2.7.0 Demon Hunter Set Balance

General Discussion
1

Hello,

This is an update to the original 2.6.9 Balance Proposal. This post is guidance for balance patch 2.7.0, it offers new recommendations to compliment GoD6, Impale and other upgrades delivered in 2.6.9.

Community members, as always – please share your feedback below.

Overview
The first objective is to make Demon Hunter rocket builds an attractive choice for S22. We realize other classes need attention too, so we’ve kept our wish list concise.

Top Performing / Functional Skills

  • Hungering Arrow
  • Rapid Fire

Skills Needing Improvement

  • Impale
  • Multishot
  • Cluster Arrow
  • Bolas

Current Builds @ ~5k Paragon Top-End Clears

  • GoD6 Hungering Arrow GR142 @ 5039p
  • LoD Rapid Fire GR132 @ 3847p
  • N6 Rapid Fire GR131 @ 4606p
  • S6 Impale GR131 @ 5623p ← can go 1-2GR higher
  • UE6 Multishot GR128 @ 4799p
  • M6 Cluster Bombs GR128 @5009p
  • N6M4 Cluster Arrow GR125 @ 6033p ← can go higher with less paragon
  • GoD6 Bolas GR125 @ 4880p ← can go 3GRs higher

Target GR for these same clears is GR137

  • GoD6 Hungering Arrow 0
  • LoD Rapid Fire +5
  • N6 Rapid Fire +2 (+3 CoE adjustment for high paragon players)
  • S6 Impale +5
  • UE6 Multishot +9
  • M6 Cluster Bombs +9
  • N6M4 Cluster Arrow +9 (adjusted for balance)
  • GoD6 Bolas +9 (adjusted for balance)

Expect 4-6 additional GRs for 10k+ paragon players. These clears typically require 500+ keys.

Set Balance Challenges
Hungering Arrow:Devouring Arrow is the top performing skill on the following sets UE6, M6, N6GoD4. GoD6 HA is 4 GRs stronger than the above set options.

We cannot buff UE6 or M6 by +9 GRs so we recommend careful tweaking of set bonuses combined with an item changes.

The Solutions

Set Upgrades

Unhallowed Essence
(6) Set:
Your generators, Multishot, and Vengeance deal 350% 650% increased damage for every point of Discipline you have.

Embodiment of the Marauder
(6) Set:
Your primary skills, Elemental Arrow, Chakram, Impale, Multishot, Cluster Arrow, Companions, and Vengeance deal 12,000% 20,000% increased damage for every active Sentry.

The Shadow’s Mantle
(2) Set:
While equipped with a melee weapon, your damage is increased by 6000% 12,000%.

Defensive Legendary Upgrades

Zoey’s Secret
You take 9.0% less damage and deal 9.0% more damage for every Companion you have active.

Rockets

Blackfeather
Dodging or getting hit by a ranged attack automatically shoots a homing rocket back at the attacker for 800% weapon damage as Physical. Increases rocket damage by 600%. Reduces damage from ranged attacks by 30%.

Cluster Arrow

Manticore
Reduces the Hatred cost of Cluster Arrow by 50% and increases its damage by 300% 650%.

Rapid Fire

Wojhanni Assaulter
Rapid Fire increasingly deals multiplicative 100% increased damage while channeling. Stacks up to 30 times.

Bolas

Leonine Bow of Hashir
Bolas have a 100% chance on explosion to pull in all enemies within 24 yards, and also deals 150% 900% increased damage.

Estimated Power Gain

Build Current High Power Gain GR Gain Estimated High
UE6 MS (Fire) 127 5.56 10 137
M6 MS (Fire) 125 8.12 13 138
M6 CA (Bombs) 128 5.07 10 138
M6 CA (Cold) 120 14.00 16 136
M6 H. Arrow 136 2.71 6 142
N6M4 CA (Cold) 127 6.59 12 139
N6 Rapid Fire 132 1.45 2 134
LoD Rapid Fire 131 1.45 2 133
S6 Impale 133 2.00 4 137
UE6 H. Arrow (cold) 136 1.85 3 139
UE6 Bolas (volatile) 120 7.42 12 132
GoD6 H. Arrow 142 0 0 142
GoD6 Bolas 127 4.00 8 135

Other Notes
We did not balance against Hungering Arrow, instead we picked a conservative GR tier of 137-138 @ 5k paragon. Please adjust the recommendations as you see fit.

Improvements to Chakram and Elemental Arrow were removed because they either require gigantic modifiers, or custom mechanics to become viable/engaging.

We like Blackfeather as the item to boost all forms of Rocket damage. It fits into the Armor cube slot on every build. Low paragon players will ensure Blackfeather by substituting Visage of Gunes/Cloak of the Garwulf with defensive jewelry items like Elusive Ring or Unity.

21 Likes
2

DMKT w the easy slam dunk as usual. I’ve sat this season out but hope someone cares enough to fix some of these for those of you still enjoying the game.

3

Wojahnni Assaulter should do 100^30 damage? Um, that’s a lot of zeros. 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000% damage seems excessive. Adjusting the percentage on the quiver would be much easier.

4

Right now the 30 Wojhanni stacks yields 3000% additive damage, in the DIBS category.

We want this 3000% damage chunk as a separate, multiplicative bonus, so there is incentive to roll our gear with 15% Rapid Fire damage affixes. Furthermore, we want the incentive to take this build into groups, so that Rapid Fire actually benefits from other additive buffs like: Entangling Shot (Odyssey End), Falter, Strongarms, etc.

2 Likes
5

Love the list I think the only comment I would make is basing the GRs on 5k paragon. I hear this everywhere including blizzard and honest I think it’s a bad measuring stick for season.

Who actually hits 5k in a season beside really really hard core players or bots. Blizzard need to fix it so for seasons at 5k paragon = ~145 GR and non season needs the mobs buffed to have (as an example only) 20% addition health or what ever so 5k paragon equals 130s

1 Like
6

It’s not for Season. It’s balancing around NS (I believe) as the seasonal themes can severely skew clears by all paragons.

1 Like
7

Lmao no, multiplicative damage stacks still add themselves together, and “multiply” your base damage afterwards.

Great thread, though why list only these skills as needing improvement?

Since you also mentioned changes to supporting Legendaries, I might as well add some builds that’ve been neglected for 10+ seasons (chief among them Elemental Arrow and Fan of Knives) which would benefit from a Legendary update, as well as a buff to their respective sets (UE and Natalya).

Yes it’s nice for DH to actually have a DPS role in groups, but I’d really prefer it not be via the (IMO) unappealing playstyle that is rapid fire. In order for RF to compete with other trash killers it would be buffed for solo as well, making it even more imbalanced there.

EDIT: thematically, I believe that DH should serve as RGK rather than TK in groups, as that fits better their role of “assassin” instead of AoE-damage caster that the intelligence classes are. Hence, I’d welcome another buff to impale.

1 Like
8

I’ve stopped reading after the GR clears, those numbers don’t make any sense, there are rapid fire clears above 140 and not all of them are 10k paragon. The difference between 5k and 6k are not 10 grs. Same for multishot.
As for the other builds, no one is really trying. i’m sure that wudijo can clear 130+ with all them with only 2k paragon and no seasonal buff

9

Somewhere in the 6-7k paragon range, the player can equip CoE instead of Elusive Ring, and then trade defensive passives/skills for offensive ones. Combined with extra dex, this produces bigger clears.

But yeah those are real clears, we had 2 eras of Rapid Fire so not sure how much more gain we’d see in this bracket.

Sometimes, you just have to accept these clears at face value.

2 Likes
10

And as a small side note:

Please change Calamity! :weary:

11

I’d say they should first and foremost focus on getting both impale and UH multishot in the correct spot, from my perspective when running public games, they seem to be fairly popular despite having GoD.

Even before the patch when Rapid fire was king, both impale and multishot were the go to in public games.

I guess speed is more favored.

12

Also, why would it be 2.7.0? If it’s just a balance patch then 2.6.10 would be more likely.

1 Like
13

I would love to see an item that makes all Multishot damage focus on only one target if there is only one available (like when fighting a Rift Guardian).

Or

Make the set and/or items buff another skill also, which can be switched to manually and used when there is only one target.

14

You can, it’s called melee range =P

I don’t like just increasing multiplier, I’m going to throw my suggestion in for Shadows here too -

NEW QUIVER :
Increase the damage of Impale and Chakram by 200-300% on targets over 15 yards away and they have a 25% chance to release Fan of Knives on the first target hit.

For Shadow’s Mantle updates should make it like this:

2pc :
Unchanged but additionally, Chakram, Fan of Knives and Impale all cast twice when used.

4pc :
Unchanged but, additionally, each second that Shadow Power is active, reduce the cooldown of Vengeance by 2.5 seconds, (comes out to 55.55%)

6pc :
Chakram and Impale deal an additional 100,000% weapon damage to the first enemy they hit. Fan of Knives increases the damage of your next attack by 100%.

Shadow Power > Well of Darkness :
Reduce all resource costs by 35%.

For Lord Greenstone’s, it should be dropped to 10 seconds of stacking and large damage increase to compensate, would work great with set.

1 Like
15

You are probably correct. 2.7.0 sounds more substantial, we might never see 2.7, although much has changed since 2.6.0 that you can consider the game different enough.

For marketing: 2.7
For development best practices: 2.6.10

16

Some builds are built to be tanks that accelerate gradually, some are glass cannons that need sustain; they have different weak points and they require varying motor-reflex skills to perform well with them.
Making the numbers equal do not reflect their motor skills, effort requirement or min-maxing phase that they need to go through for optimization.

Just don’t be surprised when development team doesn’t give every build a standard GR performance. Their footing is currently GR138 with 5k plvl but this can be affect by considering many different elements.

It’s a mass area damage spec with crowd control; I believe it ain’t gonna go higher than that due to desynchronized calculations that cause server performance issues on stacked area damage.
Desynchronization can be solved by developers, sure (Rend became high GR viable by a single legendary item) but bola subspec is 100% guaranteed pull/knockback from 24 yards and it’s a generator. Not even Necromancer class has that sustainability for his mass CC LotD, so they have to TP away in the 4man meta.
It’s up to developers but I’m not seeing GoD Bola getting a buff soon; for another Set maybe?

17

I’m curious.

If we’re figuring that the set bonus of UE only has to be nearly doubled, are we supposed to make up the rest with this idea of Blackfeather?

I’m also curious how folks are supposed to work into their builds. Sure, I’m thinking around paragon 4 or 5K, you may not need Gunes or whatnot and so can put it in the cube, maybe. But is this also assuming folks using CC3?

One of the biggest issues with UE is it’s toughness. You can fix that to a certain extent with CC3 and it’s interaction with Yang’s. So even those top top clears with UE use it. So they’re not giving up all toughness for their clears.

So is it supposed to be a choice between CC3 and Gunes, CC3 and Blackfeather, and Straight UE with Blackfeather and Gunes?

While that seems like a lot of options, it really isn’t. In all the examples, you’re still balancing defense and offense but in the latter 2 damage gets increased and we’re left with much less defense than even top top players are used to. I’m thinking.

At least that’s what it looks like to me. Maybe you folks can show me where my thoughts are flawed.

18

For UE6 Multishot, Blackfeather replaces typical Gunes. The F&R build feels similar to Season 20, when everyone stuck CoE in the armor slot in place of Gunes. One may also run it Endless Walk w/ CoE, RoRG w/ CC3 cubed.

The Arsenal rune becomes the top dawg, making those rockets incredibly powerful.

The power gain looks like this:

  • UE6 gains 1.85x
  • Blackfeather makes Multishot 3x stronger when spraying 10 targets.

In the 10 target scenario, this nets a 5.56x power gain, otherwise 10GRs. It changes the dynamic of the build too, while it is great to fight hoards of trash, single target combat really shines because of the potency of those rockets, imagine these rockets striking targets for 125-200T.

The Single Out passive becomes more attractive in solo speeds, as the single target damage rivals what Impale is today – but with the proposed 5GR buff to S2, Impale will remain the RGK king by a factor of 2. There is also the potential to not push mid 130s with Stricken – which I think is most interesting.

As far as defense – it is glassy, lower paragon players have these options:

  1. Run the Endless Walk version and enjoy CC3 defense and RCR benefits
  2. Run F&R w/ Elusive
  3. Use Esoteric Alteration instead of Trapped or Zeis and even Stricken.
  4. Run Boar, Numbing Traps and/or other defensive passives.
2 Likes
19

Besides the set buff, I think Multishot is a good skill to get all runes. It can free up a passive slot (Thrill of the Hunt becomes redundant), make resource management easier, and boost its damage by a decent amount.

3 Likes
20

I’d like to see them boost Chakrams - the damage stack on ‘Sword of ill Will’ (Chakram deals 3% increased damage for every point of Hatred you have)and add additional damage to the ‘Spines of Seething Hatred’ quiver (Does 250-300% damage).

3 Likes