DH looking for help

[darklogrus]

My advice, don't farm the Butcher area until your gear is good and ready, Act I seems to get progressively harder and trickier as you go along, try hitting up another spot earlier and go from there..

[SurrealNight]

With sharpshooter, is crit % still a good stat on gear? Obviously +crit damage is, just wondering about crit % itself.

Sharpshooter is a pretty bleh talent now. It's power was letting you ramp up to 50-100% crit ratting and then fire off 4-5 NT balls all with that bonus. If your using hunger/frost arrow you hit so fast your going to constantly be resetting the crit bonus from the attack which is a very marginal DPS gain. If your taking the Frost Arrow advice you want Cull the Weak for the 15% damage boost (and I usually have caltrops out anyways).

There is another thread about crit vs crit damage you might want to check out I posted a very math heavy thread there which still has valid #'s.

My advice, don't farm the Butcher area until your gear is good and ready, Act I seems to get progressively harder and trickier as you go along, try hitting up another spot earlier and go from there..

I would give it a shot, if you end up dying too much then your DPS is to low. You really need to get good at making sure you either avoid or SmokeScreen/Gloom basically everything that hits you. Put at least two caltrops + torturous ground between you and elite packs and that should give you enough time to empty a hatred bubble of frost arrow into them. Just keep dropping caltrops and kiting until dead (using SS or Gloom if they Jail/Vortex/ect).

Start at the cursed hold and if you hit the Jailor before you have 5 stacks port out and clear a tomb in Cemetery of the Damned (sometimes there is an elite near the waypoint).

Jailor is crazy easy, just start from the far west path and drop 3-4 caltrops behind you as you trigger the event then run back to the gate that eventually opens after he dies. Just spam hungering arrow off screen to kill the adds and agro jailor when he spawns and switch to Frost Arrow when he comes in range. I found standing in the west funnels all the adds into the middle and they just get wrecked by your Frost Arrow splits. Not sure if it's a bug but literally no adds come up the west path or from either side of me so it's just a turkey shoot.

Butcher takes some learning to do it "without getting hit by anything" so you may want to practice him on a lower difficulty. Soon as event starts drop a caltrops and run to the far back of the room and start spamming Hungering. Soon as he is in range unload Frost Arrows and dodge charge. You now have a only a couple of seconds (tactical advantage is awesome here) to get out of range of his Grapple/Fan attack which will follow so if you aren't going to make it pop SS or Gloom and then a caltrops midway in the room to give you more time to spam Hungering/Frost.

After the 1st charge and his grapple he will walk onto your screen and do the chain fan attack. This is where I died the most as you HAVE to SS or Gloom or you die. If you can learn to gauge this attack and time your SS/Gloom properly you basically have the fight one death free. Also, if he does hit you with grapple just immediately hit Smoke Screen and run back to the edge of the room.

I like to use Shadow Power+Gloom for Butcher instead of SS because the 3 second duration gives you a lot of room to pop it sooner as (at least I can't) it's almost impossible to wait until he actually does the attack. You can consider loading Tactical Advantage for the run, I really love that talent wish I had a 4th slot for it as the move boost is really nice.

Hope this helps people struggling with Act 1 from weak gear. If I can do it pre-nerf with a 600 DPS bow so can you! =P

[Trotheus]

Thanks for the advice everyone. Turns out the problem wasn't the game, but with me being a pigheaded asshole I'm having a much better time now.

Just one thing, SurrealNight: you suggest using both caltrops and smoke screen on the Butcher - but we're forced to choose between those two, we can't use both. I'm still having a ton of trouble with him because the fan attack is completely random with no indicator that he's going to do it - and it 1shots me.

[Whitey]

Thanks for the advice everyone. Turns out the problem wasn't the game, but with me being a pigheaded asshole I'm having a much better time now.

Just one thing, SurrealNight: you suggest using both caltrops and smoke screen on the Butcher - but we're forced to choose between those two, we can't use both. I'm still having a ton of trouble with him because the fan attack is completely random with no indicator that he's going to do it - and it 1shots me.

Tried Elective Mode? :P
Also +1 for admitting to jerkery openly in a friendly manner!

[Trotheus]

Tried Elective Mode? :P
Also +1 for admitting to jerkery openly in a friendly manner!

Oh wow, I saw that option and I just figured it allowed you to swap what was on L & R mouse or whatever... I didn't realize it opened up new combos o.O Now I feel like an idiot... this changes everything o.O Thanks!

[Bantokar]

I use a 994dps 2H xbow and quiver, had 120k dps with SS up (pre-patch). Full glass cannon spec, am on Belial inferno. Haven´t played after pacth though.

[Stormgnoef]

get 1k crossbow.They cost only 200k gold now.And try using impale with 100% more dmg on crit.Iwas crit with it for 200k and my gear is pretty bad.

[groparu]

For me, % crit dmg works great i was prepatch at 150k with SS now at 131k ( didnt,stack AS items just a ring and gloves).I'm at 300% crit dmg, used to clear inferno pony level very easy and working my way into act 3 now, although i hate the fps drop and laggy area in the stupid keep so i don't bother.
Bows/xbows with crit dmg and socket proved to be great dps increase for me, you might want to try that.
Also 12% ms on boots is a must have in my opinion for easier kiting and new mortar dodging.

P.S: I've always played full glass cannon with like 27k hp 50 resist to all and stuff, 2k dex.

[SurrealNight]

Thanks for the advice everyone. Turns out the problem wasn't the game, but with me being a pigheaded asshole I'm having a much better time now.

Just one thing, SurrealNight: you suggest using both caltrops and smoke screen on the Butcher - but we're forced to choose between those two, we can't use both. I'm still having a ton of trouble with him because the fan attack is completely random with no indicator that he's going to do it - and it 1shots me.

Elective Mode was already mentioned so I'll leave it at that.

Want to note I said I use Caltrops+Smoke Screen to clear elites (and Jailor) and Shadow Power + Gloom for Reflect Damage/Butcher. The 3 second duration gives you a lot more forgiveness on the Butcher but you still need enough gear to survive the hit (usually drops me to 50%). So if your really new to Act 1 you might have to do Smoke Screen anwyays.

I have a 5 button Razor mouse and put Hungering(M1), Frost Arrow(M2), Smoke Screen(M4), Preparation(M5), Caltrops(1), Shadow Power(4). For some reason I find Keyboard 1 & 4 easiest to hit compared to 3/4 *shrug*. The important thing is having SS on my thumb button so I can twitch it as the slightest sign of danger.

[Dannyl]

Sharpshooter is a pretty bleh talent now. It's power was letting you ramp up to 50-100% crit ratting and then fire off 4-5 NT balls all with that bonus. If your using hunger/frost arrow you hit so fast your going to constantly be resetting the crit bonus from the attack which is a very marginal DPS gain. If your taking the Frost Arrow advice you want Cull the Weak for the 15% damage boost (and I usually have caltrops out anyways).

Couldn't you theoretically do the same with BL? I've been running my warden/butcher runs now several times through, using BL with sharpshooter and the results are pretty good. People say that BL's damage is too low but honestly, I don't think so. At least personally I'm not having any problems at all melting the mobs away. Even works nicely with gloom against elite packs. I don't even kite that much any more; I can simply park, gloom + spam.

Reflected mobs, which were a real bane before, are now a non issue. Funny enough, now the main issue are vortex, arcane, desecrate, and that sort of thing, which were a non issue pre-patch

[SurrealNight]

Really depends on your DPS and personal taste. I love how BL works mechanically but after doing a run with BL and a run with Frost Arrow I decided on FA.

You are correct Sharpshooter for a BL build has value as you can get the same "alpha strike" effect you got with NT.

[Trotheus]

Elective Mode was already mentioned so I'll leave it at that.

Want to note I said I use Caltrops+Smoke Screen to clear elites (and Jailor) and Shadow Power + Gloom for Reflect Damage/Butcher. The 3 second duration gives you a lot more forgiveness on the Butcher but you still need enough gear to survive the hit (usually drops me to 50%). So if your really new to Act 1 you might have to do Smoke Screen anwyays.

I have a 5 button Razor mouse and put Hungering(M1), Frost Arrow(M2), Smoke Screen(M4), Preparation(M5), Caltrops(1), Shadow Power(4). For some reason I find Keyboard 1 & 4 easiest to hit compared to 3/4 *shrug*. The important thing is having SS on my thumb button so I can twitch it as the slightest sign of danger.

If you swap skills for butcher you'll lose NV.

I've had terrible luck with Razer and actually sworn off the brand. My original Dback was great. After 3 faithful years the wheel started to go so I got a 3g Dback and immediately thought "wow, flimsy.. what happened?" - Sure enough, it died 2 days later - loud pop and an electronic burning smell. RMA'd it, new one's left button stopped working within a month. RMA'd it, right button within a month... I give up. I picked up a Cyborg R.A.T. 7 and my only complaint is the side buttons kinda suck. Also, wish I'd gone with the wireless 9.

[SurrealNight]

I run Caltrops+Smoke Screen+Shadow Power. Use SS/Caltrops on most packs and SP on reflect/Butcher. My goal is to get enough gear to replace one of the three (i'd like to run with just SP+Gloom) but Dex+Vit+AllRes/Armor+X good stat don't come cheap =P

[Dannyl]

I run Caltrops+Smoke Screen+Shadow Power. Use SS/Caltrops on most packs and SP on reflect/Butcher. My goal is to get enough gear to replace one of the three (i'd like to run with just SP+Gloom) but Dex+Vit+AllRes/Armor+X good stat don't come cheap =P

Well, depends what act you are playing but I've sort of restarted my progression in act I and so far, I'm quite capable of running a full warden/butcher run (with plenty of elites) with only ~125 resist, 2.6k armor, and ~21k HP. I don't use smoke screen anymore, just shadow power and gloom for elite packs. White mobs are a non issue ofc.

Will need more than that for act II however, but at least for running the occasional easy farm on act I, it's so far enough. No smoke screen needed

[SurrealNight]

I might just be addicted to Smoke Screen from using it for so long (I leveled with SS + Tactical Advantage instead of Vault). Still nice when those brutes with the wind up hammers jail you and you SS and "whoop whoop whoop" your way away.

Haven't tested if I can take a big hit like that with Gloom yet but I can soak "one" hit from the Butcher's chain fan, 3.5k armor but my HP and Res are lower than that (~32k DPS).