Demon Hunter defensive abillitys & mage "Force Armor" compare!

[Korie]

So me & my mate are playing DH(me)/Wiz(him) & he keeps bragging about his Force armor and how he can stand in Butcher Inferno chains ect, is there any kind of defensive abillity that is comparable to a wizard force shield?

[Deleted]

Entangling Shot, Caltrops, Impale with knockback, Smoke Screen, Vault, Evasive Fire...

[Deleted]

As for mechanics? No
As in equally good? Yes, smoke screen. It prevent the next inc damage source. Timed well would make Butcher chain do 0 damage, compared to your mates 35% hp loose. Though Smoke screen require alot of timing though, while it is a nobrainer with wis shield.

[Maelstrom51]

Good timing of Smokescreen. It takes more skill than Force Armor but still isn't hard. Teleporter and Vortex champion/elite packs are brutal though =/

[Korie]

Entangling Shot, Caltrops, Impale with knockback, Smoke Screen, Vault, Evasive Fire...

Vault is quite useless at the moment because of the random leaps, entangling shot doesnt absorb damage, neither does Caltrops, Impale or Evasive Fire, you're just writing down random def Cooldowns which in no case can be compared to a free "guardian spirit" or "ardent defender"(wow).

[Malkhor]

Smoke screen makes you immune to all damage whilst it's up. It's not like Force Armor, but it's strong. Also, force armor got nerfed and so did Smoke Screen.

[Rownbear]

I did butcher inferno last night as DH, had to gem vitality to survive the chains, around 28k hp and you survive it barely. as DH you also dodge some of them, my gear isnt the best with 22k dps I just made it before all the fire on the floor went nuts. And I didnt use the impale/ cinder arrow comp because I wanted to kill hm when I still had the 5 stacks of magicfind, so with the aoe spells it was amazing when he finally went down. I probably have to farm and stack more dmg reduc :-\

[Celar]

As for mechanics? No
As in equally good? Yes, smoke screen. It prevent the next inc damage source. Timed well would make Butcher chain do 0 damage, compared to your mates 35% hp loose. Though Smoke screen require alot of timing though, while it is a nobrainer with wis shield.

yea, except its a 33% chance he will cast chains, and it will one shot you unless you have like 100k hp (more if hes at lower HP) And you cannot afford to use Smoke Screen everytime just incase its the aoe chains hes tossing at you. His other 2 abilities you can dodge, but the chains is impossible to dodge by running (unless you outrange it, which is kinda meh without a tank.. :>

Its hard, and it requires a bit of luck and thats how its supposed to be :>

[Deleted]

A well timed smokescreen to avoid the incoming hit / vaulting out of the "bad" is quite possibly the strongest thing demon hunters have, if not in the game.

When it comes down to it, force armour and smokescreen were both RIDICULOUSLY overpowered at launch and excuse the pun, but... abused to high hell(actually inferno).
Hnece why then both were swiftly hotfixed, however smokescreen is still useable in its current state, whilst I believe the force armour rune was just removed completely was it not?

[Deleted]

Vault is quite useless at the moment because of the random leaps, entangling shot doesnt absorb damage, neither does Caltrops, Impale or Evasive Fire, you're just writing down random def Cooldowns which in no case can be compared to a free "guardian spirit" or "ardent defender"(wow).

Correction, random def cooldowns that lets me avoid taking damage from pretty much anything except Teleporter elites.

Different playstyles, perhaps, but it works wonders for me.

[Ellesarr]

Wizard in general is pure BS, the one in my 4 player team was able to permastun(freeze) everything on belial (including belial) making the first 2 phases a complete joke on inferno.

[Korie]

Correction, random def cooldowns that lets me avoid taking damage from pretty much anything except Teleporter elites.

Different playstyles, perhaps, but it works wonders for me.

You seem to be quite off the topic here, I am asking about a abillity that is comparable to forcearmor, there seem to be none.

Smokescreen requires alot of timing and precision while Force armor can be up 24/7 & refresh it after an attack, on bosses like Diablo, The Butcher, Skelly King & Azmodan its an amazing abillity which seems much stronger than any other defensive abillity in the game.

[JayJay09]

Do you guys not know the latest hotfixes?

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4662...12_-23_05_2012

Force Armor no longer works like the tooltip states. It now absorbs an attack by the amount of your max hp. So, you can get oneshottet now if you didn't care about vitality. Most Wizards now stack vita in order to have better use from force armor.

Example: If you have 20k hp, force armor now protects you from 20k dmg. If the dmg dealt was 30k, you now suffer 10k life dmg. It's still a strong glyph, but you can't go for max dps anymore now. Though I don't know how this glyph actually behaves. If there's an inner cooldown or if you can refresh it endlessly and always gain it's absorb effect.. If latter is true, it'd still be ridiculously strong. I don't play a Wizard myself, so I don't know.

[Deleted]

Yep, I also saw that they nerfed the heck out of Smoke Screen. Happy day...

[Deleted]

Demon Hunters still have probably the best defensive set of abilities even with the SS nerf. All content including all of Inferno is perfectly solo'able for us still.

[Leeroyjgibbs]

whilst I believe the force armour rune was just removed completely was it not?

No, that was the Monk rune. It's still in the game but Blizz said it was basically made obsolete and no one should use it until they think of a way to change/replace it.

[korsic]

The way force armor works now is this:

You still take damage from every attack, up to 35% of your max life. IF the attack would exceed that, an amount is absorbed up to 100% of your max life. If the attack would do more damage than 100% of your max life, then you still take the excess damage on top of the 35% you already took.

For example.

Let's say I have 1000 life.
An attack that does 100 damage will still do full damage to me (10% of my max hp).
An attack that does 500 damage will do 350 damage to me (35% of my max hp, the other 150 damage is absorbed by force armor because I have 1000 hp).
An attack that does 1200 damage will do 550 damage to me (35% of my max hp, +200 because the shield only absorbs up to my max hp worth of damage, forcing me to eat the other 200).


Hope this clears things up for you guys. Force armor is still an incredibly powerful buff, it's just not super broken like it used to be.


Edit: Also, it requires no 'refreshing' after an attack. It's simply a 2 minute buff, you can refresh it whenever you want before it fades.

[JayJay09]

The way force armor works now is this:

You still take damage from every attack, up to 35% of your max life. IF the attack would exceed that, an amount is absorbed up to 100% of your max life. If the attack would do more damage than 100% of your max life, then you still take the excess damage on top of the 35% you already took.

For example.

Let's say I have 1000 life.
An attack that does 100 damage will still do full damage to me (10% of my max hp).
An attack that does 500 damage will do 350 damage to me (35% of my max hp, the other 150 damage is absorbed by force armor because I have 1000 hp).
An attack that does 1200 damage will do 550 damage to me (35% of my max hp, +200 because the shield only absorbs up to my max hp worth of damage, forcing me to eat the other 200).


Hope this clears things up for you guys. Force armor is still an incredibly powerful buff, it's just not super broken like it used to be.


Edit: Also, it requires no 'refreshing' after an attack. It's simply a 2 minute buff, you can refresh it whenever you want before it fades.

Thanks for clearing up the new mechanic . It still really is a very powerful buff, esp when you have a lot of vita.