Demon Hunter stuff

[Marius]

Here's a video of a demon hunter killing an inferno Act 4 boss using the strategy I mentioned in my guide of Caltrops + Hot Pursuit.

And note he's at yellow latency some of the time (indicates 300+ latency), so you all have no excuse.

[revengous]

yo marius, any tips for a DH?

I just started, level 10, checking auction house for level relevant gear with + exp, currently ive got +20 per kill, im hoping to just rush myself to catch up with my wizard.

quesiton:
does hatred regen while im channeling abilities? I really like rapid fire...if I got myself to regen 10 hatred a second could I have infinite rapid fire? since it costs 10 while channeling (im assuming that means its 10 per second)

[Marius]

Well, my guide's still relevant even after the smoke screen nerf - you still need smoke screen + preparation.

If you want to level up quickly you should also use tactical advantage as one of your passive slots. I have my smoke screen as the + movement speed one, and tactical advantage gives another +speed boost when smoke is activated, so can move between areas at +200% move speed. Vault with tac advantage works well for this too.

Hatred regens constantly. Rapid fire drains at the rate of your attack speed though.

Rapid fire's not the best secondary ability, though. When you get to higher levels you'll need to kite a lot more. Elemental arrow in all its runed variants is ridiculously powerful. Ball lightning is incredible, frost arrow is excellent burst, screaming skull is good for fearing away everything, and nether tentacles does heavy damage.

Good hatred regen is still great, though. Currently I'm using the bat companion and templar hatred regen, plus gear, so my regen is up to about 9 a second. With that I can spam elemental arrow all day and not really run out. So I don't actually use a hatred generator right now. It's a large DPS gain not having to use a crappy ability.

With gear you basically want to max dexterity and discipline as much as possible and make sure your weapon is on level. Every five levels I like to do a search for a new hand crossbow, with the parameters of general demon hunter, my current level, rare, with mods dexterity, max discipline and has sockets. Different people like different weapons, but I favour hand crossbows as they have more offhand options (I like using a shield with high dex), and hand crossbows are the only weapon with +discipline.

[revengous]

cheers man!

up to the butcher now, level 15. im at 6 hatred a second, i can shoot rapid fire for what seems like...an eternity, its really cool!

I probs should've said, this is a party build, so im not going to follow a set build by someone else, just see what crazy thing I can do (hence infinite rapid fire) if it drains at my attack speed, Ill have to aim for 15ish hatred a second...I can do it! the templar can assist with my hatred regen? awesome

Im going to go with dual hand crossbows, I like the +15% attack speed, spam those homing arrows!

Im using vault and the tac passive gets me around really fast

also, it seems that when I trigger a hatred regen attack (such as the homing arrow one) it gives me hatred even if I dont hit an enemy, different to rage/arcane regen runes, I like it!

[Marius]

There's still a fair bit of variation in possible abilities. It's just that smoke screen, preparation, and elemental arrow are probably the three most powerful demon hunter abilities right now, so that's why you see them in so many builds. But there's still a lot of room for doing different things around those three abilities.

Something you can do with smoke screen is it can be activated during the rapid fire channel, and you can rune it to get back hatred. So if you're in a group, you can activate smoke screen if you get attacked during the rapid fire and enemies will ignore you. Likewise, preparation can also be runed to give back hatred. With preparation runed for punishment, you could easily achieve infinite rapid fire.

[revengous]

pewpewpewpewpewpewpewpewpew strafe through everything!

level 24 and rising fast, with over 100 extra exp per kill im levelling really fast! weeeeeeee

about to finish act 2, awww yeah

[Aeolus_C]

I'm really wierd, currently hefting a nice axe and shield with my demon hunter.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#UZYghT!bcg!ZbbZYZ

I'm having fun with my snowflake setup though so its all good.

[Marius]

You have a lot of hatred generation...

I still like generator-less builds. Currently using bat full time to power frost arrow and razor disc.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/d ... ace!ZbbabZ

Frost arrow for single target, with cull the weak and archery (bow) it does amazing damage for only 10 hatred. Razor disc for AoE, supported by caltrops. Smoke screen breaks crowd control and gives me turbo speed, and preparation and bat powers it all.

It's working really well.

[Aeolus_C]

The hate generation is mainly for the huge 25 a click that throwing knife is, it can cut a line through most enemies though so i'm finding it pretty useful.

I've ended up geared towards fairly close range combat, just not outright hitting people with my axe.

[Marius]

I stopped using impale mostly because I didn't like paying a hatred premium for burst.

For example, two elemental arrow ball lightning does 310% weapon damage to anything in its path + anything 10 yards next to the path, and only costs 20 hatred. I think I have a screenshot of a single ball lightning getting a mighty blow of 30 enemies...

The main situation I use impale for is for fights where I know I'm going to have to be kiting constantly, like Belial, where you can't just stop and spam. However, I think ball lightning also hits bosses multiple times per shot because the boss hitbox is so big, making it still more efficient.

[revengous]

9 hatred a second! booyah

too bad im almost at 2attacks a second...still no infinate strafe/rapid fire...maybe if I used a crossbow...

[Marius]

Here's that ball lightning shot... you can see the range on it. Is basically a slow moving orb that zaps anything within the general area. Am convinced elemental arrow is due for a nerfing at some point. Every single rune does something incredible.



And revengous I'll see if my demon hunter can hit infinite rapid fire...

[Marius]

I just did a test revengous. I got to 1 minute 32 seconds of rapid firing. Could probably push it to two minutes if got the timing better.

If I was actually shooting at something instead of in town could get it to infinite though. Since critical hits would return discipline to power punishment.

Here is basically how you do it:

Take preparation-punishment, and nightstalker passive.

You then rapid fire down, and at the last second, hit preparation to refill hatred (doesn't stop the channeling). Every time you critically hit with rapid fire, you also have a chance to regain discipline, which powers punishment. If you actually have a target, this can hit infinite, because the rate of critical hit discipline regeneration is faster than the hatred drain.

Gear with +discipline also helps this. I have 39 discipline right now, and every little bit extra helps extend it more.

[revengous]

cheers, im running that set up now, gonna try it in act 4 coop\

edit: Rakanoth dead in seconds

first hell rift - 'infinite' rapid fire - cheers marius! (there were some delays where I had to run to fight more, but yeah awesome sauce!)

[Marius]

I just found something that is making my hardcore run a lot easier. Evasive Fire with the Covering Fire rune. Replaced my bat.

Things to love about evasive fire:

- generates 4 hatred per shot
- hits hard - 3x 125%
- penetrates walls. This means if I come across a waller I just stand behind using the wall as cover firing over it..
- hits instantly - no travel time.
- tracks - so using the 3-round burst rune, if I come across something annoying like groups of wasps, just stand there shooting and they all get tracked by homing bullets (has a pistol sound effect...).
- does stutter-stepping for you (stutter stepping is the demon hunter kite method like marines in Star Craft, where you fire, retreat, fire, retreat. This is very good for our latency, since it is purely server side.
- triggers tactical advantage on backflip, making you run fast.

Currently doing Act 2 nightmare without really getting hit using mostly evasive fire, fan of knives, and smoke screen with displacement rune and tactical advantage. I can run into a group, hit fan of knives, and get out with evasive fire before anyone reacts.

To make use of all the hatred generated, running cluster arrow with maelstrom. It hits really hard... the maelstrom it generates means everything is hit twice by the one burst, so can quickly get off a good 345% weapon damage against a group.