Well I played my first hardcore game and made it to paragon 265. It was a hard loss but I have my second hunter coming up. The hardest thing is the loss of my set gear.
RNGesus just does not favor me when trying to find stuff or trading blood shards. What are some effective ways of farming for more gear (which torment levels or GR levels give the most?)
You need at least Torment 1 for set items to drop.
Regarding the actual pieces… I like to gamble for pants and the use Kanai’s Cube to change them to the other set pieces I need. As a DH, you don’t have any class specific legs, so it can reduce the RNG a little.
Best advice I can give is to collect a backup set to keep in your stash before you try harder content.
You need to have the mindset that you will die… sooner or later.
Two godsend sites for D3 player,
https://www.d3planner.com/game/58979/kadala
To check what gear you can expect from rolling blood shards, cubing certain rare -> legendary, or to see which armor slot has better chance of getting a set item when using kadala. For instance, rolling blood shards on shoulder will give you better chance of getting a set item as it has 7 possibilities for set/leg item, while helm slot has 11 (but Nat doesn’t have shoulder so, if you’re aiming for Nat, going for boots or pants is the way to go)
https://d3resource.com/difficulties/
To check how you should set your difficulty level. This is useful when farming Death Breaths, keys, Horadric cache legendaries and such. Reward vs speed, that’s what’s important in this game. Reward could be good, but if it takes a lot of time compare to [less reward but faster run], it may not be worth it (faster run multiple times could get you better reward). This is more important for HC as pushing the limit could get you killed. Set your difficulty of where you are comfortable with, but can reap the most reward.
As Jay said, when playing HC, you should have backup sets available. Like, if you’re using UE, you should have another UE set (inferior stats compare to what you used, but still) in your stash (including the bow and quiver of course).
Also, this is me saying as a hoarder, but I’d say keeping couple of sets of LoN and ancient legendaries goes along way. Moreso in HC. You could hit level 70 and start farming around T10, depending on how many multipliers you got from blood sharding or cubing rare -> legendary (assuming you have some blood shards and Death Breaths to spare).
And yes, I’m talking about the ring set, not LoD gem. Problem with LoD gem is, you more likely would’ve been using it (which most players level them for that reason) when you died. LoN rings get tossed aside when LoD gem level gets higher.
edit: oh yeah. try to make a separate farming set (one that could use Sage set). use them when farming normal rifts. check the site I linked above. T11 has 90% chance to drop 2nd DB/key, T13 has 25% chance to drop 3rd, T16 has 50% chance to drop 4th. when I feel my gear is tad dangerous to farm T16 (that damn Unity doesn’t drop), I farm T13 with Sage set. that’s 4 or 6 DB per elite kills, which goes a lot considering how much Sage set gimps your damage compare to Crimson set, and how much dangerous T16 is compare to T13. having spare DB helps a lot in re-gearing your toon.
OP - HC requires a very different mindset from SC. You do NOT push harder before you have the gear, with the right stat rolls. Doing so puts you at much higher risk of dying.
Know your mobs - certain mobs are instaquit, as are certain RGs.
Patience is a big thing too, don’t rush your progress through a rift or GR.
Be wary of bad maps such as banished realms or barracks, both of which are spawning an awful lot this season.
The below advice is really for s6 impale…
I tend to push with diamonds in the chest piece for extra AR, and amethyst in the pants for extra vit. I run s6 impale, and I run with vit on gloves (rather than IAS or AD), and vit on the off hand quiver too (sacrificing either impale dmg or chc as you can’t have both this way!). I tend to run with aughild’s set too, which adds nice DPS and toughness boosts.
I tend not to push high GRs until I’m p800 and have at least 5 ancient pieces.
Make sure you get the belt with lpk as a secondary (dex/vit/%life/AR), chest with dex/vit/AR and -dmg from melee/ranged (take your pick) and lpk. If you can get lpk on your ammy and bracers even better. lpk on your karleis is a very good idea too.
2nd edit: with lpk, it’s important to run lightning dmg/impale ricochet rune imho - whilst cold can potentially hit more targets, it’s not a given. lightning will hit 9 targets (if there are 9 in the area of attack of course!). AFAIK, the lpk works on every hit, so if you have 9 daggers hitting a target, that’s 9 lots of lpk…it really helps with recovery and if you take a hit, you almost instantly get life back.
Once I get to around p800 and have 5 or more ancients, I start working on augments, only going up to lvl 100 (means pushing up to a GR99) - which should be doable as long as you’re careful, and slow and very aware of the mobs/elites/RG that spawn.
If you see dervishes or sand dwellers, do NOT engage. Run like hell. They WILL instashot you. I nearly died (procced awareness) on a low level GR95 a few nights ago cos I went up against a frozen/waller/horde elite mob and was kiting it and up from nowhere pops a sand dweller and bang…
I would not run UE MS on HC, it’s way too fragile, even with CCR imho. impale s6 is a much better option for HC pushing.
Also, have separate characters for your HC builds, don’t use the armory. I have a UE MS character for farming gold/mats/DBs/keys and my impale for pushing GRs. I use the UE for leveling gems to around GR64, then switch to impale for getting them up to lvl 100.
Know your limits, know the mobs, take your time.
One final note - if you proc awareness, do not carry on. TP back to town (if safe) or quit the game. Better to live to fight another day than be a hero and die. It goes without saying to ALWAYS run awareness. Trade some DPS for it. A dead DH doesn’t do any DPS.
edit: I run with vit on both rings too…at least until I get to much higher paragons with full augments.
UE is not so bad toughness wise (plus you can run the gizzard shield). At 1k paragon I have close to 1B toughness with only 2 ancient armor pieces (other ancient being the bow ofc).
Am sitting at close to 71% RCR, so outside of speed pylon (which you can opt to not activate if you want) I don’t ever need to use hatred generators (outside of maintaining bracers 50% DR buff).
Dervishes are the bane of ranged physical DPS so always keep an eye out of for them and avoid whenever possible (or don’t shoot when they have the reflect shield up) - they almost killed my LoD BS Sadder because I thought I could drop the elites before they activate xD
Even if you choose to go RF LoD or Impale, still gather UE pieces to be able to farm fast and safe T16 and do bounties (also speed level gems).
Take your time and play it safe! <3
I find impale faster for bounties with its infinite vault.
I don’t particularly like CCR - trying to balance keeping chc/chd/rcr/cdr to mitigate damage/increase damage is a nightmare. Far simpler to just give up on the build and play impale. Even with CCR, it’s weaker than impale. Great for T16 farming though as you said.
Thanks Learning a lot here. Got my new DH outfitted witha full set, but I really like the Nat set the best as it fits my play style. Just of note I was trying to insta quit when I met insta death on the last one Vaulting from one bad location to a worse one LOL.
My discipline doesn’t even dip from 100% and I can vault non stop. Never ever used active from Preparation.
What balance? You get 50% on bow, 20% on Captain’s 2pc, add a topaz and you’re set, 40% CDR is enough with the helmet in cube for Vengeance CD, rest full ChC / ChD / IAS (to reach next breakpoint ofc).
With enchantress (yes, in HC) am at 2.00 atk speed.
Ok so you get 70% something DR from RCR. 50% from bracers and 60% from UE set 4pc. Then you add Evasive Fire - Hardened for 25% more armor, Vengeance 50% DR, and I’m sitting at 97% DR.
How much tougher than this do you think Impale can get? I mean it’s a lot safer than you give it credit for (and also use companion boar for both 20% AR & the 20 yard AoE taunt which prevents mobs from targeting you with affixes / special abilities etc (and boar CD is so quick).
Plus you have a nifty shield that doesn’t break if you don’t stand in molten / beams so you don’t really drop Squirt’s buff either.
I was so afraid myself to go UE in HC had bad memories from softcore, but then I twinked the build to suit HC and it still melts faces. Am not running focus + restrain so I can use CoE and Unity for solo pushing (50% more dr), and for farming / speeds just swap Unity for SoJ to get 10 more juicy discipline ^^
Give it a go! 
Topaz in helm I presume? What helmet in cube for CDR for vengeance are you referring to? I presume you mean dawn and visage of gunes.
I’d really have to play more with it on SC before HC. These days I really do prefer the play style of impale anyway. But, it’s always good to experiment outside of your comfort zone. I’ll wait to NS and have another play with the CCR UE variant.
Yes Topaz in helm, don’t need more CDR but extra toughness and cost reduction is always welcome. Sure CDR gives you extra dmg but going from 40-50% requires a lot more investment, while going from 50% DR to 70% is huge in your survival / tankiness.
Visage of gunes in cube yep. There is a clear 116 on EU leaderboards with UE MS (hardcore), and softcore ladder Wudijo cleared 124 with UE MS (you gain more dmg as you don’t need 1 passive for cheat death).
Thanks for the clarification. I did a 119 (HC) last season with impale. Bad mobs, not so great maps, average pylons. A 116 would be going backwards for me.
Considering that last seasons theme was much stronger than this seasons theme and it’s been less than a month in the current season, there’s no way you can make a direct comparison.
Two good pieces of advice for HC.
Over time, one gets a feeling for what Torment levels they can handle with each additional damage reduction leg power that you add to your build. But in short, there are 20 levels of difficulty. Slowly bump up the difficulty to a point that you can handle comfortably. With a full set and a couple of support legendaries that grant DR and damage buffs, T10-13 is easily achievable.
Sure you can - the other character classes clears have had the same time period since the NS LB wipe…also, the same guy who got the #1 cru, monk clears, got the DH clear…same paragon…
Stop protecting Blizzard’s inability to balance this game.
…what?
All i said was you can’t compare a s19 themed clear at the end of the season with a s20 clear that’s not even half way through, given that s19’s buff was OP as hell.
I have no idea how in the world that means I’m protecting blizzard somehow. How did you get on that? Did you mean to quote someone else?
I wasn’t even talking about themes. I posted about NS clears for each class (US LBs). Nothing to do with seasons, so I’m not sure why you’re bringing up seasonal themes for as they don’t apply to NS LB clears…
My point was that DHs are 10-15 GRs behind the other classes in NS performance, with paragon being reasonably similar between all of the top class clears.
edit: there is no excuse for this lack of balance among the classes. None at all.
That’s not the part where he quoted though. He quoted you comparing your current season’s progress and last season’s progress. And he does have a point there.
I’m not defending Blizz’s ability to balance stuff either. But you’re ignoring the part where each classes are getting super strong sets in succession, in 2-3-2 classes per season, not at once. Crus got a super strong set, Monk got a strong set and a buff to SWK TR, and Barb got a huge buff to Waste set last season. This season, WD got a strong set, buffed also, Wiz, not as much but strong enough build and a buff to Hydra, and Barb got a decent set. And luckily for necro, this season theme is working well for them. So of course DH who got nothing, is part of the last season to get a new set/buff will underperform right now.
If you want to complain about Blizz balance, you should compare classes from 2 seasons ago. Sure, DH was still bottom at the barrel, but so were some other classes; as in, it’s not as extreme as you’re trying to point out to be.
No one mentioned NS, not even you. Lets go back to what you actually said.
Anelyn said:
Reading that, it’s obvious the 116 is seasonal. You responded.
You literally said you did a 119 last season. Bolded for clarification.
To reiterate, not once did you say anything about NS, as your own post clearly states you were making a seasons comparison between two different builds.
This was not your point. No one in this thread was even talking about game or class balance. Not a single person brought up the conversation.
OK, I was referring to my last season efforts with HC impale s6 vs going with the UE MS CCR variant, which would more than likely result in a lower performance for me this season. I wasn’t referring to the NS clears at all. Can you guys not comprehend?
I DON’T want a single set super strong. I want all the sets, for all of the classes, buffed to be equivalent to each other in performance. That’s BALANCE. Again, have comprehension levels dropped among people?
WD, barb and DH were at the bottom of the table. WD was pretty much screwed like DH were, although arachys firebats outperformed impales 6 by a few GRs. Barb has had constant inclusion in the group meta since day dot, so that instantly makes them a better class to play than DH, which has had almost ZERO group meta inclusion in the entirety of the history of seasons in D3. So, your point is?
But anyway, this is now digressing from the original topic at hand - DH in HC.
Uggh! Apologies! I just realised that my NS clears comparison post was in another thread! Sorry!