There’s always some cookie cutter that everyone just blindly follows and copies but that doesn’t mean there are no variants or better options. I just see players that will copy who got to 150 1st in 4 player and then that just gets copied and pasted without any critical thinking whatsoever.
So here are some options and very good options.
Entangling Shot Runes:
Chain Gang (Physical Rune) vs Heavy Burden (Cold Rune)
I’ve been playing zDH for almost a decade now and there a few things I’ve learned. Chain Gang is redundant. It’s really not needed because Strafe will apply Entangling Shot to everything it hits because of the set bonus. So I don’t use Chain Gang. I choose to use Heavy Burden because it’s Cold damage. The cold damage will be applied to everything you hit which will then trigger Ice Blink. “2 birds, 1 stone.”
Multishot - Wind Chill (Cold Rune) is good too but it’s a little redundant with Entangling Shot - Heavy Burden (Cold Rune) because it’s serving the same purpose.
It’s not a deal breaker but optional gameplay.
Weapons:
Valla’s Bequest - Strafe projectiles pierce
I’m not sure why zDH started using this weapon. It’s a new variant but I don’t think it’s that beneficial compared to other options. Valla’s Bequest was never used for years for zDH so I think it’s just one of those things where some top player only had that weapon and started using it. Everyone just copied it and never looked back. I never saw a problem as a zDH without that weapon, nobody did. Everything HIT gets chained. I guess that’s the reason why half the zDH’s in top 100 don’t use that particular weapon.
Windforce is a much better option imo.
It provides 35% chance to knockback which will trigger Strongarm Bracers +30% damage from all sources which no other weapon can do.
Windforce also give you up to 50% resource reduction which takes the place of Yang’s Recurve which was the go to for zDH solely because of the resource reduction. Other than the resource reduction, Yang’s Recurve was basically useless. But here we have an Ethereal that offers many beneficial stats, passives, and affixes aside from the resource reduction.
In addition to using Windforce you get an extra passive skill - 5 passive skills instead of 4.
In conclusion, cookie cutter builds aren’t always the best or optimal. People are just lazy so they just copy and past. They don’t even think about it. Some players will try to tell you to change this or that because they just look at the #1 4 player group and if you don’t use their build you’re wrong. That’s really not how the game works. Every single build has variants, options. The top streamers will tell you, the beta testers will tell you, maxroll will tell you… there are variants.
Testing and playing these variants is what makes this game great. It’s how players improve and it’s how builds get better. That’s why the once upon a time cookie cutter will evolve. Sometimes it’s just a minor change, one different rune, a different item, a different gem.
Anyway, it’s always good to have options. The players that want to complain about your build because you’re not playing the way they play their build is very toxic. They need to focus on playing their own toon not trying to control how others want to play.