Hey there, I know there is a lot of hype surrounding our new set and other changes coming this patch. This thread has been reworked many times and now serves as a central repository of DH tests and ideas for the season 21 PTR.
NEW PTR UPDATE DISCLAIMER
The PTR has been updated and now I will reformat this thread accordingly. I will address each item with comments related to the latest PTR build. Furthermore, the post has been cleaned up with collapsible comments for clarity and organization.
New DH Items and New Effects
Gears of Dreadlands: 2-piece set bonus
Gain a Momentum stack when attacking with a Primary skill. Each Momentum stack lasts 2 seconds at a maximum duration of 10 seconds. Your Primary skills deal 10% more damage per stack of Momentum. Gain 4 seconds of Momentum when attacking with a Primary skill, at a maximum of 20 seconds. Your Primary skills deal 10% increased damage per second of Momentum.
- Only manually cast primaries generate momentum, but primaries can be easily interleaved while strafing and the maximum number of stacks is 20.
- Momentum stacks appear to degenerate fractions of stacks per fractions of seconds (totaling 1 stack per second). This is noticed via the movement speed bonus from 4-piece set yielding bonuses not divisible by 8% such as 156%.
Gears of Dreadlands: 4-piece set bonus
Casting Strafe while you have momentum against enemies will automatically shoot your last used primary skill, and also give 60% damage reduction while strafing and for 5 seconds after. While Strafing, you move faster per stack of Momentum gain 8% increased movement speed for each second of Momentum.
- Strafe-generated primaries restore hatred (and discipline with Bitter Pill), proc area damage, proc Simplicity’s Strength healing, and activate Wraps of Clarity but do not activate Focus.
- Strafe-generated primaries will not fire unless a valid target is in range and targets enemies randomly among all valid targets. Strafe may be difficult to maintain in low density due to this.
- Strafe-generated primaries do not scale with attack speed at all and appear to fire 3 primaries per second, independent of all attack speed modifiers.
- Strafe-generated primaries are not affected by Strafe skill damage bonuses (from e.g. Valla’s Bequest).
- If no primary skill is available on the skill bar, no primaries are fired while strafing.
Gears of Dreadlands: 6-piece set bonus
Your primary skills deal 10000% more damage.
- No changes have been made to the 6-piece bonus.
Leonine Bow of Hashir
Bolas have a 30%100% chance on explosion to pull in all enemies within 24 yards, and also deal 100-150% increased damage.
- There is no internal cooldown on the pull-in mechanic but enemies gain crowd control immunity after multiple pulls.
- The pull-in mechanic procs from Strafe-generated Bolas too.
- The pull-in mechanic is not very tight as in enemies drawn together still retain collision and won’t clump up to extremely high density (unlike e.g. Ground Stomp Wrenching Smash).
Emimei's Duffel
Bolas now explode instantly and deal 150-175% increased damage.
- The area damage from the explosion appears to proc before the pull-in mechanic from Leonine Bow of Hashir.
The Ninth Cirri Satchel
Hungering Arrow has 20-25%is guaranteed to pierce and also deals 450-600% increased damage.
- All hungering arrows (including Strafe-generated) pierce all targets to their maximal distance or if they encounter an obstruction (e.g. pillar, wall, etc.).
- Devouring Arrow increases the damage multiplier by 0.7 per pierce such that the multiplier = 1 + pierce_num * 0.7.
- Shatter Shot splits the hungering arrow only on the first pierce and the two extra arrows then pierce normally (but do not split).
Odyssey's End
Enemies snared by your Entangling Shots take 20-25%100-150% increased damage from all sources.
- This bonus is additive in the “damage increased by skills” category. As such, it will scale worse with large additive mulitpliers such as: Wojahnni Assaulter, Taeguk, Strongarm Bracers, etc.
- Entangled enemies can have their ensnare duration refreshed by ensnaring any target within the web of connected chains.
Hunter's Wrath
Your primary skills attack 30% faster and deal 45-60%150-200% increased damage.
- The damage bonus affects Strafe-generated primaries but the attack speed has no effect on Strafe-generated primaries (which appears to be independent of attack speed).
Holy Point Shot
Impale throws 2 additional knives and deals 75-100% increased damage.
- The functionality of the Holy Point Shot as not changed but now has the extra damage secondary (increasing the difficulty of obtaining an ideal quiver).
Stone of Jordan
Added power: Each of your elemental’s damage bonus is equal to your highest static elemental bonus to skill.
- This ring sets all your usable elemental skill bonuses to your highest usable elemental skill bonus. For Demon Hunters, the usable elements are Physical, Cold, Fire, and Lightning.
- For example, 20% cold on bracers, 20% fire on an amulet, and 17% cold on a Stone of Jordan will set Physical, Cold, Fire, and Lightning bonuses all to 37% (since cold was the highest at 37%).
Old Items with New Interactions
Buriza-Do Kyanon
- The Buriza’s pierce mechanic works best for manually cast primaries and has an internal cooldown of 0.5 seconds.
- Strafe-generated primaries can pierce but Strafe shots may proc the pierce effect instead.
Hellcat Waistguard
- Strafe-generated Grenades do benefit from the effect and bounce.
Valla's Bequest
- Only direct Strafe projectiles pierce. Strafe-generated primaries do not pierce with Valla’s Bequest.
Fortress Ballista
- Strafe-generated primaries appear to speed up shield stack generation.
List of Known Bugs
Strafe-generated Evasive Fire does not have an attack animation.
- The on-hit animation sparks still show and the extra effects (e.g. Hardened, Parting Gift, etc.) still work. The backflip is disabled while Strafing (likely intentional so as not to cancel Strafe).
Strafe-generated Grenades do not aim towards the enemy.
- Strafe-generated Grenades fire in your direction of movement, not randomly towards a valid target like all other primary skills.
Strafe-generated primaries fire with inconsistent rate of fire.
- Attack speed seems to have no effect on controlling the number of primaries fired by Strafe. This might be intentional but it could be more clearly stated in the tooltip so as not give the idea that attack speed increases the number of projectiles.
- Some tests have shown the number of projectiles fired by Strafe seems to fluctuate randomly between 3 to 5 per second. We were unable to determine the cause; in one test, simply exiting and reentering the game changed the rate. Other possible ideas is that this could be due to server performance or a race condition between different game mechanics. A video showing different rates of fire with no equipment, skill, paragon, or other changes can be seen here.
Damage reduction from the GoD 4-piece bonus does not have an icon.
- The damage reduction property of the new set does not have any indicator to show the 5 second duration. Whirlwind has the same issue with Wrath of the Wastes.
Strafe does not fire primaries unless a valid target is in range.
- The developers have stated their intent to “strafe forever” with the new set; however, if no valid targets are in range, strafe simply fires its normal shots and not the primaries needed to restore hatred. A workaround would be to have the primaries fired always while strafing, with or without a valid target nearby.
Refreshing Entangling Shot does not refresh Numbing Traps.
- This is a very subtle bug that we found: Numbing Traps procs from Entangling Shot when targets are ensnared initially, however, Numbing Traps will not refresh on targets which are re-ensnared by Entangling Shot. Only the target directly hit by the Entangling Shot will refresh Numbing Traps. Fortunately, the refreshed snare does retain the Odyssey’s End damage modifier and the slow effect (for Cull of the Weak and Bane of the Trapped). This bug only applies to Numbing Traps.
If this bug is not fixed, Numbing Traps will not be a desirable defensive passive for ranged builds relying on Entangling Shot to slow targets. It is also important for zDH builds to utilize Multishot Wind Chill more often since Entangling Shot will be unreliable for Numbing Traps.
Entangling Shot sometimes displays a chain on targets no longer ensnared.
- We were unable to determine the cause of this graphical bug. Sometimes, targets will appear to be permanently entangled but are not. This can be seen by noting the movement speed of the target and looking for the slow aura indicator (white translucent aura under the target). The Entangling Shot duration appears to be working correctly but the chain graphic sometimes doesn’t disappear when it wears off.
Iria’s Opinions and Thoughts
Overall I think the new GoD set is in a satisfactory place at the moment (second PTR build). It is currently slightly above all other DH builds but still lags behind other classes’ top solo builds. To address some issues, here are my recommendations.
Iria's List of Recommendations
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Increase the GoD 4 piece set bonus to grant 80% damage reduction instead of 60%. This will help more casual players and lower paragon players enter the GR120-130 range. Due to asymmetric paragon scaling vs GRs high paragon players can almost fully max out their offense while lower paragon players must use multiple defensive tools (e.g. Elusive Ring, Unity, etc.) to survive unavoidable damage in dense environments. This toughness via paragon problem is also what walls out most players from certain Rapid Fire builds.
Some players are instead asking for the Hunter’s Wrath belt to be built into the new set to enable the use of Captain Crimsons. However, since the new set doesn’t use Yang’s Recurve, Captain Crimsons won’t provide a large toughness bonus by itself. -
Increase the GoD 6 piece set bonus to 20,000%. This isn’t an optimal fix but will put the damage more on par with other classes’ top builds. Instead of a straight buff to the 6 piece bonus, instead the 2 piece or 4 piece bonuses could be adjusted. For example, changing the momentum bonus to 20% per second or fixing the Strafe-generated primaries attack speed to a higher number.
Some mechanic to spend momentum for some supercharged ability would also be interesting instead of a damage buff. For example, using Fan of Knives spends all your remaining momentum and fires a shot of your last used primary skill for every 2 seconds of momentum consumed. - Increase the Holy Point Shot’s Impale multiplier from 100% to 300%. This idea was provided by dmkt. While the Impale buff was a step in the right direction, it isn’t quite enough to place Impale DH into the 4-person group setting as the boss killer yet.
- Bolas need a lot of help, consider doubling the numbers on Leonine Bow of Hashir and Emimei’s Duffel as well as granting a pierce or ricochet property to the bolas. Bolas need too many weapons to work due to competing equipment slots (Leonine, Emimei, Dawn, Buriza, etc.). Additionally, the Leonine pull-in effect should have a tighter vacuum radius like Ground Stomp - Wrenching Smash.
- Dune Dervish and Sand Dweller type monsters should reflect projectiles scaled to monster (not player) damage. This interaction has been in the game since its release. While it was okay in the early days of Diablo 3, after many damage buffs and relatively less toughness buffs, the reflected projectiles are now stronger than any attack in the game including molten explosions in GR150. Shadow Impale DH would also benefit from this quality of life fix.
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Allow Hungering Arrow to pierce walls with Ninth Cirri Satchel. This more readily makes Hungering Arrow less map-dependent and Waller-type enemies won’t be such a nuisance anymore (like Juggernauts still are).
As a compromise, for Missile Dampening enemies, give Hungering Arrow a cap of 10 pierces per arrow. Missile dampening elites are almost as good as a conduit pylon if you can keep the main elite alive while everything else (including other elites) melts with stacked arrows (and heavy server lag at times). This would eliminate the need to fish for a perfect GR which includes rare Missile Dampening elites. - Odyssey’s End should also add the Heavy Burden or Chain Gang rune to Entangling Shot. This idea was provided by bluebomber24. Using the Odyssey’s End into a solo build is very difficult without skilled “generator-weaving” with the added timing needed to make sure everything is constantly entangled and that you keep firing Hungering Arrows most of the time. Overall though, this new bow is a godsend for any DH trying to enter into group settings.
- The new Stone of Jordan should double (or provide 1.5x) the player’s elemental damage bonus instead. At the moment, the new SoJ will only benefit multi-element players who use multiple skills for their main source of damage. Demon Hunters don’t have any such multi-element builds since it is better to stack attack options for a single skill rather than multiple.
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Squirt’s Necklace should have one penalty (damage taken +50% or 12-second stack generation) removed. This idea was provided by DiEoxidE. Squirt’s Necklace is regarded as one of the best amulets for Demon Hunters. However at the moment there are too many sources of unavoidable damage which make keeping the bonus active very difficult in higher GRs.
Squirt’s Necklace has two major drawbacks: notably the damage taken penalty and the long ramp-up time after taking damage. One of these two penalties could be removed for the item to function more reliably while still retaining a drawback for fairness. See this thread for more information and discussion. -
Taeguk should be a multiplicative damage multiplier and should apply to all channeling skills regardless of resource consumption. This idea was provided by DiEoxidE. Currently, the Taeguk legendary gem provides damage by adding to the “damage increased by skills” category. Unfortunately, there are many sources of damage that stack additively into that same category, most notably Odyssey’s End and Wojahnni Assaulter. This greatly diminishes the usefulness of the Taeguk gem for builds that use those items.
In the case of Rapid Fire, channeling doesn’t cost resource with Sin Seekers rendering the Taeguk gem useless. Furthermore, since the Wojahnni Assaulter provides a massive 3000% bonus to the same additive damage category, adding even a level 150 Taeguk with its +80% damage won’t even provide 3% total DPS increase!
I would like to thank the developers and community managers for taking time to read through all of our feedback and keep building upon this 8 year old game with fresh design ideas!
With all that said, thanks to DiEoxidE, Woogmoog, dmkt, and others for helping with the testing and ideas!
I will update this list as I gather more bug reports, ideas, and suggestions. I haved moved this to the PTR Feedback thread since it contains everything in one spot for the developers to see. Please “like” this post if you haven’t already and appreciate my organizational effort!
Also, I know that this thread has over a HUNDRED replies and a lot of great ideas. To help me add to my thread, please give me concise and organized information and don’t simply link another thread or a video. I do not have the time to sift through so much content when it may be very redundant with my thread already.
Happy hunting everyone!
