I’ve just started the season last week, I’m pushing into 118s and such. My question is, why aren’t people using bane of the Stricken over trapped? It would seem that when fighting mobs that you hit for more than 30 times (which… when you’re pushing up against your limit, shouldn’t be too hard) stricken overtakes trapped. And the added 25% for RG and bosses would be good, no?
Stricken has an internal cooldown tied to your attack speed (for GoD DH typically ~0.5 seconds) and only applies 1 stack to the first target hit when off cooldown.
Next, due to the pierce cap introduced in the last patch, GoD DH suffers a lot more with rift progression and thus has a lower GR ceiling. Because of this, the boss isn’t the bottleneck anymore as much as rift progression is now. Thus, many GoD DH players now opt to use Bane of the Trapped or Zei’s Stone of Vengeance as the 3rd gem (after Simplicity’s Strength and Taeguk).
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Thanks so much for that. I had no idea that stricken had an internal cooldown , I thought it stacked on everything you hit, all the time (given the attack speed and rate of attacks, I figured that would be pretty quick)
Thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.
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Also, many are now running Squirt’s (with FoT on follower) and it’s relatively easy to maintain full stacks on most RGs 
when positioned correctly (like to maximize Zei’s bonus).
Zei’s is a forbidden concept in which feels like 99% of DH player’s don’t believe in. I’m tried pushing this in Demon Hunter community channel, a few times, just to have everyone argue against it in favor of Bane of the Trapped.
Zei’s + Squirts just feels like there is synergy together. You can’t use a close-ranged playstyle with an item like Squirts if you’re truly trying to keep the stacks up. So ideally Zeis looks like the clear option to use with Squirts since Zeis offers more damage the further away you are from your target…And the further away you are from monsters/enemies the less likely you are to get hit and lose Squirts stacks. But unfortunately you’re eventually going to lose them Squirts stacks with all the random as hell AoE and unavoidable attacks that happen.
But honestly. I’m not a huge fan of Squirts…Just because it’s so hard to keep stacks up, even when using Fortress Ballista. I much prefer a combo like using Ess of Johan or Hellfire Amulet, with Bane of the Trapped over Zei’s. It just feels more my playstyle.
Another problem I see, or have myself rather, is utilizing AreaDmg with Squirts + Zeis. As it’s very hard for me to really justify a way to group up monsters without lose stacks. I’m so passively aggressive towards trying to keep Squirts stacks up I tend to kite backwards more often than not which really seperates a lot of monsters from one another.
But hell, not everyone has DiEoxidE skillz. I sure as hell don’t. =)
I’m not entirely sure why would people be so against Zei’s. At rank 100 it gives the same damage buff as rank 150 Trapped. Also like Trapped, it’s multiplicative.
The description of Zei’s is also little bit misleading as you get full benefit already at 40 yards instead of 50. That’s because the base benefit is already gained at 0 yard distance.
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I think you’re trying too hard to keep Squirts up in the rift. Unlike a build like UE MS you aren’t expected to have any reasonable amount of Squirts uptime there. It’s mostly taken for Shield and on the RG, which already makes it superior to Hellfire and (arguably) Ess of Johan.
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Cant disagree with ya. hehe But yea, I do.
Zei’s is a viable alternative but the playstyle of staying at maximum distance doesn’t work too well since the pierce cap nerf. Killing elites by staying out of the fray won’t work until the density is low enough where most arrows target only elites. Sure Squirt’s is nice but it’s generally better to just focus on killing specific targets.
The only way to reliably hit an intended target with Hungering Arrow now is to stand on top of the target, which is where Bane of the Trapped shines.
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Yea I agree with ya of course…But by doin so, standing on top of elites, you won’t have any squirts stacks…Unless you have a shield pylon. Like i said before, unless it wasnt in this thread (too lazy to scroll up lol), I actually prefer Ess of Johan + Trapped + AreaDmg.
I just started playing GoD Hunger Arrow build and have fallen in love with it. Previously I was playing my formal favorite UE. But when I was able to easily clear a GR110 with only two augments (focus and restraint from UE) with only Dawn as the extra ancient I fell in love with this build. I still don’t have a lot of ancient gear yet on my DH and feel like I could push the build even higher since I have over 2100 paragon.
I was gonna have the WW/Rend barb be the one that would be the key farmer, gem leveler, bounty farmer, etc… the main work horse for the group.
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