Posted by ecocd at 01/16/2013 08:13 AM

Posted by douvinsky at 01/15/2013 11:01 PM

Now looking back, what a great investment into the Legacy Nat set!! The upcoming PvP has driven up the prices of the Legacy Nat pieces. A disciplined-based DH with fast discipline regen using smokescreen, vault with stun, caltrops, shadow power, preparation........be very fearful.

Wouldn't having 70 Discipline have pretty much the same impact? That's 2 pieces of gear with Max Discipline and a modern Nat's Set. If you need more than 140 Discipline in duel, you're probably not winning it anyway.

You're closing up your boots, chest, ring and helm slots with a full Nat's set. You can probably find nearly BiS Nat's Boots and Cloak to earn the 7% CC bonus. Preventing the use of Mempo or Andariel's Visage and a Trifecta or Dex/Vit/AR ring? That's a huge disadvantage from a stat perspective just for some Discipline.

I must admit that I am not that great knowing details of it, but my guess is that:

1) Big Pool of Discipline (say 70, with 1 natural regen) VS Small Pool of Discipline (say 30, with 1 natural regen + 2 from legacy)

In longer (or careless) fights when the discipline pool has been depleting fast, the speed of recovering discipline becomes more important. Over 30 seconds it is 100 (70 + 1*30) vs 120 (30 + 3*30), over 60 seconds it becomes 130 (70 + 1*60) vs 210 (30 + 3*60), i.e. over 60 seconds there are more disciplines to be used. Obviously in a short fight if only 70 discipline is enough to do the job, Legacy Nat is a waste.

I think it is similar to Monk's Perma TR, where speed of spirit regen (to be more than the spirit drain from TR) is more important than the starting pool of spirit (150 vs 250 from passive). I am also enjoying my Legacy Nat in the MP0 Strafe Build, I have the Modern Nats too but somehow I feel more comfortable in the Legacy Nat. Maybe it is my reckless playstyle but I am not careful in managing my discipline pool so I let the Legacy Nat take care of it. [edit: in a 10 minutes Alkaisser Run there should be more total disciplines from Legacy Nat for reckless spending]

I could be wrong so please don't bash me to death over my mis-statements :P

2) 4 slots Legacy Nat vs 4 BiS

I think it depends on the difficulty of the mobs/ targets. If I can do it fine in MP0, I do it for reason 1) above. If I believe a faster discipline regen will give me a much better advantage at PvP c.f. having a much higher DPS (130k vs 100k for me, no access to uber gears), I will go with faster discipline regen although it might mean killing the opponent slower (how much slower, I don't know. If most of the fight is one-shot, maybe two-shots?).

I am holding on to the Legacy Nat also for the reason of hedging the inflation. I think the set bonus is pretty unique and useful. My rings have almost double in price the last I check. One last reason, is that some players including me are lazy. We just want seemingly endless replenishment of discipline without spending effort managing it. It is like free flow of beers at a bar, endless ushering in of beautiful girls at a party, .....

Posted by douvinsky at 01/16/2013 05:04 PM

My rings have almost double in price the last I check.

How many legacy Nat rings do you have?? :-0

Yah, the pricing of legacy Nat rings keeps going up & up...I doubt I will ever save enough gold to buy one at this stage... :-(

With no notable changes to DHs in the patch notes for 1.0.7 we can expect existing builds to be good for quite a while. I think I'm going to invest in some pretty good Grenades gear. I really thought they were going to nerf the proc coefficient on Cluster Grenades. So far, though, no word of it. With the right gear, I was able to do a Key Run in Act 3 MP7 without dying once with a Calamity. With a piece of targeted gear or two, I might be able to run 8. Now I've got my eye on those Azurewraths. It's a substantial drop in dps, but a likewise substantial drop in damage taken.

Does anyone use a Windforce in MP's higher than 4? I can't figure this beast out...

My DH Profile for reference.

@Khan: Wow, very impressive stats. Looks like you're quite successful DPS-wise w/ a windforce! Really nice rolls on your Hellfire ring too. :)

It's been a very long time since I used a 2-handed bow and have primarily been using either a pair of socketed Danetta's or a double-socketed Manticore, so don't really have much advice to give to you on it. (I do have a Windforce w/ an empty socket in my stash, and two more w/o sockets in storage on mule characters, but have never used any of them..!) It looks like you're doing the right thing in terms of a very good balance of attack speed, critical hit chance, & critical hit damage though. I can't imagine you having problems in MPs higher than 4...? Only thing I might consider upgrading would be your DML--get one w/ more attack speed (14% seems kind of low for such a quiver) and maybe one w/ a bonus to a something besides multishot, since you're not even using that skill..?

Posted by Khan at 01/22/2013 06:25 PM

Does anyone use a Windforce in MP's higher than 4? I can't figure this beast out...

I found the Knockback to be more annoying than useful. I thought it would be a natural fit on my tank, but when it proc'd, they would fly out of the range of my Grenades >_< The same thing was happening when I had an Echoing Trap Spike Trap on the ground. They would trigger it once, fly back due to a Hungering Arrow strike and not trigger it again.

2H Bows are a compromise weapon. Your dps benefits fairly balanced from Dex, CC, CD and IAS. You feel like you can never quite reach enough dps, because only a trifecta ring + Dex is going to max out your damage. On a 1H XBow, you can max out your damage with CC and CD and not as much focus on Dex and IAS, for instance. Great gear is just cheaper.

With your gear, though, you might have access to some unique 2H Bow builds. You might be able to effectively run hybrids, for instance, that would never quite click particularly well with a Calamity or Manticore. You may want to look for a Rare Bow without Knockback, but I would be interested in hearing about your trial and error. It's practically untapped DH build space.

@ecocd I'm definitely trying with this thing and so far I dislike it because of the knockback. I'm going to keep trying until this works. I know there's an angle in here someplace. Maybe a true trapping DH that has the ability to just keep adversaries away via the knockback and various traps? <shrug> MP4 is still not a breeze at 200k dps.

Just curious what you guys think of my tanks build as it is right now? Thinking I need to put preparation but don't know where it would fit into it. I'm thinking of ditching the boar.

Posted by berzerkerxx at 02/25/2013 09:12 PM

Just curious what you guys think of my tanks build as it is right now? Thinking I need to put preparation but don't know where it would fit into it. I'm thinking of ditching the boar.

I'd probably recommend getting a socket in your calamity. I know it's nice having a weapon w/ over 1k DPS on your character sheet, but a cheaper 900 DPS calamity w/ an emerald in the socket will probably still boost your overall DPS by quite a bit, especially since your CC is already very high (36.5% from gear + 10% from Bait the Trap + 10% Archery passive).

Also, just out of curiosity, what did you want Preparation for--the replenished Discipline, or the healing from the rune, or both? Cause in terms of Discipline, you've got 50 max due to Natalya's set bonus & should be replenishing it fairly quickly with the NightStalker passive since your CC is so high, especially since you're using AOE attacks (I believe each of the grenades has a chance of successfully processing the bonus discipline).

The boar is nice for the additional meat shield, bonuses to defense (resist all & life regeneration), and slightly extra DPS. Though if I were going to get rid of it, unsure if Preparation is necessarily the best choice, considering my arguments in the previous paragraph. Personally, I like having at least one way to get out of jailer/frozen/etc., so I'd probably throw in either Smokescreen or Vault instead if I were getting rid of the boar (SS is my personal favorite; haven't used Vault in so long, I probably don't remember the best play style for using it effectively).

It doesn't look like you have very much Resist All either, which is very important for Tank Builds (DH or otherwise); you want high EHP so that your LoH, Gloom, health globes, & potions can quickly replenish your HP to max. You're only at 30k HP, so a bit more vitality wouldn't hurt either, though if it were me, I'd probably focus more on Resist All first. Cause I'm guessing your Resist All is probably quite low.

I guess the biggest question to help answer you better is: What is your primary problem in the game at the moment? i.e., is it dying too quickly vs heavy hitters or elemental damage, dying too frequently in general, running out of discipline, not healing fast enough when using Gloom, etc.

Just my two cents..

I'm having trouble with the discipline at this minute because of just the way you can't configure the caltrops to your left click on the mouse (I use right click so I don't have hold shift) an wasting so discipline on that. And to be honest I only worked on it for 1 hour. I'll probably give feedback on the problem some time later.
Thanks for your help.

@berzerkerxx I think everyone should note I took nearly 12 hours to respond to a post in the DH thread. That may be a new record for restraint.

tl;dr Get Vit on your shoulders and/or consider Blackthorn's Pants, drop Hellfire Ring for more ultity on the gear slot, drop Grenadier for Perfectionist, run either Buriza-Do Kyanon Scoundrel or a Maximus Enchantress for companion.

I'll echo some of @eastdragon42 's comments. If you were to make only one change to your gear, I would recommend getting Vit on your shoulders. Shoulders are a fantastic opportunity for AR and Vitality now with the crafted Vit Archon Spaulders recipe. It's going to take quite a few crafts to get an AR/Dex pair, but you'll be able to store any good AR/Str and AR/Int crafts for your alts so you won't be wasting mats. Tank builds aren't about killing fast so I wouldn't worry about dropping Dex for survivability.

The standard answer to more Vit and LoH is Blackthorn pants and that will work here, too. If you can afford the 12-15 MM for some AR on them, all the better, but not necessary. You can make up the lost attack speed on a ring replacing your Hellfire Ring. If you're running a tank, you're probably playing at least MP7 so the Hellfire Ring isn't actually adding a whole lot of XP on a relative basis and the lost Dex won't hurt you too much. The I-have-lots-of-money-to-spend goal would be IAS, AR, and CD or CC (probably more dps from cD). The I-have-more-money-than-God goal would be to add Dex/Vit and/or LoH to that.

If you can afford the 3-5 million for a CC Blackthorne's amulet, even just 5-6% CC +inherent IAS bonus will help your Discipline Regeneration noticably. With both Blackthorn's pants and amulet, you should be able to make up the LoH you'd be losing from your rare amulet.

Regearing for more defense and Vit on your build means you can drop Boar. I'm a big fan of Smokescreen to avoid Frozen which is a death sentence on the high MP levels. Not taking damage for 1.5 seconds is often enough on its own to fill up a great deal of health. To be blunt, I don't think there's any room for compromise on the Perfectionist, Archery, Night Stalker passive set. Perfectionist is perfect for the build bolstering defenses and reducing your Discipline costs 10% both of which are incredibly important. Cluster Arrow is an odd choice as most builds will get more damage from Spike Trap - Echoing Blast, but I don't think that's necessary if you like Cluster Arrow more.

For followers, you'll find a lot of synergy with a Buriza-Do Kyanon Scoundrel or a Maximus Enchantress. As a bonus, both the CC and IAS passive boosts are good for the tank build.

If you want something a bit unorthodox, you can steal @Khan 's idea of and have a high freeze Azurewrath on swap for fast critters like the guys in act three that attack with their tongues and the Act 1 KW that seem to cause DH Tanks a lot of trouble. You lose the Archery passive, but you'll be hitting them 50% more often due to freeze. the proc rate on cluster Grenades is shockingly high at 0.5 so you'll freeze on 5% of your grenades with a 10% Freeze Azurewrath.

Posted by ecocd at 02/26/2013 07:32 AM

Cluster Arrow is an odd choice as most builds will get more damage from Spike Trap - Echoing Blast, but I don't think that's necessary if you like Cluster Arrow more.

I'm going to hazard a guess & say the use of Cluster Arrow was because of the Grenadier passive. I know when I was doing a grenade tank build, the first thing one thinks of is that the grenadier passive *must* be a good thing to go with it, and the second thing (after reading what other things the passive does) is to say "hmm... I also get a decreased hatred cost on Cluster Arrow by 10 when using Grenadier... so maybe I should skill that into a slot too...?" ;-)

I'm going to hazard a guess & say the use of Cluster Arrow was because of the Grenadier passive. I know when I was doing a grenade tank build, the first thing one thinks of is that the grenadier passive *must* be a good thing to go with it, and the second thing (after reading what other things the passive does) is to say "hmm... I also get a decreased hatred cost on Cluster Arrow by 10 when using Grenadier... so maybe I should skill that into a slot too...?"

pretty much..

anyways I tried using azurwrath and I must say I like the freeze.. only if I could do more the 10000 damage. I am currently able to do mp5. But haven't attempted killing Azmodan yet

also sucks that you can't equip sword in off-hand

Posted by eastdragon42 at 01/22/2013 09:28 PM

I can't imagine you having problems in MPs higher than 4...? Only thing I might consider upgrading would be your DML--get one w/ more attack speed (14% seems kind of low for such a quiver) and maybe one w/ a bonus to a something besides multishot, since you're not even using that skill..?

So I've switched to a Witching hour that has 3.5% freeze, Calamity with 2.3% to freeze, and a Danetta's with 2.1% chance to freeze. I've also got a Windforce with a 4.3% freeze I'll be trying out later. I'm going to try and find a DML with a chance to freeze to make things more interesting.

Posted by Khan at 02/26/2013 06:50 PM

So I've switched to a Witching hour that has 3.5% freeze, Calamity with 2.3% to freeze, and a Danetta's with 2.1% chance to freeze. I've also got a Windforce with a 4.3% freeze I'll be trying out later. I'm going to try and find a DML with a chance to freeze to make things more interesting.

No Star of Azkaranth?

I think the system makes a check for each piece of equipment separately, by the way, so they stack to be less than the sum of their total freeze chance. There's diminishing returns with each additional piece of equipment that has freeze on it.

Posted by ecocd at 02/26/2013 07:32 AM

For followers, you'll find a lot of synergy with a Buriza-Do Kyanon Scoundrel or a Maximus Enchantress. As a bonus, both the CC and IAS passive boosts are good for the tank build.

Was going to add, you can also find any good bow with cold damage for your Scoundrel if those Buriza-Do Kyanons are out of your price range (I know they used to be majorly out of mine, though I haven't checked the price in awhile...). The slowing cold effect, while obviously not as potent as the chance to freeze on hit of the Buriza-Do Kyanon, is still very useful for crowd control purposes.

@ecocd I've got the Star and the Buriza on my scoundrel for my wizard. Keep forgetting to take it back and try it out.

I know I keep resurrecting old threads but I just hit the 3.0 attack per second (with enchantress)
Must say grenades is so much fun with 3 attack a second...

How well does it work with only 34k life and 263 resists? And what's the Chakram rune? Is it just Blade Storm or something more creative? I'm intrigued...

Chakram rune is twin chakram. Probably going to play around with that. Basically all I did was put all my equipment with attack speed on and played around for 30 minutes before I went to bed.
I was able to do mp5 act 1 key runs.(yes i know not that hard but)

At one point, I managed pushed my DH over 4 aps with the Enchantress using a white Balanced 1H XBow and went around on MP0 killing things for a half hour. It's completely insane. Moving back down to a normal 11% IAS 1H XBow I was able to do enough damage to clear out monsters on MP0, albeit at aps below 4.

Once you get a taste for speed, it's hard to go back.

@ecocd Erm...enchantresses can use x-bows?

@Baldy
Including the Enchantress' Focused Mind ability (+3% IAS) and my own DH equipping a 20% IAS Balanced Exorcist, I was able to achieve a displayed aps of over 4.

On a related note, has anyone tried equipping a Manticore on their Witch Doctor? I think they can use them.