Gear of Dreadlocks (GoD) - Easy and Fun!

Demon Hunter
1

I’m a mediocre player with a couple of years experience and minimal gear crafting. I’m sure experts will punch holes in this, but I thought I’d add my two cents in for other less than top tier players. If you do, please be kind.

First, I’m doing this with a Hard Core player so Pro-Life is a necessity!.

If you can count to 20 slowly to simulate a clock and use two different keys, that’s about all you need as skill.

I did online research to find others thoughts and realized once I started my build that there were good and bad suggestions. Good = Strafe is for movement. Bad = the toon is weak, WRONG!

Here’s my build. 5 piece GoD + 2 piece Captain Crimson (Belt and pants), Nemesis Bracers, Traveler’s Pledge and Compass Rose, Ring of Royal Grandeur, Wojahnni’s Assaulter and Sin Seeker. Cubed is Dawn, Depth Digger and Unity. Worn is all diamonds (I’m HC), Molten Wildebeest (HC), Zei’s, and Simplicity.

Keys are LMB=Bolos/Freezing Strike, RMB=Rapid Fire/Fire Support, 2=Vengeance/Side Cannons, 3=Strafe/Icy Trail, 4=Shadow Power/Well of Darkness, and r=Vault/Tumble.

My synergy is to boost Bolos to as much damage as possible, do Vengeance 100% of the time, and live through the experience. Rapid Fire is simply a pocket damage if I need it. But with the weapon and Offhand buffs, the two parts give a massive damage and stacking bonus, but I seldom use them.

First, Vengeance requires a 90 second cool down. With Dawn (-65%) that’s 31.5 seconds. With 20 seconds on Capt. Crimson + 12.5% with a single Diamond in the helm + 8% on the weapon + 8% on the Off Hand the formula works to 42% CDR down to 18.3 seconds for 100% Vengeance uptime. That adds 40% to damage plus fires side cannons for 100% bonus from Ballistics passive.

The Bolos, Strafe, and Thrill of the Hunt passive load most enemies with slow so that Cull the Weak gives another 20% damage bonus. Add in vengeance and the set bonuses and this is how it stacks up.

Bolos = 1.2M damage
Simplicity (L25) = +37.5%
Capt. C = +42%
Cull Weak = +20%
Momentum = +200%
Set (6) = 10,000%
Vengeance = +40% and I’m not counting the side cannons and homing rockets
Total Damage = 1,192.6M

For defense you get 20% from Capt. Crimson, up to 50% from Traveler’s Pledge, 60% from the set while strafing and Vengeance gives 3% of Max Life per hit. Pretty protective but I add Unity, Awareness and Molten Wildebeest because I’m HC and am very particular about my safety. Others could do better with Teaguk or Bane of the Trapped and a different passive.

Now the play style. It takes about 4 seconds at attack speed of 1.37 to reach maximum Momentum stacks which gives you 20 seconds + 5 more for safety. Because this toon is really fast when set, it’s easy to clear everything in a big area. Stand anywhere and fire Bolos and count 5 seconds. Hit Strafe and count 15 to 18 seconds. In the last few seconds move to a cleared area for safety and start again.

I love playing DH Shadow Impale, but this is almost as much fun and much easier. I don’t know how it’ll do in Greater Rifts, but that’s to wait for the new season.

3 Likes
2

I’m glad you’re enjoying the new set but there are some issues with your build:

  1. Rapid Fire is not buffed at all by Gears of Dreadlands and does not fire primaries when channeling Rapid Fire. My suggestion: drop this skill entirely along with Wojhanni.
  2. Vault shouldn’t be necessary as you get a lot of mobility with Strafe once you get 20 stacks of momentum.
  3. Vengeance Dark Heart and Shadow Power Gloom are much better than Side Cannons and Well of Darkness for survival purposes.
  4. Captain Crimson’s set requires using the Ring of Royal Grandeur (preferably cubed) and a belt slot. This means you lose out on Depth Diggers or Hunter’s Wrath in the cube which is a HUGE damage loss.
  5. Since you’re using Bolas (a relatively weak generator compared to Hungering Arrow with Ninth Cirri Satchel), you need to use Leonine Bow of Hashir and Ememei’s Duffel for maximum damage potential.
  6. Instead of the Endless Walk set (Traveler’s Pledge/Compass Rose), you could use Unity or Elusive ring for an equal or greater amount of toughness for a single ring slot and then have a free amulet slot for say a Flavor of Time or Ess of Johan.
  7. Nemesis Bracer’s aren’t optimal since you want toughness in hardcore, therefore your bracers should be Wraps of Clarity.
  8. While Simplicity’s Strength is a choice gem for this and Zei’s is an okay choice, the Molten Wildebeast Gizzard is an odd choice. Better options would be Esoteric Alteration for toughness or Bane of the Trapped for damage. A balanced gem would be Taeguk but remember that Taeguk doesn’t work with Rapid Fire for two reasons: (1) Sin Seeker’s eliminates the channeling cost, (2) Wojahnni Assaulter provides 3000% additive bonus to Rapid Fire which almost negates the benefit to the additive (up to 80%) bonus provided by Taeguk.

I don’t know where you searched but there are good guides out there such as DiEoxidE’s recommendations thread in this very forum:

5 Likes
3

Wow! So much I didn’t know.

That’s what I was looking for, suggestions and reasons.

I thank you, and I’m sure other at my skill level thanks you, too.

One question - In your first point you talk about Rapid Fire and my weapons. I’m not sure I understand. I have to carry a weapon. It has a buff when a specific skill is activated. Otherwise it simply fires whatever my key is bound to - Bolos. As I mentioned, RF and my gear is ONLY when I want to NOT use Bolos which does get the GoD buffs. If I’m firing my primary Bolos and getting the buffs, then switching into Strafe, doesn’t strafe use Bolos for it’s damage and not RF since I didn’t use that skill in setup?

With your suggestions, I can see using different gear, but it’s the damage of the primary skill I was thinking about.

2 Likes
4

Yes you are correct - if you fire bolas manually, strafing with the GoD set will automatically fire bolas.

What Iria was getting at, is that you ONLY want to be firing primaries as they are the ones being buffed by the set and by equipping the RF xbow and quiver you are missing out on a crapton of damage by not using the items that buff the primary skills…and using RF at all is like hitting with strand of cooked linguine… plus it’s costing you the momentum from the GoD 2pc bonus (up to 200% damage for primary skills).

For bolas - you want to use

  • Leonine Bow of Hashir
    • Bolas have a 100% chance on explosion to pull in all enemies within 24 yards, and also deal 100-150% increased damage.*
  • Emimei’s Duffel
    • Bolas now explode instantly and deal 150-175% increased damage.

However, as shown in some of the other posts (including the ones Iria linked), bolas is considerably underpowered compared to Hungering Arrow (with the Ninth Cirri Satchel at a minimum).

By the way - if you don’t equip your follower with a Unity you DON’T get the benefit of wearing/cubing it, it’s just a wasted slot (mentioning this since I don’t see you have it on a follwer).

I will also comment that to keep your 2pc bonus at max you need to be firing your primary every couple of seconds, not

every second that ticks off you are losing a big chunk of dps boost so the idea is hit 20 stacks, strafe, and fire primary every 2-4 seconds to keep at 20 stacks the whole time.

5

Thank you. This makes things much clearer.