I’m no expert and far from an advanced player, but I was able to ‘tank’ many elites in Act I inferno last night - and for the first time since getting there only died once even when faced on occasion with two elites packs at once.
Life on hit, life regen, and life on kill + diamond skin/venom hydra/blizzard did the trick - although admittedly the hydra bug (gaining life x3 resummoning hydras) certainly helped. Now, this was solo (fewer mob hitpoints) with the templar. I also use a shield, + energy armor, + magic weapon. I sacrificed hit points and dps for survivability, but I learned my paper doll DPS didn’t mean much if I’m constantly running (DPS is still decent, 26k buffed.) My gear is average, and my resists still need work but it seems doable (although probably not in later acts.) In Hell high DPS was sufficient to pull this off, although I still used a shield, so it definitately should be possible in NM.
Edit: Wanted to add, it felt quite satisfying standing up to those fast extra health teleporting mortar imps. I actually yelled Take that you **** at the screen as they lobbed their mortars over my head.
KevinC
6442
Yes, Elemental Arrow, Hungering Arrow, Smoke Screen, and Preparation are the pretty much the skills that every other DH is using in Inferno as well (myself included) - that’s kind of my point. In previous difficulties I got a lot of use out of Caltrops, Fan of Knives, etc.
I consider standing off screen plinking arrows and spikes down then smokescreen when something sees you to just be another flavor of kiting. My point was that in Inferno the variety of tactics and abilities decreases compared to previous difficulties and you’ve demonstrated that by recommending the cookie-cutter DH Inferno build that every single DH I’ve seen uses… again, including myself. We all use it because the other skills have lost their usefulness due to changes in Inferno (CC reductions and extreme damage, although that might be a bit better now that they hotfixed the MP damage multiplier).
And good luck with Fear once you’re tangling with phasebeasts and soul lashers. Fuck I hate those guys.
I use entangling arrow rather than hungering arrow in Inferno (act 3). Chain Gang is still very useful against trash, and trash is not a joke, because it kills me just as dead just as quickly as elites if it gets an attack in, and there’s a lot more of it. I’d personally rather have my hatred builder double as my slow, rather than using another slot for something like caltrops. It does also seem to slow elites very slightly.
And good luck with ANYTHING for inferno soul rippers. Against normal ones I smokescreen and burn. Against elites I either go around them, choke them with my corpses while whittling them down, drag them off into a corner and die, or just reset the game.
StGabe
6444
Inferno is, IMO, more or less working as intended. It’s just that they didn’t intend for people to immediately blast through it. You’re supposed to start having problems in Hell and Inferno is supposed to be a long-term challenge.
Certain mobs are a bit silly (soul rippers, angels in Act 4) but I don’t think it’s a matter of “Inferno wasn’t tested”. They’ve said that they tested Inferno quite a bit, then doubled the difficulty (on purpose) but then people were able to accelerate their progress a bit more than expected with the AH and beat Inferno well before it was expected. E.g., if anything Inferno was easier than intended. Soul rippers are crazy hard because people have come to expect that being in Act 3 without a lot of gear is normal and are doing glass cannon builds that can’t take a hit. It’s awesome that you’re already up to Act 3 but you’ve got to understand that you’re likely way ahead of yourself if you haven’t geared up quite a bit.
I’m at the point where Act 3 is starting to feel “easy” and Act 2 has been there for a while. However that took a lot of gearing and when I first started Act 3 it was scary, which I think was the intended effect. It feels really satisfying now that I can kick ass in Act 3. Part of that, FWIW, is that I kite a lot less. Kiting is what you do when you’re a bit behind the gear/content curve but as you catch up you’re able to stand toe to toe. I find myself using smoke screen to tank, not just to kite, and/or using Vault to get myself in position to blast away rather than using it as a mediocre escape.
StGabe
6445
FWIW, Caltrops is totally viable in Inferno and I’ve used it a lot. You just have to lay down more caltrops and Torturous Ground becomes pretty key. One caltrop without that runed does seem pretty weak. 3 caltrops with Torturous Ground between you and an enemy means you have a lot of time.
Yeah, I don’t really have that much gear on my DH, and I’m pretty sure I can close out Act 3 if I care to. I’ve dropped probably about 1.5 mil on armor, and and 1.25 mil on my bow, and it’s good enough to slowly push through. My gear is clearly not where it “should” be, and I’d love to have more AS and crit for offense, and a LOT more resist all and some +discipline for defense, but at the same time I don’t feel like spending more on a single slot than my entire set cost so far.
Caltrops: I’ve heard some folks run captrops+jagged, and stack the hell out of proc on damage effects since it ticks so often.
Really? As far as I know there are Demon Hunters in Inferno using:
Caltrops (Crit bonus)
Caltrops (2 sec stun)
Elemental Arrow (Nether Tentacles)
Elemental Arrow (Fear)
Entangling Shot (Chain Gang)
Entangling Shot (Heavy Burden)
Companion (Bat)
Hungering Arrow (Devouring)
Hungering Arrow (Cindering)
Vault (Acrobatics)
Spike Trap (varies too much to list)
Rain of Vengeance (Stampede)
The standards that everyone apparently uses are:
Smoke Screen
Preparation
There are people never touching Spike Trap and Caltrops and those who swear by them.
There are people who swear by Vault and those who long ago removed it form their skill bar.
Arguments rage over Cindering vs Devouring runes for Hungering Arrow.
I personally spent 90% of my DH’s career using Evasive Fire with the Covering Fire rune (turns it into an instant-hit shotgun that shoots through those annoying walls some champion packs put up). If I didn’t need Hungering Arrow for bosses, I would still be using Evasive Fire, since it’s so useful against both groups and ambushers. It’s the freaking Nephalem Valor buff that’s actually preventing the constant interchange between Evasive Fire and Hungering Arrow.
So, really, it doesn’t seem so unvaried to me. Could they make the other skills (like Shadow Power or Cluster Arrow) more useful? Of course. But we’re not exactly all using the same 6 skill / rune combinations right now, are we? Two thirds of our skill slots (the rest going to SS/Prep) seem to vary quite a bit.
Sell on the RMAH while you can. Prices are NUTS right now.
Hm. The AH seems to be unavailable for me.
Logout and back in, it worked for me.
They are! I was able to just quit my day job.
Kyrios
6451
To throw a little more data, I am through Act 3 (and farming it) with this DH build. No Smoke Screen, no Prep, no Elemental Arrow. All about maintaining distance/position, stunning/snaring when anything gets within 20m, and swearing loudly at one-shot deaths to Soul Lashers or poor hit tracking.
I played around with the “normal” build the other day, and I totally appreciate the DPS you can get out of Elemental Arrow, but I don’t really get the Smoke Screen thing. Oh well, I’m still doing okay!
… I would prefer if there was a melee option available, in the Javazon mold, but apparently we can’t have everything.
Hmph, still nothing. I wonder if they’re rolling it out slowly to avoid crashing it.
Sell on the RMAH while you can. Prices are NUTS right now.
I’m sure…but is anyone buying?
mystery
6453
Can’t seem to get it to prompt me for information about my Paypal account. I can sell stuff and get it deposited to my Blizzard account, but that’s it.
If I were still playing WoW, I’m sure that would mean something to me.
The prompt is bullshit, and doesn’t do anything to let you set it up. You have to set up the paypal account and SMS via account management on the website.
Apparently, if you want to send to paypal, you need to receive and enter an SMS code for every auction. I pay as I go on messages, as I avoid SMS because paying 10-20 bucks for SMS is bullshit, and I have a dozen other ways to receive messages on my phone, so paying 25 cents per code is not something I’m interested in.
Money in your Battle.net account lets you buy stuff from the Blizzard store, correct?
Quaro
6456
While it is stupid if only one build works or the game becomes all about kiting or whatever, I am perplexed by the people complaining hitting walls in Inferno or whatever a few weeks after release.
There are no raids in this game. There’s no PVP to build up your character. Inferno IS the entire late game. There’s no more challenges left in the game once you are done! Why do so many people just want to cruise through it in a week?
KevinC
6457
I’ll take your word on it that there are those out there usually those skills. Personally, in my 100+ hours in the game (I play MP exclusively), I’ve yet to encounter a DH who is not using:
Hungering Arrow (Devouring Arrow)
Elemental Arrow (Tentacles)
Smoke Screen (Lingering Fog)
Preparation
That’s 4 of 6 slots have been identical in every single DH I have ever run across from Hell Act III-IV through Inferno. I have seen a couple use Caltrops, but I’ve yet to see anyone use them effectively in Inferno. I’ll take you and StGabe at your word, though, next time I fire D3 up I’m going to try using them again and see if I can get some use out of it. Not sure what I can see myself sacrificing to free up a slot, but should be interesting.
The problem I have with Evasive Fire, Vault, Caltrops, etc is when you run into champion/elite packs it’s not going to do you any good if they have jailer, waller, etc… and with 4 affixes, chances are pretty good you’re going to run into those. At the very minimum evasive and vault need CC breaks, otherwise they’re just sucking up slots and (perhaps more importantly) Discipline that could be used for the superior Smoke Screen, IMO.
StGabe
6458
Well we’re still very early in on the end-game and it shouldn’t be surprising that people are hewing towards FOTM builds. There’s one build that people know works pretty well (glass cannon, high crit damage, high dex, sharpshooter), the four skills you mention are very good for that build, and we’ve yet to see a lot of exploration past that. Even without changes in skills we’ll see some more FOTM builds show up as people just try out a few new things.
FWIW I do use those 4 skills about 80% of the time. IMO Nether Tentacles is broken and needs a fix and that will cause people to experiment with a lot of other attack skills. I do swap it out for Screaming Skull or Frost Arrow frequently however and both of those are quite good. SS/Prep is too darn good not to use right now. I do think at a certain point I might be able to swap that out for Gloom but I’m not quite there. I think Hungering Arrow can easily be replaced by Entangling shot.
I just don’t see the huge appeal of Hungering Arrow. Is the seeking that good? I can see wanting that for some bosses/insane trash pack kites.
Quaro
6460
Can’t believe the money people are spending on items. Has the world gone insane? Are there really that many people have so much money they can spend hundreds of dollars on items so they can beat the game faster? They can’t even fight other players. What is going on.
