Diablo 3 - Season 3 - HARDCORE

[Shoveler]

Game: Diablo 3
Class: Demon Hunter
Current Level: 51
Game Mode: Hardcore Season 3


http://i.imgur.com/bFoZxqG.jpg
(Not terribly impressive looking at this point)


Skills: Below are the skills I am currently using as I level up in Hard difficulty. I'm not yet certain what my final build will look like, that will depend on set gear I find and other gear that provide elemental bonuses as well as skill based damage bonuses. At this point in the leveling up process, I have not bothered optimizing skills for a specific damage type as the gear I am using changes very quickly.


http://i.imgur.com/XQND3P9.gif
(Currently relying heavily on Sentries to pump out more dps)

Why Hardcore?: I find the grind in diablo 3 to be dull without the risk of permanent death. I have always enjoyed roguelikes so it seemed to be the right fit for my playstyle. I take a relatively conservative approach to the game and keep the difficulty level manageable rather than pushing the envelope for greater rewards. My season 2 character was a wizard with two full gear sets and I was easily handling torment 3 difficulty until I met with some bad luck (that character bought the farm while jailed at point blank range to a pack of molten boss mobs that I had just killed).

Once I hit level 70 I will update this thread with how I am building out this character, the gear I come across, etc.. If anyone here happens to also play Diablo 3 and wants to add me to their battle.net account, Shoveler#1281.

[Shoveler]

Demon Hunter
Level 70
Paragon Level 2

http://i.imgur.com/LdTkgYf.jpg

Just hit level 70 tonight, and after finishing the rift I was in I ended up at paragon level 2. Figured that was enough for one play session so I took a few screenshots and this is where I am going to be starting from as I progress into the gear grind.



Current Skills & Passive Abilities

http://i.imgur.com/HM3s0z8.jpg

Again, these skills are not optimized. Once I start obtaining level 70 gear I will make adjustments to these skills and passives to take advantage of skill bonuses and damage type bonuses the equipment provides. Once I do I will go into further detail about why I am using each skill and how they are being used together for my build.



Current Stats

http://i.imgur.com/LQrfkpM.jpg

The most important stat here is Critical Hit Chance followed by Critical Hit Damage. Most of the gear I have at this point is not even level 70, and therefore I have not even had the chance to start optimizing equipment for these two stats. At 18.6% my current base damage is just over 200k, and i will not be increasing the difficultly past hard at this time.


Items of Note

Once I hit level 70 I offloaded all of my blood shards for various armor pieces. I came across two set pieces - these are the base items used in coming up with a build. While the stats are important, what I am looking at right now are the set bonuses at the bottom of each item. By equipping enough pieces of each set, those bonuses become active and you receive the stats/skills/etc.. from the set.


http://i.imgur.com/53eHxOa.jpg

I have not dabbled with the Shadow Power ability, but if I were to find another set piece I would be interested to see how it would fit into the build. The ideal bonus from this set is the ability to die and be returned to 25% life once every two minutes. With how frail this class feels currently, that would be a nice addition. However, I am using the passive that does the same thing and I'm not certain if those stack together (I suspect they do not, will have to research that further).



http://i.imgur.com/vRiWCJO.jpg

I am not using rain of vengeance at this time, although I have used it with other demon hunters. The full set bonus on this item looks very impressive, although the odds of gathering all the appropriate drops for this set anytime soon is rather slim.


Next Step: Now that I have hit level 70, I like to start by working on acquiring a Ring of Royal Grandeur. I'll post another update once I have found one with good stats.