by Whitney "Neinball" Fairchild - 8 years ago     show comments

Blizzcon has come and passed, but the updates are still flowing! While the Blood and Treasure Panel showed off a bunch of content that was available to everyone who had a Virtual Ticket, there was a ton of new info from the demos, Lightning Talks, and chats with developers that you’d only get from the show floor. Don’t worry though, we’ve got you covered! We’ll be bringing you a ton of information from Blizzcon from now until the Patch 2.4 PTR drops later this week.

Demon Hunters

While DH’s were considered the best of the best back during Season 1, they’ve dropped off in popularity in subsequent Seasons. But, the masters of hatred are back with a Vengeance, literally in the case of the tweaked Marauder’s set.

What’s New?

The dev team has completely revamped the Shadow’s Mantle set. It is now based around the concept of a ‘Melee Hunter’ or ninja. Gone are the bows and crossbows in favor of daggers, swords, and other 1h melee weapons. Check out the full bonuses below:

2pc – Increases all of your damage by 1000% while a melee weapon is equipped.

4pc – Shadow Power gains the effect of every rune and now lasts forever

6pc – Impale gains 40,000% bonus weapon damage for the first enemy hit.

In order to complete a full six pieces the devs have added shoulders and a helm for the set.

That’s not all though, like all recent set reworks there will be a bunch of complimentary items being added to help the build. It should be noted that in Patch 2.4 DH’s will finally be able to use a quiver with 1h melee weapons, but still unable to dual wield melee weapons.

Chain of Shadows – Belt

After using Impale, Vault has no cost for 2 seconds.

Lord Greenstone’s Fan – Dagger

Every second, gain a buff that increases the damage of your next Fan of Knives by 250-300%. Stacks up to 30 times.

Sword of Ill Will – 1h Sword

Chakram deals 1.0-1.4% bonus weapon damage for every point of Hatred you have.

Karlei’s Point – 1h Weapon

Impale returns 15 (variable) Hatred when it deals damage to an Impaled enemy.

Elusive Ring

Gain 60% (variable) damage reduction after using Shadow Power, Smoke Screen, or Vault for 8 seconds.

There are going to be a ton options for the new Shadow’s build, but I do want to stress that this isn’t a real melee playstyle, it just uses melee weapons. Impale is still a ranged attack and the items give you a lot of incentive to constantly be using Vault to position yourself and to keep up your damage reduction. You are going to be a very mobile powerhouse and the only time you’ll really need to be in melee range is to cast Fan of Knives to clear out big mob packs, which might actually be the one weakness of this build.

Impale is a single target skill and even though it’s getting a huge damage boost and, in the demo, can one shot elites, it still needs to be cast a lot of times to clear out mob packs. The demo at Blizzcon only showed off the game at around Torment VIII and as we all know, things that work great at that level might not hold up in Grift 60+. While Marked for Death: Grim Reaper can help in clearing, I could easily see the build’s potential reliance on Fan of Knives for AoE clearing being the biggest hindrance to late game progression. We won’t know how everything works in the real world until we get the PTR later this week.

What’s Changed?

Marauder’s is getting a buff to bring it back into the realm of viable builds and it is getting a lot of people excited.

2pc – Unchanged.

4pc – Buffed. Sentries deal 200% increased damage in addition to using your spenders.

6pc – Buffed. Now increases the damage of Vengeance and your Companions in addition to the previous skills and the damage buff has been increased from 100% to 400% per Sentry.

The buffs to Marauder’s don’t end there, a new Cluster Arrow crossbow is being added in addition to being able to cube the new sword listed above for a Chakram build. There will be a new belt that gives passive damage reduction based on the number of Companions you have out. Dawn has also been reworked to reduce the cooldown of Vengeance by a considerable amount (50-54% is what I’ve seen in different screenshots). Could permanent Vengeance Marauder’s builds be a thing in Patch 2.4?

Not exactly DH specific, but there is also a new ‘non-set set’ being added in 2.4 that may lead to a very diverse and powerful set of build options.

Legacy of Nightmares set (Litany of the Undaunted & The Wailing Host)

While this is the only Item Set bonus every Ancient item you have equipped increases your damage dealt by 800% and reduces your damage taken by 4%.

After talking with Wyatt Cheng for a bit during the convention, the devs want the Legacy of Nightmares to be end game viable and they are fine if it actually eclipses all other sets for a couple of classes. This may potentially bring back some old school builds that were popular before the advent of class sets that focused players into using a very specific selection of skills. One of the old builds that comes to mind is the Rapid Fire builds from vanilla D3, especially when they are adding in a new Legendary shoulder piece that buffs the damage of many channeled skills like Rapid Fire.

Sadly, I never came across any pieces of Unhallowed Essence or Natalya’s to check for any changes to them and I can’t find any definitive answers from other sources at the moment to see if anyone else found anything. I don’t doubt there are many other things I’ve missed that will come up in the Patch 2.4 PTR, but be sure to stay tuned for more information that we learned from the show floor.