Yeah, as long as you're very close to him. Here's an example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrptCVU7OSE ; not optimal but still working ..Originally Posted by Kinmaul
This hasn't been mentioned yet: I think a lot of this weakness can be shored up with gear, specifically the "% chance to CC" mods.
If they are stunned, frozen, or immobilized, they are not running away; at that point, you can set up on them by dropping Caltrops (spacing them out to cover different avenues of escape if possible), closing the perma-"stun" trap. Sacrificing a skill slot may be a good idea to better initiate the stunluck, er, stunlock, but with great gear you probably wouldn't need it.
Stun and frozen up your melee survivability anyway, especially by distracting elites from using deadly abilities like arcane sentry or descecrator (they'll probably still get a few off, but you won't have to deal with seas of them anymore). Immobilize doesn't do those things, but it's noticeably cheaper to get.
If you can't get those bastards to sit still, you're probably going to have to kite them somehow, like a "normal" DH, which is likely not what you are built for... but you can still splash it in. Getting your damage up is pretty important if you go this route, and you'll have to sacrifice a skill slot (although OP already recommends using Impale, which isn't really necessary if you have excellent CC procs). Upping your damage is nice for farming anyway.
I don't believe the cold slow stacks with caltrops slow, although I could be wrong. However, it does proc off of chakram if you are that close and not dropping caltrops yet for some reason, and it works with stuff like Impale to make it easier to catch them, kite them, or actually land some grenades on them.
So really it's a gear thing. Either 1) up your CC proc rate or 2) up your damage. Your call, although I'd go with #1 for HC and #2 for SC.
Had more of a play around with the tanking build over the weekend. I'm on the late part of A3 inferno now, and I'm struggling. The problem is, everything does so much damage now that it's difficult to simply tank through things. E.g. I have 47xx armour and 650+ all res, 37K life, but I still get 1 shotted a lot by mobs doing 45K+ damage per hit. You just can't tank something that 1 shots you...
So I decided to try with a build that I haven't used since normal... the cookie cutter devouring arrow + ball lightning build, with tumble, torturous ground, battle scars and bat companion. With that I managed to rack up 5NV without much of a sweat and continued to farm elites all night long, having to only skip 2 packs (extra health + vampiric + reflect damage etc...)
I think the tanking build works well up to A2, but after that you're going to have to need some serious gear in order to tank the 40-50K damage per shot mobs in the later acts. But it's probably much safer (and cheaper) if you just avoid getting hit in the first place.
Indeed this is quite an issue if you dont focus all out on the defensive part of things and close to max out on resistance/armor. As I said before I came to pretty much the same exakt figures you're at now before just focusing on health instead. Getting gear upgrades at that point just took way too long for me. You could always get some cheap rings with vita/all ress just to progress and forget about your damage. Its doable to farm with 50k+ damage in a3 at a reasonable pace but I really think you get a lot more out of stacking mf and go for really fast a2 runs instead.
Then again, Blizz just recently said they would even further reduce the one-hits, like those 2h skeletons, in a3 so I think it will be even better and a lot smoother after the patch since the only real worry you've got is those one-shots.
Arthwyr: I beat the game with 6k armor with shield, 650 all resist, 42k hp and 12k dps 1.8k loh. I do have an excess of loh (1200 on wep, 600 ammy), but my other stats are similar. Are you trying to not use a shield? You do have to have major gear to pull that off. I don't think 800 extra loh is worth the 1k armor and 70 res all a shield will give you at low gear levels.
What is your build? I switch mine around a lot, but currently I am using Mark for Death: Mortal Enemy for hatred regeneration, then slamming Cluster Arrow: Loaded for Bear and Spike Traps: Scatter. It kills unbelievably fast (especially if you corner tank with spike traps).
I didn't have much problem with late act 3 and act 4, but you can't facetank arcane at all, and some melee mobs you need to stay away from, specifically the malachors (fat guys with two maces) and mallet lords (big robot looking things that flip their legs on you). In Act 4 the little grenade guys (subjugators) are a nightmare, but not much else in act 4 is worse than act 3.
I think the key for the tank build to work is enough Vit/defenses to not get 1 shotted. To achieve that I would have had to change a lot of my gear, which I can't really afford to do.
I switched to the classic kiting build now and I've made my way to act 4 relatively easily. However, I've hit a brick wall with Rakanoth. This guy is almost impossible to kill! One mistake and you're toast!
Hi.
First, i would like to thank people here, on this forum, for sharing an idea of this build. I have a lot of fun with it.
Recently i finished the game and now want to share my experience.
I rarely die, and if i do, it is usually due to my mistake or due to unlucky occasions like then my DH is vortexed right into a middle of arcane trap and die faster then i can hit SP.
After some experiments my latest variant of tank DH looks like this: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...hlg!XeU!ccbcaY
There are two main ideas behind this build - get as much LoH and CC (freeze/stun) chances as possible and trigger them as much as possible. In other words this build is about doing maximum hits per second.
All passives are really essential. You will want to spam caltrops and you will want them to last longer then you are frozen / jailed / running away from arcane beams or desecrators. So, Night Stalker,Archery and Custom Engineering helps you to get discipline and to use it with maximum effect.
Why Spike traps as hatred spender? I find that other spenders take too much time to use and interrupt grenade spamming for too long. Scatter traps are perfect from this point of view. They make tons of damage, and you only need to use it every 2-5 seconds (depends on your connection and tactical situation).
So, how do i maximize number of hits? Spam grenades with right mouse button. You dont need to aim with RMB, and you can simply move cursor from one monster to another without releasing rmb until monster die. Spam caltrops at the same time and renew/reposition spike traps then needed. If you are fighting a hard fight (elites/ranged/big crowd) add a Rain of Vengeance for additional 12 seconds of critical hits/LoH/Stun/freeze.
If you health golbe goes down too fast, or you unsure if you can survive new elite pack, hit Shadow Power button and you have 3 second to look around and change strategy/run away.
Shuriken Cloud only need to be updated once every 2 minutes, so i put on most uncomfortable button for me - Shift+LMB.
Getting into rhythm of spamming caltrops/spike traps can take some time, but after this thing are running smoothly.
Equipment remarks.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/e.../hero/15515145
I have 933 LoH atm, and it allows me to stand in a void zone if i have 3-4 monsters hit by a caltrops.
You need a lot of effective HP. No tank, if you die from 1 hit. There is a good criteria if you have enough life - you should survive act3 1 hit killers - such as suicide bombers in Baston and hits from golgars. Ideally you should survive two hits from them. Act 4 mallet lords might still oneshot you, but they are very easy to kite.
I have 700+ AR, 5k+ Armor and 65k+ life.
You need a lot of critical hit chance to get discipline from critical hits with Night Stalker. Around 30% is a minimum, and i like every single percent from my 38%. Almost all skills do criticals and help you with discipline. There is an interesting thing about spike traps btw - looks like they have separate chance to trigger critical for every monster they hit, so explosion of 3 spike traps in a crowd of mobs can really help your discipline pool. Looking at damage numbers, i concluded that caltrops have criticals too, but i'm not sure if they are used for Night Stalker.
I find my 20k dps to be more then enough, because monsters are hit simultaniusly from multiple sources. In a typical elite fight,everything is over before Rain of Vengeance is ready for use again (30 second cooldown). Sure some fight need more time, but i've never seen enrage timers. Azmodan can indeed be facetanked and Diablo is no fight in close range with high stun/freeze.
Getting high stun/freeze chance makes life much easier. Melee monsters are no problem at all.
In a mixed group take out ranged monsters first, using caltrops and melee monsters as a free heal.
Ranged monsters are problem because most of them dont stand in caltrops. There are two possible ways to deal with them - kite them into caltrops/spike traps or simply stand and duel with them spamming gas granades, Rain of Vengeance and spike traps on them. If you cant win this duel, leave some caltrops and kite monsters into them to regen some life and try again.
I hope this wall of text will help to people who want to try this very interesting and fun type of DH. And my apologies for my bad English.
P.S. Rain of Vengeance damage goes up in 1.04!
Last edited by eLoky; 20-08-2012 at 06:30.
This build is going to be even more amazing if the leaked patch notes are true. Gas grenades, chakram (shuriken cloud), jagged spikes, and impale are all getting buffs. [COLOR=#c0c0c0][/COLOR]
Gas Grenades and jagged spikes don't appear to be getting buffs; they just changed the wording from "X% damage per second for Y seconds" to "X*Y% damage over Y seconds."
I'd try to grab 7% more crit chance - 3% on a ring and 4% on a helm - and a shield with higher block chance. You can sacrifice stats for a white shield with 20%+ block chance. Makes a big difference.
Also, I'd replace Custom Engineering with Numbing traps. The 25% damage reduction is large.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...hlg!eVX!ccbcaY
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