DH Skills Rebalanced! Single-Target Damage Analysis: der=0>

[Strill]

If you haven't checked it out, head over to the skill calculator. They've redone every class's skills and they're much more balanced (at least the ones available in the Beta). There's also some mistakes, for example, Entangling Shot is supposed to Generate hatred yet its Golden Runestone is still listed as reducing Hatred cost to 12.

The following is an analysis and comparison of single-target Demon Hunter damage skills:


HUNGERING ARROW: (Calculation explanation)

• UNRUNED: 287.5% Weapon Damage
• CRIMSON: 687.5% Weapon Damage (If it's 160% Fire damage OVER 5 seconds)
• INDIGO: 1495% Weapon Damage
• GOLDEN: 2300% Weapon Damage
• OBSIDIAN: 850% Weapon Damage
• ALABASTER: 287.5% Single Target Damage + 600%*(Crit%) AoE Damage

Still no balance here. Totally crazy numbers.


STRAFE:

• UNRUNED: 100% Normal Attack DPS per second (Pretty much same as normal attack except you can move)
• ALABASTER: (300% * CRIT% + 100% ) Normal Attack DPS per second (Assuming a crit increases the 50% Weapon damage by 4x to 200%)
• CRIMSON: 120% AoE Normal Attack DPS /second (9 yard AoE)
• GOLDEN: 100% Normal Attack DPS per second (You can walk at normal speed.)
• INDIGO: 150% Normal Attack DPS per second
• OBSIDIAN: Not Enough Information

RAPID FIRE:

• UNRUNED: 210% Normal Attack DPS per second
• ALABASTER: 210% Normal Attack DPS per second (Plus slow)
• CRIMSON: 108% AoE Normal Attack DPS / second (10 yard AoE)
• GOLDEN: 210% Normal Attack DPS per second (Initial Hatred Reduction)
• INDIGO: 210% ~ 700% Normal Attack DPS per second (70% pierce chance = 3.33 hits per shot on average. With an unlimited supply of mobs, you'll do 700% Normal Attack DPS on average)
• OBSIDIAN: 210% Normal Attack DPS per second + 350% Weapon Damage per second (Homing Missiles not based on attack speed?)

Kinda-sorta balanced. Rapid Fire's crimson is pretty weak though. Slightly larger AoE, but less damage than Strafe on top of the heavy hatred consumption. Its only saving grace is that you can aim it yourself unlike Strafe.


CLUSTER ARROW:

• INDIGO: 160% (AoE) + 1980% Weapon Damage (rockets)

If those rockets don't deal AoE damage, this skill is junk. Was the best skill available before, but with the huge hatred cost increase, it needs a damn good damage boost to make up for that. As it is, it's not even better than Golden Hungering Arrow unless you get the Ballistics passive, or unless the rockets deal AoE damage.


HUNGERING ARROW VS IMPALE:

• UNRUNED Hungering Arrow: 287.5% Weapon Damage (Average)
• UNRUNED Impale: 325% Weapon Damage

At first I thought this was a pretty good balance. Hungering Arrow is now weaker than impale, rather than the other way around as it was before. However, I wasn't considering Impale's huge hatred cost. If they're going to keep these damage numbers, Impale needs its hatred cost reduced to about 5.


HUNGERING ARROW VS AoEs:

GOLDEN Hungering Arrow: 2300% Weapon Damage

• CRIMSON Impale: 358% Weapon Damage per Target
• CRIMSON Bola Shot: 28% Weapon Damage + 82% Weapon Damage per Target
• CRIMSON Multishot: 330% Weapon Damage per Target
• CRIMSON Chakram: 210%*2 Weapon Damage per Target
• CRIMSON Elemental Arrow: 160% Weapon Damage per Target

• 2300% / 358% = 6.4 targets for Impale to match Hungering Arrow
• (2300%-28%) / 82% = 27.7 targets for Bola Shot to match Hungering Arrow
• 2300% / 330% = 7.0 targets for Multishot to match Hungering Arrow
• 2300% / 210% = 11.0 HITS for Chakram to match Hungering Arrow
• 2300% / 160% = 14.3 targets for Elemental Arrow to match Hungering Arrow

Impale, Multishot, and Chakram look pretty decent. Chakram has two projectiles, so it can hit the same target twice, putting it about on par with the other two. If the demo video of a Barbarian that Blizzard released months ago is any indication, harder levels will have plenty more than 7 enemies per wave.

On the other hand, Bola Shot Crimson is complete and total crap. 28 targets to match Hungering Arrow? It's way too high. No reason to ever use it. Elemental Arrow is saved only because of its super low Hatred cost, but I really suspect Chakram will be better.

[RexCogitans]

Also, all the classes now have 1 skill at first level and 2 at second.
For the Demon Hunter thats Impale at lvl 1 and Hungering Arrow and Caltrops at level 2.
Read about some of the changes to the other classes here.

[Cevilo]

Kinda-sorta balanced. Rapid Fire's crimson is worthless. Slightly more AoE, but less damage than Strafe on top of the heavy hatred consumption.

not "slightly more AOE" this Aoe is just barely smaller than the Caltrops drop, which makes it strong enough to nail entire mobs from the first person on. It's not suppose to compare to any of the single target damage. hungering arrow and impale are made for Boss types and champions, they can kill the little ones with one shot pretty easy but by time you fire off a lot of shots of either of those you'll be surrounded and over whelmed by monsters, as opposed to the AOE skills that will chip all monsters you have a better chance of killing a monster before they reach you.

CLUSTER ARROW:

• INDIGO: 160% (AoE) + 1980% Weapon Damage (rockets)

Total crap. Was the best skill available before, but with the huge hatred cost increase, it needs a damn good damage boost to make up for that. As it is, it's not even better than Golden Hungering Arrow unless you get the Ballistics passive.

same case as before, over all it's suppose to damage the group not the individual, it's not the ideal choice to start firing at Diablo. it's something you're fire at Lord De Sis and his group of hell knights.

On the other hand, Bola Shot Crimson and Elemental Arrow Crimson are complete and total crap. No reason to ever use them.

I disagree here too, Crimson bola shot is bigger area effect then Caltops, you can easily shoot 1 at any member of the mob and hit the Entire mob especially if you're in tight quarters, + it only costs 5 hate, so you could fire these off all most infinitely to take down big groups of monsters, same thing with Elemenal Arrow Crimson, the Hate cost is low, sense it's cold damage I'd assume the Slow effect will come in to play here as opposed to damage this is more of a utility like freezing arrow was in Diablo 2.

this issue with your thread you went from comparing "single targets" skills to comparing single target skills to AOE skills. AOE skills are suppose to be Weak damage to balance out that they are smashing on the entire mob, Single target skills are just that, Boss killers. targeting the whole and destroying it.
they made it obvious they want certain skills to work certain ways even though Single target skills have a high damage out put, there is no way it can compare in late game to an AOE skill because the monsters will over whelm you. I've played an old build of act 2 a while back, I'm going to have to say you can't stand in the middle of a mob and spam attacks like you did in diablo 2, you need to be active you need to kite and move and use your AOE skills to your advantage. there's not doubt you could use these single target skills to clear mobs but It would take a lot more time to do so, and you'd have to do a lot of Running around which gives you a chance to run into another mob which would make it that much harder. (think of the secret Cow Level)

on a side note, it all most feels like they read our last thread, and all the math we did in there and completely redid the Demon hunter tree according to what we were saying, I have no base to this claim, but I see the skills are balanced (which would be easy to do in 1 day, it's spread sheet stuff) this game is looking better and better.

[Strill]

not "slightly more AOE" this Aoe is just barely smaller than the Caltrops drop, which makes it strong enough to nail entire mobs from the first person on. It's not suppose to compare to any of the single target damage. hungering arrow and impale are made for Boss types and champions, they can kill the little ones with one shot pretty easy but by time you fire off a lot of shots of either of those you'll be surrounded and over whelmed by monsters, as opposed to the AOE skills that will chip all monsters you have a better chance of killing a monster before they reach you.

I mean "slightly more AoE" because it has a slightly larger AoE radius. Sorry for the confusion. And the reason I didn't compare it to anything else is because Rapid Fire Crimson is already obsoleted by Strafe Crimson. Strafe Crimson is better in every way.

same case as before, over all it's suppose to damage the group not the individual, it's not the ideal choice to start firing at Diablo. it's something you're fire at Lord De Sis and his group of hell knights.

If the rockets do AoE damage as well I'll consider it, but if not, then 60 Hatred for a tiny AoE and a bunch of single-target damage that can't even match one of my Hatred GENERATORS is totally worthless.

I disagree here too, Crimson bola shot is bigger area effect then Caltops, you can easily shoot 1 at any member of the mob and hit the Entire mob especially if you're in tight quarters, + it only costs 5 hate, so you could fire these off all most infinitely to take down big groups of monsters, same thing with Elemenal Arrow Crimson, the Hate cost is low, sense it's cold damage I'd assume the Slow effect will come in to play here as opposed to damage this is more of a utility like freezing arrow was in Diablo 2.

There's no need to speak in such general qualitative terms. If you can't fit 28 enemies into a single Bola Shot explosion radius, you're better off with Hungering Arrow. That sounds totally impractical to me. Furthermore, Bola shot GENERATES 5 hate, not costs 5 hate.

this issue with your thread you went from comparing "single targets" skills to comparing single target skills to AOE skills. AOE skills are suppose to be Weak damage to balance out that they are smashing on the entire mob, Single target skills are just that, Boss killers. targeting the whole and destroying it.

You totally missed the point. I'm not looking at Multishot Crimson, seeing that it does 330%, and concluding it's weaker than Hungering Golden because it's not as strong at killing a single target. I'm calculating how big the mob of enemies has to be in order for Multishot to become superior to Hungering Arrow. It turns out that number of mobs is seven, which seems very reasonable, so I conclude that Multishot is a good AoE.

they made it obvious they want certain skills to work certain ways even though Single target skills have a high damage out put, there is no way it can compare in late game to an AOE skill because the monsters will over whelm you. I've played an old build of act 2 a while back, I'm going to have to say you can't stand in the middle of a mob and spam attacks like you did in diablo 2, you need to be active you need to kite and move and use your AOE skills to your advantage. there's not doubt you could use these single target skills to clear mobs but It would take a lot more time to do so, and you'd have to do a lot of Running around which gives you a chance to run into another mob which would make it that much harder. (think of the secret Cow Level)

Of course there's a way to compare single-target damage to AoE damage! You compare how many mobs you have to hit with each AoE shot to get more damage than the single-target attack. With bola shot and Elemental Arrow, that number is so exceptionally high that the skill is totally impractical.

on a side note, it all most feels like they read our last thread, and all the math we did in there and completely redid the Demon hunter tree according to what we were saying, I have no base to this claim, but I see the skills are balanced (which would be easy to do in 1 day, it's spread sheet stuff) this game is looking better and better.

I agree too, at least for the skills available in the Beta. End-game runes are still out of whack though.

[Cevilo]

I mean "slightly more AoE" because it has a slightly larger AoE radius. Sorry for the confusion. And the reason I didn't compare it to anything else is because Rapid Fire Crimson is already obsoleted by Strafe Crimson. Strafe Crimson is better in every way.

in terms of a single target, but so far I've watched full streams of the beta and even up to the Skeleton king I've not seen any monster ever "alone" not even the Skeleton king. which is where your flaw is, on paper the math is right, in a single target shot for shot it is better but think about it, they have 2 completely different functions. Strafe shoots random enemies, in a practical situation, in diablo there has been plenty of times when there was a random archer off on the side attacking, well away from the mob, or even multiple guys off in different areas, it becomes a less practical skill now that It works off attack speed, and sense you're not selecting your targets It could very well select the ones that make you spin the furthest apart. which slows down your rate of fire, also I'm not 100% on this but I kind of feel like strafe might force you to run, while shooting, as opposed to the stationary rapid fire, so sure damage wise it's better but there's no guarantee that it will fire even in the same general direction.

Rapid fire is concentrated and fires a lot faster than Strafe. you're more likely to kill the units you want to kill than to sit there and hold strafe down and mow through your hate at 2 a second hoping it fires in the correct direction, if it weren't for the whole movement thing and you had to be stationary like rapid fire, you'd be dead before the mob more than likely.
I think given the circumstances, these skills are completely balanced.

If the rockets do AoE damage as well I'll consider it, but if not, then 60 Hatred for a tiny AoE and a bunch of single-target damage that can't even match one of my Hatred GENERATORS is totally worthless.

honestly when I think rockets, explosion and aoe are usually a given. I'm not gonna lie I'd be pretty pissed off if that wasn't the case but I'm 99% sure it is, other wise they would be rocks not rockets. lol and of course you're going to use Ballistics with it, doubling the damage of a huge multi target attack? YES PLEASE!

There's no need to speak in such general qualitative terms. If you can't fit 28 enemies into a single Bola Shot explosion radius, you're better off with Hungering Arrow. That sounds totally impractical to me. Furthermore, Bola shot GENERATES 5 hate, not costs 5 hate.

the damage ratio for hungering arrow is based on luck, Bola shot is a set amount of damage, if that 40% kicks in it can mess up your flow of battle. bola will be predictable which makes more people more comfortable. I don't know how the generation works either but if it generates more Hate for hitting more monsters on explosion that could be it's a pro as opposed to it's damage con. also look to the reply to the next part for more comparison on these 2 skills (an after thought once I started thinking in D2 terms) and for that last part, I'll be 100% honest, I COMPLETELY missed the "Generate" this means I'm going to have to go back and my builds I have posted in my blogs a lot more than I anticipated LMAO

You totally missed the point. I'm not looking at Multishot Crimson, seeing that it does 330%, and concluding it's weaker than Hungering Golden because it's not as strong at killing a single target. I'm calculating how big the mob of enemies has to be in order for Multishot to become superior to Hungering Arrow. It turns out that number of mobs is seven, which seems very reasonable, so I conclude that Multishot is a good AoE.
Of course there's a way to compare single-target damage to AoE damage! You compare how many mobs you have to hit with each AoE shot to get more damage than the single-target attack. With bola shot and Elemental Arrow, that number is so exceptionally high that the skill is totally impractical.

It really doesn't matter how much damage potential Hungering arrow has unless the monsters push that potential.

golden hungering arrow has 2300% damage Potential for a single target.
Crimson Bola shot has 110% damage(you typoed in your original post) + 82% damage over 14 yards

if you come across a mob of 10 monsters who cover a 13 yard radius, who can take 400% of your weapon damage, you can fire Bola shot 5 times at 5 different enemies and when all 5 detonate, the entire mob is dead. even though your hungering arrow has a damage out put that is more than 10x of bola shot, you still need to fire 10 hungering arrows to take care of the mob, which is twice the amount of attacks Bola shot used to kill the mob. say you run in to that same mob, but this time, there is a Super unique who can take 1000% of your damage, if you focus fire Bola shot on that super unique then it's still a 5:10 shot ratio.

P.S. side note you're math skills are amazing, makes figuring builds out so much easier,

[Strill]

in terms of a single target, but so far I've watched full streams of the beta and even up to the Skeleton king I've not seen any monster ever "alone" not even the Skeleton king. which is where your flaw is, on paper the math is right, in a single target shot for shot it is better but think about it, they have 2 completely different functions. Strafe shoots random enemies, in a practical situation, in diablo there has been plenty of times when there was a random archer off on the side attacking, well away from the mob, or even multiple guys off in different areas, it becomes a less practical skill now that It works off attack speed, and sense you're not selecting your targets It could very well select the ones that make you spin the furthest apart. which slows down your rate of fire, also I'm not 100% on this but I kind of feel like strafe might force you to run, while shooting, as opposed to the stationary rapid fire, so sure damage wise it's better but there's no guarantee that it will fire even in the same general direction.

Rapid fire is concentrated and fires a lot faster than Strafe. you're more likely to kill the units you want to kill than to sit there and hold strafe down and mow through your hate at 2 a second hoping it fires in the correct direction, if it weren't for the whole movement thing and you had to be stationary like rapid fire, you'd be dead before the mob more than likely.
I think given the circumstances, these skills are completely balanced.

Fair enough. I wasn't considering the random target element.

honestly when I think rockets, explosion and aoe are usually a given. I'm not gonna lie I'd be pretty pissed off if that wasn't the case but I'm 99% sure it is, other wise they would be rocks not rockets. lol and of course you're going to use Ballistics with it, doubling the damage of a huge multi target attack? YES PLEASE!

I'm not so sure. There aren't any hatred generators which use Rockets. (strafe doesn't actually generate hatred). So that significantly lowers the usefulness of Ballistics. On the other hand, Golden Grenades gives 24 hatred, the most of any Hatred Generator. I suppose once Grenadier gets updated to further improve the hatred generation from Grenades, then Grenades would give you enough hatred to make Cluster Arrow your primary attack, but you wouldn't be able to use it anywhere near as often as other potential primary attacks.

the damage ratio for hungering arrow is based on luck, Bola shot is a set amount of damage, if that 40% kicks in it can mess up your flow of battle. bola will be predictable which makes more people more comfortable. I don't know how the generation works either but if it generates more Hate for hitting more monsters on explosion that could be it's a pro as opposed to it's damage con. also look to the reply to the next part for more comparison on these 2 skills (an after thought once I started thinking in D2 terms) and for that last part, I'll be 100% honest, I COMPLETELY missed the "Generate" this means I'm going to have to go back and my builds I have posted in my blogs a lot more than I anticipated LMAO

There is a little luck involved with Hungering Arrow, but even so, I'd expect that you can use it often enough that it would average out more often than not and not be that bad of a problem.

It really doesn't matter how much damage potential Hungering arrow has unless the monsters push that potential.

golden hungering arrow has 2300% damage Potential for a single target.
Crimson Bola shot has 110% damage(you typoed in your original post) + 82% damage over 14 yards

if you come across a mob of 10 monsters who cover a 13 yard radius, who can take 400% of your weapon damage, you can fire Bola shot 5 times at 5 different enemies and when all 5 detonate, the entire mob is dead. even though your hungering arrow has a damage out put that is more than 10x of bola shot, you still need to fire 10 hungering arrows to take care of the mob, which is twice the amount of attacks Bola shot used to kill the mob. say you run in to that same mob, but this time, there is a Super unique who can take 1000% of your damage, if you focus fire Bola shot on that super unique then it's still a 5:10 shot ratio.

P.S. side note you're math skills are amazing, makes figuring builds out so much easier,

Hungering arrow doesn't do all its damage in a single shot and it doesn't focus on just one enemy. It homes in on any nearby enemies and has a chance to pierce them and continue attacking. It does 115% damage per pierce, and with a Golden rune has a 95% chance to pierce, resulting in an average of 20 hits per shot. 115% * 20 = 2300%. So overkill is really not a problem. However, if it runs into a wall or runs out of targets to attack, it will be wasted. So it's a tradeoff. Very little overkill, but you've gotta have good situational awareness.

Indigo Hungering Rune deals substantially less damage than Golden, but for the most part deals its damage upfront and so overall suffers very little from either overkill or wasted shots.

[Cevilo]

I'm not so sure. There aren't any hatred generators which use Rockets. (strafe doesn't actually generate hatred). So that significantly lowers the usefulness of Ballistics. On the other hand, Golden Grenades gives 24 hatred, the most of any Hatred Generator. I suppose once Grenadier gets updated to further improve the hatred generation from Grenades, then Grenades would give you enough hatred to make Cluster Arrow your primary attack, but you wouldn't be able to use it anywhere near as often as other potential primary attacks.

what I did with it (if you check my now updated blog rocket build) was use the companion/shadow power to have 11 hate regen, and I use bola shot/bitter pill to generate hate and discipline. also using grenadier as a passive drops the hate cost to 45, you're generating 11 hate per second, + 5 more per bola shot, you should be able to fire cluster arrows one time every 3 seconds ish. + bola shot helps generate Discipline so you can potentially keep Shadow power up the entire battle.

There is a little luck involved with Hungering Arrow, but even so, I'd expect that you can use it often enough that it would average out more often than not and not be that bad of a problem.

Hungering arrow doesn't do all its damage in a single shot and it doesn't focus on just one enemy. It homes in on any nearby enemies and has a chance to pierce them and continue attacking. It does 115% damage per pierce, and with a Golden rune has a 95% chance to pierce, resulting in an average of 20 hits per shot. 115% * 20 = 2300%. So overkill is really not a problem. However, if it runs into a wall or runs out of targets to attack, it will be wasted. So it's a tradeoff. Very little overkill, but you've gotta have good situational awareness.

I never really noticed it stray off to another target after it killed a target got a vid? cuz I've seen it pierce and then fly off the screen that's about it.

Indigo Hungering Rune deals substantially less damage than Golden, but for the most part deals its damage upfront and so overall suffers very little from either overkill or wasted shots.

but you still only have 60% chance to trigger the effect.

[Strill]

what I did with it (if you check my now updated blog rocket build) was use the companion/shadow power to have 11 hate regen, and I use bola shot/bitter pill to generate hate and discipline. also using grenadier as a passive drops the hate cost to 45, you're generating 11 hate per second, + 5 more per bola shot, you should be able to fire cluster arrows one time every 3 seconds ish. + bola shot helps generate Discipline so you can potentially keep Shadow power up the entire battle.

That sounds reasonable but if Grenadier is any indication, I think a lot of the stuff to do with Hatred costs has yet to be updated. We'll have to wait and see.

I never really noticed it stray off to another target after it killed a target got a vid? cuz I've seen it pierce and then fly off the screen that's about it.

It probably has some maximum lock-on distance, but yes I have seen it attack one enemy then switch to another.

Check this video. At around 2:16 an arrow pierces the zombie closest to the top of the screen, and then at around 2:17 it goes diagonally down and to the right and attacks the second zombie.

but you still only have 60% chance to trigger the effect.

The damage I listed is on average, so that's already taken into consideration. And I expect that you'll be able to spam the skill enough that failed pierces won't cause too much overall variation in your damage.

[Cevilo]

It probably has some maximum lock-on distance, but yes I have seen it attack one enemy then switch to another.

Check this video. At around 2:16 an arrow pierces the zombie closest to the top of the screen, and then at around 2:17 it goes diagonally down and to the right and attacks the second zombie.

Interesting, I think the best way for them to deal with this OP is cap the amount of time it can pierce.

The damage I listed is on average, so that's already taken into consideration. And I expect that you'll be able to spam the skill enough that failed pierces won't cause too much overall variation in your damage.

one thing I'm curious about, is if they will have items that increase your pierce chance, or if there will be bows that auto pierce, like in diablo we had Razor Tail belt and the Bariza cross bow. that would completely change the effectiveness of this skill in any rune situation, Imagine a bow that all ways pierces + Obsidian Hungering arrow. that would wreak of brokeness.

[Strill]

Interesting, I think the best way for them to deal with this OP is cap the amount of time it can pierce.

I'd say just make it a bit weaker than single-target damage, just like Unruned is now when you compare it to Impale.