With A Vengeance: Demon Hunter Skill Analysis, Part 1
2011-11-26
With A Vengeance: Demon Hunter Skill Analysis, Part 1
Class Overview
Demon Hunters are survivors of the demonic onslaught, ones who have witnessed the butchering of their family and friends. With great vengeance they endlessly stalk demon kind, dispatching the fiends with an assault of arrows, an assortment of traps, and astonishing acrobatic adeptness. Undeniably, Demon Hunters are similar in playstyle to a hybrid of the Amazon and Assassin from Diablo 2.
These sharpshooters have two resources: Hatred and Discipline. Both restore slowly, though certain skills give Hatred upon use, known as Hatred Generators. The rest of the Demon Hunter’s skills are either Hatred Spenders or Discipline Spenders, which do as one might think. Hatred skills are almost all offensive in nature, while Discipline skills comprise the defensive spectrum.
Demon Hunters can sling arrows as much as they wish, but must alwas stay cautious since there is no way to manually generate Discipline. Running out of this resource prevents the Demon Hunter from her strongest defensive abilities, a situation that could spell d-e-a-t-h.
Skill Analysis
HUNGERING ARROW Fire a magically imbued arrow that seeks out targets for 145% weapon damage and has a 35% chance to pierce through targets. Costs 10 Hatred. If you haven’t already realized, this is just a cooler version of the Amazon’s Guided Arrow from Diablo 2. It hunts down enemies, like a cheetah on the prowl! (…or not), and has a solid chance to pierce. If you’re lucky enough for this pierce to happen, it hunts down another unlucky foe. And if the pierce continues to happen on each new enemy the arrow meets, you could have a theoretical swarm of arrows. Unlikely, but plausible.Spray of Teeth Successful crits cause a burst of bone to explode from the target dealing 39% of weapon damage to enemies in that area. This makes critical strike a nice stat to stack. That being said, I don’t know if this would work with the piercing effect. If so, awesome. If not, this runestone loses a lot of potential.
Cinder Arrow Light the arrow on fire, dealing 26% additional weapon damage as Fire damage over 5 seconds. Though these are only the level four representations of runestones, this is not a lot of additional fire damage, especially over time. As it stands, the damage-over-time effect only deals 5.2% extra weapon damage each second. On top of that, if you attack a DoTed enemy again with Hungering Arrow, and you do so before the fire damage has finished its duration or, more importantly, right before the effect has actually done damage that particular second, you’ll clip the damage. This means that you reset the effect, thus having to wait two seconds to do the 5.2% damage. The best way I see for this runestone to be worthwhile is if the fire damage works alongside the piercing effect, or if Blizzard changes this to a stacking DoT, allowing you to pile the effect higher and higher, switch to another enemy, and watch the first burn down.
Piercing Arrow Increase the chance for the arrow to pierce to 55%. Baller. This runestone is going to be lots of fun. ARROW SWARM, GO!!! (I’m going to yell that at my screen every time I pierce multiple foes.)
Shatter Shot If the arrow successfully pierces the first target, the arrow splits into 5 arrows. I wonder if the new arrows seek out targets as well, or if they just become a Multishot that flies out of the enemy’s backside. And if they do pierce, I wonder if they can seek out the original target again.
Devouring Arrow Each consecutive pierce increases the damage of the arrow by 20%. While a 35% chance to pierce is good, it’s not realistically going to happen more than once, maybe twice (possibly more if you’ve been blessed by a Leprechaun). You’ll only be getting the damage increase a third of the time, if at all. Meh. ________________________________________________________________________________________
EVASIVE FIRE Shoot for 115% of weapon damage. If an enemy is at close range, you will also backflip away 15 yards. Generates 4 Hatred. Costs 4 Discipline if you backflip. This is a pretty neat skill, especially for level 2. It’s both offensive and defensive, allowing players to mow down enemies but still keep their distance. I can see this skill really coming in handy, especially if you have waves of enemies coming at you. At the same time, I’d say there’s potential to accidentally backflip into something behind you, so you still need to be careful.
Displace Increase the distance of the backflip to 27 yards. An additional 12 yards. That’s pretty beefy. Again though, the backflip probably has potential to screw you, so make sure to keep positioning in mind when using Evasive Fire.
Shrapnel Fire exploding bullets that also deal 38% weapon damage as Fire to all enemies within 5.0 yards of the primary target. If there are enemy clumps, this will be nice. The whole defensive part of Evasive Fire doesn’t work very well versus ranged enemies; this runestone helps with that, if even marginally. Lets say you’ve got two or three archers in the back. As the first is focused down, the others take constant AoE damage. Cool. However, if your enemies aren’t clumping, this runestone isn’t living up to its full potential.
Surge Shoot for 115% of weapon damage as Lightning. Reduces the cost of the backflip component down to 2.0 Discipline. It’s always good to have another source of damage and this runestone offers that. The reduction in Discipline cost is also nice, especially if you’re fighting a lot of charging melee enemies, allowing you to backflip more often.
Covering Fire Fire a spread of bullets that hit up to 6 targets for 69% weapon damage each. Miniature Multishot with a backflip mechanic attached!? This runestone is amazing. Sure, it reduces the damage of each bullet by a bit, but if you’re fighting three or more enemies, even periodically, this will be awesome.
Parting Gift Shoot for 115% of weapon damage as Poison damage. Whenever a backflip is triggered, leave a poison bomb behind that explodes for 85% of weapon damage as Poison in a 15 yard radius after 0.7 seconds. Again, having multiple sources of damage is never a bad thing. The secondary effect is pretty sweet as well, allowing for an AoE blast of poison. 0.7 seconds is a fairly short fuse, though it may be long enough for some enemies to get out of its range. I can see this effect being especially good in narrow passages though, such as a hallways or entrances. That way, anything chasing you HAS to pass over the bomb. __________________________________________________________________________________________
IMPALE Take the time to fire a massive shot to impale a target for 150% weapon damage. Generates 6 Hatred. Part of this description is a little ambiguous. How long does “take the time” actually take? I wouldn’t imagine it to be longer than a second, if that. My guess is that this is to be used on singular enemies while Evasive Fire is more oriented towards packs of enemies. As soon as you have 10 Hatred built up, however, use Hungering Arrow. The damage is only 5% less, it seeks out a target, and it has a chance to pierce.
Grievous Wounds Critical hits deal an additional 350% weapon damage. This is a pretty massive amount of damage. Sure, you’ve got to stack critical for this runestone to live up to its potential, but from what I’ve seen, many Demon Hunter builds are going to want critical anyway.
Overpenetration The shot will pierce through all enemies in a straight line for 147% weapon damage. This could be nice if you often find yourself in narrow passageways. It also deals nearly the same amount of damage as the original shot, so that’s good.
Recoil Every shot releases a shockwave of energy centered on you dealing 105% weapon damage to all enemies within 10 yards. Eh, not sure how I feel about this. If you’re getting surrounded often, this could be very nice. However, as a Demon Hunter you probably shouldn’t be getting surrounded. I’d only suggest this if you’re going to be in close quarters, though I’d think the above runestone to be better in that situation.
Impact Shots knock the target back and stun them for 2.75 seconds. This will shine in PvP, though will also be useful for defensive purposes in PvE. I’d think the knock back or the stun to be enough for a runestone. This one does both! While we don’t know how much knock back is actually incurred, I don’t think it matters all that much. This runestone is awesome.
Liquid Flame Fire an explosive shell that deals an additional 92% weapon damage over 2 seconds.
Almost 100% extra weapon damage over only 2 seconds? Cool beans. Again, clipping could be an issue for this runestone, but if you switch between two or three targets, firing Impale each time, by the time you get back to the first enemy the DoT should have worn off. I like this runestone, though, honestly, I like some of the others better.