So, just how good is Sharpshooter? [Long post, lots of math]der=0><

[mrparanoid]

I like the math in the OP post, but realistic numbers need to take into account more attacks per second. Because the effect lasts a static 1 second, it doesn't maintain effectiveness with rising attacks per second the way it does with rising dps. Hungering arrow hits more than 1 time per attack, aoe moves hit more than 1 time per attack, and some can stack and hit many times per second (nether tentacles). This makes the gains of sharpshooter less significant (probably not in the 15-20% range); however, it should still be good. Even if you just get 3% crit on average with a high crit damage multiplier, it's better than most of the other passives without question. It's obviously better on single target and better for attacks like bola shot than it is for attacks like ball lightning/nether tentacles, but this is all not factoring in the initial damage or kiting. More time not attacking = more crits per attack, and the increase in damage at the start of the fight is significant. Good thread.

Your premise is correct, but I'm not sure I agree with your conclusions.
Indeed, for any attacks that hit more than once, my post isn't accurate, since more chances to crit = more resets for the SS bonus. Trivially, if we hit 1000 times a second for 1 damage, sharpshooter would never go over 3%. In fact, with a base crit chance of 15-20% and NT spam hitting 10 times (say 5 enemies, twice per enemy), sharpshooter is already unlikely to go over 3%. While some AOE attacks, like multishot, hit several targets at once, which slightly changes the math, you could still simply replace your effective speed with eff_speed*number_of_hits and get decently accurate results. It's very easy to see that this make SS far less effective.

What I disagree with is that "it should still be good". How is 3% crit chance better than pretty much any of our other passives? I'd take Tactical Advantage, Cull the Weak, or even lesser-used passives like hot pursuit or custom engineering over 3% crit chance any day of the week. I do agree that the initial damage spike is nice, but that's pretty much the only reason I'm not saying that SS outright sucks.

[althai]

All of the math in this thread pertains to prolonged fights (probably vs. elites). I make no attempt to quantify the usefulness of that initial 100% crit spike. This is all about elite fighting where that advantage is not as large.

To me, this pretty much invalidates your conclusions. All the math assumes you are standing still and constantly shooting. Simply put, for a demon hunter, this sort of fight does not actually exist. As a demon hunter, either you are fighting groups which you can kill quickly with the initial crit burst from sharpshooter, and then finding another such group, and killing it as well (the sort of situation when sharpshooter works best), or you are fighting groups/single monsters that you have to kite, in which case sharpshooter has some time to tick up between attacks/bursts of attacking. Either way, the benefit provided by sharpshooter will be significantly higher than the scenario you assume (standing still and constantly attacking and resetting sharpshooter).

[mrparanoid]

To me, this pretty much invalidates your conclusions. All the math assumes you are standing still and constantly shooting. Simply put, for a demon hunter, this sort of fight does not actually exist. As a demon hunter, either you are fighting groups which you can kill quickly with the initial crit burst from sharpshooter, and then finding another such group, and killing it as well (the sort of situation when sharpshooter works best), or you are fighting groups/single monsters that you have to kite, in which case sharpshooter has some time to tick up between attacks/bursts of attacking. Either way, the benefit provided by sharpshooter will be significantly higher than the scenario you assume (standing still and constantly attacking and resetting sharpshooter).

Not really. While you're correct that in a real situation you're not just standing still and shooting, you're also not just hitting once every time. I don't think fighting whites even enters into this, because you can kill whites even with 20k dps. No one optimizes their build to kill whites, it's all about the elites. And I don't know about you, but when I kite elites I'm still shooting most of the time. It's step-step-shoot-step-step-shoot-step-step-shoot, and each shot usually hits more than once. Obviously the math isn't entirely accurate in that situation, but you can still get a good idea of how the numbers look, and they don't look good for sharpshooter.

Just fight a few mob packs with and without sharpshooter, and try to get a feel of how many crits you're doing and how quickly you're killing things. If there's no noticeable difference either way, then I guess it doesn't even matter which one you choose. I personally feel that other passives win out over sharpshooter in most situations, but that said - I still use it myself sometimes, when I just want to see big spikes or when I know I'm going to fight in an area with lots of enemies close together, but in distinct groups (a good example is the battlements).

[buralien]

Not really. While you're correct that in a real situation you're not just standing still and shooting, you're also not just hitting once every time. I don't think fighting whites even enters into this, because you can kill whites even with 20k dps. No one optimizes their build to kill whites, it's all about the elites. And I don't know about you, but when I kite elites I'm still shooting most of the time. It's step-step-shoot-step-step-shoot-step-step-shoot, and each shot usually hits more than once. Obviously the math isn't entirely accurate in that situation, but you can still get a good idea of how the numbers look, and they don't look good for sharpshooter.

Do you agree that you can actually itemize your char for SS? Avoid +Crit Chance, don't pursue IAS (just be able to pull off 2 shots in 1 sec, easy), instead stack +Crit Dmg and use skills like Multishot that can hit large AoE instantly instead of skills that hit several times (Ball Lightning, Nether, Hungering Arrow). Archery/Crossbow is a cool synergy (+Crit Damage and slow firing speed).

BTW, anyone with ideas how SS works with Bola? Do the shots keep the +Crit% bonus even when they explode after 1sec?

[mrparanoid]

I do agree. It's what a lot of DHs have been doing. All those 200k dps DHs you see have been gearing specifically for SS. I just think it's not QUITE as amazing as people make it out to be. It's got good burst, but to pull off any kind of dps that would actually be substantially better than a non-ss build in the long run, you need crazy amounts of cash.

And I don't think that you should avoid crit chance or IAS. This is actually an important point. Both of these stats reduce the relative effectiveness of SS, but they won't reduce your overall dps. What this means is that you should still pursue crit damage, dex and IAS, probably in that order - because in order to get those insane dps figures for a SS build, you'll still need all 3 on basically every single item.

And sorry, I don't know the answer to your bola question.

[buralien]

One more point that I found regarding SS is that you can adapt your playstyle to it in order to use the benefit of large bursts even more.

Due to the 1 second interval after a crit lands, it is better to land the crit with 80% crit chance then with 30% crit chance, because your next shot (or 2) will use that value as well. With SS, this is possible by intentionally kiting a bit before every burst. Use Caltrops and Vault/Smoke (which you probably have anyway) to avoid the monsters for 10-20s, which builds your Crit chance into the 50%+ range, then apply burst damage with Evasive Fire/Multishot on the whole pack, scoring many crits. Most builds will not clear that champion pack with additional mobs in couple of seconds anyway, so the kiting will be there. You just "overdo" it in order to score easily double the damage couple of seconds later, and you can still use stuff like Caltrops/Sentry that will damage the pack (with a bonus from SS) without resetting your SS crit bonus. By focusing on survival, you shouldn't die and what you lost in DPS can be quite easily compensated by SS (and a bit of time). Of course as your gear improves, you will probably find faster ways to put those champs down, but for people like me, who don't like the AH and are poor anyway, it feels like a good alternative.

[calinduca]

Great work, but kinda got lost in the details close to the end.
Any chance you can quickly put this in an excel/google docs?

[kynshny]

Great work, good read. Thanks for doing all this!

I've been trying this out with my level 56 DH, using BL and Frost arrow, a slow crossbow with archery passive. I have around 195% crit damage, and my crit chance is around 11%, so I think I'm in your "slow shot, high crit damage" category.

One of the things I noticed was that my first BL that goes through the pack does crits for every hit it gives. I'm not sure if that's working as intended, but that first BL gives me yellows all the way through. The second one does, for a while, then stops. The same thing with my Frost arrow; the first hit is crit for sure, then the splits also end up critting. Can someone confirm that this is the way that it's supposed to be?

If that first multi-hit attack is guaranteed to crit for every hit it does, then this might open up your calculations to way too many variables, like, how many monsters does that first attack hits.

I'm going to have to agree with some of the previous posters; in hell, there's just no way I can take on elite packs constantly attacking. There are times where I'm running and dropping multiple caltrops before I can get to a safe enough distance to maybe do 2 BLs, especially against mortars.

[Yggdrasil]

One more point that I found regarding SS is that you can adapt your playstyle to it in order to use the benefit of large bursts even more.

Due to the 1 second interval after a crit lands, it is better to land the crit with 80% crit chance then with 30% crit chance, because your next shot (or 2) will use that value as well. With SS, this is possible by intentionally kiting a bit before every burst. Use Caltrops and Vault/Smoke (which you probably have anyway) to avoid the monsters for 10-20s, which builds your Crit chance into the 50%+ range, then apply burst damage with Evasive Fire/Multishot on the whole pack, scoring many crits. Most builds will not clear that champion pack with additional mobs in couple of seconds anyway, so the kiting will be there. You just "overdo" it in order to score easily double the damage couple of seconds later, and you can still use stuff like Caltrops/Sentry that will damage the pack (with a bonus from SS) without resetting your SS crit bonus. By focusing on survival, you shouldn't die and what you lost in DPS can be quite easily compensated by SS (and a bit of time). Of course as your gear improves, you will probably find faster ways to put those champs down, but for people like me, who don't like the AH and are poor anyway, it feels like a good alternative.

I am not playing that way at all (my passives are Archery, Steady aim and The one that increase speed after using vault, shadow screen or backflip from Evasive fire), but I find this idea of kiting longer a good one. My advice would be to try coupling SS with the passive Which generates disc when landing crits : During your burst ohase, with high crit chance sue to SS, you generate lots or disc, wich you use right after it during your kiting of 10-20 seconds in traps, Smoke screen and Vaults.

[calinduca]

Great work, good read. Thanks for doing all this!

One of the things I noticed was that my first BL that goes through the pack does crits for every hit it gives. I'm not sure if that's working as intended, but that first BL gives me yellows all the way through. The second one does, for a while, then stops. The same thing with my Frost arrow; the first hit is crit for sure, then the splits also end up critting. Can someone confirm that this is the way that it's supposed to be?

If that first multi-hit attack is guaranteed to crit for every hit it does, then this might open up your calculations to way too many variables, like, how many monsters does that first attack hits.

For AOE damage, each individual attack has his own chance to crit. That explains who one crits and one doesnt.
Sharopshooter bonus resets to your base crit chance 1 second later. So once you hit 100% chance, all your AOE attacks crit, for 1 second.