Melee DHs - no more?

[Nachee]

The "new procs on the legendaries" excuse is lame. They just wanted wizards and DH to stop going melee.

Build diversity my ***.

[thefranklin]

I agree (if it does in fact mean no more loh) that they are done for. They didnt just nerf us once, they nerfed us on all three fronts! And the Caltrops nerf is so heavy that you cannot just stand by monsters anymore, therefore you won't ever use jagged spikes anymore. So JS will get filed next to Nether Tentacles along with Shuriken Cloud and Gas Grenades joining the "never to be used again" list.

But Whirlwind needed to do more damage; we can't have barbs running around basically invulnerable. They need to be whirling around basically invulnerable! The tornado loh was about 1/2 to 1/3 effective as caltrops, but you had the ability to be far away from the monster while this is taking place! People weren't whirling and just running becasue they can buy a cheap 2nd weapon that does not factor into the tornado damage clalc (unlike caltrops, the second bow couldn't be 300 dps...)

The DH class in general really got a huge nerf comparatively to other classes that can use a 2h weapon effectively. My barb is poorly geared, doing fine in act 3 and never used overpower. The only difficult fights involved arcane, shielding, and invulnerable minions. Oh make it easier will you?

[PandadudeSP]

Honestly caltrops proccing fear from nats gaze made me hands down the most annoyed ever playing d3. Anyways I didnt run jagged spikes before getting full nats and I was still able to tank in a2 with pretty average gear (like 500 AR, 5k armor, 20k dps). I did use shuriken cloud but no poison grenade and Im certain I healed way more from shadow power than from LoH off abilities. Now with another nerf to elites and the most dangerous monster types I still think itll be possible to tank most elite packs in melee (evading elemental effects). Think Ill run a build like this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...Vkl!Ved!ccYYbb possibly switching sentry + brooding for smoke screen + tactical advantage.

Edit: Ill also note that there are still a few abilities left with decent LoH coefficients. Shock collar has 160 per target. Smoke screen - Choking gas has 50 per target for 5 ticks. Sentry - Chain of Torment has 75 per target per tic. The damage of these 3 abilities have been increased dramatically aswell.

[thefranklin]

Confirmed. Zero loh.

[WhiteGiant]

brooding is a terrible terrible passive even now. i dare say that even with 3% it would be hard pressed to compete with Life reg gear LOH and mitigation that could be offered by numbing traps.

[Kalixian]

Just did my first farm run in Act 1 and 2, and I'm pleased to say this build is still very viable.

My gear is good but nothing spectacular. 31k DPS, 445 AR (580 Phys), 3367 Armor, 33.5k HP, 940 LoH. DPS is high for the build, but my AR, life and LoH are all low.

I kept shuriken cloud, it still gives a little LoH and DPS, and the extra LoH definitely helps in a crowd. Plus I don't really know what to replace it with (I was thinking sentry but it costs 10 disc, screw that).

I switched fan of knives for preparation/invigoration, which increases max disc by 10 for 5 seconds. My thinking on this rune is that as long as I use gloom within those five seconds (which is likely if I'm burning my disc to begin with), then it makes the gloom essentially cost just 4 disc. The other prep runes aren't really that attractive.

I switched nighstalker (which is now useless even with my 43% crit) for vengeance, which is an underrated passive IMO. Really helps with disc regen between packs, and since I have some extra pickup radius (something everyone should have IMO) I can frequently snag globes during fights.

I kept jagged spikes and numbing traps.

Act 1 is still trivially easy.

Act 2 is still very farmable. I used gloom preemptively against ranged packs to close the distance and get caltrops down to proc numbing traps before grenade spamming. I have to use gloom more than before (and use it earlier as my globe starts to drop) but I wasn't having any trouble running out of disc with prep to back me up.

Just don't spam jagged spikes anymore. Put down one to proc numbing traps and preserve the rest of the disc.

[Dethklok]

Just did my first farm run in Act 1 and 2, and I'm pleased to say this build is still very viable.

My gear is good but nothing spectacular. 31k DPS, 445 AR (580 Phys), 3367 Armor, 33.5k HP, 940 LoH. DPS is high for the build, but my AR, life and LoH are all low.

I kept shuriken cloud, it still gives a little LoH and DPS, and the extra LoH definitely helps in a crowd. Plus I don't really know what to replace it with (I was thinking sentry but it costs 10 disc, screw that).

I switched fan of knives for preparation/invigoration, which increases max disc by 10 for 5 seconds. My thinking on this rune is that as long as I use gloom within those five seconds (which is likely if I'm burning my disc to begin with), then it makes the gloom essentially cost just 4 disc. The other prep runes aren't really that attractive.

I switched nighstalker (which is now useless even with my 43% crit) for vengeance, which is an underrated passive IMO. Really helps with disc regen between packs, and since I have some extra pickup radius (something everyone should have IMO) I can frequently snag globes during fights.

I kept jagged spikes and numbing traps.

Act 1 is still trivially easy.

Act 2 is still very farmable. I used gloom preemptively against ranged packs to close the distance and get caltrops down to proc numbing traps before grenade spamming. I have to use gloom more than before (and use it earlier as my globe starts to drop) but I wasn't having any trouble running out of disc with prep to back me up.

Just don't spam jagged spikes anymore. Put down one to proc numbing traps and preserve the rest of the disc.

Well of course Act 1 it's still gonna work, but I am calling your bluff on Act 2... I had difficulty against Act 2 elites (not whites) with very similar gear stats (except more like 16k damage) in 1.03, so saying it works now is... dubious.

[Virility]

Just don't spam jagged spikes anymore. Put down one to proc numbing traps and preserve the rest of the disc.

This is what has helped me. I am trying to be more "disciplined at using my discipline".

Maybe this last comment is off topic but, I believe the idea that skill combinations that could make up for gear quality will no longer happen.

[speedloader]

So much for build diversity. What the hell is their motivation for this one?

I suspect this is related to all the procs on the new legendary items, like they said to wizards when they cut Wicked Wind proc coefficients in half. I'm starting to wonder if the procs on these legendary items are going to be worth all of this.

Nope, considering LoH and stun/freeze procs, I tried buriza+amethyst, and hollow whispers, hollow doesn't proc, buriza doesn't help (so neither will azurewrath), eventually considering sky splitter+LoH+amethyst ... but I don't think it justifies the nerf.


Here are my assumptions

- Gloom helps selling nata 1.0.3 at obscene prices on the RMAH

- They'll do everything to keep dps hunters farming

- Wyatt Cheng needs a brain

Meanwhile, Jay's 100Kdps/1M EHP Barb permastuns act 4 elites with azure/sky and procs LoH like crazy.