I think this is part of a larger issue, insofar as the shard difference is a problem in and of itself. Even later in the season I do not gamble for anything above 25 shard price. It’s simply not worth it, the vast drop pool coupled with the abysmally low chance on top of that to get anything good even if you do happen to roll what you want is outrageous.
Tl;dr: Lower all gambling prices to 25 shards.
I gamble for rings too (50bs), but that’s about it. I don’t touch weapon or ammy, far too expensive. If Blizzard would reduce the weapon gamble to say 75, and let you pick the sub-weapon types, it would be better imho.
But either way, gambling and rare upgrades are only in the game because drops are terrible in d3. Blizzard would be better off to completely remove the crap legendary items that no one EVER uses, that way, when one does drop, it’s worthwhile.
Am I the only one who thinks DH actually has a nice leveling experience? The multiplier is 100% guaranteed and both dagger options provide some sort of power leveling. It is not on necro level, but then again what is…
I don’t mind another leveling option for DH, but any class can level to 70 within 2 hours, tops 3.
Karleis is near useless for levelling - not enough dmg at higher levels, very expensive to cast, and no AD. LGF if far, far, far superior.
Yes, an experienced player could get to clvl 70 with DH (via LGF) in between 2 and 3 hours solo, but some other builds are doing it sub 1 hour solo. Big difference. Either way, DH’s levelling experience is pretty horrible imho. Obviously others agree with that assessment, hence this thread.
You just might be! 
LGF isn’t the worst thing under the sun. But it’s definitely far from the best, and has a very anti-DH playstyle that often leads to a lot of death along the way. It has a medium CD, and provides very little in terms of AoE and consistent progress. It’s good for blowing up Elite packs, but bad for general combat.
DH could have a much more effective and iconic spell to use…
Reduce the level requirement of The Ninth Cirri Satchel
I’d agree with that assessment. Cooldown for this skill needs to be seriously lowered, and some AD affect added (in skill, enhanced by AD on gear of course). Not only is there the cooldown to deal with, but then there’s the stacks issue. It takes quite a while to get to 30 stacks for maximum dmg from the skill. It’s actually longer to get to 30 stacks than it is for the base cooldown!
If Blizzard fixed the cooldown, fixed the time to get to maximum 30 stacks and buffed dmg, added some in skill AD to FoK, it would make a far better levelling experience.
Post clvl 70, adding FoK to the shadow set with dmg buffs would make for an interesting end game build. Not a play style that I’d enjoy, but hey, neither is god build enjoyable (at least for me).
It’s just my personal opinion, but this doesn’t bother me. LGF itself is immensely powerful, even far below 30 stacks. At 10 stacks (aligning with base 10sec CD) that’s a 4000% multiplier on a 620% base skill, which is more than powerful enough even compared to other classes’ leveling multipliers. In fact, 30 stacks is almost certainly Overkill (or 15stacks with Pinpoint Accuracy’s 15second, 1600% damage).
My biggest gripe with it, for leveling, is that it’s a close-quarter, small range attack on a sizeable 10 second CD. It’s just fairly clunky and dangerous for leveling. It’s the most useful tool we have, by a mile, but it’s not a great one.
I don’t expect Blizzard to make any changes to base skills at this point in the game’s cycle. The skill’s design and numbers are likely as set in stone as they’ll ever be. Unfortunate, but realistic. 
However, changing an item’s required level is absolutely trivial. And while it’s not an ideal solution, it would be a very useful and powerful one.
Reduce the level requirement of The Ninth Cirri Satchel
cirri statchel wont be enough dude, just cube it and test for yourself with blue and yeallow weapons from headrig, cirri mutiplier behaves worse than greenstone fan… to do what you want it to do, we would need hunters wrath belt as well. I also believe cirri should have its lvl drop reduced, but we need something else to help, or else it is just not enough.
For example, cruzader can just gamble at lvl 1 kadala bracer and johana shield witch basicly carry him till lvl 70 2x multipliers with 25% chance from kadala, and i wont even talk about necro… hunter have ONLY greenstone fan on cube craft ( witch now have a low chance ) and basicly ZERO multiplier items from lvl 1 to 16, worse season 1-70 by far.
It may be cirri, it may be emimei, but still gonna need a second item to help it, please blizzard low the lvl drop from at least 2 things that can help hunters to start with. Dont necessarily need to be cirri or emimey, but something that help us out.
on PC maybe, on console, no. With NG (NG on console works very differently to the PC version of the game), and a full 30 stacks, it takes 5-7 shots at 30 stacks apiece to kill an elite on T6. I see people on PC one shotting them with the same setup. So, from my perspective at least, LGF/FoK is weak.
I sympathize with NG mechanics on console. Personally, I think it’s a really bad system that should be removed.
However, the relative power does not change between PC and Console. Because the 50% damage penalty of NG is the same across all classes and builds.
30 stacks of LGF with Pinpoint Accuracy (which is what you would use, if you’re going to 30 stacks) is a 192,000% weapon damage modifier. This is one of the highest attack modifiers in the entire game, and definitely makes the skill powerful compared to other classes’ leveling multipliers. The issue lies specifically with the mechanics and CD of the skill, not with power.
If it’s taking you 5-7 x 192,000% attacks to kill an elite, that would be equivalent to 290-407 of a Monk’s juiced up LTK (3,300%)…perhaps better to just turn down the difficulty at that point 
I have done exactly that, multiple times, before I ever created this topic and multiple times since.
As I have repeated in this thread: This is not the ideal solution. But the goal is to seek Improvement, which this very simple change truly provides. It won’t make DH the best leveling class by any stretch of the imagination, but it would definitely help.
Cirri provides a smaller multiplier than LGF, of course. However, my suggestion to improve Cirri is not meant as a “superior replacement” for LGF. Rather, it is a boost in addition to LFG/Karlei’s, as it fills gaps that both of those tools leave behind.
LGF suffers from it’s CD and close range: Cirri is spammable and can be used to aggro mobs and gather groups to use FoK on, to finish off any remaining HP, or to pick off stragglers.
Karlei’s/Impale suffers from being incredibly Hatred hungry and being single target: Cirri is a generator that can be used as an AoE-like ability while restoring significant Hatred to use with Impale.
It’s not perfect, but PLEASE
Reduce the level requirement of The Ninth Cirri Satchel
The issue I see is not really that the leveling time for the DH. The DH can be the second fastest leveler to 70 (only the necro is faster). The problem occurs that the skill needed to pull this off is far beyond any other class.
I’ve kept track of season starts and leveling for the past 6 seasons or so. At the 2 hour mark, roughly 60% of the players are Necromancers. And who knows how many of the rest are actually grouped with Necromancers. Your average player can hit 70 within that time frame as a necromancer. With any other class, 3-4 hours is more likely.
Demon Hunters are the next highest group, and can break an hour (2 hours on the console). But this is tied to Halls of Agony 1 Traps, which is a leveling method specifically for them, just as Cursed Chests are for the necromancer.
But compare the difficulty. Necromancer stays roughly in one spot, hitting one button, killing everything and gaining a ton of levels. Either LGF or HoA1 traps, the DH has to constantly move around to avoid being one shot, while managing to tag monsters to keep up the massacre bonus.
Now, when you remove that, because most people probably don’t have the skill, then they become the weakest class to 70. They’ll barely do damage to enemies until they get their 6 piece, but that’s after they’ve already hit 70.
Diablo 3 takes zero skill.
Blizzard games are far more about players not being terrible than they are about players being good.
What taking more than 4 hours to hit level 70 is soooo long. How about a little more cheese with that whine…It’s not all that difficult to get to level 70 even without a gem of ease borns or cains gear…Heck even playing in campaign mode you can nearly be there after act I
I’d disagree on the zero skill. It’s what separates the fastest levelers from the slowest ones. A good DH can hit Level 70 at season start in under an hour, with only the necro being faster. This puts them clearly as one of the fastest classes to 70. But most people aren’t capable of doing this, hence the complaints about being one of the slowest levelers.
This just isn’t true. While I will not hesitate to say that the video you linked of the 1 hour DH is very impressive (I’ve seen a ton of DH speed leveling videos, and this one is by far the fastest by a huge margin), it’s also an outlier in terms of luck (getting LGF/WoC/Leorics) and taking advantage of an active Season effect which provides significant killing power. The season effect, especially, is important to keep in mind. The player played fantastically, full respect, but this is nowhere near a typical run for even the most skilled and lucky players.
If you look at more “normal” speedrun attempts on DH, even the most skilled players are setting personal bests in the 1:35-1:45 range on DH. This includes players like Wudijo, Raxx, and VelaRUS.
The video you posted is the first, and only, 1 hour solo DH video I’ve ever seen. But it doesn’t even use Cleavers. The fastest Cleavers I’ve seen is about 1:29 from VelaRUS. While I’m sure 1:20 might be possible with exceptional RNG for XP gear and floor layouts, it is most definitely not near the realm of “1 hour for a good player”.
And of course, if you don’t get LGF with your 50/50, you are completely screwed.
However, above and beyond a super clear outlier like this 1 video, consider any other situation. Especially one involving other players, where you can’t/won’t spend 15+ seconds at a time creating density. In any group leveling context, DH is far and away the least desirable. All other classes will have spammable, high damage AoEs, while the DH stands around tickling mobs with Chakrams, possibly killing a few mobs every 15 seconds if they have LGF.
Even with The Ninth Cirri Satchel, Hungering Arrow won’t be anywhere near as powerful as a Monk’s LTK, Barb’s Slam, or Crusader’s Sweep. But at least it would something.
Reduce the level requirement of The Ninth Cirri Satchel
I’ve been working with another player the past several months, and can now pull it off with LGF in roughly 75-90 minutes almost every time, without any xp gear. Wujido and Raxx aren’t who I’d be looking too, as they’re more focused on post game than the leveling process. VelaRUS does practice leveling, but he also goes for the speedrun website, which has limitations such as no vendor gear, no blacksmith gear, no kadala, all of which would speed up the process. For example, with vendor gear, you can survive 1 T6 hit. If you’re just using dropped gear, yeah, you’re probably going to be in one shot territory the entire time to 70. (And, I have seen a video of a person soloing traps in under an hour, but I’ll have to find that video. YouTube isn’t so great about being able to search for videos).
What makes the DH viable in terms of speed is the fact that, along with necros, they can stay on T6 the entire way to 70. But this is not an easy feat by any means. And that’s why I said it’s skill related. If you’re just after your average player who never practices, and goes straight into either traps or LGF, yeah, it’s going to take forever to hit 70.
But outside of the DH and Necro, what other class can take T6 on with just one item?
I mean, if we’re just looking at the 90 minute mark, the past 3 seasons, roughly 60%+ were necros. 20% were DH’s. The other 20% were a mix of every other class. For other classes than the DH or Necro, sub 90 minutes is the sign of skill, not sub one hour.
I realise this. What I was trying to say is that I see players on PC T6 One shotting elites in ToTFB runs and I can’t do that on T4 on console - it takes 4-5 hits @ 30 stacks to do the job…and that’s at T4! It’s even worse on T6. It further makes levelling a DH on console even more horrid.
I can reliably get WoC, leoric’s nearly every run. LGF seems to be greater than 50/50 from my extensive experience with the game.
yes, that is very true. You can still level to 70, but it’s not as fast as LGF or efficient. The problem is that impale’s base skill dmg is low imho, and the cast cost very high. Blizzard needs to re-work the shadow set to low set bonus dmg imho and buff the base skill much higher to make up for it, so impale is useful when levelling. Combined with lowering the cast cost of impale (even post clvl 70 it’s way too expensive imho), it would make it more viable during levelling.
Of course, and I’m not saying they’re the best DH speedrunners in the world. Only that they have, in the past 2 years, both practiced DH solo leveling on stream for hours, and have easily accessible youtube videos of their best attempts, and those attempts are nowhere near as quick as you’re suggesting is ‘typical’. They’re decent players who know what they’re attempting to do, so the fact that they still struggle to come in under two hours, when any random Necro can come in under 1 with no practice, is revealing.
While some of his videos do prohibit a few things (he has a 1:29 Cleavers with no vendor, for example), most of his videos still allow everything but Paragon and Kadala (preventing XP items). For DH, this isn’t a huge deal, since we don’t have any gambled multipliers anyway (Wraps are nice, but not game changing).
But I feel this discussion has become far too focused on “solo leveling under ideal conditions”, which is missing a large share of the point in this thread.
The problem is that DH’s cannot meaningfully contribute to any group, and the “casual” leveling experience is so drastically lagging any and all other classes.
We can agree that perfect LGF massacre bonuses solo might not be twice as slow as every other class (except Necro). Because the nature of being able to build very high density when playing solo, and playing around FoK’s CD might work when playing for solo massacres…neither of these exists in the group environment (or for a slightly casual player). Meanwhile, DH’s group contributions are non-existent, and leveling without LGF is absolutely abysmal (even solo).
Obtaining The Ninth Cirri Satchel at low level would help to alleviate these issues. And would do very little to change the “ideal circumstances” LGF method you describe (since LGF would still be doing the majority of the damage). It’s Win-Win.
Witch Doctor does fine. However, the question itself is unimportant; T6 is irrelevant, leveling speed is what matters. And the only reason other classes, such as Barb, have issues with T6 is due to toughness.
If we’re looking at the past 3 seasons, we’re not looking at anything useful to this discussion. Virtually all serious players are playing in coordinated 4 man groups with at least 2 Necros carrying. Class stats, beyond identifying that there’s “a whole lot of Necros” are literally meaningless in this context.
DH’s toolkit is significantly lacking AoE and reliable damage modifiers. A simple change, at zero cost, could help a lot of people have a lot more fun playing and leveling their DHs.
Please,
Reduce the level requirement of The Ninth Cirri Satchel
For TotFB runs, you avoid elites altogether. I haven’t seen any videos of anyone attempting to kill one, excluding maybe around Level 40 or so when they have a Level Reduce weapon. And yes, I’d agree that the console is at a disadvantage due to NG.
But really, the difference between the console and the PC is that you need to focus on speed killing, as massacre bonuses give nearly zilch in xp. With a 400+ streak, you’re only 20% of your XP is going to be from the massacre bonus. On the PC, with a 400+ streak, only 25% of your XP is going to be from actually killing monsters.
This is something Blizzard should really focus on their end fixing imho. I broke 2 hours on the console soloing as a DH, but on the PC, that would have been like a 70 minute run.