I actually think elusive ring would make for better habits in terms of quicker clear times overall.
Elusive ring’s buff last for 8 seconds. If you are standing still for more than that amount of time, you’re going to take a lot of damage and/or not be in the most optimal positioning for pew pewing. This is why EW was never a popular setup with UE over the years, because you really can’t afford to stay around a specific area that long to make use of the buff.
Fixed it for certain stutter-stepping-fancy-footwork-wombo-combo DH.
I meant CoE for you softcore guys, in HC you really can’t drop Visage OR Elusive, DR is super important because we are not only fighting the mobs but also occasional lag spikes / rubberbanding, so you will be happy to have either (I prefer Visage because am lazy mode on DH, got enough key spam and attention to buffs / cooldown playing my SB WD).
I just don’t push beyond my limit (I always gauge my TTK on trash & normal elites with incoming dmg) it’s fine if Gizzard drops vs tough affixes if I can finish the pack without actually dropping Squirts stacks, if not, dial it down 1-2 GR’s and wait for more para / augs etc.
I lost 2 WD’s this season to Raiziel OHK from 100% through 96% DR and 1mil HP in GR 100 despite me pushing GR110 with 6m left at para 700 (except Raiziel and Versalius or w/e his name is, I don’t fear any other RG on WD), so now my 3rd WD has 4B toughness now with 96% DR standing and 98% DR moving (1.4m hp too).
For some reason I find it easier to vault than to SW, but also as UE I stay max range and use boar taunt so it’s pretty safe 90% of time, but SW also needs to be used for 4pc DR bonus and you also need to keep SH stacks up, it’s so much more complicated (but more powerful too!).
Cheers! <3
PS: @DiEoxidE & Iria
I notice most UE use ambush - I get the reason behind it - you want to get mobs / RG under 60% ASAP to enable Dead Man’s bonus, but once you’re under 70% hp on targets ambush stops doing anything. Am I losing a lot by using cull the weak 20% instead?
My thought process is that Cull the Weak also works when targets are under 60% hp thus buffing your DML double Multishot each of them, so you don’t have the initial burst of Ambush, but you end up dealing more dmg when targets are under 60% correct?
Cheers! <3
Ambush equates to about roughly 12.7% damage over the course of the rift. You can gain a few more %'s if you only shoot during all over your buffs, in attempt to “overshoot” the 75% threshold. If you’re running physical, it’s possible to slot Ambush/Steady Aim/Cull the Weak, so there’s not much of a reason not to slot it.
With fire though it’s more tricky. Usually people swap back and forth between Steady aim and Ambush. For some it may seem quite difficult to keep up steady aims requirement, especially when opting to stand in oculus rings as much as possible, thus not getting the 20% buff as often as they would like. If you are one that can keep the distance required for Steady Aim, then Steady Aim is consistently stronger than Ambush. If not, then Ambush is a little more appealing. I’d also assume it’s popularity to the fact that some just may not know the actual overall effectiveness of Ambush. Cull the Weak is one of those passives you should always have slotted regardless of build for GR’s.
I wrote an entire thread on Ambush with Fire UE6 a few years back on the old forums and why it’s not really a good passive for Arsenal due to rocket A.I. Ambush however, is godlike for things like T16 runs or GR scenarios where you’re looking to one to three shot mobs.
Yeah for speeds Ambush makes perfect sense, but for pushing I run both Cull the Weak and Thrill of the Hunt, with Ballistics and Awareness (for speeds am replacing ballistics with Ambush as I kill T16 RG’s in 2-3s so no need for more single target dps).
Ballistics makes the missiles really hardest hitters, here is what D3planner shows me on my DH:
Multishot / Arsenal
As you can see the rockets are almost double of Multishot dmg.
And this is with swapping out ballistics for Steady aim:
So pretty much Ballistics looks like BiS for Arsenal no?
Cheers!
Where is this number from? If you assume no overshooting of the damage, then it goes as (1/1.4) time/damage for the first 25% damage and 1 time/damage for the latter 75% damage, this means 0.25/1.4 + 0.75 = 0.928 time units instead of 1 time units without ambush, comparing the two (via division) we get 7.7% more dps using Ambush.
Of course, this figure is the bare minimum with zero overshoot (assuming it takes many many hits to kill a mob).
There’s a post on reddit about harmonic means that explains this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo3/comments/eb5vgz/harmonic_means_you_ft_ruthless_ambush_frailty_100/
It changes with DML.
Ambush is worth more with a DML. Since it makes you hit the DML double-hit range sooner.
Assuming no overshooting, it’s still not 12.7% (not sure where that came from), but it’s 11.36% instead of 7.69%.
| Value of Ambush | ||
|---|---|---|
| Without DML | 100/((100-75)/1.4+(75-0)/1) | 1.0769 |
| With DML | ((100-60)/1+(60-0)/2)/((100-75)/1.4+(75-60)/1+(60-0)/2) | 1.1136 |
EDIT: I think it gets really wonky when you factor in Stricken. I’ve been meaning to crunch some numbers on that for a while, but I haven’t got around to it. Then the effect should change depending on your DPS relative to the RG HP. Depending on how many Stricken stacks you expect to get over the fight would change the relative values of Ambush and DML.
12.7% wasn’t an exact figure, as I stated “roughly about”, but that figure came into play years ago when VocaloidNyan did an extensive spreadsheet on this, with and without DML.
The thread is obviously lost on the old forums, but the end conclusion was that you should expect roughly ~12.7% increase on average in a rift’s entirety give or take certain scenarios with a MS build. This figure has been thrown around on these forums for a long time and this is the first time anyone made a ~1% correction. 
The important take away though is ambush is not typically not stronger than the alternative choice for fire which is steady aim if all conditions are met, especially with the way rockets behave.
I calculated 11% too, but the worth is greater on lower GRs.
Okay, how about this: with DML, It’s worth somewhere between 11.4% and 40%.
If it takes you an extremely large amount of hits to kill each enemy, it’s value approaches 11.4%.
If you always deal exactly 71.4% of each enemy’s HP, then Ambush is worth exactly 40%. If your regular hits either consistently deal either less than or more than 71.4% of an enemy’s HP, it’s worth somewhere between 11.4% and 40% 
The guy who wrote that post on Reddit added a post about that very subject:
https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo3/comments/eb5vgz/harmonic_means_you_ft_ruthless_ambush_frailty_100/fb3zxt5/
And also made a spreadsheet to play with:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gYrS9mQ5n-_ukYfqm0TqGWN6IYGTngqTwhm8OVF4WyU/htmlview
If you want to get even more wonky about it then you can factor in how these effects interact with Area Damage. Ambush may only work on “Mob 1” until he’s below 75% life, but if he’s surrounded by other mobs at full health, then he’ll still be feeling some significant effects from the skill.
As DH, unless you’re doing the plant n fire Rapid Fire builds… you should never be staying in one place for more than a shot or two anyway.
Movement is Life ~DH Code
I don’t disagree, but you can be constantly on the move without vaulting.
I tend to stutter-step with UE (or at least attempt to!) and reserve vaults for when I need to make longer moves to avoid dangerous affixes etc.
The vault animation isn’t instant, and every time you vault is time you aren’t multishotting. Some vaulting is good, but excessive vaulting hurts your DPS. Also sometimes you don’t want to move as far as a vault would take you, you just want to make a small move to dodge something but still stay roughly in the same position.
Sometimes if I’ve got a good pack setup I can just stutter around a pack without needing to vault. And if I’m running Elusive Ring sometimes I forget to force myself to, at which point Elusive Ring drops off, and then I get whacked by a stray arrow coming in.
For me, running Elusive Ring would require a bit of a playstyle adjustment to make sure I keep it up. Not really that hard, just not how I’m used to playing UE!
Precisely, is not like Wiz Teleport where you can decide with precision where to go (like occulus circle).
BTW does vault during it’s animation give invulnerability? Like vaulting past a molten explosion or arcane beam do you still take the dmg? (haven’t really tried it since my DH is on HC so would be a bad idea probably ^^).
Cheers!
Ok fellas, forgive me for quoting you to get your attention, but I thought I’d share what I came up with.
I took a look at a scenario of fighting a group of enemies one might well encounter. This is a group of mobs consisting of one of each type from Monster Set 20, otherwise known as “Lacuni / Phasebeast” or “Lacuni / Thrall”.
Link here: http://www.warpath.eu/ms.html#ms20
It is one of the best monster sets for builds that thrive on enormous density.
I took the monster hp multipliers for each of these mobs, and multiplied by 1,000,000, to get a decent life pool.
The monster hp multipliers can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16kUe9iED6gsNgpV9_OAI7hADuFGWezUNEtlgbD84yoI/edit#gid=974783445
For the player’s damage, I assumed a base damage per attack of 10,000 (which hits all mobs, like Multishot). I also assumed that these mobs are tightly packed within 10 yards of one another, so that AD procs from all will hit all (definitely feasible, in testing I’ve seen over 30 enemies packed into a 10 yard radius). And finally, I assumed 144% AD on paragon and gear (this is the amount Wudijo had in his recent 128 clear).
Then I worked out the number of shots it would take to kill the whole group: with no AD or Ambush, with Ambush alone, with AD alone, and with AD + Ambush. Take a look:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1n2qsSG4szDVs6_N6rgmx1FMTCyDD0KVQGQDwQMb9HAk/edit?usp=sharing
From this, it seems like Ambush is really not very good when it comes to density. The efficiency of adding Ambush starts off pretty good, on the weakest enemies (about 25% increase), but quickly declines. For the entire back half of the fight, it adds less than 3% efficiency.
One caveat: much of the time you can kite surviving mobs from one group to fresh density, at which point the benefits of the skill will significantly increase. Still, it certainly seems like Steady Aim is going to be a significantly better choice, even if you can only keep partial uptime.
The number of times I have confidently vaulted straight to my doom…
Yes it does, but I’m not sure of the frame data though. Also, frame data wouldn’t really be that useful due to input and server lag fluctuations. I think the invincibility frames are while you are between your starting and ending position so you can vault over things safely but not from or onto things.
^^ I’ve found that Vaulting a millisecond before a Grotesque explodes prevents damage.
Also, for the guys at the top of the thread there, try a GR100 Hardcore. You will gain a new appreciation of how to build a tough Demon Hunter.
I added the Barb passive Ruthless (and a second tab, showing the whole sequence of numbers) to my chart (see post 23).
As you would sort of expect, Ruthless is more relatively useful in the back half of the fight, when you’re down to just a few enemies.
On the other hand, I think you’re relatively unlikely to actually play this way- killing most of the density pretty fast, then just staying there and fighting a few remaining mobs till you kill them. More likely, you’ll kite them to more density, at which point I think the “efficiency gap” between Ambush and Ruthless will pretty much disappear.
The two skills are very similar in terms of the value of their interaction with Stricken, as well.
Got it thanks!
PS: Stutter stepping with DH after playing 3 seasons channeling wizard builds is so hard haha! (and totally not needed for speeds / bounties).