1.04 Trail of Cinders Build

[Kalixian]

Been messing around with a build centered around trail of cinders since last night. Basically, it's ****ing awesome.

The basic goal of the build is to use vault/trail of cinders to kill things, and to generate a ton of disc so that we can vault more.

SKILLS

Vault/Trail of Cinders

This is mandatory, and is our main damage dealer. It does absolutely absurd damage. But since it's very resource intensive, and monsters don't always stay in the cinders (thus requiring additional vaults), the rest of the build is designed around generating disc so that we can vault more.

Multishot/Suppression Fire

Also mandatory. Suppression fire gives 1 disc for every mob hit by the multishot. Multishot is used primarily to generate disc, NOT deal damage, so it's useful to think of it that way. Think of your hatred as extra disc waiting to be converted with multishot. A couple mobs clumped together? Blow your hatred with multishot = full disc bulb. The extra damage is nice and multishot is useful for blowing up trash mobs (especially little fast ones), but in elite fights it's used only to generate disc.

Preparation/Invigoration

Also mandatory. Again, disc disc disc. I've been using invigoration, but battle scars or backup plan (or even focused mind?) will work.

Shadow Power: Gloom

Not mandatory, but I certainly wouldn't want to play without it. The LoH returns from cinders are pretty weak, but with gloom up the life leach is great.

Entangling Arrow: Shock Collar

This is pretty good in 1.04. Solid damage, solid LoH, and allows us to control the mobs better which - depending on the mob type - synergizes really well with trail of cinders. More on that later.

Rain of Vengeance: Flying Strike

Free spot. To be honest, I'm not really sure what to put here. RoV is fun. Hungering arrow would be nice for single mobs, especially goblins, which are a pain to kill with this build. Bats would be more hatred, so more multishot, so more disc. Open to suggestions here.

Passives: Archery, Nighstalker/Perfectionist, Vengeance

Vengeance works really well with this build, especially if you have some pickup radius; you'll get globes frequently as you vault around. Plus it fills up your globes between fights. Plus the extra hatred means an extra multishot.

HOW IT WORKS

There's basically two different methods depending on the type of mobs we're fighting.

For anything that is willing to chase us in a straight line, let it get close and then vault away and let it chase, running through the cinders and taking massive damage. Use shock collar between vaults to slow the mobs down so they take longer to go through the cinders. Anything that's willing to chase through the cinders is going to be trivially easy to kill.

Mobs that run away are trickier, and basically involve vaulting through them to lay the cinders right under them. We vault around, lay fire everywhere, and then line the mobs up for multishot to refill the disc, then vault more. Gloom if things get hairy (using gloom and then vaulting through mobs will give massive life leach), prep if empty on disc and and hatred.

Another strategy is to simply stay at long range from the mobs and snipe them with multishot and shock collar. This is not efficient, but effective against certain types of ranged mobs if you can just dodge their projectiles.

STATS

A good mix of offensive and defensive stats is optimal. Since we'll be vaulting in and around the mobs, we will be taking hits. This is NOT a tank build, the LoH is far too low for that, but it's not a glass-cannon kiting build either. A good amount of LoH (at least 800, preferably well over 1000) is needed. Trail of cinders doesn't appear to crit, and I don't know whether it incorporates crit and/or IAS into its damage, so further testing is needed there.

ETA: Extra disc is really useful. I would suggest dual wielding crossbows, both with life on hit, and at least one with extra disc. The damage from cinders is huge, so trading some raw bow damage for extra disc is well worth it.

And that's the build.

[Kalixian]

I currently have 32k DPS, 34k HP, 446 AR (580 Phys), 940 LoH. I'm mowing stuff down in act 2, I'd say it's even easier than with the gas grenades tank build I was using in 1.03 and my gear is all the same. Going to try act 3 tonight.

[Greizer]

I say let's call this the 'Afterburner' build; 'Tumblr' would be nicer (reflects the speed and method of movement), but as we use ToC it's best to avoid confusion.

Granted that I'm only in Nm with my DH, but I see no reason why you couldn't use Smoke Screen instead of / in addition to Gloom in Inferno if you've got poor gear - for rolling through the mobs I mean. Should work in Act I at least. You'll run through your Disc pretty fast, but just run some more and shoot a few Multishot volleys and it will be back up soon enough.

Also, Tactical Advantage is a pretty nice passive for the build if you've got fast mobs chasing you.

[Karth]

Awesome, I'll have to give it a shot when I have resources free to play with. My DH's been languishing.

[Death_StrikeR]

I also thought of this build yesterday after someone suggesting that cinder from vault melts champs, so i changed my action shot rune to it.
And im using action shot since I played a DH since there's no other rune in Vault that interests me.

I think its better and easier to use a caltrops then vault away. It would cost more disc but more efficient in slowing multiple chasing enemies = longer exposure to cinder than use ES.
Tactical advantage is awesome too in conjunction with this setup, it gives you huge space between the enemy you're burning, at the same time give you alot of time to fire/spam all your skills, like MS for disc regen, and your main Hatred generator.

I having fun using Evasive fire with this build as secondary damager and hatred replenisher, backflipping & the movement speed bonus from TA gives a lot more control to your mobility and positioning.
I occasionally deliberately trigger the backflipping effect of the evasive fire to use the speed bonus since its cheaper disc than vault.

IMO, a very fast weapon and gear are needed for this build to work, you need to fire fast enough to generate hatred = more MS = more disc = more cinder-vaulting = more damage.

I currently have around 2.5 aspd using an almost 1kdps rare hand xbow(just 65% crit damage+10 attackspeed) + self-found dead mans legacy quiver and +attack speed accesories.

I really love acrobatic/speedy build!
And this build will rock those type of gamers.

But i dont know if this will work in higher difficulties, and i agree the you need some damage reducer skills like gloom and high resists to jump right on the pack.
But be careful tho, you should really have a "back up plan" like having enough disc to run away from the fray if it went really bad.
That's why i have the EF for cheaper disc backflipping if it went sour.

EDIT: To add aesthetic and signature to the build... you could use the legendary boots Fire Walkers to add firy-ness to it XD Im using it and its cool! I mean hot! XD~

[Kalixian]

I see no reason why you couldn't use Smoke Screen instead of / in addition to Gloom in Inferno if you've got poor gear - for rolling through the mobs I mean. Should work in Act I at least. You'll run through your Disc pretty fast, but just run some more and shoot a few Multishot volleys and it will be back up soon enough.

Gloom is really a lot better than smokescreen. Double the duration + huge life leach. The only advantage of smokescreen is to get out of jail/frozen/nightmare, and that's not enough to justify having it, because in every other situation you'd rather gloom.

[Kalixian]

I think its better and easier to use a caltrops then vault away. It would cost more disc but more efficient in slowing multiple chasing enemies = longer exposure to cinder than use ES.

The stun caltrops could be quite effective with this build. Stun them and then roll through with cinders.

Tactical advantage is awesome too in conjunction with this setup, it gives you huge space between the enemy you're burning, at the same time give you alot of time to fire/spam all your skills, like MS for disc regen, and your main Hatred generator.

I'll try this.

[Vanadin]

Just a few thoughts:

(1) If the insane damage from TOC is an "apology" for taking LOH off Jagged Spikes, I think I'll accept it.

(2) I just played in a DH party in Act I. Champion packs that normally would take 2 min to kill were dying in short order. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if this gets nerfed soon, but in the interim, I'll gladly take it.

Rain of Vengeance: Flying Strike

Free spot. To be honest, I'm not really sure what to put here. RoV is fun. Hungering arrow would be nice for single mobs, especially goblins, which are a pain to kill with this build. Bats would be more hatred, so more multishot, so more disc. Open to suggestions here.

Seriously? What I've seen is that goblin + one TOC = tasty BBQed goblin + treasure

[Kalixian]

If you can get the goblin stuck in a corner, sure, it's toasted. But when it's running around it's hard to get cinders on it.

There's currently an issue with sharpshooter and this build. Cinders gets its damage from your DPS (including crit/IAS) but cannot actually crit. So if you use sharpshooter and get 100% crit, that is your effective DPS with cinders until you use a different skill to actually crit and reset sharpshooter. So you can lay down a bunch of super high DPS cinders, then blast away with a few 100% crit nightstalker multishots (instant full disc) and go back to cinders. It's laughably broken, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's why the servers are currently down.

[Virility]

So we abuse an escape skill as a primary dps skill, and to think I thought using grenades was "exotic".