow ass 2 hander. They fixed that before they launched the game. When you look on the Grift leaderboards and see the top 3 saders wearing Roland's, they are just HIDING their gear, they aren't using Roland's. Nobody is, because it sucks.
Rolands would be amazing with IAS everywhere, if you had a 3.0 attackspeed before Roland's doubled it, you'd be sitting pretty, the problem is, you can't have good damage with attack speed on gear, and all the fast one handers have broken low damage.
Now, If you're attacks per second were 6.0, i'd concede you'd need less damage to advance, because you're hitting way more often, so on hit procs would be better, but in order to have any kind of toughness with rolands, you need to have around 50k LoH, and you can't use Laws of Valor - Invincible to do it, since you need to use Unstoppable force so you don't run out of wrath.
So the problem with rolands is, you need to have IAS/Crit Chance/Crit Damage/Mainstat/Cooldown Reduction/50k LoH and you still need to somehow cram in toughness stats and 3 sockets on your jewelry. It requires WAY too many stats to even match AK's damage from Akhan's set + FoTF, and when I say way too many, what I mean to say is -- It's UNOBTAINABLE. There is currently 0 way to make it work.
I'm currently sitting on 2 entire sets of Rolands with a pretty beast heart slaughter and a perfect Piru Mirella and it can't even come close to matching the damage of me running around in Champion with 6 seconds down time using LIGHTNING Fist of the Heavens - Fissure. Not even CLOSE, and the damage I do with this funky off build is enough to steam roll T6 like it's normal mode, and this is just a FRACTION of the damage that I could do if I min/maxed towards Holy Shotgun. [Which I'm doing, I have a 3900 DPS FotF/Hellskull, ready to go -- I just need to hit the break point on CDR so I don't run out of wrath.]
Roland's DPS output can't even come within 30% of the damage output, let alone "Quadruple." You don't understand the game,and have NO idea what you're talking about. Which is EXACTLY the case with everyone saying M6 is "Fine."
You're all NOOBS.
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Do you see the difference? It's the same as Crusader, every crusader HAS to use AK's or they can't Grift.
What makes Saders not as bad though is, they have MULTIPLE builds that are top Grift. They can build Firelight/Phalanx/Shotgun/Captain America, all four VERY different builds. This is possible because the Crusader weapons/Shield combos allow for synergy with AK's. The fact that they MUST wear AK's is STILL a problem.
But jump over to barbs, who are doing Grift 40 now, and look -- you have Jumpy Barbs, you have Raekor Barbs, you have Immortal Kings + Raekor barbs, all barb sets are usable at higher Grift levels. Demonhunter can't use Nats, can't use Shadows and can ONLY use M6. Why? Because M6 is OP, and the DH without M6 is UP. It's by far the WORST class in terms of balance right now. I'm sorry if you think everyone running around with the same 5 skills and not even shooting a bow is a "Variable, diverse, and fun" way to play the game.
I want to use Strafe, but I can't -- because STRAFE SUCKS. I want to use FAN OF KNIVES, but I can't, because FAN OF KNIVES SUCKS. A barb can use Leap/Earthquake/Avalanche/WW/WotB/Bash/Frenzy, etc -- why? Because NONE OF THEM SUCK.
You see yet? There most definitely IS a problem with M6, the problem really stems from the fact that WITHOUT M6 the DH sucks.
Not only do DH HAVE to use M6, but they also HAVE to use Bombadiers Rucksack, they also HAVE to use Etrayu or Unbound Bolt. Neither one of these changes the build or the playstyle, they play exactly the same, just with more damage. They also HAVE to use a RoRG to wear, you guessed it, ANOTHER MUST HAVE PIECE, Tasker and Theo. They also have to have 3 jewelry sockets and all HAVE to use the same 3 gems, Bane of the Trapped, Bane of the Powerful, and Enforcer.
They all also HAVE to use Slavebonds for the 5 affixs, so they can have extra toughness to survive a 1 shot, and they also HAVE to have a great Countess Julias Cameo with a socket. They also NEED to use the Unity with the follower can't die item, or an SoJ with a party.
They also HAVE to use a Witching hour. So you see, this leaves them ZERO slots to change ANYTHING. No other class has this problem.
Every demon hunter looks exactly like this, or are on their way to looking exactly like this;
Maras Helm
Maras Shoulders
Maras Chest
Maras Pants
Maras Boots
Countess Julia's
RoRG
SoJ/Unity [depends on solo or group] Tasker and Theo
Slave Bonds
Witching Hour
Bombadiers Rucksack
Etrayu/Unbound Bolt
There is ZERO room to deviate and be "different." This is hands down, the best build. Change the gloves cut your damage tremendously. Take off the RoRG, cut damage tremendously. Take off Rucksack, cut damage tremendously. Take off Unity, cut solo survivability tremendously. Take off Slave Bonds, lose the all resist, cuts back on your much needed toughness tremendously. Take off Julias and you're one shot by jails because you can't have 20m toughness. Where is there ANY options? There aren't any, because M6 is OP, and the DH without M6 is garbage. There is no inbetween.
It's not about DH outperforming other classes, it's about demon hunters not having any other options. DH isn't out far and a head of other classes, they are all closing the gap. Best DH is at 42. Best Crusader 41. Best Wizard 41, Best Witch Doctor 40, Best barb 40. Best Monk 38.
So they are all close, but when you look at how they get there, DH's all do it the same, while everyone else has options. Wizards also don't really have "Options" because they just wear both Rashas and Firebirds.... but see they can do that because Firebirds has 7 pieces.
WD is kind of hurt too, but this is already being worked on, Wall of Zombies is being redesigned completely, and then the Helltooth set is getting changed with it.
Why is it that everyone knows all the other classes need help, but nobody wants to admit the DH is in a bad place? Is it because you all realized how easy and powerful playing a DH is, so you rolled the OP class? I can smell it in your posts.
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Watch them, everysingle shot is a Multishot/FrostArrow/Cluster Arrow. You may have difficulty seeing the individual skills because cluster arrows graphic is modest, but if you look at any target, you'll see they are ALWAYS in a "white" cloud, that's caused by the graphic of frost arrow.
They always shoot all 3, always, and if you only have 2 spenders on, it will always shoot both AND a regular pea shooter turret arrow. They DO NOT alternate. If they alternated, you'd be better off with ONE spender, the HIGHEST one.
0
There is a reason when you look at the demon hunter ladder, that the lowest on the board is Grift 37 at rank 1,000. Crusader at rank 1,000 is at 31. Even though the best geared Crusaders can do 40/41 the average crusader is WELL below the average DH, that's because the 6 piece IS that strong.
They confirmed it in the last QA, although blizzard devs were being super modest about "potentials." They said "We can buff skills, but no matter how much we buff skills [like frozen orb] it's never competing with the 2500-6000% damage bonuses of the set items. So going forward we're going to create new sets that can compete, rather than buffing skill damage, next DH set will be based on multishot."
DH's is well above and beyond that range, that's the problem. Get rid of the rucksack, delete the item out right and it becomes pretty sensible, although it's still highlighting the fact that the DH hits like a wuss.
Then they confirmed that all the sets with 4 pc bonuses that actually have 6 pieces are going to get a 6 pc bonus. Doing this breaks the useability of the 4 pc sets that only have 4 pieces, like Shadows Grasp and Raekor.
What they need to realize is, the 6 piece sets with 4 piece max bonuses and the 4 piece sets should be designed together in tandum, rather than adding a 6 piece OP bonus to Immortal Kings/Nats/Inna's/Zuni's/Rasha's they should be looking at buffing the off sets and the 4 piece bonuses on vanilla 6 piece sets, so using both of those = a 6 piece set like Mara's.
Invoker should be reworked to be the rolands support pieces, the rolands set bonuses should be granted at 4 pieces. 4 piece bonus should look like this:
"Sweep Attack does 100% more damage
Shield Bash does 100% more damage
Each hit with shield bash or Sweep attack adds 20% damage for 3 seconds, stacks up to 5 times"
And the invoker set needs to enhance that to a level that can compete with 100% perma Akarat's Champion 6 pc AK's.
Otherwise all those off sets which are rather cool are just going to get phased out and never used -- this is a design flaw.
If they make a multishot set like they plan on, it'll have to exceed M6, but that'll be down right impossible to do, because if you're NOT using M6, you need toughness that you can't get. This is the major problem with Rolands, outside of the other problem that Rolands just cannot, absolutely cannot, out DPS AK's with 100% up time on Champion.
Keep in mind too, that Roland's is NEW, it was intended to compete with AK's, but it just can't, because they fail to see the damage + toughness explosion you get from 100% uptime in Champion, that in order to compete, they'd have to bump rolands down to 4 pc, redesign invoker to give you crazy toughness, and add 10% damage to each of those sets. That's the only way it could compete.
Adding a "Support piece" isn't going to "fix" the damage/toughness explosion of AK's. This is the same exact scenario as M6. You don't need 22 million toughness on a demon hunter who can blast at 25,000% weapon damage without even being in the room. How can any set compete with this without being absolutely ridiculous?
The end result is, the game becomes easy sauce; because the sets give so much raw power, that it's not about "Which Item do I use, what build, what items do I need to enhance this build, and so on" it becomes, do I want to be a Zoohunter? Okay, M6. Do I want to use Multishot? Okay multishot set.
It makes the item game even MORE stagnate than it was before. Because you have to wear 6 pieces to get these bonuses, even an RoRG doesn't help much, because it only allows you to sub out ONE piece of the set.
RoRG was cool and awesome because people were wearing 3/4 sets at a time, but when you make the sets all 6 piece, and make the 6 pc bonus a MUST HAVE, you take away the ability to use multiple sets at once, essentially destroying the use of the RoRG at the same time.
0
M6 IS OP, it's not relative to other classes, it is relative to other DH options, therefor, the demon hunter needs some skill buffs. If we buffed the base damage on the skills, the M6 would scale with that, and be OP relative to ALL classes. That's the problem with M6. Has NOTHING to do with Greater Rift design and everything to do with Demon Hunter design, solely.
2
You're going to use, Cluster Arrow/MultiShot/Elemental Arrow/Wolf Companion/Ballistics/Cull of the Weak/Custom Engineering.
With Mara 6 and a RuckSack, you get 5 turrets, that shoot all three spenders at the same time, with no cooldown or resource limit.
So what's that mean in terms of raw numbers?
Maelstrom is 550% weapon damage plus the 5 rockets per volley, each rocket dealing 450% weapon damage + 100% Weapon damage from Ballistics.
That's 1,100% weapon damage, and maestrom procs Cull of the Weak for an additional 20% damage, and then you have Wolf companion that gives you 30% more damage ontop of the cull of the weak.
x 5, since you have five sentries, and that's 5,500% weapon damage x 20% x 30% = 8,580% weapon damage PER VOLLEY and this is just using ONE spender, the turrets use all 3 and they don't alternate, they fire all three every volley.
Then we have Frost Arrow, which does 330 x up to 10 [since it hits up to ten targets each] for 3,300% weapon damage per shot, x 20% x 30% = 5,148% weapon damage, x 5 for each turret = potentially 25,740% weapon damage per volley, ON TOP of the 8,580% weapon damage from maelstrom.
So JUST using frost arrow and Maelstrom with Mara 6 and a rucksack, we're already outputting 34,320% weapon damage PER SHOT.
Now add multi shot which can hit everyone on the screen for 360% weapon damage + 300% weapon damage + 100% weapon damage from ballistics * 3 since it shoots 3 rockets. This is 1560% weapon damage x 20% x 30% = 2433.6% weapon damage per volley.
This takes Mara 6 + Rucksack up to 36,753.6% weapon damage PER VOLLEY, NOT counting +% to sentry damage, +% to cold damage, or +% to fire damage, not counting +% damage against elites, or the +% pet damage you get from enforcer, or the +% attack speed you get from Tasker and Theos.
By the time you add all that in, you're in the realm of ~45,000% - 60,000% weapon damage PER VOLLEY. This doesn't even count ANY of the damage that the actual army of 8 pets is doing. So you have the ~45,000% - 60,000% weapon damage x almost 2 a second + actual companion damage, and we all know they hit for millions too.
So the problem is 100% the 6 piece bonus on Mara combined with the fact that the demon hunter has piss poor hatred regen and all their good spenders are inefficient. Without Mara 6, you can't shoot more than 3 cluster arrows in succession without being empty. With mara 6, you can shoot 5 at once without spending any resource.
Is the discrepancy getting clear yet? The Demon Hunter is in the WORST place of all the classes, because without the over powered Mara set, it's useless piss poor weak. They made the Demon Hunter viable through one set of gear, they didn't do any skill tuning. What they need to do, is disable Mara 6, buff the DH skills until it can do GR 40 and then come up with a new 6 piece that is supplementary and not OP. Or just remove the Turrets cast your spenders out right, move the "you gain all companions" to 6, and add something less powerful for the 4 piece.
As it stands now, nothing can even come close to Mara 6, nothing will ever come close to Mara 6 unless they are even more ridiculous than Mara 6, because if you take the turrets away [say for the new multishot set they are working on] then multi shot has to do triple output x 5, in order to compete, so the 6 piece would have to say "Increase Multishot Damage by 72,000% weapon damage."
That's absurd, we all know it, the problem is -- that's how much damage people with Mara 6 are doing in ONE volley.
Another fix for it, is to make the Sentries cast your spenders with reduced damage, like 60% less damage this doesn't for instance just subtract 60 from 330, we take frost arrow at 330% and deduct 60%, we don't just do 330 - 60 = 270% from the sentry, we do 330 x 60% = 198, 330 - 198 = 132% weapon damage. And to cap it at 2 spenders instead of 3. This would force people to actually play the game, rather than drop turrets and hide in the other room, it would also allow other builds to be viable provided they had support pieces for those builds. So going forward, this gives the devs the room to create new sets and Legendary items that would allow other builds to compete, but until there are new items in the game, if you applied my "massive" nerf to Mara 6, it'd STILL be hands down leagues and ladders better than any other build in the game, simply because you have 5 extra demon hunters in your pocket at all times [sic; turrets].
It's clear that the spenders AND generators on DH hit for too little, so the only way for them to output enough damage to climb greater rifts, is to give them all of that on unlimited resource x 5. The solution should be to make it so you can do that much damage out of just the DH without 5 turrets.
Mara 6 is lazy design. Run Mara 6 next to Natalya's w/ shadows grasp -- now this is an ideal combination, because nats is 4 piece and Shadows is 4 piece, which lets you wear them both, which gives the natalya's setup better toughness [that it would need if it didn't have the companion army] but the damage output is TENS OF THOUSANDS of percent lower, and it shouldn't be.
Natalya's + Shadows should = Grift 40, but it doesn't, you'd be lucky to hit 26, and Torment 6 is = to Grift 25.
Blizzard thinks the way to solve this problem is to make Nat's have a 6 piece bonus that is also ridiculously strong, but the problem with that is, it renders the shadows grasp set useless[since you can't wear 5/3] which is required to get the toughness to survive at the higher grift levels when you don't have companion tanks and turrets that do damage WHILE you kite. You will have to stop and DPS which is going to garauntee enemies will DPS you, so without the extra toughness [35% damage reduction] and LoH [32,185] and the Slow [80%] + Movespeed [30%] and with the Discipline reduction + Nightstalker you get 100% uptime on Shadow power, you get from shadows grasp, you're going to be dead in the water.
Mara 6 needs to be redesigned, the DH needs it's resource per damage ratios balanced, needs it's generators to deal adequate damage and then Natalya's 4 piece needs to be buffed, rather than JUST reduce the cool down, it should increase the damage output or give you access to all the runes for every cast, like Rasha's meteors.
The way the game is balanced now is T6 can be done in Legendary Gear, but Grifts and T6 on Farm status requires Sets. I'm cool with this curve, but that means there needs to be many, many, many, more sets for each class to support build diversity, but if the set is = to 70,000% stronger, the gap is WAY too large, it just means the character class itself is weak.
The crusaders have a similar problem right now, Ak's vs Roland's, Roland's sucks right now, because having Perma Akarat's Champion = such a huge EDPS boost + a super Etoughness boost [running prophet takes me from 11m toughness to 24 million add a monk to the party and I'm at 42 million] that the measly double attack speed from rolands set can't even come close to competing. Blizzard has acknowledged this and said that their probably will be a support piece added for Rolands, but they already have 2, they have the Piru Mirella and the Golden Flense + rolands is a 6 piece. If Rolands was a 4 piece, they could get away with adding more support pieces -- but as it stands, not really sure where they think people can equip this "Support" piece.
P.S.
Combine the insane damage output of Mara 6 x 2 with 2 other support characters and we're full circle back to "Support Monks with 0 damage and explosive palm that did 92% of the enemies health in damage on kill." Because nobody else has even close to the damage output of Mara 6, this is why every 4 player group has 2 DH's and 2 Supports, because the supports can add even more flat damage buffs to those demon hunters,
I.E. Monks with Overawe + 16% more damage taken from all sources, or Crusaders with Shield Glare for +20% more damage taken from all sources, which is WAY MORE than +16% damage, since the damage they take is based on your actual damage hits at the END of the calculation, instead of at the beginning.
So, if you have a crusader, run it with some people running Mara 6 who can grift at 35+, don't even fight, just run around and shield glare. When you shield glare, you'll notice that everything almost instantly explodes with the exception of guardians, but since they have so much life, you get to see how much damage stacking the glare does for them, as the life bar will drain at a much Accelerated rate.
This is why all 4 party that get 42+ have monks or crusaders, because they provide raw toughness bonuses + damage through enemy debuffs. It isn't because they are also doing "Sick" damage. There is just nothing that can compete with that composition... why? Because DH are WAAAAAY over powered, but ONLY because of Mara 6, take that away and they are DRASTICALLY under powered, and that's the real problem in a nut shell.
Demon Hunters are super weak and cannot do damage or stay alive without Mara 6. Without Mara 6, they are the worst class in the game, with Mara 6 they are the best class in the game, there is too much swing from one set of gear, this is broken.
You can't fix it without nerfing the set. If you buff the skill damage and leave the set alone, it'll do exponentially more damage in curve. If you don't buff the skills, Mara's will ALWAYS be the only option. So this isn't a case of "Buff everyone else don't nerf us!" because buffing demonhunter builds that don't use maras will only make maras better than it is now, buffing other classes would then just create this problem on 4 other classes making the game essentially boil down to "Get x Set, win the game, use any other set, lose the game."
If you buff all the sets in the game to Mara levels, then you just end up with gear explosion at 70 -- My character is "Broken" until I get "X" set, and then my character is godly. There is no smooth progression of power this way unless they made these sets extremely, extremely rare, but then what happens is -- players get frustrated because they played for 300 hours and didn't get it, and homeboy rolled a new character and has only played him for 60 hours and he's winning the ladder.
So they all have to be common enough, which means that the classes themselves have to all be strong, and the sets have to amplify certain builds a small amount, rather than a massive amount, this way the stats on the gear matter more rather than the set bonus automatically added superficial power that is magnitudes stronger than the stats on your gear in value.
In other words, the absolutely only way to fix this problem is to Nerf Mara 6, and buff the DH to compensate. This will change how it's played but not actually "Nerf" anybody. You'll be achieving the same power, but most of it will be from your skills and gear stats, rather than most of it being from the set bonus. Set bonus is supposed to be a bonus, not the base. Right now Mara 6 is more than a bonus.
0
Holy Shotgun is one of, if not the best proven performing build for crusader. That weapon IS the only weapon for that build, and it's a pretty solid roll. I've concluded, you've no idea what you're talking about.
Right now, there are essentially 3 choices, Emperion Spear [with roland set, because it has 6 primary after the gift.] Fate of the Fell, and Darklight. That's it for viable weapon choices... I suppose Gryf/Jak Captain America is probably viable, but it's not going to out perform the other 3 options.
0
LPWS is an insanely strong stat. Put the gift in it, try it out with the LPWS before the re-roll. You can get the 55.6% CDR elsewhere and have 100% uptime on AC, so putting it on one of the best in slot weapons is a mistake.
No contest really.
The reason? a FotF with maximized damage can be 4,000 dps. You already have the 10% damage. My FotF is 3600 without the 10% damage, after 10% damage it'll be ~3990 which is way better than 3600.
0
You just have to set a budget... "I'm not gonna go lower than "x"" and when you hit that, put a freeze on all your spending. It really isn't hard to make gold in this game, what you're doing is trying to rush to the best in slot gear, just have some patience and understand that you might have to put your spending on a hold for a little.... Just pretend the mystic doesn't exist for a couple day and tell me what your gold shot up to.
P.S.
Gold find help enormously, I by happenstance have over 130%. Without a goldskin/goldwrap/averice band/gladiator gaunts or a socketed helm with an emerald in it.
I do have all that stuff in my chest though, but I never feel like I need to put it on because my gold generation is pretty good as is.
When your gold is low, sell everything to the vendor, convert your bloodshards into gold by selling the non-legs. Once your gold is back up to your goal amount, then start breaking stuff down for matts. Then re-roll again. However, under NO circumstance should you re-roll until you're broke. That's just foolish.
0
Even on zeal/slash some of the hits come from the shield. Just pointing that out. Also Smite isn't a shield attack either, this isn't DII. Smite throws a holy beam from the mainhand. [Yes it looks whack.]
0
I.E.
380 armor = 38 All resist. The ratio is 10:1. The only time you should use an armor roll is if you're a monk using OWE. You can't roll All Resist as a primary if you have a single resist as a secondary. So if you're a monk, the best mitigation is Armor roll + single resist. Any other circumstance AR is always the better stat.
Also, when people say they have 1 million DPS, they generally mean without buffs, they are usually talking about profile page. I was 1,080,000.00, now I'm 875k, but the difference between my 1 million dps kit and my 875k kit, is that my 875k kit has 51% to lightning skill damage, which brings my real effective flat un buffed DPS to 1.3 million [which is obviously greater than 1 million] even though it only shows at 875k. However, with Laws of Valor, I'm still over a million in my inventory paper sheet -- this puts my actual in game effective damage to around 1.5 million dps.
So you don't need as much toughness as most people think as long as you have a solid way to replenish your health quickly. You only need just enough toughness to soak a couple hard hits and enough healing to fill up before you die. It's a balancing game.
0
Heavenly Strength Caps your movespeed to 10%.
2 Handers are super disproportional to one handers on the crusader. This is what makes it a must have.
It's no fun, because it restricts build diversity by saying 2 handers are blatantly better than one handers, but in order to use a 2 hander, you won't be able to keep up with your friends in a coop game.
It's counter-intuitive to multiplayer. No passives should GIVE you a penalty, getting penalties isn't fun -- using a passive to NEGATE a penalty is fun, this then makes the passive an option.
So how do we fix Heavenly Strength? It's very simple actually -- we make it a bonus instead of a boon. How do we go about doing this? We make it so Crusaders can wield 2 handers and a shield without the passive. Without the passive, we can have a movement speed penalty.
So what should heavenly strength do then? Well, first of all, it has to narrow the gap between 2 handers and one handers to enable 1 handers to still be a viable choice.
The new Heavenly Strength should read like so;
Crusader has no damage passives outside of Holy Cause. Holy Cause, while being an interesting passive, is very specific -- not only is it very specific, but it's damage buff isn't calculated the same as any other damage buff in the game, in terms of passives.
Archery = % damage
Glass canon = % damage
Weapon Mastery = % damage
Holy Cause = % holy WEAPON DAMAGE
The key here is, all the other passives take your sheet DPS and multiply it by x%. Holy cause takes your weapons holy damage roll and multiplies that by 10%. Giving a much smaller buff than all other classes, this is to be expected though, since the crusaders buff is using 2 handers in 1 hand, but what about 1 handed crusaders? They have no effective DPS buff that is comparable to any other classes, nor can even come close to closing the gap between 1 hand and 2 hand weapons.
So doing this accomplishes a couple of goals...
It makes playing with a 2 hand fun, so we can finally keep up with the people we're playing with. It also makes using 1 handed weapons viable in terms of competitive damage, even at 18% you'd still be doing less than you do with a 2 hander, but the gap would close up nicely, the attack speed and increased wrath generation should make it viable for using high cost no CD wrath spenders. While 2 handers would focus on high damage CD skills because of poor wrath generation. Higher % weapon damage skills scale better with 2 handers too, giving the crusader an extreme variety in build diversity.
It also makes heavenly strength an optional passive. If you want high damage, but don't want to use it, you can stack a 4th defensive passive without sacking your damage, instead -- you're capping yourself at 10% movespeed. This would be ideal for trying to chug through higher torment levels, or doing uber runs etc.
Also doing this, doesn't require you to redesign "The Hell Skull" shield that allows you to move at full speed with a 2 hander. That shield now frees up a passive for you, allowing you to alter your build [build changing legendary] it actually becomes a viable shield, whereas right now -- it's useless, since you'd definitely be better off with Akarat's Awakening.
Redesigning this passive to function in this way, essentially out right fixes the crusader in terms of design and diversity. He still needs some number tweaks, some looking into CD reductions and another look at some passives like Finery.
I think Finery should also add a 2.7% damage reduction for each gem that's socketed. You can have 11 sockets. 2.7*11=29.7% damage reduction. Most people will probably rock around 7 gems giving you 18.9% DR.
Having sockets in ammy's and rings sacrifices too much damage, even having a socket in the helm causes you to suffer damage or toughness. So I think this is also a fair way to get some DR back... since the Crusader doesn't have that 30% built in baseline.