Quality of life idea for the UE multishot build

Demon Hunter
1

Hey everyone!

I’m Zarkano, a player of all the Diablo games since 1997 (edit). I’ve written this critique to address an issue I find vexing after 2 seasons of intensive play with a UE Multishot DH. Please keep in mind that this is my opinion only and not necessarily that of other DH players.

Overall, I’m relatively satisfied with the performance of my DH in normal circumstances. Torment 16 content is trivial now. There’s literally nothing I can’t kill up to GR 110 and I’ve managed GR 114 with a complete non-selective clear. That means, killing mobs as I find them. No clumping, no herding, no need for seasonal damage effects. When I enter the rift, I am DEATH. Everything, within seconds, is dead on the ground. Very satisfying. Very god-like.

That said, I’ve come to accept the limitations of the multishot build but, I have some ideas that might make playing this character more enjoyable. It’s a quality-of-life issue really.

The biggest beef I have is range. We are constrained to shooting mobs at a distance. Even our gems reinforce this playstyle (Zei’s). Let me ask this simple question. If I cocked my bow and let an arrow go in your face at point blank range, would this hurt more or would it hurt less than one fired at you from 50 yds? I think the answer is obvious. However, the devs decided it should be at the greater distance and hence we’re stuck, constantly manoeuvering, trying to keep distance.

This alone wouldn’t be so bad, BUT… The trouble is all the interface around edges of the screen where we need to aim. You know the story. Click click, oops. I just opened the followers icon and am staring at their spells. The delay is enough. I’m dead.

Click, click. Attackers coming from below screen. Either I’ve opened my spells, thrown away my potion or opened the detail on active buffs. And again, I’m dead. In any case, there’s no way I can gain the 50 yards I need for max damage when the interface allows only 20 to 30 yards at most. Throw a few leapers, anarchs or winged assassins into the mix and it’s a mess.

Therefore, here’s my suggestion for Blizzard. Alt-Z will hide the interface. It gains us the necessary blank space we need at the screen edges to properly aim and kill the mobs. BUT, it also makes navigation difficult. SO, allow the minimap while hiding the rest of the interface. Most of us know our keystrokes well enough to play without seeing them in the spell bar (i.e. it’s obvious when to recast Vengeance). Furthermore, the artwork of the rifts, mobs and effects takes on a whole new appearance. I’ve played like this a few times in rifts that allow easier navigation without the interface. As a consequence, I have gained a greater appreciation for the artwork that went into D3.

Can this be done? I don’t know. Only Blizzard could answer this. I hope my critique is seen by someone at Blizz that can forward this idea to the right people.
Thanks for taking the time to read this wall of text.

TLDR;

Give us the minimap while hiding the interface with ALT-Z so we can navigate without shooting the follower/group member icons, spell bars, life globe or chat screen. Give us clear, clickable targets at the range we need without interference from the interface.

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Hey Zarkano,

50 yards is not that far in game. To get an idea of how far it is, when you are in Tristram and sitting on the waypoint, the Blacksmith is 50 yards away from you.

One of the best things that many of us enjoy about running a UE is the fact that it is a ranged build. Killing things from a distance is what we do.

You don’t need to have your cursor all over the screen to run UE. Keep the cursor between you and your target and fire away. You can keep is close so you don’t accidentally click on chat, your potion or anything else that isn’t a target.

1 Like
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Varadia,

Thanks for posting that example.

Using your scale, I actually measured the distance on my screen. Then I looked to see where that same distance was both horizontally and vertically. The result is that 50 yards is well below the screen and actually into the display monitor plastic border. The same goes for straight up. So there’s no 50 yards available to us to begin with. Then the interface cuts it down another 20. You’ve illustrated my point that we are limited in our sightlines and it’s why I’m lobbying for a minimap with Alt-Z. I’d welcome even that extra few yards without clutter.

You’re absolutely right about us being a ranged build and killing things at distance. So why not let us see some distance? When Grotesques are exploding all over the place, I really would like to see it clearly without interference or obstruction. Less is more in this case.

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Another workaround is to use a lower DPI setting on your mouse and remember, for Multishot, you don’t need to actually target the monster but can fire in the general direction if you force stop while holding down the left mouse button for the skill. This way you can keep your cursor near the center of the screen.

Not to nitpick but I’m going to anyways, Diablo 1 was released at the end of 1996 or start of 1997.

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I’m more impressed (?) that Zarkano has all Primals except his boots on his seasonal toon. That’s some epically nice RNG I guess… :thinking: :bowing_man: :bowing_man: :bowing_man:

BTW - diamonds in gear instead of emeralds would definitely help your death issues. And yes, no need to click anywhere outside a few inch radius to unleash hell on mobs regardless of direction.

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@Iria,

I stand corrected, it was January 1997 that Diablo was released.

@PMG,

It’s not all RNG. Check my post in the topic ‘Fix the primal drops for the …’ in the Items and Crafting threads. There’s an explanation as to how I acquired most of my Primals. Simple math.

As per the diamonds idea - quite honestly, I don’t die to anything else other than chest-bursting mobs I’ve shot while vaulting down corridors and through doorways. I doubt diamonds would help since I can stand in desecrate, lightning and poison pools without much effect until the shield from the Gizzard gem drops. Then I just move. Diamonds also lower my damage. But just to be fair, I will run diamonds today in my armor and go looking for some Grotesques and Horrors to see the difference, if there is one.

Again, this leads back to my idea of better sightlines. Visibility around screens edge without interface clutter is what I’m lobbying for. Allow me the minimap with no interface. Very simple.

edit: Update @ PMG
Tried the diamonds in the armor. I find no appreciable difference in survivability. At GR 100, the explosions still take me out. The 1/4 million decrease in damage is noticeable as mobs stay alive longer. Most noticeable on length of time it takes to kill the RG. I’ll stick with the emeralds. I’d rather kill faster as it poses less risk. But thanks for the suggestion.

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I also love DH Multishot, but I use it mostly for farming. I prefer DH Impale for pushing (with it I managed to reach 120 solo and 140 as RGK in group of 4 )

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I read your post and it seems to be mostly tin-foil hat but there could be a nugget truth in there. Here is my take on your story:

I believe you got incredibly lucky this season or farmed a lot of bounties/rifts. If there was a provable method for obtaining primals, you likely wouldn’t be the only one to have discovered it if it was as simple as a counter. Some players have tracked primal drops since they were introduced and have not noticed any patterns (with the exception of the guaranteed first solo GR70+ free primal).

That said, there was, or still is, indeed a counter in the system which tracks the last legendary item that dropped. This was a safety-net feature added in the early days of the game, when legendaries were indeed very rare, that prevented unreasonably long unlucky streaks. There is no evidence that this feature is still even in the game given how common legendary items are now (the safety net was supposed to be active after hours of play without a single legendary item drop).

I cannot provide further details of the safety-net feature as those posts were on the old forum which as recently been removed.

If your method is reproducible and falsifiable I will update my beliefs on this issue accordingly.

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@ Iria
I’d be glad to continue the discussion about primals in the appropriate thread where the subject was brought up instead of here where it has no bearing on the original post. Thank you. And I believe you mean verifiable as opposed to falsifiable.

@ everyone

What gear my DH is wearing doesn’t belong here. What I post into another thread about primals does not belong here. And I especially do NOT welcome comments that border on condescending or insulting.

What we are discussing here is a suggestion of allowing the minimap while the interface is hidden. I welcome thoughts and comments on that topic.

Please stay on topic.

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Ok Mr. 5 posts Forum Police Chief.

Pretty sure the fatty bombs are killing you at 100 thanks to Squirt’s. That’s the trade off. Massive power boost and super glass…

PS - hiding the interface means you have no way to track buffs which IMO is more important than an extra inch of viewable space.

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Interesting topic. The QoL is nice in theory, but as an avid UE MS player myself, I see no reason for it, considering that most UE MS variations do not require you to actually click on any mobs or anything specific on the screen at all.

With this said, all mouse movements should really only be around the DH itself, especially those who stutter step. As long as the DH is pointed in the correct direction, the build should be able to run efficiently without ever having issues with the interface.

Though it wouldn’t hurt to add this idea of yours, I doubt this would widely be used and thus an inefficient use of resources from the developers.

2 Likes
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Yeah, I meant verifiable, I mixed up the words.

I’m sorry if you got that vibe, it wasn’t my intention. The comment about the 1995 thing was meant to be a joke in good faith. I intended it as a joke about the forum trope: “I’ve been doing X since Y!” when X wasn’t even available until sometime after Y; I see this a lot on reddit with the poster using that setup to enhance credibility.

There is nothing wrong with introducing a topic that way; I just thought it was funny since most players don’t introduce themselves that way. Again, I didn’t mean to offend.

Mildly derailing topics is quite common here on the forums. We’re still talking about D3 things but I just chimed in since PMG noticed (and drooled on) your shiny gear.

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I can’t be certain, Zarkano because the site currently has you in a gold farming build.

But what I can gather is you’re using Squirt’s with Gizzard.

Checking your gear, you don’t have any life regen on items like bracers, boots and such.

With Gizzard, adding replacing vitality with stats like Armor, All Resist, and Life Regen essentially gives you more toughness even though your sheet toughness will go down. Instead, your shield gets tougher enabling it to take more damage.

As an example of a way to build your character when using Squirt’s with Gizzard check out my character named Rynn.

That character’s sheet toughness is about 20 million but her shield’s toughness is near a billion.

She can take Grotesque explosions to the face up to around GRift 110 as long as it’s not 2 or three at the same time.

I’m not trying to tell you how to build your character, you do it in a way that makes it fun to you but I am saying that there is a better way to build if you mean to take full advantage of Gizzard.

I’m saying this because you’ve noted in the thread that you want this QoL improvement specifically because you die to exploding bad guys. This is an effort to say that it would be nice but not necessarily necessary because there’s another way to build your character that would fix the problem to a certain extent.

Edit: Here’s a link to a thread that explains how it works and I posted about a lot of my progress from Season 18.

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Finally there’s some constructive criticism and offers of solutions instead of negativity! That’s the type of response I was looking for. Thanks for turning it around.

I think DiEoxidE is likely right in his last sentence. Judging from the reaction I got to this idea from the community, it seems that players don’t see this as an issue and are therefore uninterested in promoting a minimap while the interface is toggled off. But at least I’ve had the opportunity to present it in hopes of improving and providing choices in the game.

And just something to consider. We’ve been conditioned after years of playing to avoid the interface. Would players use the extra real estate if it was available? I think they would. But for now, it appears that my solution will continue to be toggling the interface on/off with the remapped Alt-Z on the mouse.

@ Idolis

Thank you for for your suggestions. Yes, I logged out in my gold gear at 4 a.m. after running a night of vaults.

I will definitely have a look at your character today to see if I can still make adjustments to mine with the existing gear. While most of my numbers are similar to the ones you highlighted, I have one very noticeable difference in the Effective Shield Toughness. Mine is nowhere near that and I’m somewhat dismayed that it might not be fixable this season as everything has been re-rolled. But it’s a great place to start to see what can be remedied for next season. Appreciate the link.

@ Iria

I wasn’t upset about the date at all. I don’t mind someone correcting an obvious mistake. My comments about condescension were aimed primarily about stating the obvious as to where to position the mouse. If only you could have read my mind about where to put that mouse! Lol. But I forgive you.

You are spot on about the fatty bombs. They are quite literally, my only problem. Almost without fail, every time I die, it’s usually at the bottom of the screen because that’s my direction of travel and I don’t see them in time.

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Your reasons are logical in intent, but believe it or not, players seem to actually want the opposite.

The reason why the 3rd party program Turbo Hud is so popular is because it overlays much more information than our current interface provides, which is technically more clutter but useful info (and things that it shouldn’t do, like map hack etc).

To reiterate, I don’t think your suggestion is a bad idea. Instead of a toggle to get rid of the interface, maybe a way to adjust opaque value and make the interface “unclickable?” It would still be in the minority in terms of interest, but maybe you can get the best of both worlds.

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Ww barb could use your idea. I absolutely like it badly! Showing buff as greyed at bottom of the map unclickable maybe with a options in the setup menu where you sized it would be a dream feature to cruse and just farm without all the details of the hud. Observing all graphics would be so much nicer.