Diablo® III

Currently I am: 140k DPS without Sharpshooter

This thread only contains my current thoughts/information which I think may be useful to fellow Demon Hunters. I am constantly updating my gear/style etc. Whenever I play I stream live at twitch.tv/theprohacker

(Removed gear link, as I want to discuss playing styles rather than specific gear/items)

Please help me with your own suggestions and comments!

FARMING:

1: MF does NOT affect chests, corps, pots etc. Less important now to stack high MF.

2: Don't try to cheat the system with glitches or farming endless goblins etc. Blizzard have been v clever about exploiting and are nerfing every single avenue of "exploit" farming very hard indeed!

3: Don't stop after building up your NV5. Keep killing packs and elites. This is your source of endless rares and possible items for AH.

4: Act 3 is your ideal place for farming. But DO NOT farm there if you are simply not ready for it. If you are struggling to kill mobs in act 3, don't do it. It is simply not worth it.

5: Act 1 and 2 can ALSO spawn lvl 63 items now, although at a lower rate than Act 3 & 4.

6: Act 4 is completely useless for farming, so is whimsyshire pony level.

7: Your best source of gold income is the gold AH and trading. But this in turn depends on how good and efficient you are in farming.

SKILL CHOICE:

1: Shadow Power with Gloom Rune is extremely important for a DH who doesn't die. My ideal endgame skillset includes both smokescreen and shadow power.

2: I would say the first primary attack ought to be hungering arrow. Devouring or spray of teeth if you have a good crit setup. And i would say second primary attack is simply a matter of personal preference. In my view third attacking option is a must, mine is the impale with stun, it saves me from immediate dangers and I'm able to snipe ranged monsters and focus down targets.

3: If you choose to go elemental choose any rune that works best for you. Rapidfire with hatred reduction is also a good option if you have a decent crit setup. I personally use cluster arrow with cluster bombs rune at the moment because I never had a high demand for the Elemental arrow with my heavy impale use.

4: I am a firm believer in my 3 attacking, 3 survivability selection approach. So for me, hungering, cluster and impale are my three layers of attacks, whilst shadow power, smoke screen and vault (no discipline rune) are my survival tools to make sure I do not die! If you do not have extra discipline added or regenerated from the nat set, you would have replace one with prep.

GEAR BUILDING & PASSIVES:

1: Sharpshooter is seriously overrated. Don't be satisfied by your fake DPS number that shows on your stat screen.

2: Realistic & optimal Crit Chance / Dmg to aim for is around 34%/250% in my view. (With around 2000 dex) Once you hit this, remove sharpshooter from your passives.

Sharpshooter only benefits DHs with a very low crit chance. If your crit chance is 25%+ it doesn't help you very much.

Simple maths here,
10% Crit chance = ~ 1/10 shots critical dmg
20% Crit chance = ~ 1/5 shots critical dmg
25% Crit chance = ~ 1/4 shots critical dmg
33% Crit chance = ~ 1/3 shots critical dmg
50% Crit chance = ~ 1/2 shots critical dmg

33% is OPTIMAL because with 50% stacked, you won't be able to maximise other areas of your stats. (Unless you have some really top end gear which is extremely hard to come by)

3: Steady Aim Passive is a ABSOLUTE MUST. 10 yards in Diablo 3 is a TINY amount of space.

4: Vitality and some resistance is helpful (I'm on 230+ AR), because post 1.0.3 there is less dmg from monsters.

5: Natalya Set: Don't rush into buying a full set. Think about all aspects of the gear carefully. If they nerf the +2 discipline (4), A: It won't be a hard nerf. And DH have plenty of other options to manage discipline. It really won't be that big of a deal in my view.

Finally, I LIKE A DEMON HUNTER THAT:

1: Moves fast (25% movement +). I heavily prefer a DH that relies on movement and mobility.

2: Looks sexy

3: Does tonnes of dmg :D But real dmg! Not number dmg!?

4: Tanks a little dmg. (Just when we get hit sometimes!)

5: Dodges everything like a jammy dodger

SUMMARY:

1: You need a lot of unit control skills - movement, positioning, engagement skills.

2: You need more balanced gear now. Blue items with just dex and attackspeed is totally useless for anything apart from damage, which is only 1 important part of being a DH!

3: Yes you have been punished very heavily with 1.0.3 if you are purely glass cannon. I would say rightly so. We should be aiming to transition from softcore into hardcore, playing pure glass cannon deffo does not help that!

Thx. Please help me with your own suggestions and comments! When you have a moment you can watch me kill some demons (!) live at twitch.tv/theprohacker

great post!

i have 42% crit with 280 crit dmg and 1900 dex and about 52k dps without SS. probably the difference on dps is from weapons, as i have really low ones.

Does everyone include steady aim in their final dps numbers?

Can your post your build please ? :)

I think it's OK to include steady aim in DPS, the range 10 yards is so small :)

Good post but skill section might be more detailed. Post patch builds needs more than choosing between NT and frost arrow. Any hunter below 80-90k DPS without sharpshooter will struggle against elites and bosses at act 3 with only frost arrow or nether tentacles. I think you should mention secondary filler dps/utility skills like impale, rain of vengeance and fan of knives . Also there are viable hatred spenders other than NT and frost arrow like cluster bombs which has ridicilous damage output.

just a quick question . as i`ve recently dinged , i have quite some information to absorb about demon hunters . you guys are always mentioning 30-40% crit chance . how can you achieve that ammount of passive crit chance when all i see in ah are items giving 4-7% crit ? and is crit chance better to prioritise versus crit dmg value ? i must mention my budget for buying this from ah is around 3-5 mils .

and also another question . except the boots ( btw which boots u`d suggest as BiS ? ) , where else do you get mov speed ?

cheers in advance

Hi, I have refrained so far from discussing certain specific skill choices, but I'm a firm user of hungering, elemental and impale.

Blu, a balance of chance/dmg is essential. Too much dmg but not enough chance results in a very poor efficiency of the dmg.

Movement speed can be gained on legendaries of inna's glory, lacuni prowlers, and some chest armor. Alternatively you can use the hot pursuit passive.

What passives are you using aside from Steady Aim? (Archery should be one I assume.)

After dropping Sharpshooter, I went for Cull the Weak since it looks like the best dps increase available, and switched to Frost Rune (I still like NT better because of the life gain and bigger aoe range though).

And why do you use Impale btw? Elemental Arrow is pretty much all purpose hate spender, and Hungering Arrow is also decent single target dmg.

@Blu:
if you have a limited budget, stick with Crit Dmg and use Sharpshooter till you have enough gold to buy the better items.

Guys, seriously Theprohacker is a amazing DH,if anyone still get confuse about wat a DH or how to build ur DH ,just go check his stream and support him .farming whole inferno like normal lol.

What passives are you using aside from Steady Aim? (Archery should be one I assume.)

After dropping Sharpshooter, I went for Cull the Weak since it looks like the best dps increase available, and switched to Frost Rune (I still like NT better because of the life gain and bigger aoe range though).

And why do you use Impale btw? Elemental Arrow is pretty much all purpose hate spender, and Hungering Arrow is also decent single target dmg.

@Blu:
if you have a limited budget, stick with Crit Dmg and use Sharpshooter till you have enough gold to buy the better items.

I use tactical adv,

Impale is very important to snipe key monsters.

Thx bro seven.

Bump.

This guy is really interesting, watch his stream you'll learn a thing or two.

Great Info, Great guy, Great Steamer!
Bump!

Sharpshooter might be overrated now, but it simply wasn't before patch 1.03.
With the old NV the 5 first shoots would crit with double damage AOE. Why would you not pick that?

Mostly all right except for a few things...

1. MF is the most important stat. The whole game is about finding gear and not about clearing mobs with the most efficiency. I would say full MF and running ACT 2 is now more profitable than full DPS running ACT3. I run with 170% MF (after five stacks) and then with 240% and the difference is very noticeable. All my good finds have been on 220%+ MF

2. Movement speed, depends on build. A DH doesn't need any movement speed if they're using certain abilities which speed up movement (such as vault/tactical advantage) or abilities which slow down enemies (frost arrow/caltrops hooked spikes).

In my experience, MF has not contributed a sufficient amount towards my farming. Instead sometimes I even found that I find more blue items than rare/legendaries with more MF on gear.

Regards to Zodd's no.2 point, yes on paper it may seem "sufficient" without full movement speed, but it is again from my own experience that I can personally say, for me,+25% is essential for faster farming, less deaths, more effective kiting. Regarding caltrops, they are not so good for what I possibly need it the most, vs fast mobs. (useless)

Proto,

Would you be so kind to share your current gear with us?

ok, I am new to DH playing as I am a wizard. And now I would love to have a DH but I want to know if resists are OK to be kept around 250-300. With wiz I imba tank act2 with 900-1000res...ofc DH is in no way similar to wizards:)

Also, how much armor is needed for act2-3 inf...?

Hi, I will update my gear on my streampage by end of today.

250-300 AR sounds pretty good for a DH... I myself am between that range. I think it's hard to do anymore without sacrificing other essential attributes.

I didn't think too much about armor it was always low on my list of priorities for some reason.

Maybe because dodge is >>> armor