This is the proper way to make a successful solo-player DH build.
6 easy steps to making a proper DH build
Step 1: Completely ignore the template set in place by blizzard. Calling the blizzard template garbage would be an insult to garbage.
Step 2: Pick 1 out of the five Hatred generators.
Step 3: Pick 2 Hatred spenders. One should be more AoE centric, while the other more single target.
Step 4: Pick 2 Defensive Discipline spenders. These are your primary defensive skills and include: Caltrops, Smoke Screen, Shadow Power & Vault.
Step 5: Pick 1 complimentary skill. These are more situational or passive skills which include: Companion, Preparation, Marked for Death, Fan of Knives, Rain of Vengeance, & Sentry.
Step 6: Make sure you choose 3 passives that synchronize well with your build. Also try to avoid the obvious weak choices such as: thrill of the hunt, hot pursuit and broodling.
These are the six basic mental steps I take to make any of my demon hunter builds, as it ensures an extremely well rounded build with plenty of fire power and survivability.
Note:
This is in essence the box. If you are thinking outside the box, then that is fine; but just be aware that there will only be a handful of good builds, comparatively speaking, that won't fall into this template.
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"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
Step 4: Pick 2 Defensive Discipline spenders. These are your primary defensive skills and include: Caltrops, Smoke Screen, Shadow Power & Vault.
Do you think this is necessary given how effective Smoke Screen is at completely avoiding any damage? Obvious exceptions would be if your group WANTS you to be a main snare with caltrops, or if you have some build that requires a ton of mobility with vault. From my perspective, I feel like I'm wasting a skill slot grabbing anything defensive with smoke screen being such an effective tool for that purpose.
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To Jay Wilson and everyone else: Diablo 3 can be competitive without being an E-Sport.
Step 4: Pick 2 Defensive Discipline spenders. These are your primary defensive skills and include: Caltrops, Smoke Screen, Shadow Power & Vault.
Do you think this is necessary given how effective Smoke Screen is at completely avoiding any damage? Obvious exceptions would be if your group WANTS you to be a main snare with caltrops, or if you have some build that requires a ton of mobility with vault. From my perspective, I feel like I'm wasting a skill slot grabbing anything defensive with smoke screen being such an effective tool for that purpose.
Smoke screen is a great escape tool, but what are you going to do when smoke screen ends? Just do it again? It only last 2 seconds(3 runed), and its rather expensive on the disc. Spamming it rather seems out of the question without the right build in the right situation.
Smoke screen is absolutely awesome though, and I can't really see myself making a build without it, but idk if I would rely on it completely to save me all the time. I also really like caltrops - torturous ground.
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"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
I don't agree with everything but overall it's good for people who have never played the class before. Nothing is required for a build to work, I'm using 4 Discipline moves in my build and I'm confident it will work very well.
I don't agree with everything but overall it's good for people who have never played the class before. Nothing is required for a build to work, I'm using 4 Discipline moves in my build and I'm confident it will work very well.
What is your build.
Of course this is with solo play style in mind. Group play could be slightly different.
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"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
I am curious about your point about Sharpshooter. Is it really that weak?
Depends if your gear is good or bad really. It also depends on the wording compared to the actual functionality too.
If you have high crit % and a fast attack speed, then aside from the first shot in between groups its not going to do a whole heck of a lot due to the 1 second reset CD.
For instance imagine a situation where you have 50% crit and 2 APS. (50% crit sounds like a lot, but with good gear you could technically get over 100% and 3 APS could easily be done with DW.)
0.0 - Attack Crit (1 sec CD starts)
0.5 - no benefit
1.0 - no benefit
1.5 - +3% crit (probability 50%)
2.0 - no crit
2.5 - +6% crit (probability 12.5%)
3.0 - no crit
3.5 - 9% (probability 3.125%)
In this scenario the odds you get 2 stacks is slim, and the odds you get 3 is just laughable. Then when you start averaging out how much additional crit% you actually had the entire time, it gets really low. Mostly a bunch of +0% crit while on CD and 3% buffs with the occasional +6% and rare +9% and higher.
There are a couple unknowns though. Like after the 1 second cooldown, maybe you don;t get a stack instantly and you have to wait one additional second. That is a good possibility.
Also, what about the shots during the CD. What if they crit? Does the CD restart? I would hope not, but that possibility exist as well.
Furthermore, this is a single target scenario, which is really best case for this passive. In a room full of mobs, even with a rather low crit%, you are almost certainly going to crit one of them with an aoe spell.
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"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
This is diablo odds are you are going to be fighting a room full of mobs most of the time.
So if you have 50% crit and 2 APS.
Lets say there are 5 mobs in a room, and you are aoe'ing them.
If you crit one of them, then you are just in an endless cycle of the 1 second internal CD.
Odds you don't crit ANY of them in 1 second is,
0.5^10 * 100 = 0.09765625%
ROFL!!! Yah, that passive is crap. If it procs instantly after 1 second, then you might get 3% buff out of it most of the time.
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Do you want to get scammed? Perhaps a nice keylogger?
"Just google "diablo 3 gold guide" and magical rainbow covered demons will assault your eyes."
I was operating under the impression the during the 1 second "after crit" cooldown ALL your attacks would keep the increased crit chance until it reset.
Still awful since aoe will prevent the stack from going high, but at least it makes the "alpha strike" nature of it a bit better when you can unload 2-3 really strong 100% crit attacks to start a pack off.
Some thing like Spike Trap + RoV + Impale + Hungering Arrow.... Not exactly practical but you could in theory stack a lot of dmg in that 1 second window.
I was operating under the impression the during the 1 second "after crit" cooldown ALL your attacks would keep the increased crit chance until it reset.
Still awful since aoe will prevent the stack from going high, but at least it makes the "alpha strike" nature of it a bit better when you can unload 2-3 really strong 100% crit attacks to start a pack off.
Some thing like Spike Trap + RoV + Impale + Hungering Arrow.... Not exactly practical but you could in theory stack a lot of dmg in that 1 second window.
That is an excellent point. I guess it might be worth using just for unloading huge burst dmg at the start.
Though after that initial burst, you are back to down to it doing next to nothing. In easier difficulties I could easily see using this, but once you get into inferno it might not cut it anymore.
I will remove it from the list of crap passives, as I think it might have value on initial burst and be usable.
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"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
I don't agree with everything but overall it's good for people who have never played the class before. Nothing is required for a build to work, I'm using 4 Discipline moves in my build and I'm confident it will work very well.
What is your build.
Of course this is with solo play style in mind. Group play could be slightly different.
Mmmm, I see what you did there. I will keep a suspicious eye on its usefulness as I progress because I planned a build to use it. -.^
I keep trying to find reasons that Steady Aim and Cull of the Weak shouldn't be automatic choices, with no success. I'd imagine non-archery based builds would find reasons not to use Steady Aim, but it's so strong otherwise.
6 easy steps to making a proper DH build
Note:
This is in essence the box. If you are thinking outside the box, then that is fine; but just be aware that there will only be a handful of good builds, comparatively speaking, that won't fall into this template.
Epicurus
Do you think this is necessary given how effective Smoke Screen is at completely avoiding any damage? Obvious exceptions would be if your group WANTS you to be a main snare with caltrops, or if you have some build that requires a ton of mobility with vault. From my perspective, I feel like I'm wasting a skill slot grabbing anything defensive with smoke screen being such an effective tool for that purpose.
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Smoke screen is a great escape tool, but what are you going to do when smoke screen ends? Just do it again? It only last 2 seconds(3 runed), and its rather expensive on the disc. Spamming it rather seems out of the question without the right build in the right situation.
Smoke screen is absolutely awesome though, and I can't really see myself making a build without it, but idk if I would rely on it completely to save me all the time. I also really like caltrops - torturous ground.
Epicurus
What is your build.
Of course this is with solo play style in mind. Group play could be slightly different.
Epicurus
I am curious about your point about Sharpshooter. Is it really that weak?
Signature by Aranoch
If you have high crit % and a fast attack speed, then aside from the first shot in between groups its not going to do a whole heck of a lot due to the 1 second reset CD.
For instance imagine a situation where you have 50% crit and 2 APS. (50% crit sounds like a lot, but with good gear you could technically get over 100% and 3 APS could easily be done with DW.)
0.0 - Attack Crit (1 sec CD starts)
0.5 - no benefit
1.0 - no benefit
1.5 - +3% crit (probability 50%)
2.0 - no crit
2.5 - +6% crit (probability 12.5%)
3.0 - no crit
3.5 - 9% (probability 3.125%)
In this scenario the odds you get 2 stacks is slim, and the odds you get 3 is just laughable. Then when you start averaging out how much additional crit% you actually had the entire time, it gets really low. Mostly a bunch of +0% crit while on CD and 3% buffs with the occasional +6% and rare +9% and higher.
There are a couple unknowns though. Like after the 1 second cooldown, maybe you don;t get a stack instantly and you have to wait one additional second. That is a good possibility.
Also, what about the shots during the CD. What if they crit? Does the CD restart? I would hope not, but that possibility exist as well.
Furthermore, this is a single target scenario, which is really best case for this passive. In a room full of mobs, even with a rather low crit%, you are almost certainly going to crit one of them with an aoe spell.
Epicurus
Signature by Aranoch
So if you have 50% crit and 2 APS.
Lets say there are 5 mobs in a room, and you are aoe'ing them.
If you crit one of them, then you are just in an endless cycle of the 1 second internal CD.
Odds you don't crit ANY of them in 1 second is,
0.5^10 * 100 = 0.09765625%
ROFL!!! Yah, that passive is crap. If it procs instantly after 1 second, then you might get 3% buff out of it most of the time.
"Just google "diablo 3 gold guide" and magical rainbow covered demons will assault your eyes."
Still awful since aoe will prevent the stack from going high, but at least it makes the "alpha strike" nature of it a bit better when you can unload 2-3 really strong 100% crit attacks to start a pack off.
Some thing like Spike Trap + RoV + Impale + Hungering Arrow.... Not exactly practical but you could in theory stack a lot of dmg in that 1 second window.
"Just google "diablo 3 gold guide" and magical rainbow covered demons will assault your eyes."
That is an excellent point. I guess it might be worth using just for unloading huge burst dmg at the start.
Though after that initial burst, you are back to down to it doing next to nothing. In easier difficulties I could easily see using this, but once you get into inferno it might not cut it anymore.
I will remove it from the list of crap passives, as I think it might have value on initial burst and be usable.
Epicurus
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#WSYdXV!aXT!cZZYcb
Solo or Group build I'm using this 100%.
I love mobility and Bola Shot. Also, sticky bombs.
I keep trying to find reasons that Steady Aim and Cull of the Weak shouldn't be automatic choices, with no success. I'd imagine non-archery based builds would find reasons not to use Steady Aim, but it's so strong otherwise.
"Just google "diablo 3 gold guide" and magical rainbow covered demons will assault your eyes."