Below are test results of the Demon Hunter skill changes. Stay tuned for more 1.0.4 guides, builds and a lot more coming soon to the Diablo 3 blog.
Buriza Do Kyanon
- Buriza Do Kyanon pierce is calculated multiplicatively with Hungering Arrow. It first checks for Buriza pierce, if it works then the arrow will pierce, then it checks the base pierce chance of the skill. Maybe it's the other way around but it doesn't matter: no infinite piercing.
- The life on hit from Cinder Arrow + Buriza is not enough to facetank with ~600 life on hit in act 1.
- The highest AOE dps you can get with Buriza comes from Frost arrow. Buriza + Frost arrow works roughly the same way as Lightning Fury back in the days. In other words, you get a solid mass of blue light. It's a beautiful sight of course, but it's not enough to take care of things on its own in inferno.
- The second highest AOE with Buriza is Bola Shot with range rune. It works kind of the same way Kuko Shakaku worked back in the days. pierce, explode, pierce, explode, leading to quadratic scaling of damage. It's not enough to take care of things on its own in inferno
- The highest single target buriza dps is a tie between Puncturing Arrow (50% chance to pierce) and Devouring Arrow (70% more damage after each pierce). Shatter Shot simply doesn't work with Pierce. Anyway it's not enough to take care of things on its own in inferno.
- Rockets don't pierce, grenades and other ground-targetted AOE don't pierce.
New Jagged Spikes
- Zero procs include zero life on hit, but you knew that already.
- Jagged Spikes dps is crazy still and it really really hurts trying to tank without it, this is what melted things down.
- Jagged Spikes can still life leech. 6% life steal is not enough to recoup the lost health unless you have godly dps gear. I don't.
- Tanking without Caltrops is a mess, not because of the lack of health returns but because of the lack of a go-to skill to apply Numbing Traps. Remember to put Fan of Knives and/or Spike traps somewhere on your bar if you spec for it.
New Vault: Trail of Cinder
- it's crazy op
- not using it is stupid
- life leech works
- life on hit works
- the proc coefficient is roughly estimated at around 0.6
- it should be nerfed to deal only 150% damage over 3 seconds.
New Vault: Action Shot
- it's pretty good & fun
- it's not crazy OP like ToC so don't spec for it for now
- it shoots 4 arrows all the time, and it works exactly like Strafe except it deals more damage (75% per arrow instead of ~30%). The 4 arrows will all hit one target if there's only one available.
- it's the biggest discipline hog ever if you use it as your main attack
- couldn't see if it could proc night stalker
- didn't check if it consumed sharpshooter
New Rain of Vengeance: Stampede
- the biggest damager of the RoV runes if what you want is burst damage, its dps comes close to half of Trail of Cinder's at 1200% over ~5 seconds, and its AOE is bigger than Anathema, and it also acts as a CC.
New Chakram
- Boomerang damage is decent. Can't kill shit with it as a tank DH in act2 though: Life on Hit is too low to stay in range for a cast. A fix could be to the make it a twin boomerang for twice as many hits (and of course halve each boomerang damage).
- Serpentine deals good damage but is completely unpredictable, as always. A simple fix would be to make it always start its first curve from the right-hand instead of randomly alternating. Right now the only way to make sure you hit something is to spec for crazy IAS with dual-wield and carpet-advance (ie: do the opposite of kiting). This simply doesn't work.
- Shuriken Cloud damage upgrade is impressive but the proc coefficient is way too low, and the base damage is way too low too.
New Companion: Wolf
- still broken: doesn't attack anything that moves. Increase its attack range. It should ALWAYS be able to hit something that's snared.
New Strafe: Demolition
- still broken: doesn't hit anything that's not snared. If you don't want us to tank, make it explode on impact.
- Strafe damage in general is still pitiful. It's currently a channelled dot that scales down with the amount of monsters.
New Rapid Fire
- is decent but still slightly worse than all the good damage options we have, as far as raw dps is concerned. Need to double the proc coefficient or something so there's a benefit to actually fire rapidly instead of just throwing a big hitter and kiting.
That's all folks, enjoy 1.0.4 and have a nice day!
