Demon Hunter stuff

[Bronze_D]

problem with evasive fire is that when you are fighting fast champions/elites (of which there are CONSTANT supply of in inferno or even hell) you can burn through your entire discipline in just seconds because if you hold your fire on him when he dash towards you or port to you, your character automatically flips, then he close in, then you flip again, and this can happen several times per second before you can even stop.

particularly troublesome when you need them for smoke screen or shadow power to prevent instant death when you inevitably get vortexed in or jailed, or walled and intercepted.

want extra pain?

vortex, fast, invulnerable minion, reflect damage soul lasher elites.

[Marius]

It's all about balancing the discipline budget.

Since taking evasive fire, I took caltrops off my bar and leaned more towards hatred spending, because now I generate more hatred.

But I see a lot of inferno builds taking 3 discipline spenders. Same sort of thing. They have to figure out a balance between caltrops and smoke screen, or smoke screen and vault, or whatever.

And you can always combine it with other things to keep range, like thrill of the hunt, screaming skull and other crowd control.

The benefits of an instant cone attack outweigh the disadvantages, though.

[Bronze_D]

none of the CC or snare will technically work well in inferno either way, since their resistance to CC is gigantic.

a 7sec stun becomes 1-2sec stun etc, and this applies to all CC you can apply to them.

caltrops are still useful even if it doesn't slow them much because it lets you trigger several other things that relies on hit effect, but ultimately the primary reason why you have 2-3 discipline at least is simply because you need at least several defensive skills to adapt and survive in inferno... generally speaking a lot of the elities pack multiple abilities that will spell instant death unless prevented and you don't have much of a choice except to pack multiple defensive abilities and apply the correct one to each and ration your discipline the best you can to survive it.

which is the problem... with multiple discipline skills, any expenditure of discipline outside their usage is very likely going to result in death in inferno.

and you can't burst them down either until you reach 60K damage potential range, and even then you still can't avoid defensive skills even in Act3 which is one of the easiest overall.

make no mistake of course, in inferno... you will die, a lot, sometimes several times a minute before you get anywhere even with massive gears, but generally speaking you have to be able to at least survive long enough to deliver a meaningful damage salvo to the enemy before expiring.

[Marius]

You could just choose to not hold the button down to avoid that problem, or rune evasive fire for reduced discipline cost, or to go backwards 30 years instead of 15. There's lots of options.

[Bronze_D]

options which depending on the circumstances may or may not actually be a good expenditure, which is the main point.

since discipline is incredibly precious to survival, every single flip have to justify it's cost in discipline, even as short as 2 discipline.

and the problem with 30 yards flip is that you do not exactly have full control of where you flip towards...

sure you flip away from the enemy always (well as long as you didn't get hit by bad latency anyway) but where exactly the enemy will be especially when against teleporting and double fast enemy (natural fast + fast trait) will make you think twice from doing that in inferno when death is in every corner.

and incidentally since the flip triggers as well when an enemy is nearby you and in direct path of your shot (even if you were not actually aiming at it), using it against extra fast minions and horde mobs means you will probably flip without realizing it.

[Marius]

When I complete inferno act 1 hardcore using evasive fire I'll post here.

[Bronze_D]

There's also another alternative as to how to use evasive fire safely in inferno..

ie: being able to one shot them or otherwise obliterate them easily.

with sufficiently large damage potential like our colleague's DH with his 60K damage potential, he can utilize evasive fire with little worry in Act 1 inferno since most things he shoot will be dead instantly anyway so it doesn't really matter if he expended some discipline for it.

and no he wasn't using sharpshooter, his natural crit is so massive he doesn't need it anymore, though i think he actually shifted some gears recently and used sharpshooter again...

edit: yep, he broke 100K damage potential with sharpshooter and the legendary gear he got recently, if you were in his position then you pretty much can use whatever the hell build you want really since nvm skill attack, his basic attack obliterates most things up to Act2 at least.

[Marius]

You don't have to use it all the time...

Right now my hatred regen is high enough that I can just spam elemental arrow all day without running low.

But I just find all the other generators so lacklustre. Devouring arrow is OK... but Frost Arrow, Ball Lightning or Nether Tentacles has so much higher DPS, and you'll never run out of hatred if you have decent hatred regeneration. At 125 hatred and 10 a second, if you're attacking at 2 times a second, you'll take 12.5 seconds of constant attacking (generally impossible while solo) to use up all your hatred. Then it just regens after 10 seconds of downtime.

The main reason I keep evasive fire around is the instant attack and especially the wall penetration, which are two things the other generators don't have.

If you're in a situation where you want to conserve discipline, you spam elemental arrow.

[Bronze_D]

That's true...

though of course you almost never have the chance to stand still and deliver fire (that generally means death) so one way or another you'll be running for your life trying to insert as much damage as possible while delaying them or making enough range between you and them without being clipped by one of the lethal fire all around the field.

personally in inferno, i am always on the verge of running out of discipline against most elite, since few will ever give you a break and it will take every single discipline available to stay alive and unload your damage.

the only exception is when i go back to Act1 inferno again with my moderately geared characters (i am no where near as geared as my colleagues but even with just moderate gears Act1 is quite easy now).

[RaTTuS007]

options which depending on the circumstances may or may not actually be a good expenditure, which is the main point.

since discipline is incredibly precious to survival, every single flip have to justify it's cost in discipline, even as short as 2 discipline.

and the problem with 30 yards flip is that you do not exactly have full control of where you flip towards...

sure you flip away from the enemy always (well as long as you didn't get hit by bad latency anyway) but where exactly the enemy will be especially when against teleporting and double fast enemy (natural fast + fast trait) will make you think twice from doing that in inferno when death is in every corner.

and incidentally since the flip triggers as well when an enemy is nearby you and in direct path of your shot (even if you were not actually aiming at it), using it against extra fast minions and horde mobs means you will probably flip without realizing it.

You vault wherever your mouse is pointing. That said I used to use vault but with our latency its too risky to use, atm i use shadow power with gloom, smoke screen with lingering fog and caltrops with the 2 sec stun.

[revengous]

level 35, latest gear I bought I made it all had decent +attack speed

at 2.8 attacks per second shooting the explosive Ebola causes so such hilarity.

[Marius]

I found an evasive fire exploit that I plan to abuse the **** out of to keep my hardcore demon hunter alive in Hell.

Decided to edit it out though, because it's not been posted anywhere else and I don't want it 'fixed'.

That ability is so buggy, though, lol. I've now found three exploitable bugs with it. The backflip is a touch annoying, but once you know where the ability shines and where it doesn't, you can pick and choose your attacks.

I switch attacks between evasive fire-covering fire, cluster arrow-maelstrom, fan of knives-hail, and elemental arrow-skull depending on what situation I need to deal with. So far it works really well.

Need to mow down groups at range? Evasive fire.
Beset by a nasty elite? Screaming skull.
Mobbed by stealthers? Counter-stealth then Fan of Knives.
Want to assassinate anything? Two cluster arrows for instant 690% weapon damage.

[Bronze_D]

options which depending on the circumstances may or may not actually be a good expenditure, which is the main point.

since discipline is incredibly precious to survival, every single flip have to justify it's cost in discipline, even as short as 2 discipline.

and the problem with 30 yards flip is that you do not exactly have full control of where you flip towards...

sure you flip away from the enemy always (well as long as you didn't get hit by bad latency anyway) but where exactly the enemy will be especially when against teleporting and double fast enemy (natural fast + fast trait) will make you think twice from doing that in inferno when death is in every corner.

and incidentally since the flip triggers as well when an enemy is nearby you and in direct path of your shot (even if you were not actually aiming at it), using it against extra fast minions and horde mobs means you will probably flip without realizing it.

You vault wherever your mouse is pointing. That said I used to use vault but with our latency its too risky to use, atm i use shadow power with gloom, smoke screen with lingering fog and caltrops with the 2 sec stun.

Not vault, flip (backward flip to be precise)... it's the secondary automatic movement that evasive fire triggers when a foe is within certain range of you at the moment you fired if they are within the arc of firing.

The flip generally always flip away from the foe that are within the threshold distance in the direction of your shot, however when facing teleporting or ultra fast mob and especially if you held your fire against it you tend to lose control the direction of the flip since the mob can reappear quickly behind or besides you.

[CelticAngel82]

Just got my DH into nightmare mode lastnight. loving playing her so much, much more than my wizard (who is now 46). also, LOVING Vanishing Dye.. my DH looks so freakin' hot. Will post screenshot of her later this arvie
bought 2 very sexy 1-h crossbows for her from the AH and gemmed them... hot hot hot.

[Marius]

Yeah I'm enjoying it too; Leliana (5) is 49 now, almost up to where my last one died... but this time she has over double the DPS, so won't be failing the gear check.