Mastering the CA DH: Resource Cost Reduction and Attack Speed.
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.
In part one of the series, we will stress out the importance of Resource Cost Reduction and how it can be one of the most important stats for the CA Demon Hunter, in particular we will compare it to the popular Attack Speed and show you that your “Trifecta” might very well be Critical Hit Chance, Critical Hit Damage and Resource Cost Reduction.
The Logic Behind it:
What makes Cluster Arrow builds super powerful is sheer power of the Cluster Arrow ability itself. Loaded for Bear and Shooting Stars can both do upwards of 1000% weapon damage and with enough Elemental Damage % and Cluster Arrow % you can reach near 2000% weapon damage. In comparison a cast of entangling shot will struggle to get past 350% weapon damage.
It doesn’t take a math genius to realize that 2000% > 350%, so every time you are able to cast a Cluster Arrow instead of an entangling shot you will be gaining a good chunk of Damage.
You will then say that attack speed will increase your resource regeneration as you were able to cast Entangling shot faster, which in turn will mean that your Cluster Arrows will come up faster as well. Which is in some fashion true, and some quick mindless math will appear to prove it.
But not so fast, if you dig deeper into it, you will realize that you didn’t consider one of the biggest factors on CA Builds: Preparation – Punishment. This skill serves as a mean of Resource Regeneration that isn’t tied to attack speed, and as we will see later, that will make one big difference.
Because Attack Speed doesn’t let us cast Punishment more often, it suffers against Resource Cost Reduction. RCR will lower the discipline cost on Punishment and all your other utility skill, making it a very attractive option. Slower and cheaper attacks will also take a better advantage of both your passive Hatred regeneration and your use of Punishment.
But those are just words and my ideas, to prove that going heavy on RCR is in fact better we will need heavy math. Follow along into the next section if you dare, but if you are not in the mood for a few Paragraphs of Math skip right to the conclusions section.
Mathematical Proof:
Assumptions:
For ease of calculation we are going to assume 1 Attack per second as our base, our generator will be Entangling Shot with the 6 hatred generation rune and our spender will be Loaded for Bear. Since all of the damage will be fire based, we can ignore +Fire Damage as it will have the same effect on both ES and CA.
We will assume 42% attack speed on 6 item slots and 8% from Paragon points for a total of 50%
We will assume 40.5 Resource Cost Reduction on 6 item slots and 8% from Paragon points for a total of 45% Resource Cost Reduction.
Our Attack Speed scenario would have us with 1.5 attacks per second at 0% RCR, meanwhile our reduction scenario will be at 1 attack per second at 45% Resource Cost Reduction.
The DH has 5 Hatred Generation/Second as passive regeneration, it also has 1 discipline/second passive regeneration.
We will assume we use half our Discipline to fuel Preparation w/ Punishment rune.
We will also assume +40% to Cluster Arrow on gear and +0% Entangling Shot Damage.
Loaded for Bear is 770% Fire Damage and an extra fire 220% damage on each Grenade. Assuming at least 1 Grenade hits the main target you would have 990% fire damage, considering our 40% extra Cluster Arrow Damage we are up to 1386% Fire Damage.
That leaves us with 1386% weapon damage to CA and 200% Weapon Damage to ES.
Attack Speed Build:
Punishments costs us 25 Disc and gives 75 Hatred, that leaves us with 3 Hatred/Disc, since we regen one discipline per second that would be 5 extra Hatred, but we said we would only use half our discipline to fuel Punishment so we end up with an extra 1.5 Hatred per second.
We are then generating 6.5 Hatred per second passive, and at 1.5 attacks per second the “cast time” of CA and ES is 0.66 seconds, we can then shave 4.3 (=0.66*6.5) of the cost of Cluster Arrow, since we will regen 4.3 Hatred between shots.
Our effective CA Cost is then 35.7 (=40-4.3).
ES generates 6 per hit and hits 1.5 times per second so we generate 9 Hatred per second active, it also takes 0.66 seconds to cast so we will regenerate and additional 4.3 Hatred Passively.
This adds up to 13.3 Hatred per Entangling Shot. This means that for each ES we cast, we generate enough resource to cast 0.33 Cluster Arrows. (=13.3/40)
That means 25% of our attacks will be Cluster Arrows. (=0.33/1.33)
With 1.5 attacks per second then we fire 1.125 Entangling Shots per second and 0.375 Cluster Arrows per second.
0.375 Cluster Arrows per second lead to 520% Weapon Damage per second. (0.375%*1386%)
1.125 Entangling Shot per second lead to 225% Weapon per second. (1.125%*225%)
For a total of 745% Weapon Damage per Second.
Resource Cost Reduction Build:
45% RCR means our skills cost 55% or 0.55 of their original cost.
Punishments costs us 13.75 Disc (25*0.55) and gives 75 Hatred, that leaves us with 5.5 Hatred/Disc, since we regen one discipline per second that would be 5.5 extra hatred, but we said we would only use half our discipline to fuel Punishment so we end up with an 2.75 extra hatred per second.
We are generating 7.75 Hatred per second passive, at 1 attacks per second the “cast time” of CA is 1 second, we can then shave 7.75 Hatred out of the cost of Cluster Arrow, since we will regen 7.75 hatred between shots.
Our effective CA Cost is then 14.25 (=40*0.55 – 7.75)
ES generates 6 Hatred per hit and hits 1 time per second so we generate 6 Hatred per second active.
We now know that when using Entangling Shot we generate 6 Hatred per second actively and 7.5 Hatred per second passively, this adds up to 13.5 Hatred per second. This means that for each ES we cast, we generate enough resource to cast 0.95 cluster arrows. (=13.5/14.25)
That means roughly 49% of our attacks will be Cluster Arrows. (=0.95/1.95)
0.49 Cluster Arrows per second lead to 679% per second. (=0.49*1386%)
0.51 Entangling Shot per second lead to 102% per second. (=0.51*200%)
For a total of 781% Weapon Damage per Second.
Conclusions:
Numerically, both alternatives seem pretty even at a Glance, with RCR pulling ahead in raw DPS by 5%.
But of course there’s a few things to throw into the mix of consideration.
- Discipline Consumption: Resource Cost Reduction would allow you to cast your other Discipline skills more often, remember that we said we would only be using half our discipline for Punishment. Should we devote more Discipline into Punishment, we would get a higher margin of improvements for RCR Builds.
- Itemization: I used examples were you completely neglect one of the stats in favor of the other, I also didn’t add Cindercoat into the mix which could have been a 30% extra RCR albeit only for Cluster Arrow. You could also add some extra RCR or Attack Speed using some set bonuses.
- Vengeance – Seethe: 10 Extra Hatred per Second means you will be able to spam Cluster Arrow almost endlessly while under the effects of Vengance.
- Movement: DH’s are a frail class, and even with Smoke Screen you will have to move out of the way more often than not, when you are moving you won’t be able to cast Entangling Shot thus won’t be able to take advantange of your Attack Speed boosted regeneration. Attack Speed builds needs 5 seconds to get enough Hatred for a single Cluster Arrow when moving, Resource Cost Reduction on the other hand only needs 2 seconds.
- Skill Allotment: Maxed Resource Reduction + Cindercoat+ Reaper’s Wraps + Blood Vengance + Max Passive Regeneration might be enough to drop the generator altogether. This has huge potential as a heavy RCR build could switch out Entangling Shot for something like Multishot – Supression Fire or Rapid Fire. If you have enough RCR and Passive Generation to the point that you don’t even need another damaging skill you could add things like Marked for Death, Sentries, or Rain of Vengance for extra damage.
All evidence points towards Resource Cost Generation being somewhat considerably superior to Attack Speed, maybe there’s a sweet point of Balance where they multiply higher if you put a bit on each but IMO, having enough Resource Cost Reduction to completely drop Entangling Shot and add something else is what would give us the best results.
