For each individual needs to determine which is better for them. Taking information away from the MF analysis you can assume the following.
Average base drop rate is 3.5 items per elite
Base rare drop rate is 10% from elites
5NV = +1 additional drop which is guaranteed to be a rare.
Act2 has a 51.2% chance of dropping a ilvl61+ and a 9.3% chance of it being ilvl63
Act3 has a 65.1% chance of dropping a ilvl61+ and a 16.3% chance of being ilvl63
Those are the facts, so I'll do some calculations for my own chr which has a base MF of 200%. An Act2 VoA run which hits nearly every waypoint takes me ~54 minutes and the last time I took down 38 elites/goblins. I personally keep all ilvl61+ rares to ID so we'll go with that for this calculation. Keep in mind that "base" MF on charachter is 0% so 200% MF actually equals 300% in calculations.
300% Base MF * 10% rare drop rate * 3.5 items per elite * 51.2% of it being ilvl61+ = .538 rares
Then increase the base MF by 15% each kill due to NV until you complete the 5th kill so in this case the 2nd elite kill will be:
315% MF * 10% rare drop rate * 3.5 items per elite * 51.2% chance of it being ilvl61+ = .564 rares
Then lastly, and the most imporant part of trying to calculate this out. Once you hit 5NV you get that bonus drop which is a guaranteed rare.
(1 bonus drop * 51.2% chance being ilvl61+) + (375% MF * 10% rare drop rate * 3.5 items per elite * 51.2% chance ilvl61+) = 1.184 rares per elite.
Thus for my run in Act2 I take .778 rares per minute that are a ilvl61+ rare. Now, if I apply the same methodology for Act3, where I still need to clear trash unlike Act2, my siege breaker run yields .376 rares per minute. But if you only care about ilvl63 you just need to recalculate out as it's not a linear relationship between the drop rates but even so for myself it's not worth doing Act3 just chasing ilvl63.
Edit: Corrected the base drop rate in calculations
For Act 3 I run cluster bomb, hungering arrow, spike trap (scatter), smokescreen, shadow power and prep. 3 traps and a cluster bomb kills things even with fugly affixes before they become an issue.
I think the only way to do act 3 more effectively than I do (outside of just having better gear,) would be with a nats set and spectacular gear.
Here's the problem with that thinking; we can all improve. Basically from what I'm seeing is that your Act3 build skips no trash and spends time clearing everything. Which is fine, but unless you're farming trash for your drops it's not the most efficient. Also, I'm unsure of your playstyle as you have nothing to slow/immobilize mobs unless you're 100% reliant upon cold damage on your weapon. It would appear you lay down spike traps and run and continue this dropping traps and running (probably with the mobs barely, if even on the screen) and then firing off a few hungering arrows to keep aggro and build some hate and then cluster to finish them off. While effective, I can't imagine these are 'fast' kills as each kill you'll have to lure them a few hundred yards to run over your spike traps with a few hungering arrows fired off screen for some additional damage. I'd surmise that much of this build relies upon keeping your enemies off your screen so they can't teleport or vortex you in along with giving your traps time to arm, if this is the case I'd surmise your effective DPS is probably in the ballpark of a 10-15k tank build due to the amount of time running and backtracking. The tank in this case would be a faster farmer because they can skip trash and keep their DPS running on the boss elites all the time. As keep in mind, tanks can keep 5 caltrops jagged spikes (45% weapon x 5), shuriken cloud (30% weapon damage), while spamming gas grenades (95% weapon damage on explosion 25% as DoT) and whatever hate dump they choose. So that's 375% weapon damage running all the time (caltrops have no cast time and shuriken cloud has a 2 min up time) and just face tank vs most kite/run away builds which dump 2-500% damage over a small period of time but then spend a lot of time running away to build hate for the next hate dump.
This is why I created this thread. Not just to say balanced/glass builds are far superior since they can higher DPS numbers. There's definitely more than one way to play these classes but at this point it really seems like Nat's set w/ MF is the most ideal as a DPS/Gloom tank, the rest kinda just fall into how good your gear is but the tank is definitely at a disadvantage because they don't have the ranged/moving DPS to take down goblins consistently. If this is offset by them not having to clear any trash I'm not sure. Which is why I was looking for some insight into their playstyle as I do have a tank set but I just don't want to keep investing into two sets of gear as I only just started the game a few weeks ago and don't have the funds to do both now.
I skip most trash too. I just run past it and smokescreen if needed, cluster back into it from the other side if anything is too close to me.
3 well placed traps and a cluster will kill anything short of extra health tremors, and invulns that eat the traps. I don't do much kiting, but you're right, when I do kite I rely on them being off screen.
What you're saying appears to conflict with one another. With 60k DPS and being with your health/resists you can't take a single shot from any elite even with gloom so you're smoke screen spamming any elite that gets into range but you're also saying you don't kite much on a build that relies upon the mob running over your traps 1 sec after you put them down allowing them to arm. You also don't have a single slow skill but somehow you're not kiting, allowing traps to arm and getting the elites to run over them,doing this in confined spaces as you don't clear most trash as you don't have the hate or slows to waste on trash that comes up behind you... Either you've got Nat's set to smoke screen spam or you're leaving something out as there's something missing from your gameplay description that allows yourself to live and having time/space to have fast/elite mobs to run over 9 individual traps with a 1.2 sec arm time.
For Act 3 I run cluster bomb, hungering arrow, spike trap (scatter), smokescreen, shadow power and prep. 3 traps and a cluster bomb kills things even with fugly affixes before they become an issue.
I think the only way to do act 3 more effectively than I do (outside of just having better gear,) would be with a nats set and spectacular gear.
Here's the problem with that thinking; we can all improve. Basically from what I'm seeing is that your Act3 build skips no trash and spends time clearing everything. Which is fine, but unless you're farming trash for your drops it's not the most efficient. Also, I'm unsure of your playstyle as you have nothing to slow/immobilize mobs unless you're 100% reliant upon cold damage on your weapon. It would appear you lay down spike traps and run and continue this dropping traps and running (probably with the mobs barely, if even on the screen) and then firing off a few hungering arrows to keep aggro and build some hate and then cluster to finish them off. While effective, I can't imagine these are 'fast' kills as each kill you'll have to lure them a few hundred yards to run over your spike traps with a few hungering arrows fired off screen for some additional damage. I'd surmise that much of this build relies upon keeping your enemies off your screen so they can't teleport or vortex you in along with giving your traps time to arm, if this is the case I'd surmise your effective DPS is probably in the ballpark of a 10-15k tank build due to the amount of time running and backtracking. The tank in this case would be a faster farmer because they can skip trash and keep their DPS running on the boss elites all the time. As keep in mind, tanks can keep 5 caltrops jagged spikes (45% weapon x 5), shuriken cloud (30% weapon damage), while spamming gas grenades (95% weapon damage on explosion 25% as DoT) and whatever hate dump they choose. So that's 375% weapon damage running all the time (caltrops have no cast time and shuriken cloud has a 2 min up time) and just face tank vs most kite/run away builds which dump 2-500% damage over a small period of time but then spend a lot of time running away to build hate for the next hate dump.
This is why I created this thread. Not just to say balanced/glass builds are far superior since they can higher DPS numbers. There's definitely more than one way to play these classes but at this point it really seems like Nat's set w/ MF is the most ideal as a DPS/Gloom tank, the rest kinda just fall into how good your gear is but the tank is definitely at a disadvantage because they don't have the ranged/moving DPS to take down goblins consistently. If this is offset by them not having to clear any trash I'm not sure. Which is why I was looking for some insight into their playstyle as I do have a tank set but I just don't want to keep investing into two sets of gear as I only just started the game a few weeks ago and don't have the funds to do both now.
Well, I am sitting at 95k dps and 35k hp and I nearly never die running act 1 farm runs and rarely die in act 2. I don't consider myself any of your 3 categories.
First, I one shot trash.
Second, I can take a beating and live.
Third, I clear the act 1 farming run in 30 minutes.
But, if you want my opinion, you should go glass cannon and make sure you have smoke screen. Glass cannon with smoke screen in act 1 should not die, ever. Ultimately your skill choices also matter as much as your gearing choice. If you run a 2 hand xbow with marksman, steady aim, sharpshooter your already doing amazing damage output. I run caltrops and smoke screen for defensive abilities. Companion ferrets cause if I dont have to run around and pick up gold I can clear faster getting more drops per minute. For attacks I run Multishot (half cost rune), impale (addition crit damage rune), and hungering arrow (devourer rune). These 3 attacks allow me to easily kill invulnerable packs via multishot spam. Realistically thats the only packs a DH should really be afraid of. The impale with the +crit damage rune allows me to 2-3 shot most elites after kiting for +crit. Hungering arrow with devourer just does amazing damage and has the longest range so you can start picking thngs of at a huge distance.
Interesting, I'm guessing you're speaking about 95k DPS w/ sharp shooter as if not there's NO reason to farm act 1. Many of the skills you list are inefficient (again, this post isn't about builds. It's about playstyle mentality) for quick farming. But go over it quickly - for lower acts you NEED vault and tactical advantage for a fast farming build along with gear you can swap for 25% movement speed. Depending on your disipline needs (Nat's 4pc bonus or not) you'll need preparation as well. Beyond that a multitude of skills can be used. As the biggest time consumer is movement between elite packs. But this is off topic as I'm not speaking about Act1 or specific builds.
Glass cannon CAN work in Act3 but due to the fact 1 hit from ANYTHING will kill you it's honestly not for me especially when a rubber band or any kind of lag will probably kill you and repair costs are in the range of around 10k per death. Farming is efficiently clearing certain areas with minimal amount of deaths. Again, this is for Act3 where most mobs hit for over 70,000 damage and elites hit in excess of 200,000 damage.
Maybe its a physiological thing with me, but personally I think MF does not work. I have read the post and countless threads of data people put in about MF. I still don't think MF is effective.
Just my 2 cents.
While having nothing to do with efficiency build MF only have a VERY small bearing upon the item's stats. On the theory crafting side of this site you'll find a detailed study going on regarding it's effectiveness. Essentially magic find gives you more rares, a lot more rares or a lot more rolls of the dice. If all of your A1 items rolled poorly, that's unfortunate but not a function of MF. All MF does is give you more rolls of the die on your desired ilvl items.
CobraKaji: You can easily figure this out with Blizzard's published stats. You'd need to farm Act3 1.2x faster as Act1 to get equivalent amount of 61+ rares with 250% MF w/ NV in Act1 vs 75% w/ NV in Act 3.
Assuming the same magic find you will need to farm Act 2 approximately 46%-75% faster (varies by if you just care about ilvl 62+ or just ilvl 63) than Act 3 to break even. Throw in say you need -100% MF to do Act 3 using 250% MF w/ NV as a starting point you can do Act 2 12% slower (this doesn't account for affix rolling, just very basic calculation) and still come out ahead of Act 3.
While I admit the Nat set bonus + MF is an appealing option it's still way out of my budget at the moment thus my reasons not to chase it. Without the disipline bonus I don't think a DH could survive consistently in Act 3 without insane levels of damage to essentially flatten anything before having to gloom or smoke screen 4-5 times. Though I'd like to see if there's any tanky DH who are farming w/ magic find.
I'm not asking for builds but instead playstyles for magic find concentrated solo demon hunter. Basically I see 3 base playstyles out there right now. Glass cannon, balanced (variant of glass cannon) and tank. Each has their own inherent benefits but I'm trying to figure out which would be the most efficient for elite farming in Act 3 Inferno. Being that these are pure MF gearsets Natalya's bonus is not applicable for the purposes of this thread. I'll briefly outline the pro/con of each.
Glass Cannon:
Pro: Generally able to kill trash in 1-3 hits and elites die the quickest if able to kite effectively
Cons: Highest death rate of the builds so the most corpse running/repairs, can not bypass trash mobs due to fragility so must do full clears of explored areas. Some affixes are nearly impossible to beat without many deaths. Any kind of cluster bomb build becomes a bit tedious in the tower due to the delayed mobs climbing up the walls as you need to pick them off as they come due to again fragility.
Balanced:
Pro: Can take a few hits from most trash, occasionally from elites as well. Has an option to vault past groups of mobs to explore for elites and use shadow power to recharge life for the couple of trash hits you take vaulting.
Con: Can't melt elites or trash as fast and if vaulting past mobs can run into problems with kite space with elite packs due to longer battles. Again may have issues with certain elite affixes but due to being able to face tank with gloom for a few seconds much can be alleviated.
Tank:
Pro: Really doesn't care about mobs and can run past most dropping a caltrop to regen any life lost and head straight for elites. Even if you aggro 200 mobs and an elite pack as long as they don't have arcane you'll probably survive. Lowest death rate of the playstyles for less corpse running.
Cons: Battles can take 5-10x as long even with stacking caltrop damage. Most will have trouble killing treasure goblins as well due to lack DPS and effective range attack. Possibly the hardest/most expensive to gear for due to needing 750k+ effective health, 1500-2000+ LoH, while maintaining a decent base of damage plus magic find.
Basically what my question is if the need to clear mobs and probably more deaths is less/more efficient than being able to bypass them entirely but taking 5x as long on elite packs and probably losing out on a few treasure goblins? I currently don't have the funds (only been playing a month) to test this out but am curious about people's experience with the playstyles.
I do have some experience as I currently have a balanced set w/ about 45k DPS and I'm vaulting around Act2 for fairly efficient clears but 45k DPS isn't quite enough for efficient Act 3 farming. The tanking set I have is just far too low damage (9k) to be efficient as I bought it all on a whim. I can kill Azmo in it (and my balance set) but on elites I hit enrage timers far too often. Essentially trying to determine which route I should progress down for the best use of my play time. I've wasted enough gold teaching myself lessons so any insight will be appreciated!
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- Average base drop rate is 3.5 items per elite
- Base rare drop rate is 10% from elites
- 5NV = +1 additional drop which is guaranteed to be a rare.
- Act2 has a 51.2% chance of dropping a ilvl61+ and a 9.3% chance of it being ilvl63
- Act3 has a 65.1% chance of dropping a ilvl61+ and a 16.3% chance of being ilvl63
Those are the facts, so I'll do some calculations for my own chr which has a base MF of 200%. An Act2 VoA run which hits nearly every waypoint takes me ~54 minutes and the last time I took down 38 elites/goblins. I personally keep all ilvl61+ rares to ID so we'll go with that for this calculation. Keep in mind that "base" MF on charachter is 0% so 200% MF actually equals 300% in calculations.- 300% Base MF * 10% rare drop rate * 3.5 items per elite * 51.2% of it being ilvl61+ = .538 rares
Then increase the base MF by 15% each kill due to NV until you complete the 5th kill so in this case the 2nd elite kill will be:- 315% MF * 10% rare drop rate * 3.5 items per elite * 51.2% chance of it being ilvl61+ = .564 rares
Then lastly, and the most imporant part of trying to calculate this out. Once you hit 5NV you get that bonus drop which is a guaranteed rare.- (1 bonus drop * 51.2% chance being ilvl61+) + (375% MF * 10% rare drop rate * 3.5 items per elite * 51.2% chance ilvl61+) = 1.184 rares per elite.
Thus for my run in Act2 I take .778 rares per minute that are a ilvl61+ rare. Now, if I apply the same methodology for Act3, where I still need to clear trash unlike Act2, my siege breaker run yields .376 rares per minute. But if you only care about ilvl63 you just need to recalculate out as it's not a linear relationship between the drop rates but even so for myself it's not worth doing Act3 just chasing ilvl63.Edit: Corrected the base drop rate in calculations
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Here's the problem with that thinking; we can all improve. Basically from what I'm seeing is that your Act3 build skips no trash and spends time clearing everything. Which is fine, but unless you're farming trash for your drops it's not the most efficient. Also, I'm unsure of your playstyle as you have nothing to slow/immobilize mobs unless you're 100% reliant upon cold damage on your weapon. It would appear you lay down spike traps and run and continue this dropping traps and running (probably with the mobs barely, if even on the screen) and then firing off a few hungering arrows to keep aggro and build some hate and then cluster to finish them off. While effective, I can't imagine these are 'fast' kills as each kill you'll have to lure them a few hundred yards to run over your spike traps with a few hungering arrows fired off screen for some additional damage. I'd surmise that much of this build relies upon keeping your enemies off your screen so they can't teleport or vortex you in along with giving your traps time to arm, if this is the case I'd surmise your effective DPS is probably in the ballpark of a 10-15k tank build due to the amount of time running and backtracking. The tank in this case would be a faster farmer because they can skip trash and keep their DPS running on the boss elites all the time. As keep in mind, tanks can keep 5 caltrops jagged spikes (45% weapon x 5), shuriken cloud (30% weapon damage), while spamming gas grenades (95% weapon damage on explosion 25% as DoT) and whatever hate dump they choose. So that's 375% weapon damage running all the time (caltrops have no cast time and shuriken cloud has a 2 min up time) and just face tank vs most kite/run away builds which dump 2-500% damage over a small period of time but then spend a lot of time running away to build hate for the next hate dump.
This is why I created this thread. Not just to say balanced/glass builds are far superior since they can higher DPS numbers. There's definitely more than one way to play these classes but at this point it really seems like Nat's set w/ MF is the most ideal as a DPS/Gloom tank, the rest kinda just fall into how good your gear is but the tank is definitely at a disadvantage because they don't have the ranged/moving DPS to take down goblins consistently. If this is offset by them not having to clear any trash I'm not sure. Which is why I was looking for some insight into their playstyle as I do have a tank set but I just don't want to keep investing into two sets of gear as I only just started the game a few weeks ago and don't have the funds to do both now.
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Interesting, I'm guessing you're speaking about 95k DPS w/ sharp shooter as if not there's NO reason to farm act 1. Many of the skills you list are inefficient (again, this post isn't about builds. It's about playstyle mentality) for quick farming. But go over it quickly - for lower acts you NEED vault and tactical advantage for a fast farming build along with gear you can swap for 25% movement speed. Depending on your disipline needs (Nat's 4pc bonus or not) you'll need preparation as well. Beyond that a multitude of skills can be used. As the biggest time consumer is movement between elite packs. But this is off topic as I'm not speaking about Act1 or specific builds.
Glass cannon CAN work in Act3 but due to the fact 1 hit from ANYTHING will kill you it's honestly not for me especially when a rubber band or any kind of lag will probably kill you and repair costs are in the range of around 10k per death. Farming is efficiently clearing certain areas with minimal amount of deaths. Again, this is for Act3 where most mobs hit for over 70,000 damage and elites hit in excess of 200,000 damage.
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CobraKaji: You can easily figure this out with Blizzard's published stats. You'd need to farm Act3 1.2x faster as Act1 to get equivalent amount of 61+ rares with 250% MF w/ NV in Act1 vs 75% w/ NV in Act 3.
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While I admit the Nat set bonus + MF is an appealing option it's still way out of my budget at the moment thus my reasons not to chase it. Without the disipline bonus I don't think a DH could survive consistently in Act 3 without insane levels of damage to essentially flatten anything before having to gloom or smoke screen 4-5 times. Though I'd like to see if there's any tanky DH who are farming w/ magic find.
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Glass Cannon:
Pro: Generally able to kill trash in 1-3 hits and elites die the quickest if able to kite effectively
Cons: Highest death rate of the builds so the most corpse running/repairs, can not bypass trash mobs due to fragility so must do full clears of explored areas. Some affixes are nearly impossible to beat without many deaths. Any kind of cluster bomb build becomes a bit tedious in the tower due to the delayed mobs climbing up the walls as you need to pick them off as they come due to again fragility.
Balanced:
Pro: Can take a few hits from most trash, occasionally from elites as well. Has an option to vault past groups of mobs to explore for elites and use shadow power to recharge life for the couple of trash hits you take vaulting.
Con: Can't melt elites or trash as fast and if vaulting past mobs can run into problems with kite space with elite packs due to longer battles. Again may have issues with certain elite affixes but due to being able to face tank with gloom for a few seconds much can be alleviated.
Tank:
Pro: Really doesn't care about mobs and can run past most dropping a caltrop to regen any life lost and head straight for elites. Even if you aggro 200 mobs and an elite pack as long as they don't have arcane you'll probably survive. Lowest death rate of the playstyles for less corpse running.
Cons: Battles can take 5-10x as long even with stacking caltrop damage. Most will have trouble killing treasure goblins as well due to lack DPS and effective range attack. Possibly the hardest/most expensive to gear for due to needing 750k+ effective health, 1500-2000+ LoH, while maintaining a decent base of damage plus magic find.
Basically what my question is if the need to clear mobs and probably more deaths is less/more efficient than being able to bypass them entirely but taking 5x as long on elite packs and probably losing out on a few treasure goblins? I currently don't have the funds (only been playing a month) to test this out but am curious about people's experience with the playstyles.
I do have some experience as I currently have a balanced set w/ about 45k DPS and I'm vaulting around Act2 for fairly efficient clears but 45k DPS isn't quite enough for efficient Act 3 farming. The tanking set I have is just far too low damage (9k) to be efficient as I bought it all on a whim. I can kill Azmo in it (and my balance set) but on elites I hit enrage timers far too often. Essentially trying to determine which route I should progress down for the best use of my play time. I've wasted enough gold teaching myself lessons so any insight will be appreciated!