06-10-2012, 05:04 AM
My opinion regarding your impressions and some of my own impressions.
I agree with most of your impressions, except in some points.
Grenades: not very useful as a damage dealer as the way it hits is literally somewhat of a hit & miss, but I found it useful as a Hatred generator coupled with the double Hatred rune and the passive that further boosts it.
With a high attack speed you can generate Hatred very quickly for some resource-intensive skills such as Impale or Cluster Arrow (which I've found largely useless).
Elemental Arrow: with Nether Tentacles, this is currently probably the best damage skill in the game for the Demon Hunter, as the missile can hit the same target multiple times for 155% weapon damage.
Another factor is the Sharpshooter passive, which lingers on for a period after a hit. Because of the nature of the slow moving projectiles, you can create a whole string of projectiles which all hit for critical damage, which makes mince-meat out of almost anything (as long as it doesn't have Reflect Damage!).
Considering this skill and rune combination is leaps ahead of anything else currently available, I foresee a nerf where it will only be able to hit once per shot per target, so better use it while the using is good.
I've also gotten a lot of use out of the Frozen Arrow rune, which hits hard (but not as hard as NT) and slows.
Caltrops: still a very useful skill even in Inferno, where some fights are very hard to solo without the slow this skill provides.
I used to utilize the 80% slow and 2 second stun runes, but lately I've changed it in favour of the 45% damage one, which provides significant supplemental damage.
Sometimes you are running more than you can shoot, where this rune really comes in handy as there is no delay when dropping a trap.
Smoke Screen: I started out using Vault and regular movement as my only method of avoidance at first, as the snob in me did not want to join the masses who spammed the hell out of it before the nerf.
But once I got to the latter parts of Hell and beyond, I realized that it's simply impossible to stay alive without this skill.
Not that you won't be dying, since you'll still suffer countless deaths, but this skill allows you to avoid a few of them.
For this, I really hate the character design, as I recall Blizzard mentioning they wish to advocate diversity of builds and the viability of all skills (hah!), but then they indirectly force you to use a skill.
Vault: I'm still using this all the way up to A3/4 Inferno, I find it very useful in avoiding damage, dodging Arcane Sentries, and the like.
It was invaluable to me in certain boss fights such as The Butcher and Belial.
I started out using Tactical Advantage with this rune, the extra speed was also very nice for general travel and corpse-running.
But later in Inferno I swapped that out in favour of a damage passive, as it proved to be more efficient to kill things as fast as possible rather than trying to run away in futility and dying anyway.
I still really like this skill and it's one of the skills I never remove, I just wish they would add some invincibility frames during the jump, or remove the slight delay during the start-up and end of the skill.
I've also noticed a bug with this skill, sometimes when you use it just as you get hit, you are dropped to 0 HP but are still alive anyway.
You can still attack and everything, but the screen continually flashes with the red HP warning, and you cannot drink potions or use any other way to heal back to positive HP.
Evasive Fire: I used to think that this skill was completely worthless as well, until I got the Covering Fire rune. The benefits of this skill over the other generators is that it generates slightly more, and hits 3 targets instantly in your screen range and slightly beyond.
This means it could possibly save you from death from a charging monster where a projectile-based skill might be slightly too slow.
And perhaps a design flaw or bug, there are some occasions where you can shoot through obstacles or above/below you where other skills cannot reach.
In Inferno I just constantly spam this skill while moving, as it also functions as a detector of enemies, as you can see the damage numbers pop up, which gives you time to prepare. This is also very useful, as everything kills you in 1 hit you need to be aware of where your enemies are, some of which can be very hard to see (the insect swarm type for example), and this skill does not really need to be aimed.
Also, I just like how it goes 'boom boom boom' all the time when you spam it.
Strafe: Indeed, this is a contender for the worst skill in the entire game. I really wanted to make this work as I liked it a lot in D2, but no matter what rune I used, it simply eats up a disproportionate amount of Hatred while doing insignificant damage *and* slowing you down to boot.
It is somewhat amusing that Blizzard is prideful about their skill diversity and viability, but this skill does not seem to have been play-tested at all, as I reckon anyone who has tried it would have noticed it is nigh useless.
I agree with most of your impressions, except in some points.
Grenades: not very useful as a damage dealer as the way it hits is literally somewhat of a hit & miss, but I found it useful as a Hatred generator coupled with the double Hatred rune and the passive that further boosts it.
With a high attack speed you can generate Hatred very quickly for some resource-intensive skills such as Impale or Cluster Arrow (which I've found largely useless).
Elemental Arrow: with Nether Tentacles, this is currently probably the best damage skill in the game for the Demon Hunter, as the missile can hit the same target multiple times for 155% weapon damage.
Another factor is the Sharpshooter passive, which lingers on for a period after a hit. Because of the nature of the slow moving projectiles, you can create a whole string of projectiles which all hit for critical damage, which makes mince-meat out of almost anything (as long as it doesn't have Reflect Damage!).
Considering this skill and rune combination is leaps ahead of anything else currently available, I foresee a nerf where it will only be able to hit once per shot per target, so better use it while the using is good.
I've also gotten a lot of use out of the Frozen Arrow rune, which hits hard (but not as hard as NT) and slows.
Caltrops: still a very useful skill even in Inferno, where some fights are very hard to solo without the slow this skill provides.
I used to utilize the 80% slow and 2 second stun runes, but lately I've changed it in favour of the 45% damage one, which provides significant supplemental damage.
Sometimes you are running more than you can shoot, where this rune really comes in handy as there is no delay when dropping a trap.
Smoke Screen: I started out using Vault and regular movement as my only method of avoidance at first, as the snob in me did not want to join the masses who spammed the hell out of it before the nerf.
But once I got to the latter parts of Hell and beyond, I realized that it's simply impossible to stay alive without this skill.
Not that you won't be dying, since you'll still suffer countless deaths, but this skill allows you to avoid a few of them.
For this, I really hate the character design, as I recall Blizzard mentioning they wish to advocate diversity of builds and the viability of all skills (hah!), but then they indirectly force you to use a skill.
Vault: I'm still using this all the way up to A3/4 Inferno, I find it very useful in avoiding damage, dodging Arcane Sentries, and the like.
It was invaluable to me in certain boss fights such as The Butcher and Belial.
I started out using Tactical Advantage with this rune, the extra speed was also very nice for general travel and corpse-running.
But later in Inferno I swapped that out in favour of a damage passive, as it proved to be more efficient to kill things as fast as possible rather than trying to run away in futility and dying anyway.
I still really like this skill and it's one of the skills I never remove, I just wish they would add some invincibility frames during the jump, or remove the slight delay during the start-up and end of the skill.
I've also noticed a bug with this skill, sometimes when you use it just as you get hit, you are dropped to 0 HP but are still alive anyway.
You can still attack and everything, but the screen continually flashes with the red HP warning, and you cannot drink potions or use any other way to heal back to positive HP.
Evasive Fire: I used to think that this skill was completely worthless as well, until I got the Covering Fire rune. The benefits of this skill over the other generators is that it generates slightly more, and hits 3 targets instantly in your screen range and slightly beyond.
This means it could possibly save you from death from a charging monster where a projectile-based skill might be slightly too slow.
And perhaps a design flaw or bug, there are some occasions where you can shoot through obstacles or above/below you where other skills cannot reach.
In Inferno I just constantly spam this skill while moving, as it also functions as a detector of enemies, as you can see the damage numbers pop up, which gives you time to prepare. This is also very useful, as everything kills you in 1 hit you need to be aware of where your enemies are, some of which can be very hard to see (the insect swarm type for example), and this skill does not really need to be aimed.
Also, I just like how it goes 'boom boom boom' all the time when you spam it.
Strafe: Indeed, this is a contender for the worst skill in the entire game. I really wanted to make this work as I liked it a lot in D2, but no matter what rune I used, it simply eats up a disproportionate amount of Hatred while doing insignificant damage *and* slowing you down to boot.
It is somewhat amusing that Blizzard is prideful about their skill diversity and viability, but this skill does not seem to have been play-tested at all, as I reckon anyone who has tried it would have noticed it is nigh useless.