Captain Crimson for Season 22!

I’m sure everyone is on the hype train for the changes to other classes but there are still some things that DH can be excited for. Most notably is the addition of a 4th slot to Kanai’s Cube (which I’m hoping gets added permanently after the season ends).

One such build I theory crafted was to include the Captain Crunch set. Without the extra cube slot, one had to miss out on Hunter’s Wrath or Depth Diggers for the build to work, but now it is possible without losing so much damage.

Updated link:
https://ptr.d3planner.com/268839741

The result is the following:

  • 9,510,623 sheet damage (only incl. Taeguk bonus)
  • 2,256,825,982 sheet toughness (incl. all 100% uptime buffs)
  • 348,673,594 sheet recovery (incl. all 100% uptime buffs)

This theory crafted build would provide all these benefits:

  • +45% Hungering Arrow damage (quiver/belt/pants)
  • +134% Area damage (weapon/quiver/gloves/shoulders/paragon)
  • +64%/480% Critical Hit Chance/Damage (optimal for quiver user)
  • +1118-1328 Resistances (no Boar buff)
  • +7%/7%/11% Melee/Ranged/Elite Damage Reduction
  • +50% Damage Reduction (Wraps of Clarity)
  • +100% Damage (Depth Diggers)
  • +200% Damage (Hunter’s Wrath, also 30% primary attack speed)
  • 55.85% Cooldown Reduction (1.5585x damage multiplier)
  • 64.00% Resource Cost Reduction (already factored into toughness)
  • 75% uptime on Wolf Companion (time averaged 1.1133x damage)
  • 5.04 discipline Shadow Power cost (essentially 100% uptime)
  • 100% Vengeance and Fan of Knives - Bladed Armor uptime
  • Flexibility in legendary gem and passive skill choices

Some drawbacks are:

  • No Convention of Elements (but this is offset by the CC3 bonus)
  • No Elusive Ring (but this is more than compensated by the CC3 bonus)
  • Limited to Hungering Arrow (must use Yang’s Recurve)
  • Restricted weapon slots (no Fortress Ballista or Valla’s Bequest)

The build in the d3planner link assumed 3000 paragon with 120 augments and 150 gems (something doable by middle or end of season).

There are a few other variants I came up with that use the extra cube slot but this thread is specifically for Captain Crunch! Basically, you get all the damage but a TON of more toughness than the standard GoD6 build with near permanent SP - Gloom and the CC3 bonus.

Updated to include edits from later posts and the PTR version of the d3planner.

6 Likes

Cool to see CC3 squeeze in there. I imagine that this may be a tough sell, as you’re somewhat trading out advantages/disadvantages with a few more perks (perma skills).

If someone simply wants both more damage and toughness, they could just slot mantle of channeling to the standard setup now that they removed the 1 second ICD, which is 25% to both damage and toughness. You won’t get the easy perma uptime’s, but you’ll have your freedom of weapon slots back.

With that said, it works and nice to see CC3 back in the picture as an additional variation.

1 Like

True, you won’t get near the toughness of this build but the Mantle of Channeling also provides that extra damage. That said, I think this GoD6/CC3 will be easier to handle for newer players due to the massive RCR and toughness. Not only do you get that near infinite Shadow Power, but it should be much easier to maintain hatred in low density.

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They’re not going to give away their one carrot on a stick that actually makes the seasons that have it fun and enjoyable for free.

If they did they’d have nothing left.

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They could try to make better season themes than a couple of the last few (seasons 18, 19, and 21 were meh).

This would make sense if it was the only buff for the season, but it’s not. Many players have been asking for more build diversity in some sense and having a 4th cube slot as the norm would certainly help fill that desire across the board.

Nothing wrong with giving non-season part of the bone for those who may not enjoy season and want to play with their decked out characters every now and then.

I disagree. Seasons should stay special, and non-season non special. Non-seasonal already have their huge paragon advantage.

4 Likes

Getting “part” of the season buff “after” the season is over as a permanent addition to both seasons and non-season won’t suddenly make seasons “not special” and would be nice for players who enjoy one or the other, or both. Seasons will always have the exclusive primary theme, thus will still remain more appealing.

Also I’m not sure if paragon is really an advantage if there are way more 150 clears in faster times in seasons than non-seasons, but it’s really not suppose to be viewed as a competition between the two.

3 Likes

hopefully GoD gets mega nerfed before the season starts, it’s too good, it’s too fast, and this would make it the only class build played by anyone not trolling.

1 Like

It appears to me that they left GoD6 in it’s current state because they knew they were not going to give DH’s anything this patch.

I’m sure it’s going to get some sort of nerf in the future, but at the moment you can’t mega nerf it without significantly buffing the other sets/builds. You would kill the class entirely for the season if that happens.

It sucks that we were left out in this patch and would have preferred more options, but they chose not to nerf GoD6 in the meantime so at least we have an option.

im not sure they’ll ever nerf it on its own. atm its great for solo push, speeds, and farming, but its not breaking groups at all. speeds its basically just the new rats (and people have been doing rats for however many years) and its still far far behind necro for high gr tk.

has their been any season buffs added to ns? for some reason one of my friends assumes every season theme becomes part of the game after it ends lol…

1 Like

I don’t disagree, however all builds that have reached 150 solo in NS has been hit with a nerf bat of some sort, so I’d be very surprised if GoD6 will continue to be sparred.

Not only that, but the build performs exactly the opposite of what it looks like. I don’t think the devs saw uncapped peircing being a thing, given how the DA rune scales per pierce and of course it’s interaction with missile dampening. DA is a clear outlier with the above, as all of the other runes, including bola builds, are much closer to blizzards balance point if you don’t factor DA.

All in all, we’re lucky they left it untouched, but I personally can’t imagine it’ll stay in the current, somewhat wonky design state past next patch. They’ll touch something.

Almost, following season 17 (the LoN season), they added the LoD gem.

1 Like

^ true

were there others than crus/wd? they also were the 2 main ones of the 4p meta and looking at the last era, crus lasted 6 months

Wizards reached 148 and got some nerfs and first iteration of barb WW which was PTR a few years back, but was nerfed before it went live. Wizards have gotten the most mileage out of their powerful builds before nerfs, but eventually it happened.

The main difference between DH’s GoD6 and other strong solo builds that hit similar power is that GoD6 isn’t part of any group meta, which makes it an interesting case.

Here is an updated version that focuses a little more on offense and has some further gear optimizations. The restrictions I used are:

  • Paragon capped at 3000
  • Caldesann’s Despair capped at rank 120 (equipped gems are 150)
  • Required items/sets: Gears of Dreadlands, Dawn, Ninth Cirri Satchel, Bastions of Will, Depth Diggers, Hunter’s Wrath

https://www.d3planner.com/285247289

The result is the following:

  • 9,510,623 sheet damage (only incl. Taeguk bonus)
  • 2,256,825,982 sheet toughness (incl. all 100% uptime buffs)
  • 348,673,594 sheet recovery (incl. all 100% uptime buffs)

The extras not factored into the above numbers are the following:

  • +40% Cold Damage (amulet/bracers)
  • +45% Hungering Arrow Damage (quiver/belt/pants) (additive to Taeguk)
  • +134% Area Damage (weapon/quiver/gloves/shoulder/paragon)
  • 55.85% Cooldown Reduction (1.5585x damage multiplier)
  • 64.00% Resource Cost Reduction (already factored into toughness)
  • 75% uptime on Wolf Companion (time averaged 1.1133x damage)
  • 5.04 discipline Shadow Power cost (essentially 100% uptime)
  • 100% Vengeance and Fan of Knives - Bladed Armor uptime
  • Passive skills were not included in the analysis

So there you have it, I think this build will be one of the best since it provides you with an incredible amount of toughness at the cost of a CoE (which is offset by the CC3 bonus) and perhaps a Mantle of Channeling (1.25x damage, 1.33x toughness). The massive toughness gained will let players use the build more aggressively and tank inside Oculus Ring circles more effectively.

2 Likes

Interesting build Iria. But are you sure it will go higher in solo push than the usual GOD6 with two weapons and using both Elusive Ring and CoE in S22?

The build I linked provides 55.85% cooldown reduction and is thus more than the CoE 50% time-averaged bonus. The 64% resource cost reduction provides more toughness than the Elusive Ring 60% reduction. Furthermore, my build has 75% uptime on Wolf and essentially 100% Shadow Power.

What you lose out on is a weapon ability which is either Fortess Ballista or Valla’s Bequest. The toughness and healing from the build with 100% uptime on Shadow Power makes the Fortress Ballista the weaker option unless running with Squirt’s Necklace (I prefer Flavor of Time). And Valla’s is only useful to compensate for breakpoint/internal cooldown issues which are not very significant if you use Rocket Storm and manually fire Hungering Arrow a lot.

Edit: I didn’t even mention that because the build uses a bow, the damage per hit is higher too (albeit not as high as a 2h crossbow).

Oh and forget about pushing as high as season 21 since we won’t have the snowball cheese cake to carry even zdps through a GR150.

1 Like

agree with above, using my profile and elusive, the above build shows almost 2x toughness and i included a liberal amount of vit. even without including SP its still more toughness than elusive so if you wanted you could switch to smokescreen and have ~70% uptime of zero dmg, or 60% with a ton of healing

how would you lose out on Vallas when it will be in the fourth cube slot?

you need to roll of that attack speed on the quiver or remove the paragon Attack speed or you wont get 9 frames breakpoint. Trust me, i’m literally one of the best DH’s in the game and my iq says im a genius.