How important is Crit Chance to a DH when they have passive skills like Sharpshooter and Archery?

I'm currently running with a bow and Sharpshooter, Archery, and Steady Aim passives...this adds 15% damage + 20% damage + 100% Critical Hit Chance after 3 seconds. When I use Rapid Fire, with the CHC of 12% geared, the first shot tends to hit for 80K, followed by a stream of yellow numbers. I'm wondering if I'm paying too much for the CHC in the AH for the DH. Any advice? Comments?

Check again, Sharpshooter is not 100% Crit Chance after 3s.
it adds 3% Crit Chance every second.

what is your base Crit Chance? (remove SharpShooter to see it)

Posted by whirlingd17 at 09/27/2012 05:19 AM

How important is Crit Chance to a DH when they have passive skills like Sharpshooter and Archery?

I'm currently running with a bow and Sharpshooter, Archery, and Steady Aim passives...this adds 15% damage + 20% damage + 100% Critical Hit Chance after 3 seconds. When I use Rapid Fire, with the CHC of 12% geared, the first shot tends to hit for 80K, followed by a stream of yellow numbers. I'm wondering if I'm paying too much for the CHC in the AH for the DH. Any advice? Comments?

@whirlingd17: Unsure if you're still seeking an answer to your question two months after the fact, but just in case, a nice resource to check out that I discovered recently is at this site: http://diabloshit.blogspot.tw/2012/08/demon-hunter-gear-synergy-crossbows.html

There's a little bit of math involved, but the author does a fairly decent job in explaining just how important Critical Hit Chance is depending on whether you're using a two-handed crossbow, a two-handed bow, or dual wielding a pair of one-handed crossbows.

So if you're like me & dual wielding, then Critical Hit Chance is probably the single most important item to try & improve of the three (attack speed, critical hit chance, critical hit damage).

Hope that helps...

That article is decent, but completely fails to take into account how the damage is distributed. I don't agree with some of his conclusions. High CD% without a corresponding high CH and aps causes damage to come in spikes rather than a smooth damage curve. Someday I'll get my damage guide written up and can put it up. dps display in game doesn't tell the whole story and gets more distorted the higher your bonus crit damage goes without a corresponding increase in CH and aps.

Posted by ecocd at 11/26/2012 07:30 AM

That article is decent, but completely fails to take into account how the damage is distributed. I don't agree with some of his conclusions. High CD% without a corresponding high CH and aps causes damage to come in spikes rather than a smooth damage curve. Someday I'll get my damage guide written up and can put it up. dps display in game doesn't tell the whole story and gets more distorted the higher your bonus crit damage goes without a corresponding increase in CH and aps.

While we're waiting for your damage guide to be written up & posted, would you care to elaborate on which of those conclusions you feel are the furthest off...?

Specifically, in his chart for Critical Hit Chance, Critical Hit Damage, & Attack Speed, what numbers would you input into the table?
chc chd ias
2x 9 7 8
1x 10 5 1
bow 8 8 3

I think all three are important & it's good to have a well-balanced amount of all three, & I believe the author himself pretty much stated that as well. But in the absence of having millions of gold to spend on the AH for trifecta equipment, it seemed like he had a good generalization on what area(s) to focus on based on the type of weapon one's DH was currently equipped with & how the Archery passive interacts with each of those types of weapons....no?

He touches a little on the issue, but I don't think he spends enough time on the relationship between CC and CD. The worst offender of the dps display being misleading is low CC, high CD. This also happens to be the easiest and cheapest way to increase the displayed dps. If you have something like 20% CC, but 300% CD, the in-game display will treat this as a 0.2*3 = 60% increase in dps. This, however, fails to take into account that your damage actually comes in spikes based on when you get crits.

You're going to 1-shot a monster every time you get a crit, but it's going to take 4 shots to take down that same monster without the crit. If you're talking about taking down elites and act bosses, that doesn't matter as much since it's going to take so many shots to kill them that the overall damage tends to smooth out. It really shows, however, in trying to take out minion packs with their unique supporting them.

As your CC increases, however, those damage spikes smooth out. At 50% CC, you're not going to crit every other arrow/bolt on average. Your in-game dps display will be more realistic.

The other offender has to do with damage range of a weapon based on the same concept of how many shots it takes to kill an enemy. The crossbows have an extremely tight damage range which means more consistent kill rates. 1H bows have a huge damage range which leads to even more spikey damage.

The article is a little out of date in that Sentry is now a viable skill and without CC means a ton of damage comes from Dex exclusively.

Posted by ecocd at 11/28/2012 07:01 AM

The article is a little out of date in that Sentry is now a viable skill and without CC means a ton of damage comes from Dex exclusively.

In case anyone didn't see in the previous patch notes - it also takes attack speed into account now.

Posted by sabin at 11/28/2012 07:30 AM

Posted by ecocd at 11/28/2012 07:01 AM

The article is a little out of date in that Sentry is now a viable skill and without CC means a ton of damage comes from Dex exclusively.

In case anyone didn't see in the previous patch notes - it also takes attack speed into account now.

Right, duh, forgot that. Thanks. You can see from my profile that I'm up to 3.0 aps and the damage can get pretty crazy with 3 sentries going at 175% weapon damage each. I use LOH on each 1H XBow weapon with Hungering Arrow and Caltrops along with a substantial amount of AR and HP to keep me alive while they take down the monsters for me. With my relatively humble gear (Mempo notwithstanding), I can breeze through MP2 and technically clear MP6 with a number of deaths. It's pretty crappy for multiplayer, however, due to its slow speed.

Posted by ecocd at 11/28/2012 08:53 AM

It's pretty crappy for multiplayer, however, due to its slow speed.

It seems like a pretty great build for ubers with some adjustments. Constantly having 3 sentries will do great DPS on their own, and the 15% reduction is fantastic for the team. If you play with a tank/CM wiz, you wouldn't need caltrops, and maybe not smoke screen if they tank well. You could throw in marked for death and maybe a companion.

Posted by sabin at 11/28/2012 10:34 AM

It seems like a pretty great build for ubers with some adjustments. Constantly having 3 sentries will do great DPS on their own, and the 15% reduction is fantastic for the team. If you play with a tank/CM wiz, you wouldn't need caltrops, and maybe not smoke screen if they tank well. You could throw in marked for death and maybe a companion.

I've only run ubers once with my current build and I was told the constant stream of damage was noticeable, particularly because I don't even have to be onscreen to be doing my damage. Triple Sentry and Hungering Arrow puts out 640% weapon damage 3 times / second which works out to a respectable 256k / sec. With only a single Sentry when hunting elite packs, it's pretty pathetic. the damage reduction isn't as useful in practice as it is on paper. None of the melee characters seem to stand in the same place long enough to take advantage of the damage reduction effect and ranged characters (that aren't built to be tanks) get killed in 2 hits regardless of the 15% reduction.

The caltrops are useful for the Jagged Spike rune triggering LOH procs more than the slowing effect. With large enough packs, a set of caltrops on the ground and some Spike Traps, I'm proc'ing over 5000 HP / sec. which means I can tank with the best of the melee classes.

@ecocd I was thinking you wouldn't need a ton of LoH or the slow of caltrops with a CM wiz or 2 if they freeze well. I really only have to move a lot to follow ZK's teleporting. I tend to stay in the same spot for long periods on the other 2 fights. I guess it really depends on the group dynamic. Really though, I think any build with sentries and numbing traps will make you a good addition to the team.

@sabin Ah, I get it now. I can see how the LOH could take a back seat. Now I could be looking for a Uber's gear of Dead Man's Legacy and Calamity... I need moar gold!

@ecocd yeah, and you're still gonna be getting pretty decent LoH from devouring arrow alone. I was thinking for low MPs the bat familiar so you could use more spike traps, and the boar for higher MP survival for the occasional hits that do get through. You wouldn't need much discipline so I'd probably swap preparation for gloom. I haven't actually fought ubers with my DH so this is just my guess at a useful build.

Hi...my first post. How do you counter reflect damage affix on elites when using sentry turrets? Its terrible even tho my DPS is only 48K. I have no problems rolling through mp4 - mp5, even though it is a bit slow...spike traps, caltrops and sentry engineering built and all but when it comes to reflect damage its horrible....i die even without getting hit. don't get me wrong, all my heroes are mostly well balanced (no glass cannons) so survivability is okay.

Thanks for the reply, @ecocd...though not sure if you really answered my question...? :) Guess I'll just have to wait for your damage guide to come out then... ;)

Yah, I've heard a lot from a good friend of mine about how awesome the new sentry is, but still haven't found a good way of fitting it into my current skill set. I think if Sentry processed LoH, though, I'd definitely switch over. Then again, if going in a team against ubers where I don't necessarily need to worry so much about tanking/dying, I guess maybe I could sacrifice Gloom or Smoke Screen for it..? Unsure.

My original hybrid tank DH build used a lot of Caltrops w/ Jagged Spikes, but now I rely almost exclusively on Spike Traps w/ Echoing Blast to regenerate my LoH; instead, I use Caltrops w/ Bait the Trap, which pushes my critical hit chance over 50%....

@drvndrvn: Welcome to the D3rmt forums! The way I survive Reflect Damage mobs is through a combination of LoH, Gloom, & Shadow Strike, w/ the occasional healing potion / Preparation-Battle Scars to help tide me over. I can usually fight Reflect Damage mobs up to MP4 or 5 w/o dying. Perhaps if you could link to your hero profile so that other forum members more knowledgeable than I could see your equipment & skills, they could give you a bit better (or at least more specific) advice?

It's really frustrating that skills like sentry or hydra cause reflect but not LoH/steal. Now that you guys mention it.. I wonder if the sentries in an uber build would be a problem vs the reflect of SB. I guess as long your teammates kept you safe so you could keep attacking with other skills/gloom, you'd get enough life back to make up for it. Worst case scenario you could avoid dropping all 3 sentries at one time in that fight.

@eastdragon42 Sorry I derailed the thread there. I was playing the same DH build you were before I bought gear for the Sentry build. For a hybrid dual 1H XBow build, you're going to want to get CC up to a moderate level (~30% with archery) and then favor AS and CD. Dex is still important, but dual-wielding hybrid DH's live and die by their crits (to a lesser extent, their procs). If you have all the money in the world you can build up CC, CD and AS, but on a budget, I would focus on decent CC, decent AS and then as much CD as you can afford. I eventually finished with +43% CC and about +500% CD (equipment + 50% base CD).

I know that sounds a little contrary to say you live and die by crits and then say you only need decent CC, but the attack speed and Hungering Arrow make up for a relative lack of CC. Due to piercing, Hungering Arrow actually has a passive attack speed buff by piercing and hitting again. If you want to you want to use Entangling Shot or Evasive Fire as your primary Hatred Generator, you probably need your CC up in the 40% range.

A secondary bonus dual-wielding DHs get are procs. Because your rate of fire is high, you get a ton of chances to proc a crowd control effect which are much more effective in Patch 1.0.5 than 1.0.4. Since LoH stacks on each weapon, the advantages there go without saying.

An obscure benefit is that dual-wielding DH get to take better advantage of Cold Damage's chilling effect than any other class. The damage will be noticeably lower on an offhand Cold weapons, but since every other arrow slows white trash mobs you'll usually get in a second arrow from your primary hand weapon passively increasing your dps while still stacking CD and LoH from your offhand. In that case, Hungering Arrow - Puncturing Arrow gives you a 50% pierce chance and Spike Trap Scatter allows you to hit a pack of enemies; if you time it right, you get the Spike Trap on your Cold offhand and chill the entire pack at once. The downside is that Inferno elites aren't actually slowed by the chill from Cold Damage.

That's all only for dual-wielding DH's. If you want to be boring you can go with the uber damage Cluster Arrow 2H Bow/XBow builds. If you want to be wacky, you can use a shield and 1H XBow and bulk up as a DH tank. If you just want to confuse people, you can equip a sword and shield and spam Sentry, Spike Trap, Rain of Vengeance and Grenades as none of them require a bow.

DH's are absolutely spoiled when it comes to viable playstyles.

@drvndrvn Life On Hit procs are pretty much the only way to counteract sentries on Reflect Damage elites and even that doesn't work particularly well. In Patch 1.0.7, they'll be removing the Reflect Damage proc from Sentries and pets so we don't constantly die while 70 yards away from the nearest enemy because our Sentry killed us. Notably, under Smokescreen, DH's don't take Reflected Damage.

I definitely agree on the LOH proc as i gear up all my heroes with LoH affixes..., and i do use gloom...but i guess my attack speed is a bit slow to counter the rapid loss of HP due to reflect damage...
@ecocd i wish they remove those from pets and sentries :)

the current skills are for helping a friend level up...usually i use spike trap (echoing blast), caltrops (torturous grounds), turrets (spitfire) and shadow power (gloom).
with ballistics, custom engineering and numbing trap as passives

@ecocd Ah, grenades! I was wondering how exactly one could play with a sword equipped when I saw it was possible.

Also, if you're trying for Leorics Signet, you can use a Sunkeeper with a sheild with Chakram - Shuriken Cloud and just run around while monsters die. :)

cc on gear is not so important , important thing is how you intergrate skills with your gear to excellency .... use bait the trap caltrops + 10 cc

Btw how do you guys add your d3 profile to your d3rmt a/c lol sorry for the noob question ~_~

Posted by MrFox at 01/09/2013 07:08 PM

cc on gear is not so important , important thing is how you intergrate skills with your gear to excellency .... use bait the trap caltrops + 10 cc

Yah, I love using Caltrops w/ Bait the Trap, as it pushes my CC to just over 50%. I've even gotten rid of elemental arrow as a secondary attack & placed caltrops onto my right-click mouse button for convenience. :) The only hatred spender I have at the moment is Spike Traps w/ Echoing Blast, which I spam quite liberally. Coupled w/ Gloom, it works fairly well for me.