Mastering the CA DH: The Physical Cluster Arrow Demon Hunter

by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

The Cluster Arrow Demon Hunter has positioned itself strongly on the minds of players as one of the most powerful DH Builds out there. In this mini-series we will look at the fine print on the Cluster Arrow Demon Hunter so we can make informed selections on our items and skills that will make us the strongest we can be.

Good day everyone, Dannie “Identify” Ray is back to keep sharing the knowledge of the Cluster Arrow builds. For the Past few weeks we’ve seen Attack speed vs Resource Cost Reduction and Hand Crossbows vs Crossbows, so you’d likely be expecting to see Physical vs Fire today.

Alas, that’s not much of a fight. There is a reason most DH’s play Fire and that’s not because Loaded for Bear is exceptionally strong compared to other Cluster Arrow Runes. The real reasons we choose Fire are [d3item name=”Cindercoat”]  and [d3item name=”Magefist”].

Getting 30% Resource Cost Reduction is insane, when we took a hard look at the math we realized that 30% RCR would be superior DPS-wise to having 30% Attack Speed; imagine how insane people would go if they could get 30% Attack Speed not only in a single item but also as a secondary property.

But wait, if Fire is clearly superior to Physical and we are trying to be the very best Cluster Arrow Demon Hunters we can be; why would I be covering the Physical DH?

The Reason is super simple, I haven’t been able to get a Dexterity Cindercoat yet. No matter how hard I try, that little piece of red goodness continues to elude me. The Funny thing is, not having a Cindercoat has allowed me to explore plenty of different options. I’ve come into the conclusion that if we remove Cindercoat from the equation then Physical can be just as a strong, if not outright superior.

The Build:

The First thing you notice is the absence of a Hatred Generator, this means we need the slowest possible Weapon and also loads of Resource Cost Reduction and Hatred per Second.  You’ve also noticed the Ballistics passive which is key and allows us to compete with Fire.

Ballistics skyrockets the Damage of our Shooting Stars to whooping 800% weapon damage, coupled with the 550% of the base ability we have a total of 1350% weapon damage; that’s a very high base. That’s not all instant damage though the 550% comes first and that could put you out of Ambush range which would be a shame. Remember that you can always switch up Ambush for another passive.

Still, 45% to Cluster Arrow and 60% to Physical on top of that very high 1350% base would result on a lot of damage. Now if we boost it by Wolf Companion’s 30% then it gets even crazier.

Basically you want to pop Wolf and Vengance so you can spam Huge Damage Cluster Arrow to your heart’s content, Punishment will make your crazy Shooting Star sprees longer and when you see that you are starting to run out of mana you can always switch to Rapid Fire.

Why Rapid Fire?

The biggest problem with this type of build is a long fight. Rift and Act bosses on the proper difficulty can have too many hit points to be killed in a single CA flurry. Rapid Fire is perfect for this scenario, a single target skill that deals considerable damage and can be cast almost infinitely if you have the proper RCR? That’s just what the doctor ordered.

This particular Rune deals 525% Weapon Damage plus a rocket for 145% extra, with Ballistics the damage is doubled to 290% for a grand total of 815% Weapon Damage; that’s way more than a generator could ever dream of doing

Other Options:

You can also use Nether Tentacles, Razor Disk or Suppresion Fire; out of those three I liked Suppresion Fire the best as it did offer some utility. After playing with Rapid Fire it is just too hard to give away, at least for boss fights.

If your RCR is not where it should be, then you’ll likely be forced into a generator, in that case use whatever you like better regardless of the element; generator damage isn’t a big part of your DPS anyway.

Conclusions:

While Fire is undoubtely the best spec, it is because of Cindercoat. If you are like me and just can’t get one of them you might do well trying Physical and see if you like it. Shooting Stars is a super strong alternative to Loaded for Bear and if patch 2.1 delivers on its promise of new Legendaries it might just become the OP DH build, it would do us well to have a headstart.

If you like the build it can easily be switched to fire just by changing the Ballistics passive for Night Stalker and switching the runes on both Rapid Fire and Cluster Arrow.

Hopefully on the next part of the series we can look at our survivality options and how to play in a hardcore environment, I’m guessing Neinball is going to have a few thoughts on that.