To put it simply 1.05 just hurts the DH. The reason is because in any build you want something that fulfills 2+ of the categories of damage / defense or life / mobility / resource generation. What Blizz did was to take the one skill (ToC) that fulfilled 2 of those categories well and made it yet another skill that's a single category skill with some side benefits. Most classes have at least one skill that fulfills 3 of these categories while DH's are lucky to have one that fulfills 2 well. So now in 1.05 you'll have a bunch of new builds because NO DH skill fulfills 2 of these categories well (even with passives directed toward it) much less 3. So you're filled with a bunch of single category interchangable skills with VERY little synergy between one another. IMO it's terrible and just shows how little the designers play the DH class.
Additionally, we have the monster power introduced. Essentially 50% increase of hp per level. Who does it hurt? The classes which rely on damage to create quick kills and unable to do sustained tanking w/o taking massively away from their DPS. Aka the DH. Thus we went from the 2nd fastest farming class (thanks to ToC) to probably the 2nd or worst farming class becuase of how poorly damage scales and how poor our resource generation and how much our subsequent AoE skills need these resources.
So in the end I went from a 130k DPS 2 elites per minute farmer in 1.04 to something that will never farm above MP3-4 because of the HP to damage relation. I could get the best gear in the game and up my DPS to 380k but guess what, that's still only somewhere between MP4-MP5. Otherwise I'm relegated to kiting (going over your own footsteps 3-5x) where any class that can get into the middle and take damage while putting down damage (Wiz, barbs, some degree witch doc and monks) will do better as they can hit a lot more targets without having to run away. In the end, for end game DH's are now probably the worst class, especially when compared to how much you have to spend to get there.
Sadly, I saved most of 1.04 and got crap drops even with 350+% MF and through 70 levels of crapagon with the last 40 at 403% in 1.04. Now in 1.05 I'm probably going to shelf my DH for a bit for the barb as really seems that's the only way to go if you care about farming.
Now that 1.05 is on PTR and is live we can really evaluate this.
First thing you see is that DH now get additional stuff to be somewhat forced onto their bars. Most farming balanced/glass DH will be running vault, gloom, and prep and now additionally will need probably boar to help with resistances. Additionally you'll probably need to take perfectionist and then stack life steal on gear as reflect will waste us with just gloom or take evasive fire with the armor rune. Some analysis was done here:
Additionally, it's been shown that even the top DH (250k+ dps) are taking 5-10 minutes to kill elite packs at level 10 and only are able to use (though no idea how much experimentation has been done) a kite build. The new level 10 Diablo has over 200 million hp so you can figure out how long that'll take you and how lucky you'll have to be not to mess up once. The new sentry turrets are somewhat useless for this style, as you're running away, and will be only viable to the true tanky spec DH who uses chains of torment where you can build your little fort of doom which will take more than 20 seconds to implement.
These new toys mostly have no ability to crit, so no nightstalker bonus. And to reference an earlier post if you are using hungering arrow to attempt to proc nightstalker, even with 2 APS and 50% crit chance you're still looking at around 10-12 sec of continuous shooting to get enough for ONE additional gloom. It's just not a sustainable method to regen discipline. I think this will continue to be a largely useless skill.
Basically... comes down to much of what I feared. You can't out DPS content with the current gear available. The defensive items aren't as strong as we'd hope for. Reflect damage will leak through gloom for most (so now you need to run, gloom, shoot, run to regen discipline). Getting life steal on weapon will become nearly essential if the math is correct. Because of the kite method required, we need to run backwards and thus relegating ourselves to the slowest farming class in game. Though, I will admit, most of this does help the DH tank if that's your playstyle.
I guess I'm off to download PTR to see if this all holds true.
proc rate of nightstalker is either the same as loh proc coefficient or proportional to it. in short runes like shock collar, cindering arrow, chemical burn, cluster grenades etc are good for that purpose.
I know I said that I was out but just correcting incorrect information. The tick damage of many DH skills do not proc night stalker as they do not produce yellow crits. So cinder arrow, toc, etc have a 0% proc rate. But it is misinformation like this and misunderstanding class characteristics and closed mindedness prevents a useful discussion on this topic.
I guess most of you can't break away from your boxed in thinking. Think about this from the standpoint of a sandbox mode. ANY item you want, near perfect rolls, the 1 in a trillion gear piece... Now that's out of the way...
How do you kill a monster with 50+ million HP and can hit like a truck?
Can't burst them down as most DH have done previously (out burst DPS content) as it's too much HP.
New Gloom will basically equal the melee chr defensive bonus (35% gloom vs 30% melee bonus). So being that barbs/monks will/should have issues taking hits, we can basically assume that no DH is going to run 800 All Res / 8000 armor (general basis for barbarians now) and be a DPSer so Gloom tanking is probably out or very close to being out.
SS tanking? You'll survive as long as you have discipline but still not enough damage. Might be able to take large fractions out of their lives this method.
What's left? Ahh.... there it is... kite for miles. Use every slow in the arsenal (caltrops, cold damage, entangling shot, etc) and stutter step from New York to California shooting off screen elemental arrows/spike traps, or maybe taking a risk and allowing them to get closer and using cluster bombs. As the effective DPS kiting is by far the lowest of all the classes assuming similar gear. The reason why you have to do this? Because you HAVE to limit and slow down the usage of discipline to allow for prep to catch up. The original 'kite or die' method again.
Basically, the only reason why the DH class is effective now, on a whole, is they're able to out burst DPS the content before running dry on discipline. Otherwise when you're as geared as the content you're forced to kite as we all did when we first stepped into inferno. When forced to do sustained DPS the DH loses by a mile to other class DPS as they have to waste time running/trapping while occasionally DPSing. So even with the best gear in the game, you're still forced to kite. A barb for example can lay down his full DPS indefinitely as long as he can mitigate dmg and gain enough life back. BUT as a side benefit we're the best when it comes to corpse running through content as we do have that burst....
Basically this becomes one of those 'watch out for' mentalities as Blizzard has shown they do not do much DH internal testing (the ToC 'bug' which the community was raving in about 2 minutes of gameplay). So while I'll keep an open mind to the upcoming changes I still am going to remain skeptical as I do understand the DH mechanics and realize just how unforgiving they currently are to prolonged battles in contrast to other classes. But anyway I'll conclude my participation in my thread here as many are just locked into 'gear check' or they trust Blizzard mentalities.
Monster power isn't meant for people who can't deal with it, if you cant kill 30-40 mil hp you should not be trying to do it.
Besides, think they are putting enrage back to mobs with increased difficulty, so you can't whirl around for 10 mins around them either. I might be wrong about that tho.
Solution? Get better gear.
Im killing azmodan in 15 seconds without using full discipline at the moment and he got 8mil hp i think in 1 player game. Sure its gonna be abit longer without trail of cinders, but then again, i dont have to use discipline at all to kill azmodan.
You do realize that Azmodan has a MASSIVE hitbox and no CC, shields, or other attributes to deal with right? I can kill Azmodan before he puts up a 2nd pool.(< 15 seconds) Current content is pretty easy. Now take Azmodan, put him into a Hulking Phasebeast body, give him 7x the health, and give him 3 buddies with nasty affixes. You, me, and every other DH below say 200k DPS (or Nat's Legacy) is dead.
The thing that people seem to not understand is 30-40 million over the standard 3-4 mobs is 90-120 million HP you need to wreck before you run out of discipline. Without Nat's Legacy set and 50 discipline you can gloom for about a minute Even with an absolutely PERFECT manticore, dead man legacy, witching hour, mempo twilight etc. you're probably still only pushing just over 200k-300k DPS (didn't bother calculating) which very well might not be enough to do this incredible amount of damage required in the small time frame. Basically we'll be back to kite for miles (assuming this mode has miles to kite) style and that will be the only effective way to play the DH. Since if this is like D2 (as they state) it'll just be a dmg and hp bonus like there's 8 people in game. Try soloing an elite pack with 3 people sitting in town. That'll be 'half' as hard. As I said earlier, this will become less of a gear check, but more of a class wall as sadly nearly every other class CAN deal as much damage as we do. The only difference is they usually can sustain it while we're very front loaded. Once we burn our hatred/discipline we're pretty weak until we can regen it back and we have few skills that help regen life/discipline.
Poekl: Are you sure about that? I've fired multishot (17% proc rate I think) into a massive pack of about 25+ demons and seen my discipline jump by 3-5 (enough to visually see). But beyond massive packs nightstalker really seems to be useless against nearly all elite packs due to the low proc rate with small number of mobs.
I think that is more of a problem with the barbarian metagame, rather than the big picture of how this patch is going to work. If only the elite of the elite can handle the most difficult setting with the new system, how is that a problem? Personally, if they're making normal inferno even easier, I hope they add 4 or 5 difficulties beyond that, maybe one or two harder than the original inferno.
You sidestepped the question though. Piece together a non-legacy Nat's set with perfect rolls and you'll find a pack of 3 to 5 30-40 million hp elite mobs is nearly impossible for a DH. As essentially you have approximately 50-60 sec to deal that much damage to each mob before you need to just straight up run/kite as you've run dry on discipline. For all other classes, because they can regen their spenders, can have the fight go on as long as needed to kill them. It's not just the end game system, it's a matter of how disgustingly uphill it will be 1.05 and beyond for DH because of the original intent of being able to kill before running out of discipline.
True, but it doesn't hurt to speculate. Essentially the question becomes, besides Nat's legacy set (and infinite gloom) how would a DH deal with a 30-40 million HP elite if this 'monster power' system buffs dmg and health to something like a factor of 8? Because nothing but the elite of the elite DH will be able to take down that much HP in 2 discipline balls (one + prep). While very well I could take my barb and whirl/sprint for 10 minutes but as long as my EHP/LoH/Mitigation is high enough I'll definitely win.
Sprint/RLTW also can hit an area (not just a target) beyond 15-20x with a 20% proc rate regening 15 fury or essentially enough for 1 sprint.
As for damage, it's probably going to be true. It's not posted. In general, Blizzard does not give without taking something back. Especially since most of those complain point to DH damage as being OP (which in truth is only barely above other classes), it's probably going to happen to make every class mirror one another.
Ball lightning can hit 3x but only on targets moving with the ball. So if you want to fire your ball lighting at a target, vault over it, and run ahead of the ball to get the fast mob to chase... yes you can hit 3x. Is it worth it over shooting another one? No.
DH Regens 'hit' hatred just like every other class. Use basic attack to gain X amount of spender with the exception we don't have to actually hit anything. Only real difference. Make up the fact that monks usually have a much higher attack speed and it evens out along with the fact they usually can survive battles be it 5 sec to 5 minutes with little difference in playstyle. The issue here is not if they can regen, it's ability to stay alive (discipline) while stutter stepping those 5-10 sec to regen enough hatred. Think about it this way... Assume this player-8 will be equiv of 8 players in game. So with some 'extra health' affix you're looking at 30-40+ million HP elites. I'd guess 98+% of DH will not be able to kill those before they run out of discipline. What do do then? Run backwards for 45 seconds til preparation is available? What does a Barb/Monk/WD Do for this? Oh yeah, they can regen their life and spenders so keep going nearly indefinitely. Can a DH do that? No.
That's why I started a DH. Realizing it was inherently squishy class with zero worthwhile passives to help with defense but having high mobility to move and place myself in advantageous positions to take down enemies quickly. I'd only live as long as I had discipline. Playing to the "I'll kill you before I run out of discipline" mentality.
Now, it appears Blizzard is changing how they want the DH to work and changing it more to a cookie cutter ranged class that uses a bow. As they continue to reduce the effective DPS of skills (not character sheet DPS) and now are planning to give defensive passives/actives along with nerfing but increasing duration of gloom. All these things point to changing the DH from a high mobility, high reactionary, short engagement character to just a character that stands on the sidelines taking hits while pushing out some DPS. But there's a big problem with this...
DH have the worst proc rate in game
Be it either hatred or discipline or LoH DH really have very little ability to use skills to generate either of these spenders or life. Used to be a balanced DH could drop a caltrop and turn and run to get some distance while regen some life via caltrop LoH, now with no proc rate it's gone. Same with nightstalker, it's proc rate is terrible for most skills. 20% from ball lightning, which means it has to crit on 70 targets (where ball lighting can hit a target only 2x) to gain enough discipline for ONE more additional gloom/SS. Essentially DH's have no high hit rate (nothing remotely like sprint/rltw) to regen life or spenders which serve other purpose (regen/damage/utility: pick 2).
What's the problem with this? Now, since I'm assuming you're expecting many to use these new skills/passives to help with survivability you're also forcing a decision to move away from damage increasing skills/passives. Thus forcing longer battles. But since DH has little ability to regen any of the 3 major areas (life/hate/discipline) giving more defensive abilities doesn't help anything. Just forces a DH to run away and kite even more than they do now.
I am really unsure of the direction Blizzard is going with this as it really appears that unless we get a strong hate spender that doesn't cost an arm and a leg (cluster bomb) or a skill that actually helps regen our life/spenders we will be relegated to the worst class in the game by 1.05 especially once that player-8 releases as well as our dmg does NOT scale well into prolonged battles for anyone that doesn't have a legacy Nat's set. As the biggest problem is it makes a HUGE difference if the battle is 15 seconds or 1 minute. For nearly all other major classes/builds they can regen their life/spenders thus a prolonged battle is not that much different than a short one.
My current crit chance is 50% w/ weapons master + ruthless + battle rage with 324% crit damage.
Basically it's a bit low All Res, need some more life regen, can sacrifice some armor. Basically seems like the bracers will be the thing that most needs replacing along with one of the rings for All Res and maybe some life regen if I can find it for cheap. Since I've spent less than 15 million on this build using random items from my 'to sell' box plus some other stuff I've found for cheap on the AH just looking for a direction and as of right now for the most part I never die in A3 unless it's a fast mob that runs molten around the entire screen stacking moltens or plagues or just is fast and fire chains me constantly.
So while I think I have a direction in the mitigation, it's primarily what to look for in a weapon next so I can throw some actual money on the item. This chr is primarily just going to be a speed XP farmer just needs to be able to jam past white mobs and have them die in the sprint whirlwind wake so being able to dish out some very strong sprint damage will be key to what I'm trying to build. It seems like mighty weapons are the way to go for 'end game' whirl barbs? I might have to price it out getting some Lacuni Prowlers as well for this but somehow I think that'll exceed my miniscule budget as most of my funds are still going to my DH.
I am quite new to the barbarian class and am creating a WW barb for kicks and am somewhat confused as to what to search for in a main hand and off hand weapon. I'll jot down what I think I know and would appreciate any feedback on it.
Main hand:
Damage for sprint whirls is based off weapon damage range. Due to this weapon speed is not wanted. But should I only be searching for high average damage? Or are modifiers such as % damage or +min or +Max damage additional modifiers that I need to take into account as well? Currently bought a cheap 730 average damage mace with 900 LoH and a socket for crit damage. Basically trying to determine if/how the damage modifiers effect sprint damage before I actually invest in a weapon.
Off hand:
Because damage here only applies 50% for whirlwind and bash dps is relatively unimportant. Stack up on stats such as strength, crit damage, Loh, atk speed and vit roughly in that order depending on need. That being said I am using a 450 dps, 200 str, 90% crit dam via socket, 950 LoH, 80 vit dagger that was purchased cheaply. If my understanding is correct I ideally just want atk speed and natural crit damage additionally?
Jewelry:
Going to assume average damage here trumps all other offensive stats here as well? Won't drive up your dips on chr screen but will be the most effective on build if my understanding is correct.
And one last random question, for elite mobs that run away is it best to finish the last mob by cornering and bashing (what I have been doing) or sprint in some fashion and run away to kite the mob into the whirlwind? Generally just try to get one sprint to tick on the mob and bash away. Anyway, thanks for any feedback.
While I did only skim this post I'll contribute with some info. I realize that you may have already invested (somewhat strangely by your chr profile as you have a lot of items which have other than main stat on them) but some additional information for those who wish to take this route. My info is pre-1.04 but for the most part still applies.
Gold Find is not that important:
This may seem strange but maxing out GF is not very important. Think about it this way, assume your best runs right now are say at 200% GF base and are making 500k/hr. Increasing this to 300% capped will make you an additional 167k/hr. But how much did you spend to reach the cap? Probably more than 10-20 million. You now need to farm enough to pay off this additional 10-20 million debt. With an additional 167k/hr you can do the math about how many additional hours you need to grind to break even.
Buy Gear that's CHEAP:
Gold find gear is about having a supplemental set of gear which allows you to move very quickly through content. Generally it will be found that staying in nightmare or hell difficulties will be the most efficient for gold find runs. You really do not need to spend more than 300k per piece of gear with the exception of boots, and movement item and weapon.
Gear/Stat priorities:
1. Movement speed, hit the 25% cap however you like.
2. Pickup radius, you ideally want over 35 but the higher the better.
3. Main stat (our case dexterity) as you need enough dexterity/dmg to one shot any white mob reliably.
4. Max discipline (8+) on chest and quiver
5. Gold find
6. Attack Speed
7. Life on Kill because no one values it thus it's essentially a free stat and because you're one shotting mobs it's like a LoH heal.
I did not miss crit chance or crit damage, you don't want them in a gold find build. As you want every mob (not just the ones it crits on) to die on the first shot. I did this all pre-1.04 and went with the Legacy Unity ring and Lacuni Prowlers. Unity can roll movement and gold find and a socket for dex and Lacuni Prowlers can roll movement, gold find, and pickup radius with the bonus of attack speed on bracers. Generally you'll want a crossbow with a high and narrow damage range (not always the same as dps) and possibly with some dex on it, you don't need crit damage here. Bow's have a very wide range and thus can not guarantee a one shot kill thus not a great choice.
Playstyle:
The playstyle of a gold hunter is one where you one shot all white mobs, only shoot once from any one position (except elites), and in general is always moving. The max movement speed (+60% tac adv) plus vault in addition to the wide pickup radius ensures you don't ever have to turn and chase gold. You always want to be moving forward and toward new enemies. If you're wasting time turning around and picking up a 300 pile of gold or some random blue/rare that's gold wasted. Assuming you're doing this in nightmare, any rare you find isn't going to vendor over 500 gold so there really is no point to picking them up. May seem counter intuitive but just leave them on the ground. There's only a few (and maybe not with 1.04) legendaries that are worth picking up in hell and nightmare but the rest can stay on the ground.
Skills:
Ideally you want no offensive passives as almost all your skils are going to be geared toward ensuring you're always moving toward more enemies. I take TA, Vengeance, and Perfectionist. You can swap hot pursuit in for perfectionist but I find I'm not at max hatred enough to justify it. For bar skills I take HA/DA, Multi/FAW, Vault/Tumble, SS/Breathe (breaks any CC and gives 15 hate for one multishot), prep/backup, companion/ferret (if you find you're out of hate, take bat instead). The playstyle is vault, run forward til TA wears off, then repeat until you find a mob pack. Fire mulishot, immediately vault again into the area you just mowed down and fire off another multishot if the pack was bigger than your first cone and repeat this throughout. All this time your pickup radius will automatically pick up your gold and you're continuing down your merry way.
Closing:
With this in mind I probably spent maybe just over 1.5 million on my gear (sans weapon) in 1.03 so prices will be cheaper now. I think I'm only at around 220% GF with a decked out follower and have a radius of around 53 yards and can average around 650k/hr doing A3 nightmare runs. 53 yards isn't quite enough where if you see it fall you collect it but it's fairly close. You can spend more and jump into hell, but I never bothered seeing how much additional gold drops in hell vs nightmare, plus the gear costs that much more as you actually will need to push closer toward 2000 dex to ensure one shots.
IT IS very possible to have good (not perfect) MF numbers while still putting out good DPS. It costs a bundle more, or probably around 5-10x as much as similar gear without MF, but it is possible. I've only been playing a month and I have 70k DPS (w/o sharp) on 215% base MF on a balanced (400 all resists and 35k life) DH. Yes, it's not anywhere near those glass cannon 125k+ DPS DH but then again they have much more gold/time invested than I do.
But this new Paragon system just gives even more incentives to macro gear swap. Here's the incentives for each side
To gear swap:
Faster killing of both white and rare mobs for faster Paragon experience leveling
Full 300% base MF for elites/treasure goblins for maximum loot.
To have MF on questing gear:
4x more magic items will drop from white mobs. Which in reality will probably be only 1-4 extra rares per hour over 0% MF. Fairly easily offset by faster killing speed.
I personally find it silly that in order to optimize your gameplay Blizzard gives these kind of incentives to skirt the User Agreement while NOT making a stand whether or not they deem it okay to use 3rd party macros. Much of the argument for one side or the other is purely one side not wanting to violate the TOS and not so much macro use. The funny thing is if Blizzard came out and banned everyone that used gear swap macros they'd probably ban 30% of the player base and kill the game completely so in truth it's highly doubtful they will. Regardless though, I built a charachter around MF and now I'm just finding that while I was probably more efficient than most of the 0% MF characters before 1.04 I'm now in a big hole going forward as I will not be able to level my Paragon levels anywhere near as quickly as those with only questing stats.
One error in your calcs. The 4.5 drops per elite includes the guaranteed rare so what you really see is 3.5 drops per elite. Also, from what we've found in the MF thread, rare gains is not linnear with MF and in fact has some slight diminishing returns. In other words, if you get 35 rares from elites at 0 MF, 0 NV, you do not get 350 rares at 900 MF, you would get less, and likely more like 250. I think at 400 MF the DR ends up turning the rare chance from 10% to about 40%, whereas if it were linnear it would be 50% (10% base + 400% of the base). The non-linnearity comes from the individual affix drop % for rares.
Oops, accidentally took the base drops from treasure creatures and not elites. Will fix above. And while I do agree with the diminishing returns principle and the fact that's probably what most will observe it's really, for aspect of just which act to choose, just isn't worth the calculations as one rare creature not appearing will have more of an impact than the diminishing returns.
Has it been proven that Act3 provides more 5-6 prop ilvl63 items as a % of the ilvl63 drops? If that is the case then it very well might be more efficient to start farming Act3 once you hit approximately 75% [arbitrary # out of the air] of the Act2 rares per minute efficiency especially farming for money due to the rarer plan drops along with the higher drop rate of 5 and 6 prop ilvl63 rares.
Essentially right now with this new system they 'built' they entice the following
Run in full questing/damage gear and ignore MF on gear for fastest EXP gain. [has not been confirmed that +exp gear will work]
Use a macro hot key swap for killing blows to hit 300% MF cap
Run solo as MOST classes will be able to kill trash faster alone than in a group as most won't bring an extra 75% killing efficiency to the group to make up for the extra health.
Some may cite the "4x more magic/rare drops from trash mobs" as a reason to run MF gear all the time. But remember, they also said they're not increasing the number of drops at all just the quality thus killing say 400 mobs slower just to get 1 additional rare just isn't efficient thinking. Goals now are cap out these Petragon levels by killing stuff as fast as possible and just macro gear swap for maximum loot. If you think about it, they did address gear swapping in this method by essentially saying "yes, it's fine. Look, we encourage it now."
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Additionally, we have the monster power introduced. Essentially 50% increase of hp per level. Who does it hurt? The classes which rely on damage to create quick kills and unable to do sustained tanking w/o taking massively away from their DPS. Aka the DH. Thus we went from the 2nd fastest farming class (thanks to ToC) to probably the 2nd or worst farming class becuase of how poorly damage scales and how poor our resource generation and how much our subsequent AoE skills need these resources.
So in the end I went from a 130k DPS 2 elites per minute farmer in 1.04 to something that will never farm above MP3-4 because of the HP to damage relation. I could get the best gear in the game and up my DPS to 380k but guess what, that's still only somewhere between MP4-MP5. Otherwise I'm relegated to kiting (going over your own footsteps 3-5x) where any class that can get into the middle and take damage while putting down damage (Wiz, barbs, some degree witch doc and monks) will do better as they can hit a lot more targets without having to run away. In the end, for end game DH's are now probably the worst class, especially when compared to how much you have to spend to get there.
Sadly, I saved most of 1.04 and got crap drops even with 350+% MF and through 70 levels of crapagon with the last 40 at 403% in 1.04. Now in 1.05 I'm probably going to shelf my DH for a bit for the barb as really seems that's the only way to go if you care about farming.
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First thing you see is that DH now get additional stuff to be somewhat forced onto their bars. Most farming balanced/glass DH will be running vault, gloom, and prep and now additionally will need probably boar to help with resistances. Additionally you'll probably need to take perfectionist and then stack life steal on gear as reflect will waste us with just gloom or take evasive fire with the armor rune. Some analysis was done here:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6631904558
Additionally, it's been shown that even the top DH (250k+ dps) are taking 5-10 minutes to kill elite packs at level 10 and only are able to use (though no idea how much experimentation has been done) a kite build. The new level 10 Diablo has over 200 million hp so you can figure out how long that'll take you and how lucky you'll have to be not to mess up once. The new sentry turrets are somewhat useless for this style, as you're running away, and will be only viable to the true tanky spec DH who uses chains of torment where you can build your little fort of doom which will take more than 20 seconds to implement.
These new toys mostly have no ability to crit, so no nightstalker bonus. And to reference an earlier post if you are using hungering arrow to attempt to proc nightstalker, even with 2 APS and 50% crit chance you're still looking at around 10-12 sec of continuous shooting to get enough for ONE additional gloom. It's just not a sustainable method to regen discipline. I think this will continue to be a largely useless skill.
Basically... comes down to much of what I feared. You can't out DPS content with the current gear available. The defensive items aren't as strong as we'd hope for. Reflect damage will leak through gloom for most (so now you need to run, gloom, shoot, run to regen discipline). Getting life steal on weapon will become nearly essential if the math is correct. Because of the kite method required, we need to run backwards and thus relegating ourselves to the slowest farming class in game. Though, I will admit, most of this does help the DH tank if that's your playstyle.
I guess I'm off to download PTR to see if this all holds true.
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How do you kill a monster with 50+ million HP and can hit like a truck?
- Can't burst them down as most DH have done previously (out burst DPS content) as it's too much HP.
- New Gloom will basically equal the melee chr defensive bonus (35% gloom vs 30% melee bonus). So being that barbs/monks will/should have issues taking hits, we can basically assume that no DH is going to run 800 All Res / 8000 armor (general basis for barbarians now) and be a DPSer so Gloom tanking is probably out or very close to being out.
- SS tanking? You'll survive as long as you have discipline but still not enough damage. Might be able to take large fractions out of their lives this method.
What's left? Ahh.... there it is... kite for miles. Use every slow in the arsenal (caltrops, cold damage, entangling shot, etc) and stutter step from New York to California shooting off screen elemental arrows/spike traps, or maybe taking a risk and allowing them to get closer and using cluster bombs. As the effective DPS kiting is by far the lowest of all the classes assuming similar gear. The reason why you have to do this? Because you HAVE to limit and slow down the usage of discipline to allow for prep to catch up. The original 'kite or die' method again.Basically, the only reason why the DH class is effective now, on a whole, is they're able to out burst DPS the content before running dry on discipline. Otherwise when you're as geared as the content you're forced to kite as we all did when we first stepped into inferno. When forced to do sustained DPS the DH loses by a mile to other class DPS as they have to waste time running/trapping while occasionally DPSing. So even with the best gear in the game, you're still forced to kite. A barb for example can lay down his full DPS indefinitely as long as he can mitigate dmg and gain enough life back. BUT as a side benefit we're the best when it comes to corpse running through content as we do have that burst....
Basically this becomes one of those 'watch out for' mentalities as Blizzard has shown they do not do much DH internal testing (the ToC 'bug' which the community was raving in about 2 minutes of gameplay). So while I'll keep an open mind to the upcoming changes I still am going to remain skeptical as I do understand the DH mechanics and realize just how unforgiving they currently are to prolonged battles in contrast to other classes. But anyway I'll conclude my participation in my thread here as many are just locked into 'gear check' or they trust Blizzard mentalities.
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You do realize that Azmodan has a MASSIVE hitbox and no CC, shields, or other attributes to deal with right? I can kill Azmodan before he puts up a 2nd pool.(< 15 seconds) Current content is pretty easy. Now take Azmodan, put him into a Hulking Phasebeast body, give him 7x the health, and give him 3 buddies with nasty affixes. You, me, and every other DH below say 200k DPS (or Nat's Legacy) is dead.
The thing that people seem to not understand is 30-40 million over the standard 3-4 mobs is 90-120 million HP you need to wreck before you run out of discipline. Without Nat's Legacy set and 50 discipline you can gloom for about a minute Even with an absolutely PERFECT manticore, dead man legacy, witching hour, mempo twilight etc. you're probably still only pushing just over 200k-300k DPS (didn't bother calculating) which very well might not be enough to do this incredible amount of damage required in the small time frame. Basically we'll be back to kite for miles (assuming this mode has miles to kite) style and that will be the only effective way to play the DH. Since if this is like D2 (as they state) it'll just be a dmg and hp bonus like there's 8 people in game. Try soloing an elite pack with 3 people sitting in town. That'll be 'half' as hard. As I said earlier, this will become less of a gear check, but more of a class wall as sadly nearly every other class CAN deal as much damage as we do. The only difference is they usually can sustain it while we're very front loaded. Once we burn our hatred/discipline we're pretty weak until we can regen it back and we have few skills that help regen life/discipline.
Poekl: Are you sure about that? I've fired multishot (17% proc rate I think) into a massive pack of about 25+ demons and seen my discipline jump by 3-5 (enough to visually see). But beyond massive packs nightstalker really seems to be useless against nearly all elite packs due to the low proc rate with small number of mobs.
No, I'm not jelly. I faceroll A3 without it.
But anyway, it appears we don't know enough about 1.05 yet to get a decent discussion about it so I'll let this thread die.
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As for damage, it's probably going to be true. It's not posted. In general, Blizzard does not give without taking something back. Especially since most of those complain point to DH damage as being OP (which in truth is only barely above other classes), it's probably going to happen to make every class mirror one another.
Ball lightning can hit 3x but only on targets moving with the ball. So if you want to fire your ball lighting at a target, vault over it, and run ahead of the ball to get the fast mob to chase... yes you can hit 3x. Is it worth it over shooting another one? No.
DH Regens 'hit' hatred just like every other class. Use basic attack to gain X amount of spender with the exception we don't have to actually hit anything. Only real difference. Make up the fact that monks usually have a much higher attack speed and it evens out along with the fact they usually can survive battles be it 5 sec to 5 minutes with little difference in playstyle. The issue here is not if they can regen, it's ability to stay alive (discipline) while stutter stepping those 5-10 sec to regen enough hatred. Think about it this way... Assume this player-8 will be equiv of 8 players in game. So with some 'extra health' affix you're looking at 30-40+ million HP elites. I'd guess 98+% of DH will not be able to kill those before they run out of discipline. What do do then? Run backwards for 45 seconds til preparation is available? What does a Barb/Monk/WD Do for this? Oh yeah, they can regen their life and spenders so keep going nearly indefinitely. Can a DH do that? No.
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That's why I started a DH. Realizing it was inherently squishy class with zero worthwhile passives to help with defense but having high mobility to move and place myself in advantageous positions to take down enemies quickly. I'd only live as long as I had discipline. Playing to the "I'll kill you before I run out of discipline" mentality.
Now, it appears Blizzard is changing how they want the DH to work and changing it more to a cookie cutter ranged class that uses a bow. As they continue to reduce the effective DPS of skills (not character sheet DPS) and now are planning to give defensive passives/actives along with nerfing but increasing duration of gloom. All these things point to changing the DH from a high mobility, high reactionary, short engagement character to just a character that stands on the sidelines taking hits while pushing out some DPS. But there's a big problem with this...
DH have the worst proc rate in game
Be it either hatred or discipline or LoH DH really have very little ability to use skills to generate either of these spenders or life. Used to be a balanced DH could drop a caltrop and turn and run to get some distance while regen some life via caltrop LoH, now with no proc rate it's gone. Same with nightstalker, it's proc rate is terrible for most skills. 20% from ball lightning, which means it has to crit on 70 targets (where ball lighting can hit a target only 2x) to gain enough discipline for ONE more additional gloom/SS. Essentially DH's have no high hit rate (nothing remotely like sprint/rltw) to regen life or spenders which serve other purpose (regen/damage/utility: pick 2).
What's the problem with this? Now, since I'm assuming you're expecting many to use these new skills/passives to help with survivability you're also forcing a decision to move away from damage increasing skills/passives. Thus forcing longer battles. But since DH has little ability to regen any of the 3 major areas (life/hate/discipline) giving more defensive abilities doesn't help anything. Just forces a DH to run away and kite even more than they do now.
I am really unsure of the direction Blizzard is going with this as it really appears that unless we get a strong hate spender that doesn't cost an arm and a leg (cluster bomb) or a skill that actually helps regen our life/spenders we will be relegated to the worst class in the game by 1.05 especially once that player-8 releases as well as our dmg does NOT scale well into prolonged battles for anyone that doesn't have a legacy Nat's set. As the biggest problem is it makes a HUGE difference if the battle is 15 seconds or 1 minute. For nearly all other major classes/builds they can regen their life/spenders thus a prolonged battle is not that much different than a short one.
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Basically it's a bit low All Res, need some more life regen, can sacrifice some armor. Basically seems like the bracers will be the thing that most needs replacing along with one of the rings for All Res and maybe some life regen if I can find it for cheap. Since I've spent less than 15 million on this build using random items from my 'to sell' box plus some other stuff I've found for cheap on the AH just looking for a direction and as of right now for the most part I never die in A3 unless it's a fast mob that runs molten around the entire screen stacking moltens or plagues or just is fast and fire chains me constantly.
So while I think I have a direction in the mitigation, it's primarily what to look for in a weapon next so I can throw some actual money on the item. This chr is primarily just going to be a speed XP farmer just needs to be able to jam past white mobs and have them die in the sprint whirlwind wake so being able to dish out some very strong sprint damage will be key to what I'm trying to build. It seems like mighty weapons are the way to go for 'end game' whirl barbs? I might have to price it out getting some Lacuni Prowlers as well for this but somehow I think that'll exceed my miniscule budget as most of my funds are still going to my DH.
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Main hand:
Damage for sprint whirls is based off weapon damage range. Due to this weapon speed is not wanted. But should I only be searching for high average damage? Or are modifiers such as % damage or +min or +Max damage additional modifiers that I need to take into account as well? Currently bought a cheap 730 average damage mace with 900 LoH and a socket for crit damage. Basically trying to determine if/how the damage modifiers effect sprint damage before I actually invest in a weapon.
Off hand:
Because damage here only applies 50% for whirlwind and bash dps is relatively unimportant. Stack up on stats such as strength, crit damage, Loh, atk speed and vit roughly in that order depending on need. That being said I am using a 450 dps, 200 str, 90% crit dam via socket, 950 LoH, 80 vit dagger that was purchased cheaply. If my understanding is correct I ideally just want atk speed and natural crit damage additionally?
Jewelry:
Going to assume average damage here trumps all other offensive stats here as well? Won't drive up your dips on chr screen but will be the most effective on build if my understanding is correct.
And one last random question, for elite mobs that run away is it best to finish the last mob by cornering and bashing (what I have been doing) or sprint in some fashion and run away to kite the mob into the whirlwind? Generally just try to get one sprint to tick on the mob and bash away. Anyway, thanks for any feedback.
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Gold Find is not that important:
This may seem strange but maxing out GF is not very important. Think about it this way, assume your best runs right now are say at 200% GF base and are making 500k/hr. Increasing this to 300% capped will make you an additional 167k/hr. But how much did you spend to reach the cap? Probably more than 10-20 million. You now need to farm enough to pay off this additional 10-20 million debt. With an additional 167k/hr you can do the math about how many additional hours you need to grind to break even.
Buy Gear that's CHEAP:
Gold find gear is about having a supplemental set of gear which allows you to move very quickly through content. Generally it will be found that staying in nightmare or hell difficulties will be the most efficient for gold find runs. You really do not need to spend more than 300k per piece of gear with the exception of boots, and movement item and weapon.
Gear/Stat priorities:
1. Movement speed, hit the 25% cap however you like.
2. Pickup radius, you ideally want over 35 but the higher the better.
3. Main stat (our case dexterity) as you need enough dexterity/dmg to one shot any white mob reliably.
4. Max discipline (8+) on chest and quiver
5. Gold find
6. Attack Speed
7. Life on Kill because no one values it thus it's essentially a free stat and because you're one shotting mobs it's like a LoH heal.
I did not miss crit chance or crit damage, you don't want them in a gold find build. As you want every mob (not just the ones it crits on) to die on the first shot. I did this all pre-1.04 and went with the Legacy Unity ring and Lacuni Prowlers. Unity can roll movement and gold find and a socket for dex and Lacuni Prowlers can roll movement, gold find, and pickup radius with the bonus of attack speed on bracers. Generally you'll want a crossbow with a high and narrow damage range (not always the same as dps) and possibly with some dex on it, you don't need crit damage here. Bow's have a very wide range and thus can not guarantee a one shot kill thus not a great choice.
Playstyle:
The playstyle of a gold hunter is one where you one shot all white mobs, only shoot once from any one position (except elites), and in general is always moving. The max movement speed (+60% tac adv) plus vault in addition to the wide pickup radius ensures you don't ever have to turn and chase gold. You always want to be moving forward and toward new enemies. If you're wasting time turning around and picking up a 300 pile of gold or some random blue/rare that's gold wasted. Assuming you're doing this in nightmare, any rare you find isn't going to vendor over 500 gold so there really is no point to picking them up. May seem counter intuitive but just leave them on the ground. There's only a few (and maybe not with 1.04) legendaries that are worth picking up in hell and nightmare but the rest can stay on the ground.
Skills:
Ideally you want no offensive passives as almost all your skils are going to be geared toward ensuring you're always moving toward more enemies. I take TA, Vengeance, and Perfectionist. You can swap hot pursuit in for perfectionist but I find I'm not at max hatred enough to justify it. For bar skills I take HA/DA, Multi/FAW, Vault/Tumble, SS/Breathe (breaks any CC and gives 15 hate for one multishot), prep/backup, companion/ferret (if you find you're out of hate, take bat instead). The playstyle is vault, run forward til TA wears off, then repeat until you find a mob pack. Fire mulishot, immediately vault again into the area you just mowed down and fire off another multishot if the pack was bigger than your first cone and repeat this throughout. All this time your pickup radius will automatically pick up your gold and you're continuing down your merry way.
Closing:
With this in mind I probably spent maybe just over 1.5 million on my gear (sans weapon) in 1.03 so prices will be cheaper now. I think I'm only at around 220% GF with a decked out follower and have a radius of around 53 yards and can average around 650k/hr doing A3 nightmare runs. 53 yards isn't quite enough where if you see it fall you collect it but it's fairly close. You can spend more and jump into hell, but I never bothered seeing how much additional gold drops in hell vs nightmare, plus the gear costs that much more as you actually will need to push closer toward 2000 dex to ensure one shots.
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But this new Paragon system just gives even more incentives to macro gear swap. Here's the incentives for each side
To gear swap:
- Faster killing of both white and rare mobs for faster Paragon experience leveling
- Full 300% base MF for elites/treasure goblins for maximum loot.
To have MF on questing gear:- 4x more magic items will drop from white mobs. Which in reality will probably be only 1-4 extra rares per hour over 0% MF. Fairly easily offset by faster killing speed.
I personally find it silly that in order to optimize your gameplay Blizzard gives these kind of incentives to skirt the User Agreement while NOT making a stand whether or not they deem it okay to use 3rd party macros. Much of the argument for one side or the other is purely one side not wanting to violate the TOS and not so much macro use. The funny thing is if Blizzard came out and banned everyone that used gear swap macros they'd probably ban 30% of the player base and kill the game completely so in truth it's highly doubtful they will. Regardless though, I built a charachter around MF and now I'm just finding that while I was probably more efficient than most of the 0% MF characters before 1.04 I'm now in a big hole going forward as I will not be able to level my Paragon levels anywhere near as quickly as those with only questing stats.0
Has it been proven that Act3 provides more 5-6 prop ilvl63 items as a % of the ilvl63 drops? If that is the case then it very well might be more efficient to start farming Act3 once you hit approximately 75% [arbitrary # out of the air] of the Act2 rares per minute efficiency especially farming for money due to the rarer plan drops along with the higher drop rate of 5 and 6 prop ilvl63 rares.
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- Run in full questing/damage gear and ignore MF on gear for fastest EXP gain. [has not been confirmed that +exp gear will work]
- Use a macro hot key swap for killing blows to hit 300% MF cap
- Run solo as MOST classes will be able to kill trash faster alone than in a group as most won't bring an extra 75% killing efficiency to the group to make up for the extra health.
Some may cite the "4x more magic/rare drops from trash mobs" as a reason to run MF gear all the time. But remember, they also said they're not increasing the number of drops at all just the quality thus killing say 400 mobs slower just to get 1 additional rare just isn't efficient thinking. Goals now are cap out these Petragon levels by killing stuff as fast as possible and just macro gear swap for maximum loot. If you think about it, they did address gear swapping in this method by essentially saying "yes, it's fine. Look, we encourage it now."