Well, without a primary skill then your bracers would need to be replaced and you would lose that protection from Wraps of Clarity so losing the primary skill probably makes no sense, which means you probably do need the quiver. Sorry, thinking out loud.
No need for quiver, Grenade is a primary buffed by a belt, not a quiver.
Grenades have a lot of issues, including the aiming bug with GoD. Strafe-fired Grenades do not auto-aim to the enemy and instead aim to where your cursor is pointed.
Next, losing the Hunterâs Wrath is a huge damage loss; replacing Depth Diggers in cube with Hunterâs Wrath is better.
Lastly, while it seems like Grenades would be an okay build, it leaves a lot to be desired, similar to the problem with Bolas at the moment. The reason the GoD set is so strong right now is due to the Ninth Cirri Satchel with Devouring Arrow.
TL;DR: Grenades are simply too weak to be viable compared to Hungering Arrow.
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Not worth it at all. I did a segment on my stream a few weeks ago where I put together multiple n6/god4 setup request from viewers to sort of show why the hybrid version is a bit behind normal god6 and why any other setup besides HA is even further behind.
For a short summary, you just miss out on too much. The damage from N6, while stronger than G6, does not make up for the loss of F&R and losing either depth diggers or hunters wrath. Despite N6 being able to buff âeverythingâ, things like strafe and RoV still donât do nearly enough damage to even assist the generator of choice due to lack of supporting legendaryâs.
Edit: Iria beat me to it.
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With GoD set:
HA >>> Bolas > Entangling > Grenades >>> Evasive Fire (has anyone even tried this?)
Edit: Iria and DiEoxidE beat me to it.
I tried it in PTR; this is how I discovered the animation bug. While the GoD 4-piece bonus does indeed fire Evasive Fire while strafing, the animation is missing and you only see the on-hit sparks. Furthermore, the backflip is disabled from the relevant runes (for obvious reasons).
Edit: both of these bugs (Grenade aim bug and Evasive Fire animation bug) were reported very early in the PTR but no bugs were fixed. See my massive PTR feedback thread for details: Season 21 PTR - Organized DH Feedback Thread! đš
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Interesting thread! Funny thing is I made up almost every build in here on my own! They turned out okay, but nothing compares to GoD HA. The 6PCNat4PCGoD with flying strike can be decent for solo play, though, due to the combination of high toughness and freezing all of the enemies. Makes surviving a lot easier. However, you no longer get to strafe circles around enemies. Since you have to aim RoV at them and use it every second, youâre always moving towards the enemies you target.
Good point! Definitely going to try this next time I roll DH.
Hello All -
Season 21 was dominated by the GoD Demon Hunterâs, at least in the top 1000. I decided to build the N6G4 to prove a point that GoD by itself is excellent in pushing and getting top rankings. However, the N6G4 build is, in my testing, just as powerful and in some case more effective in pushing rankings. At least, for me.
The argument is that you will lose the benefit from the focus/restraint combo. Sure, you will, but you gain a couple of other benefits that are often traded anyway within the GoD build:
-
Elusive for CoE - In fact this is a huge hit on damage to Rift Guardians as you would lose 200% damage. With Bane of the Stricken, you will literally see the health just drains when the 200% damage boost comes up on cycle.
-
Wraps for Nems - Losing 50% damage reduction that is multiplicative from the wraps for a chance at free elites, is a sacrifice that could cause you the run, or even your Hero (HC players) if you are not careful. You would need to find damage reduction in other places.
The N6G4 build gives superior toughness and damage resist over the GoD as it benefits from both the 4 piece set bonus of the GoD and the 6 piece set bonus of the Natalya set. This means you can sacrifice either the Elusive Ring or the Wraps of Clarity, and even both if you are willing to risk it. The toughness in the latter would be comparable to a GoD build with Wraps of clarity and no Elusive ring.
Additionally, you gain the ability to add crowd control, which is superior to the GoD build. The N6G4 build also leaves room to play around with swapping out pieces and skills without sacrificing toughness and damage reduction.
In season 21, I put it to the test and out performed the GoD players of the same LB rankings (they having better gear and slower times).
On the PTR for Season 22, with the fourth cube slot, I run with Nemesis (worn) and Wraps (cubed). Again I out perform the same ranked people. I have also tried different variants of the N6G4, such as wearing wraps and elusive ring. I realized that this was a moot point, as I ended up with slower times in the Greater Rift. Plus, I was not taking much damage with the previously mentioned Nemesis bracers worn and Wraps of clarity cubed. There are some added benefits to wearing Nemesis bracers to help manage pylon spawning.
I also had the opportunity of getting a complete thorns set for the N6G4 build and attempted to use Hack in the fourth cubed slot. I had over 250k thorns damage. This worked rather well until I ran up against a higher Rift Guardian.
With the N6G4 Thorns build, I noticed that to make it effective, you had to have over 200k thorns damage, but to achieve this, you would need to sacrifice the Emerald gems for Topaz in your weapons. And, when you do this, at the Rift Guardian, you are essentially doing thorns damage, which does seem to benefit from the set bonuses, but does not benefit from the Bane of the Stricken gem resulting in an overall reduced damage to the Rift Guardian.
It sort of looks like this âŚ
Two topaz in weapon slots lowers your sheet damage by 260%, so out of 2m sheet damage, you are loosing roughly 600k damage. This would bring you down to 1.4m sheet damage. Add 250k, you will be at 1.65m sheet damage.
This is assuming that the thorns damage is additive. Therefore, without any additional modifiers to thorns, this does not seem feasible at this time.
If you use the heart of Iron, which gives you thorns equal to a percent of your vitality, then you will not be applying thorns damage 100% of the time, as you would with Hack. Heart of Iron in any other slot, or worn, will sacrifice the set/build bonuses thus reducing, significantly, the damage from primary skills.
The main downside to the N6G4 is the resource usage efficiency. It is awful, and like the Demon Hunterâs Impale build, requires you to be at a higher Greater Rift, scaled to your current power.
In Summary.
The Demon Hunterâs GoD build is an exceptional build to push rankings as far as GR 150, but the N6G4 build can give you an alternative to the GoD. That said, GoD is still superior to farming than the N6G4. Therefore, leave the pushing to the N6G4 and farming to the GoD.
The benefit is that you play N6G4 just like you would with the GoD, except instead of Shadow Power, you use Rain of Vengeance with targeting.
Comparing toughness
To meet N6G4 toughness
N6G4
- Vengeance - Dark Heart Rune
- Wraps of Clarity
GoD
- Vengeance - Dark Heart Rune
- Wraps of Clarity
- Shadow Power - Gloom Rune
- Elusive Ring
- Passive Skill - Numbing Traps
Good Luck and Have fun!
Please see my post from June (scroll up a bit):
There are tradeoffs to using N6G4 which generally donât win out. Itâs alright to experiment but I donât see how your build will work. DiEoxidE even tried these kinds of ideas on his stream and they just arenât as strong. Iâm sure he will comment on this soon too!
Do you have numbers here? What rankings, what GRs etc.? Generally it isnât good to compare lower GR clears since most who place on the leaderboard there didnât actually push with fishing attempts.
You may want to mention that youâre specifically talking about HC, as reading this in context to someone playing SC makes a bit less sense. Anyways, to dissect your post a bit.
- N6/G4 doesnât have any innate advantages over traditional GoD6.
The loss of F&R is 125% damage, which equates to roughly 5 to 6 GRâs of damage loss. Since youâre playing HC, elusive ring is popular to slot in cube, thus losing CoE. The 6pc bonus of nats is 40% stronger than the 6pc bonus of GoD, and being able to slot CoE allows for another 50% on average, bringing close to the damage potential of traditional GoD6. In terms of damage (excluding weapons, more on that later), traditional GoD6 is about 1 GR stronger than N6/G4 in HC, which one isnât likely to notice vs all of the rift and seasonal buff RNG.
In terms of toughness, Natâs gives you an additional 60% DR, whereas slotting Elusive ring gives you the same DR. Due to having to remove shadow power gloom (your call) for RoV, your N6/G4 loses an additional 35% DR and massive life on hit, making GoD6 a bit more durable than your N6/G4 combination.
- You lose out on weapon combinations.
You canât use vallas (10 - 20% more dps, and extra stat), canât use fortress (additional toughness and dps bump if used strategically with squirts), canât use a 2hxbow (33% more damage output per HA), Canât use Etrayu and so on. Not having access to a weapon with a suitable legendary affix or a weapon that just puts out more damage gives GoD6 a further ahead.
All in all, with N6/G4, youâre losing about 3 GRâs worth out potential damage output and 8+ GRâs worth of DR, while having to juggle an additional skill to proc the 6pc bonus of nats. If the user in HC decided to opt for CoE instead of elusive with traditional GoD6, N6/G4 doesnât come close in DPS, but does lose out a little on DR. Next season, with the addition of the 4th cube slot, GoD6 pulls even further ahead of N6/G4.
This isnât to say N6/G4 is bad, but it doesnât really offer no tangible benefits that GoD6 already canât provide more efficiently. I did a whole stream segment on this build highlighting all the points you made, including thorns and other proc mechanics. If you want something different, thatâs a bit tankier, you can give this a shot next season.
Itâs literally perfect for HC.
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Theyâre both 60%. But I agree with your other assessments. Also be sure to plug my GoD6/CC3 build in your post!
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Already made the correction when I re-read that lol. Post now updated.
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Itâs literally perfect for HC.
Thank you for this. This is great information.
After a certain point, the top 100 have settled into a min/max, optimized combinations that is pretty much the same as everyone else. Though the other items available with the GoD6 are excellent alternatives, they are hardly used in higher level Greater Rifts in lieu of items that provide the very minimal sacrifice to either toughness or damage.
Personal performance listing at the end.
In my test, and thanks to PTR to allow me to test this. With the same gear, no augments, and same gems used for both N6G4 and GoD6, I noticed the following.
Toughness is higher in the N6G4 (no Elusive ring) than the GoD6 using an elusive ring (per my configuration above) by about 30-35% on average. This is easily seen by opening the character sheet while running. And also felt when barreling willy nilly into a group of mobs.
Contributing factors of skill/gear buffs to hit that toughness provided by N6G4.
N6G4
Wraps of Clarity - common
4p GoD - passive - common
6p N6G4 - passive
Rain of Vengeance - needed to activate 6p Nat bonus (trade off for Shadow Power - gloom)
Vengeance Dark Heart rune - common
GoD6
Wraps of Clarity - common
Elusive Ring - active
Shadow Power (gloom) - active (trade off for rain of vengeance)
GoD4 - passive - common
Vengeance Dark Heart Rune - common
Numbing Traps - active passive (optional in both builds)
- Active meaning you have to have it to meet the toughness of the N6G4
- Common meaning used in both builds.
- Ignoring non-optimized items for builds
Progression boost with 4th cube slot
N6G4
You lose out on the F/R rings.
Gain ability to use Nemesis
Gain CoE - potentially gain 2/4 rather than 1/4 bonuses (DH only).
Gain the relevant items in fourth cube slot.
GoD6
Gain ability to use CoE
Gain the ability to use Nemesis (not at the same time as CoE if going elusive ring route).
Gain Limited relevant items
Performance Listing
Season SC Mode - Current configuration
N6G4
Wrist - Nemesis
Weapons - Nat Slayer, Dawn
Rings - Nat, CoE
Cube
- Ninth Cirri Satchel
- Depth Diggers
- RoRG
- Wraps - max bonus
Paragon - 1250
Augments - 3 (105, 110, 107)
Gems - Stricken (117), Taeguk (114), Simplicity (117)
GR - 124 - 8m45s
HC Seasonal - stopped playing due to latency issues at the time.
N6G4
Wrist - Nemesis
Weapons - Nat Slayer, Dawn
Rings - Nat, CoE
Cube
- Ninth Cirri Satchel
- Depth Diggers
- RoRG
- Wraps - max bonus
Paragon - 950
Augments - none
Gems - Stricken (70), Taeguk (80), Simplicity (80)
GR - 115 - 8m
Season 21
N6G4
Wrist - Wraps
Weapons - Nat Slayer, Dawn
Rings - Nat, CoE
Cube
- Ninth Cirri Satchel
- Depth Diggers
- RoRG
Paragon - 1600
Augments - all but three, average 100-105
Gems - Stricken (114), Taeguk (114), Simplicity (117)
GR - 120 - 11m
The N6 bonus and the Elusive Ring both provide exactly the same 60% damage reduction. And you have Shadow Power Gloom with the GoD6 setup, so I donât see how you have more toughness with N6G4 provided everything else is the same and all buffs are active. Can you screenshot this?
Also, in your comparisons, you didnât mention how GoD6 performs but only N6G4. If possible, can you make d3planner links for all of the builds used to see how optimized each setup is?
I will try to screenshot this without dying 
I believe my argument here is, when in higher GRs, the player has to make the decision to choose between extra damage or more toughness.
With N6G4, you donât have to worry about the toughness side.
Yes but you sacrifice quite a bit of damage. As I mentioned in my post from June, you lose 2 ring slots, a weapon slot, and a skill slot. While N6G4 grants you about 1.4x the damage of GoD6, you miss out on Focus/Restraint (2.25x damage), a weapon slot like Fortress Ballista or Vallaâs Bequest, and a skill slot for Shadow Power or Fan of Knives.
On the other hand, if you just want the extra 60% damage reduction (2.5x toughness), you can just use up a single ring slot for Elusive Ring instead.
I do agree that toughness is important, especially in HC, but GoD6 with Elusive will turn out to be tougher since you can use Fortress Ballista and Shadow Power.
Now as an aside, I did the theorycraft optimization for GoD6 Elusive vs N6G4 with a paragon 3000 DH using rank 150 gems and 120 augments:
https://www.d3planner.com/270601661
Here are the results:
GoD6 Hungering Arrow DPS: 5,415B
GoD6 Toughness: 1,936,155,734 (2,978,701,130 with SP Gloom)
N6G4 Hungering Arrow DPS: 3,360B (5,040B average with CoE 1.5x)
N6G4 Toughness: 1,936,155,734
The above does not include the fact that Vallaâs Bequest will provide more procs on average throughout the rift (~20% more) making the result even more in favor of the GoD6 setup.
The key differences as I mentioned are the loss of the weapon slot, the ring slots (Focus/Restraint + Elusive cubed vs CoE/Natâs + RoRG cubed), and the loss of Shadow Power.
Edit: Removed mention of extra primary from Vallaâs (Natalyaâs Slayer also gets an extra primary).
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not arguing the rest, but nats also has an extra primary
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Yeah, I forgot Natâs gets the extra primary too. Iâll fix that.