Least Effective DH skill

[Sulle]

What would you consider to be the least effective and practical skill to use at the moment and why?



The demon hunter does have a few of them imo. This is my small list of the undesireable skills, which could indeed need some improvement:

1: elemental arrow(obsidian runestone) which grants a small chance to shoot a skull that will fear affected enemies for 5-6 secs.

2: companion all of the creatures, since they donīt do weapon dmg, and the only useful ones, would be the ferret for MF and the spider for snaring your enemies. However, they could certainly be improved, if they did weapon dmg, and the wolf did i.e. adtional poison dmg since itīs summoning time is very limited.

3: rain of vengeance( golden runestone) small dmg and a stun at the cost of 30 sec cooldown and 40 hatred.

[demasked]

Entangling Shot "Justice is Served": Probably a typo right now, but this 5 hate regeneration skill rune reduces the amount of hatred used by 9. Will most likely switch to gain an extra 9 hatred adding to 14 I suppose being much more useful.

Rapid Fire "Withering Fire": Reduces the hatred cost of the INITIAL or first shot, which I don't find to be too useful a rune to pick when there are damage modifier runes to pick from.

Fan of Knives "Crippling Razors": Only increases the slow by 8% and that's it. Not worth it, perhaps if increases the % more to like 80-85% and increase the timer to 6-8 seconds would be more useful.

Alot of the hate/discipline reducing skill runes should have an slightly increased reduction to make them more useful imo.

Otherwise I agree with your choices except maybe your rain of vengeance as the stun effect would be aoe which would be useful for pvp, mobs, and quick moving monsters.

[Elfik]

Entangling Shot "Justice is Served": Probably a typo right now, but this 5 hate regeneration skill rune reduces the amount of hatred used by 9. Will most likely switch to gain an extra 9 hatred adding to 14 I suppose being much more useful.

Rapid Fire "Withering Fire": Reduces the hatred cost of the INITIAL or first shot, which I don't find to be too useful a rune to pick when there are damage modifier runes to pick from.

Fan of Knives "Crippling Razors": Only increases the slow by 8% and that's it. Not worth it, perhaps if increases the % more to like 80-85% and increase the timer to 6-8 seconds would be more useful.

Alot of the hate/discipline reducing skill runes should have an slightly increased reduction to make them more useful imo.

Otherwise I agree with your choices except maybe your rain of vengeance as the stun effect would be aoe which would be useful for pvp, mobs, and quick moving monsters.

Yeah I must conclude that Blizzard rushed the publication of the skill calculator to work on other things (which I don't mind, I'd rather they work on the game then address my complaints). A lot of skill-runes are underpowered, some are near useless. The obsidian runes seem to be the worst in terms of the completely useless category, with indigo a close second.

In particular, the golden runes that reduce resource cost of skills are useful but range from slightly to grossly underpowered, relative to damage increasing runes (usually crimson). This is true from the runes I've looked at for the wizard, barb, demon hunter, and probably the other classes as well. Golden is one of my favorite runes but it's often underpowered.

[Strill]

Yeah I must conclude that Blizzard rushed the publication of the skill calculator to work on other things (which I don't mind, I'd rather they work on the game then address my complaints). A lot of skill-runes are underpowered, some are near useless. The obsidian runes seem to be the worst in terms of the completely useless category, with indigo a close second.

In particular, the golden runes that reduce resource cost of skills are useful but range from slightly to grossly underpowered, relative to damage increasing runes (usually crimson). This is true from the runes I've looked at for the wizard, barb, demon hunter, and probably the other classes as well. Golden is one of my favorite runes but it's often underpowered.

Yeah, I notice that many golden runes are balanced such that they have the same or worse Damage:resource efficiency as Crimson runes. The catch is that the crimson runed skills also require less time to use those resources, which means more DPS. The golden version is only useful if a player is suffering from heavy overkill.

There are also many skills which don't scale reasonably at all, usually ones which naively increase dodge or pierce chance by +5% per rank. Golden Hungering Arrow's average damage DOUBLES from rank 6->7. That's a greater increase than all the previous ranks combined whether measured in absolute or relative terms.

[HardRock]

Expect the values to be adjusted for Piercing Arrow now that Hungering Arrow has a fixed 35% chance to pierce.

[Jaago]

If the pierce chance increase per level is kept at 5%, Golden Hungering Arrow now does 2.17 times the unruned damage, a multiplier which is pretty much in line with crimson runes in other similar skills.

[Strill]

If the pierce chance increase per level is kept at 5%, Golden Hungering Arrow now does 2.17 times the unruned damage, a multiplier which is pretty much in line with crimson runes in other similar skills.

The problem with that is that Indigo deals 496% unruned damage, AND deals it much faster making it far better than golden.

Total Damage = non-pierce_chance*weapon_damage + 8 * pierce_chance*weapon_damage*Pierce_multiplier

(1-.35)*x+8*.35*x*1/(1-.35) = 495.8% DPS

Even if Indigo and Golden dealt the same expected average damage, Indigo would still be better. Golden needs a damage boost to make up for its higher potential for overkill.

At this point I think they've just decided to ignore Hungering Arrow's balance and leave it for later.

[shadowgoat]

Rapid Fire "Withering Fire": Reduces the hatred cost of the INITIAL or first shot, which I don't find to be too useful a rune to pick when there are damage modifier runes to pick from.

I think Withering Fire is probably #1 or #2 out of all the rapid fire runes. Its expensive to initiate Rapid fire... If you stop for any reason, like moving 2 steps away from an opponent, you have to spend an extra 30 hatred.

Web shot or fire support are also nice.

I am thinking from a PvP perspective btw.

2: companion all of the creatures, since they donīt do weapon dmg, and the only useful ones, would be the ferret for MF and the spider for snaring your enemies. However, they could certainly be improved, if they did weapon dmg, and the wolf did i.e. adtional poison dmg since itīs summoning time is very limited.

I'd also have to say Bat Companion will be effective also. If hatred regen is 5/s, then 2.5 hatred/s from the bat at lvl 4 can pretty useful.

[JumpyMonkey]

I'd also have to say Bat Companion will be effective also. If hatred regen is 5/s, then 2.5 hatred/s from the bat at lvl 4 can pretty useful.

Hatred regen is 4 per second currently in the beta.

[shadowgoat]

Hatred regen is 4 per second currently in the beta.

Thanks for the stat. I've been looking for that number for awhile but could never find it. With less regen the Bat looks even more useful.