Vault: the Fantasy of Action Shot & Trail of Cinders with Danetta's Hatred

Demon Hunter
1

As a huge fan of this skill and of the fantasy suggested by the Danetta’s Hatred set, I want to outline some issues with how that fantasy is actually carried out, and possible solutions, to be optimistic about 2.6.7+.

So, what is the fantasy suggested by the Danetta's Hatred set? Primarily, the fantasy is to do damage with the Vault skill.
Why is that the fantasy it suggests? Danetta's Hatred does 4 things, each of which indicates this is the intended fantasy:
  • (1) Makes Vault cost Hatred and (2) gives you the Rattling Roll rune. Being Hatred-based means Tumble and Acrobatics do not apply to it. Having Rattling Roll already means the two rune choices are Action Shot and Trail of Cinders. This is a signal to select a damage-dealing rune. Additionally, moving away from it being Discipline-based aligns it with Blizzard's philosophy that DPS should come from Hatred and not from Discipline. A high-profile example of this philosophy in action was the Patch 2.1 change to Preparation - Punishment:

    • “Preparation (Punishment) was creating less than ideal gameplay by encouraging the conversion of Discipline to direct DPS.”

  • (3) Increases Vault's damage, applicable only to the Action Shot and Trail of Cinders runes. This is also a clear signal that the set is meant to be used with the damage-dealing runes and that it is meant to make the damage more significant.
  • (4) Leaves clones as you Vault. This is the one least connected. I won't argue that this one is a strong signal like the others. In theory the clones in theory do add a small amount of damage, but it is minuscule. However, 3 out of 4 sends a clear message.
What are the issues the fantasy faces?
  • The Vault damage is too insufficient to be meaningful, even with the 9x multiplier.
    • At best you will get into the low billions with damage from Vault itself. Even that is quite the stretch.
  • The most effective use of the skill for damage actually gets its damage from Vengeance, not Vault, and really gets its damage from another set as well (Unhallowed Essence).
    • Since Vault triggers Vengeance, the most effective way to do damage from Vaulting is actually through having 81 Discipline and using the Unhallowed Essence 6-piece bonuses.
    • If we take Vault's 300% WDMG x 9 from Danetta's Hatred, this is 2,700%. We'll come back to critical damage from Action Shot in a moment.
    • If we take the baseline 400% WDMG from Vengeance (without any rune changes, Ballistics or Grenadier) x 284.5 from Unhallowed Essence 6, this is 11,380,000%.
    • I've left out the 40% increase from Vengeance and the 60% increase from Unhallowed Essence 4 in both scenarios since both Vault and Vengeance can benefit from them.
    • While Action Shot can auto-crit, this is less than a doubling of damage (since the Vengeance setup could have Critical Hit Chance on items). Being generous, our 2,700% x 2 = 5,400%. This is 2,107x less damage than the Vengeance damage.
    • While the Danetta's Hatred conversion of Vault costing Discipline to Hatred is still relevant in this setup, the 800% increase in Vault damage is wholly irrelevant. But since that 800% bonus exists, it suggests the intent is for that bonus to matter, which would mean a build dealing its damage via Vault, not via Vengeance.
  • Without use of a 6-piece set, the most effective use of Vault for damage is actually discipline-based, not using Danetta's Hatred, both undermining the Discipline-Hatred philosophy and demonstrating the inefficacy of Danetta's Hatred.
    • The most effective way to boost damage without a 6-piece set is Legacy of Dreams. This requires not using Danetta's Hatred. To sustain Discipline-spending, you stack RCR and CDR on every slot possible, including using Yang's Recurve, Leoric's Crown, and Gogok of Swiftness. You can maintain approximately 2.5 Vaults/second without running net-negative on Discipline. Altogether, even assuming considerably higher numbers of Vaults/second in a Danetta's Hatred setup, the Discipline approach is able to output more damage.
What are some possible solutions to fulfill the fantasy of using the Danetta's Hatred set to enable a build that deals damage with Vault?
  • The simplest is to either directly buff Action Shot and Trail of Cinders or to buff the Danetta's Hatred set damage multiplier.
  • Next, you could add a multiplier, DIBS or otherwise, to Vault on the individual items that make up the set.
  • Getting more complex, you could introduce other ways to boost damage of Vault that would work in conjunction with this set.
    • Increasing Vault damage based on movement speed.
      • You could even put a unique twist on this and have the damage scale based on the difference in movement speed between you and the enemy, so slowing them down also boosts your damage. If it's {Your_Speed}-{TheirSpeed} that would be slightly more than the basic example in the bullet above. If you wanted to push it more, it could be {YourSpeed}/{TheirSpeed}. E.g. if your speed was 185% and theirs was 60%, your damage would be increased by 308%.
    • Increasing movement speed based on different conditions - e.g. hatred spent, attack speed, number of clones you have. Since Vault's animation scales with Movement Speed, this boosts damage but also increases resource costs per second. It helps, but since resource costs can be rather large at higher numbers of Vaults/second, this shouldn't be leaned on exclusively.
    • Allowing Vault to synergize with other skills and/or items for other skills.
      • Legendary power to have Vault uses other skills while still counting as Vault for the set damage multiplier; unfortunately this would likely require two itemization approaches, one for Action Shot and one for Trail of Cinders:
        • Action Shot shoots skills: any Primary, Chakram, Elemental Arrow, Impale, Multishot or Cluster Arrow
        • Trail of Cinders leaves behind skills: trail of Sentries, trail of Spike Traps, trail of Fan of Knives that spring when an enemy approaches
      • Items like Chain of Shadows that benefit Vault under different conditions related to other skills.
    • Make effects that scale with your number of shadow clones. For example, Haunt of Vaxo could add 100% damage for each clone you have, which would work on its own since it creates a clone, but would synergize with Danetta's Spite as well. Admittedly this type of approach has to be examined in context of how other builds might poach it. E.g. would a 6-piece set onsider Danetta's Spite in the off-hand and Haunt of Vaxo to stack a multiplier for a skill other than Vault?
    • Adding other unique gearing incentives / multipliers for Vault. E.g. what if a legendary power said, "{PARAM}% of your Life per Hit/Kill is applied as damage on every Vault?" That could represent a substantial damage increase even with a moderate percentage, since it would add to base damage and the value per affix is in the thousands (or even more with Shadow Power or the Leech Passive if using Life per Hit).
  • Moving beyond just the raw damage, which is a significant need, addressing the lack of meaningful AOE as well.
    • This can also combine with the option above for Vault to shoot or leave behind other skills. E.g. AOE is achievable through shooting Spray of Teeth, Bolas, Grenade, Chakram, Elemental Arrow, Multishot and Cluster Arrow; or leaving behind Spike Trap and Fan of Knives.
    • Have Vault - Action Shot fire additional arrows.
    • Have Vault - Trail of Cinders leave behind a larger trail/wake. Maybe it's wider by a number of yards equal to your pickup radius.
    • For Action Shot, you could expand the shot radius by your pickup radius. It wouldn't actually affect number of enemies hit, but it would add some extra 'reach,' I suppose.
Thanks for reading.
3 Likes
2

This is formatted really well.

1 Like
3

I prefer these ideas for Vault, but I wouldn’t want other skills to completely overshadow it.

Danetta’s cannot be used with LoD/LoN – so Natalya’s becomes the defacto set for Vault as the damaging skill, unless the ‘shoots another skill’ feature becomes a thing. If this happened:

A logical implementation would be to make Action Shot shoot a fixed skill like Hungering Arrow with a guaranteed minimum of 5 pierces. Devouring Arrow would see a decent lift in damage. Perhaps a modification to how pierces impact the Spray of Teeth/Scatter Shot’s runes would allow several more build options, maybe those runes need to pierce more than once?

But how does the game know which skill to shoot? Does it pick the skill assigned to left click? Or does it shoot random skills? Maybe this is too complicated? To make this set versatile, we need this:

Clones should buff defense in addition to damage, 8% defense and 50% damage per clone. (i haven’t seen more than 8 out at once), keep in mind Vault displaces normal attacks. With this sort of buff, Vault, Rain of Vengeance and FoK become 5x more deadly. N6 Vault FoK could probably solo clear GR138-140, while UE6 Grenades non-piercing grenades would see a sizable lift in power (2.5-3.5x)

So at the end of it all – here’s what I’d do to the xbow set:

  • Vault costs 8 Hatred instead of Discipline
  • Vault deals 4000% increased damage.
  • Each clone increases your defense by 8% and damage by 50%.

With this, you choose either N6 Vault + FoK/RoV, or UE6 Grenades

1 Like
4

I definitely agree this could get complicated, especially from a coding standpoint, as I think it might require coding in each of those skills/projectile possibilities into Vault (judging from how D3Planner Data represents some other skills that do things like this, like Might of the Earth 4-piece being coded into Leap to cast Earthquake). In terms of result (setting aside code), it could use the Etched Sigil approach of using ones that are equipped.

The 800% → 4000% and 50%/8% buff from the clones is likely much, much easier to implement though, and it works for both Action Shot and Trail of Cinders at once. Nice and simple suggestion. :slight_smile:

Aside, do you know what MS% it was that got 8 clones? I think I derived the animation calculation for Vault (and its MS%) breakpoints, but my computer has trouble with this game even on lowest settings, usually running about 50fps, so I can’t test accurately (it’s a laptop from 2010/2011). But since the clones last 2 seconds each, knowing the MS% that got 8 clones and seeing if that fits the expected range for 4 Vaults/second should help.

EDIT:

A few other ideas for relatively simple legendary powers (in terms of calculation / procedure complexity) that might still have fun gameplay implications:

  • Vault deals up to 800% increased damage based on the Hatred spent to use it.
    • Example: if you have 60% resource cost reduction, Vault costs you 3.2 Hatred, so you get +480% [(8 - 3.2) * 100%] additional damage.
    • The benefit to this vs. simply checking your RCR is it could benefit Trail of Cinders using Cindercoat in theory.* Granted, I personally like Action Shot more (and this would still be useful for Action Shot), but Trail of Cinders probably needs more help on the damage, being honest. Or it could synergize with Chain of Shadows, encouraging pairing Vault and Impale (while lifting up the damage of Vault, so possibly encouraging a different build than Shadow’s Mantle).
    • *The one issue is lack of flexibility in the torso slot, since Aughild’s shoulder is possibly a better use of the RoRG flexibility for Natalya’s Vengeance than Cindercoat.
  • Vengeance rains down on enemies you pass through while vaulting.
    • This would be a much simpler execution of the idea above of firing different spenders or leaving behind different traps, since this would be a single skill (Rain of Vengeance) rather than 10+ skills that would be coded into Vault. Rain of Vengeance is chosen since it’s an area effect that can be centered on the intersection of your hit box with the hit box of the creature you pass through. There isn’t really a question of firing direction, compatibility between Action Shot vs. Trail of Cinders, and so on. There would still need to be a decision whether this inherits the damage bonus from Danetta’s, and the likely answer from a design and intuitiveness standpoint is probably no unfortunately, so this might not actually solve the ‘fantasy gap.’
  • Vault benefits from {PARAM} of your bonuses to movement speed. [150-200]%
    • Percentage could be changed. The range given is just to clarify what I meant by the parameter. So, for instance, with 200%, if you had +25% Movement Speed, Vault would instead treat it as +50% for its animation speed. This would be coded as an alternate value for the existing movement speed line in Vault. (Using alternate values with a fallback to some base value is a common occurrence for many skills with legendary powers that augment them, so the code should be relatively easy to create.)
  • Each time you Vault and do not hit an enemy, your damage with your next Vault increases {PARAM_1}%. This effect stacks up to {PARAM_2} times.
    • As phrased this would probably only work for Action Shot. There might be a phrasing that also encapsulates the idea ‘if an enemy hasn’t taken damage from your Trail of Cinders since your last Vault’ (while still maintaining the current effect for Action Shot) to make it work for both. I’m just not sure how to word it without it sounding overly technical.

Two more ideas for legendary powers that can elevate Vault:

  • Each time you damage an enemy with Vault, increase the damage of your next Vault against that enemy by 100%.
    • So if you hit 4 times with Action Shot or the enemy takes 6 ticks from Trail of Cinders, your next Vault deals +400% or +600% against that same enemy.
  • Vault - Action Shot fires an additional arrow for every 10 points of Hatred you have.

These two powers would also have a strong synergy: at full Hatred (150, including the +25 from Paragon), your first Vault would shoot 19 arrows. With a lot of mobs, that’s a significant AOE improvement over the current 4. With a single target (e.g. Rift Guardian), that means your follow-up Vault deals +1900% damage. Overall, that next Vault, which would fire +14 arrows (18 total), would deal 425% (more arrows) x 2000% (more damage per arrow) = 8,500% damage (or 85x damage).