A quick guide for optimizing Squirts with Gizzard gem/Fortress Ballista

:laughing:

That seems like a good problem to have!

I’d prefer the attack speed in that situation. The value of attack speed will depend on where you are in relation to breakpoints, but it’s probably going to be worth more than CDR in this situation.

The value of additional CDR purely from a DPS with Crimson’s isn’t all that strong. In your case, if it’s bumping you from about 46% CDR to 51% CDR, that’s only worth about 3.4% DPS (1.51/1.46). It’ll be a bit trickier if you’re running Wolf since the extra CDR will give you a little more uptime, but that’s a smaller effect.

I tend to prefer attack speed here.

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2 Primal yangs? Lol.

If we’re just comparing the bows, the difference between the two is so minute that it won’t effect the outcome of any GR you’re trying to reach, however the AS will be more fun because it feels better so that would be my choice.

Personally I would go with the CDR bow, but only after swapping diamond to topaz in helm and then run wolf instead of boar. The topaz will help me make up some of the DR loss from boar, while providing me with more MS’s and less strain on my disc (more damage) and of course a straight damage boost from wolf.

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The one with Attack Speed I reforged pretty early in my time playing this season but it lacked Discipline so I had to roll that onto it. I attempted to get a more perfect one about 5 days ago and got the second one but it also lacked Discipline.

So in both cases I’m missing the resource cost reduction.

With these two from this season, it brings my total to 5 Primal Yang’s.

Sadly the other three rolled with Discipline but I wasn’t aware that rolling off Dex for another stat would have made them perfect, so I rolled a different stat. At any rate all 5 can now have different stats. Attack Speed, Cooldown Reduction, Resource Reduction, Area Damage, and I’m not sure about the 5th.

God I’m lucky, lol.

So… you weren’t happy with your Primal Yang’s, and you went out and got another one just like that. I … uhhh… Damn.

I have something like 40 souls right now. Not sure of the exact number, but I know it’s under 50, because I burn literally every soul I get reforging. (full disclosure: I’m not reforging Yang’s, but still :stuck_out_tongue: )

But I have found 4 Primal Aquila’s this season, so I guess there’s that?

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Yep. But on the other hand, I’ve spent tons of mats on a Squirts or Flavor of Time trying to get an ancient with the correct stats over the last 2 weeks and have yet to come up with one. So my luck only extends so far. lol

But on another note…

Tier 115 down.
Paragon:1353
Time: 14:45.266
Rank 40 as of this posting.
Toughness after Evasive Fire: 242,288,384
Shield: 319,247
Life: 387,971
Shield Effective Toughness: 199,370,158

Thanks for the suggestion, DiE. That did the trick. You’re frickin’ awesome!

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Have a look at this beauty…
https://eu.diablo3.com/en/profile/Meteorblade-2266/hero/111853392

Reforging is such a b***h. After 200k shards at Kadala I get a perfect Dead’s Man Legacy primal (12 disc, 10% ChC 20% IAS, 1k dex, CDR 10%, 15% Multishot).

Then I say fine let’s try our luck with reforging the helmet, bam 3 reforges Primal. Not perfect, 1k dex, 10k regen, 15% Multishot (enchanted) as I don’t really need the 6% CHC that bad am already at 51.50% CHC with 454% CHD. Still would replace it with an ancient with decent dex, 6% CHC and 15% Multishot if any pops.

Then I say fine let’s try for an ancient 2nd Yang’s in case things go south. 2k FS and almost all my bounty mats gone, not a single ancient! Drove me crazy <.<

Current one is 3181.6 DPS, 1409-1765 poison dmg, 10% DMG, 895 DEX, 10% CDR, 45% RCR, 12 Discipline, 151% MS multiplier - so while plenty of areas for improvement, is not bad by any means.

What I am thinking and asking at you guys is, would it be worth it to craft 2 pc Crimson with an intellect class for more AR (so you would ideally get 130 from 650 int x 2 on pieces, and another 260 AR (130 on each piece), as am really struggling to get my Armor to AR ratio closer.

My armor is 24k+, but Resists are all over the place between 1135-1834 (cold lightning and arcane being lowest just my luck), and I remember that you want closest 10:1 ratio between armor & AR to get most toughness -----> which is very important to me in HC.

Obv running full diamonds in armor (and my current Squirts is int one - shared with my Hydra wiz, no luck getting a decent dex one or trifecta).

Much obliged! <3

That’s really nice, Meteor. Grats!

200k shards for a primal DML. I wish I had that kind of luck.

Expected number of shards for a primal DML (let alone a usable one) is around 1 million.

2188 shards per DML, ~1/450 chance of primal. 2188*450 = 984,600 shards.

Odds of getting a primal DML that actually has correct rolls is even worse.

Yeah, and the good thing about it, if it turned out to be a bad primal (thanksfully it didn’t!) I would have only lost 25 shards and gained 15 FS instead of reforging which eats through your FS and bounties like no tomorrow.

I mean if you think about it, the odds of not only getting a primal (let alone a good primal) but the right type of quiver to be the primal… math explosion (since we have a dozen of quivers).

A question I want to ask…

So, I’m trying to improve my shield. I’ve got primal gloves and primal chest. I was running 11% damage resistance against elites but changed it to Life Regen. On my gloves, I’ve Dex, crit, crit, and rolled cooldown onto it, but if I roll of cooldown for life regen, it’ll improve my shield by 20,000. I’d still have enough cooldown since it’s on the bow to keep Topaz in the helm and have perma vengeance.

I’m debating which is more important, the damage from cooldown or boosting my shield?

What would you do?

Life regen on gloves seems less than optimal? Makes sense to stack it in slots you can’t get RCR, but if you have a large amount of life regen, after a certain point RCR should give a bigger boost to your shield toughness than a flat life regen roll too. You’d have to check the % boost to your life regen.

E.g. with CC, 8% RCR is always an 8.7% toughness boost.

If adding a life regen roll (in a slot where you could have RCR instead) increases your life per second by less than 8.7%, then RCR is better.

If you have more than 115k base life regen, then 8 RCR is worth more shield toughness than 10k additional life regen (1/(1-0.08)) > 125k/115k. You’ll be over 115k regen from a high level Gizzard alone.

So life regen is only worth it in slots where RCR doesn’t roll. Anywhere RCR rolls, RCR gives more shield toughness than regen.

Plus RCR has additional utility on top of straight toughness.

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I was thinking that too. Let me change it up then. Thanks, Tinne.

You don’t need a huge shield like Wizards do, a 300k-ish one will do just fine, what you need as DH is AR. To get most toughness you need 10:1 ratio for armor vs AR (unless this changed in past 2 seasons and I am not aware of it).

You will grow armor naturally by gaining paragons as your main stat is dex which also increases armor for every point you spend, so you need to focus on AR.

For me on HC - I crafted ancient Crimson3pc belt and pants with an int class, aiming for as close to 650 int rolls, high vit, 120+ AR (%15 life on belt ofc), and am also using a Squirts with int roll main stat, chc/chd/socket. This puts me at 2k int base (that’s 200 AR), plus AR on most pieces of gear 120-130, with boar companion (20% more AR) I manage to get close to 2k each resist type with ~24k armor.

Obviously you will aug with Dex unless you’re 6k+ Paragon, then you could go for couple int Augs to catch up on AR to your armor.

Life regen is nice on defensive items (at expense of armor, but not %life if you can get it - at least for me on HC due to bugged Raziel), on offensive items always go for what you need most (you should be at 100% uptime on Vengeance, and more CDR doesn’t do much for your dmg, so go for RCR once you hit the highest MS breakpoint you can w/o gimping your chc/chd).

RCR does two important things for you:

  1. provides toughness through CC3
  2. reduces your hatred and discipline costs - my HC DH is close to 70% RCR, my MS costs a mere 7 hatred, so even with speed pylon and 21 frames BP, I am not dipping under 90% hatred pool using 1 Evasive Fire Hardened every 5s to keep up Wraps of Clarity buff (also your smoke screen if you are using it, or vault will cost almost nothing).

TinneOnnMuin touched on this as well, regarding RCR vs life regen, a leveled gizzard to 100+ is plenty for your shield.

But once more, do not ignore AR. Damage is reduced by armor / resists then what goes through by your DR, so if you have poor AR and the number going through is as high as your HP+shield after DR you will get proc’d, simple as that.

PS: you can get at ~2k para with good affixes, ~96% DR with squirts on (goes to 97.xx% when squirts buff drops, but you shouldn’t have it drop ever).

Cheers! <3

I’ve got as much AR as my equipment will allow. In that, there’s several pieces that have AR. But then again, there’s several that don’t. Normally, I’d run Boar for the added AR, which would increase my shield immensely, but losing Wolf is a no-go as of right now.

I’ve got about 1450 paragon and am working on a 116. Rolling the gloves from cooldown to resource reduction, helped bunches and the shield is doing a decent job. I’d like better pants and might run some Act 3 and 5 bounties to get a better pair.

I’ve also got a decent Squirts but it’s not ancient and only has 17% fire. I’ve been using tons of mats to get an ancient with right stats but so far no luck.

My gear isn’t terrible, but there are some pieces that need improvement. Bracers, Pants, and Amulet mostly.

I did mention that my DH is on HC seasonal, so personally I can’t afford to run wolf and risk it all for 15% dmg increase. For me safety comes first, am in no rush to push so early in the season (especially when my WD with no legendary gems can speed 110 with 4.8B toughness solo - proof how OP the new set is, also is much easier to get armor than AR).

For softcore you can do whatever you want, but still you wouldn’t want to die too often during clear and especially during RG fight (for example you could get a great map and a good RG with the right pylon to finish it off, and if you die you lose pylon and chance to clear goes out the window).

Ancient is not required for offensive slots (gloves & helmet exception), as you pretty much want a trifecta for rings & amulet (elemental dmg chc / chd on amulet, damage chc and chd on rings as you can aug with dex np). But rng being rng you will take whatever has highest increase for your offense in those 3 slots.

You need to farm. A lot of nephalem public / solo games. That’s where most upgrades will drop. Kadala is great for quivers and that’s about it, rest is super mega RNG to get the right type of armor piece, ancient, and good affixes & stats. This will also fuel your future reforges / crafts (btw way easier to craft 100 yellow bows and upgrade to legendaries to fish for a primal Yang than just pure reforges).

Good luck! :slight_smile:

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Agreed. Out of season, I even run Diamonds in Armor slots.

I’ve rolled off all vitality, use boar and so on. My sheet toughness is something like 40,000. But the shield’s toughness is near 1 billion. However, I’m not quite able to finish a 117 with over 2500 paragon.

It’s frickin’ amazing to me that with CoE over Gunes with the season buff, I’m nearly matching that with only 1450 paragon. lol

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Tier 116 down.

Rank 32 as of this posting.
Paragon: 1450
Time: 13:59.399
Life: 300,262
Shield: 325,983
Sheet Toughness after Evasive Fire: 199,412,736
Shield Effective Toughness: 216,494,801

Changed some things around. As mentioned above, I rolled off cooldown on the gloves to resource reduction. I had a set of boots with All Resist in my stash that I forgot about, so I rolled Multishot onto them and augmented them with a 500 Caledesan’s. I also crafted another pair of pants with All Resist and put them on.

In addition, I switched from my cooldown bow to the attack speed one and put diamond in the helm.

All that did the trick.

Woo hoo! I’ve officially matched my Non-season personal best in this season with about 1100 less paragon.

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Well, I can almost beat a 117, not quite there and it would require one of the easier guardians without one shot mechanics. It can’t be Orlash because of his clones, or the Exarch one with his super nuke dagger like attack. But a Cidea, Mancarver or one of those kind would be ideal.

It also requires three good maps in a row, or at least 2 and decent one with high value mobs. I’ve gotten that setup several times but the guardian has wound up being bad in all of them.

I want to note that before replacing cooldown on the gloves with resource reduction, those ghost enemies would wreck my shield every time. That’s not a problem anymore, but there’s one affix that gives me all the trouble in the world and that is Mortar. Everything else is easy peasy but if I get to many elites with the mortar affix the grift is almost over before it begins.

Yeah, I know fishing is required at a certain point when pushing and I’m not complaining. It’s actually really interesting that I can almost spawn the boss in time, if I could just get a good one of those, I’m sure I can beat a 117.

Either that, or the game needs to give me that dang ancient Squirt’s with correct stats that I’ve been looking for since I started playing this season some 3 to 4 weeks ago. lol

Just thought I’d give this slight update.

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I remember before they changed his mechanics Orlash was sweet for UE. You could just kite him endlessly backwards across the map with a slow and the slow would keep him from closing on you and he’d literally never attack, just keep moving slowly towards you but never getting there.

He’s not nearly as good anymore :frowning:

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