As we all know, Demon Hunters need some love to be “on par” with the current Sets/Builds of other classes. Below are a list if changes I would make to existing builds to greatly improve the way Demon Hunter plays for Speed Rifting as a Casual Player.
Increase UE 4 Piece from 60% to 100%
Increase UE 6 Piece from 350% to 465% (yes its an odd % I know)
Both of the UE changes above would increase the damage of UE builds by 39.56% which would equate to current builds being buffed by 10-15 GR Tiers. Bringing UE Multishot from a “Speed 100s” build to a “Speed 110s” build
Valla’s Bequest: Remove Increase Strafe Damage Primary, Replace to Affix and buff by 100%. New Affix would read: Strafe deals 100-200% Increased Damage and its projectiles now pierce.
K’mar Tenclip: Remove Increase Strafe Damage Primary, Replace to Affix and buff by 100%. Change Affix from “Strafe Gains Drifting Shadow Rune” to “While casting Strafe reduce damage taken by 50%, Strafe Damage is increased by 100-200%”.
Both of those weapon changes would put Natalya’s Strafe up 10-15 GR Tiers putting it around Greater Rift 100-105 with the parameters of my testing.
All test setups are at d3planner / 219992342 where I put together the exact gear I used for testing out these setups (the Natalya setup may not be “ideal” but when thinking Natalya Strafe for “Speed GRs” it is the best I could work with). Natalya in its current state is VERY squishy hense why the setup is using Aughild’s instead of Mantle of Channeling with Nemesis Bracers. Both Builds were tested under 4k Paragons with 111 Augments.
Increasing the damage multiplier on UE4 from 60% to 100% would be a (1+100%)/(1+60%) = 1.25x buff while increasing UE6 bonus per discipline point from 350% to 465% would be a (1+4.65*86)/(1+3.5*86) = 1.327x damage buff. Thus combined they would increase your damage by approximately 1.659x (not the quoted +39.56% amount assumed to be 1.3956x).
Monsters gain 17% life per GR level so a 39.56% damage increase would equate to log(1.3956)/log(1.17) = 2.12 GRs higher. If using the proposed changes as recalculated to 1.659x, then it would be log(1.659)/log(1.17) = 3.23 GRs higher.
As an added side-effect to changing the UE4 modifier from 60% to 100% as worded, it would render the DH immune to all damage via 100% damage reduction! The modifier would need to be coded separately for damage dealt and damage reduction.
Thanks for the head’s up, and explanation on the math. I will have to re-check the math on my end to see where i went wrong.
Its hard to test Demon Hunter builds even though it is my favorite class to play, as I am not great at it. I just want to see UE/Nats in the 100-110 range and the 4 piece bonus and 6 piece bonus of the UE set seemed like the easiest place to change/buff that build to be better performing. With the changes to Valla’s Bequest and K’mar Tenclip not changing how Natalya Rapidfire performs
Edit: I checked my math and was indeed wrong in my initial post, double checked the Values and searched the Leaderboard on all the regions available to me (Americas, Europe, Asia). Finding that UE has the following “top” clears for the year 2019-1 to current: 122 at 4650 paragons, 128 at 4799 paragons, 125 at 7006 paragons, 125 at 6685 paragons, 132 at 9534 paragons, 128 at 9376 paragons.
The new math after checking i feel like 4 piece buff to 100% damage only (keeping DR to 60%) UE 6 Piece to 500% instead of my before mentioned 465%, buffing both Yang’s and Deadman’s to 450% instead of the 200% on Live server. My math states it would be 5.99 Times the damage output equating to an 11.407 GR increase.
My math is as followed: UE 4 Piece (1+1)/(1+0.6) = Buff of 1.25 UE 6 Piece (1+ 5 * 86)/(1+ 3.5 * 86) = Buff of 1.427 Yang’s Buff (1+4.5)/(1+2) = Buff of 1.833 Deadman’s Buff (1+4.5)/(1+2) = Buff of 1.833
Total Buff 1.25 * 1.427 * 1.833 * 1.833= 5.996 GR Tier Increase log(5.996)/log(1.17) = 11.407 Tiers Higher
For the record, i do like this post and the whole community knows DH has been left behind for quite a time now but with that being said…Every set change anyone has proposed are all the same changes… Every push set in this game has essentially the same general stats on it so now all blizzard had to do is come up with a new design, lore and name… boring
I agree with your new numbers. However, in increasing damage to clear about 11 GRs higher, UE DH would need a little more toughness (around 30% or so). So changing the 4 piece damage reduction bonus from 60 to 72% would do the job, but 80% would be a nicer number (doubling toughness compared to 60%).
UE needs like a +12 GR level buff in order to be in pair with WW.
Also, i think that they should reduce base monster damage or just buff every single damage mitigation on every single set, mostly because some builds are almost impossible to play at low paragon because they are squishy.
revamp of the class as a whole with all the changes to the game since the current items/buffs were added deff needs to be done. hopefully when they do the “more balancing” after the DH and Necro sets get added to the game we get balance changes the same way we got the sets. 2 to 3 at a time and its a class wide here is “all the buffs” required to put it at the 130 (ish) mark, please play PTR to test to make sure we didn’t “overshoot” the GR potential or break any items in the process (like how DW+ES were double dipping on wizard after they changed them).
