I haven't gotten to watch the Butcher kill video yet but Skeleton King's kill was pretty clean. And them skipping mobs doesn't bug me. It's loot chances they're missing out on. And they need gear to be able to complete the boss attempts. Not as if they're gaining something from skipping the mobs.

 

I just find it pathetic is all. Clearing Inferno is more important than having fun apparently.

 

I didn't wait 10 years to rush through the game in one sitting lol. I played about 4 hours today, and had a bit of fun doing it. I downed Leoric after a few tries. my jumping aerobatics thing is useful, when it actually works and doesn't take 5 seconds after lag.

I kept going and made it past the spider queen, who was quite easy, and dropped me a nice rare bow. +dex, + exp, ice damage, some other stuff. I got the blacksmith up to level 2, but I'm not high enough level to use any of that stuff yet.

The lore is still pretty cool, but the plot is getting a bit heavy handed. Leah and her 'Inner power, blah, blah' and the female villain from power rangers is in this game for some reason, spouting all the cliche villain lines.

But, I have to say, some of the idle chat with the Templar is funny as hell. Theres one point where you have Leah, templar, and the scoundrel in you party, and it gets pretty funny, and then there are times when both my fem!DH and Leah are ganging up on him with feminist remarks. fun stuff.

 

I...am ashamed to admit that I love the female barbarian's accent.

Put it this way, if she was a real chick, I'd bang her on the accent alone.

 

My sentiments exactly. While a friend technically bought the game for me, I couldn't really bring myself to play with him through Normal, since he didn't bother to pick up lore tomes, go into side dungeons and such. I was determined to play through Normal at least, with as thorough of a play-through as possible.
It honestly kind of baffles me to see him now in Nightmare, finally trying to do some of the exploration stuff(as his earned achievements are suggesting to me). That's something I strived to accomplish in Normal difficulty.

 

My friends and I played act 2-act 4 in one sitting (one long sitting).
Today, we started new characters instead of immediately picking up where we left off in nightmare.

 

How the hell do Barbarians ever die in non-Hell/Inferno difficulties? Their skills give such insane survivability, it's hilarious.

 

Over confidence mostly

Two of my Three deaths in normal were from bomber dudes and another death was my refusing to admit that I couldn't flat out tank 3 elite dudes that liked to stun.

Nightmare is a tad more difficult with the various elites that are hard to tank.

 

I'm using a 1-H + Shield Barb with a Vit focus and so far, I've yet to see an enemy ever drop me into 50%.

My standard is:

LClick: Cleave + Reaping Swing
RClick: Whirlwind + Dust Devils
1: Leap + Iron Impact
2: Ground Slam + Wrenching Smash
3: Revenge + Vengance is Mine
4: Ignore Pain + Iron Hide, Threatening Shout + Intimidate, Call of the Ancients, Earthquake + Chilling Earth. All situation dependent.

Passives: Pound of Flesh, Nerves of Steel, Superstition

Just run around smashing everything, using Revenge and a On-Hit Steal HP amulet for my health needs.

 

Yeah, I'm a little more focused on Damage than survivability, but even then, I only died in Normal when I was being dumbed. Of course, 2 of my 3 deaths were instant deaths from bombers because I was to busy pwning everything to be careful.

How far are you?

 

Picked up this game today so that I could play with my brother, who back in the day was a Diablo 2 nut. He was friendly enough to take time out of his hardcore grind (He's now level 36, just finished Act 1 nightmare on a monk) to play through Acts 1 and 2 with me.

I've got to say, the game is very polished. Some of the dungeons made me feel like the game is just a remake of Diablo 2, but that's probably a good thing considering I picked this up to play in a non-competitive manner.

So far I'm not sure I like how scripted some of the boss fights are. I'm used to them just busting out and sticking to me like white on rice, but now certain fights like Butcher and Belial are scripted to the point that it feels like I'm back learning MMO boss fights. And sadly, the mechanics in Diablo 3 are laughably easy. Although I suppose the alternative of smash, kite, smash, kite, heal is worse.

I've been playing a Demon Hunter and I've got to say, I'm not too keen on the vast majority of abilities. None of my "basics" are worth shit. Rapid Fire is absurdly powerful, especially when used in conjunction with my Shadow Power leech buff. So many of the other abilities, though, are just trash. Strafe is garbage. Multishot is garbage. Fan of Knives is garbage. Pretty much everything from the "secondary" tree is pathetic compared to Rapid Fire, which according to my brother is probably the highest dps ability in the game once you get to higher gear levels.

There are some nice utility moves but for the most part I don't think that the attack abilities were balanced very well. Tomorrow I'm going to log in and finally decide which of the basic attacks I hate the least.

 

I thought the same thing too, but as I get higher, I noticed different uses for different abilities, especially when you start looking at the runes. I didn't play my Demon Hunter very far, but I can see that in solo play, Rapid Fire might start becoming less useful when you are standing still taking to much damage later in the game.

One ability that I never thought I was going to use, has now become my main attack.

(Rend)

I think the only ability I kept from my initial build plan was Leap.

Some abilities are far more powerful at the beginning of the game than later. For example, I had no use for skills with cooldowns in normal 1-2 Acts, because cleave was 1-2 shoting everything.

 

So far I've been able to play my barb without any complaints that it feels A) too much like D2's barb B) that it feels too much like WoW's warrior class. Those were both things I was worried over before I picked it up. And I die all the time. But I went completely offensive with my barb.

And the Method guys rushing through make their money being able to do those things. I could/would never do it. I've neither the time nor the inclination. But that's how they enjoy gaming. I can respect that.

 

So, I've played a fair amount the last few days. I have a few insights, especially into the DH.

Rapid Fire is OP. But it's the only OP thing about them.

Personally, I use Bolo Shot for my primary, but Grenades is pretty powerful at clearing waves. However, it sucks vs single target so it's not as useful.

Tip #1. Stack. Magic. Find. % gear.

DO IT.

A cousin of mine just got to Act III with 100+ subtle essences and 40+ fallen tooth/fang, after doing lots of crafting, as well as the fact that he had several yellows equipped and several waiting in the stash. He doesn't even bother to pick up white items at all anymore.

Tip #2 Don't hold onto + exp items after the first 15 to 20 levels. The amount they give you is negligible in comparison to the EXP requirements to level up. Much better to STACK MAGIC FIND instead.

Tip #3: The Demon Hunter's repertoire of abilities are not designed around multiple routes of damage dealing. Instead they're designed mostly around survivability and only a couple reliable ways to deal damage. I run with 3 Hunting abilities (tumble and shadow power always, with the third adjustable) and Fan of Knives, which is great for some breathing room if you end up surrounded and are low on discipline.


P.S. Magic Find is OP. Use it.

 

Multishot is amazing when you get the first rune for it (reduces cost to 20 hatred). It hits everything, goes through some walls and terrain, and clears large groups (like Fallen packs) very well.
Rapid fire is great, but completely useless vs pretty much everything in act 2 and beyond outside of boss fights. Plus standing still and firing it on nightmare skeleton king/butcher/belial in any type of co-op game will get you killed, even if you run the 30% lifesteal shadow power. Single target is a very rare thing to have.

Basic attacks are great. Bola shot is tons of fun. Basic bola is decent, electric bola is amazing and lets you switch between being an archer and a sorcerer, and poison bola is just too fun to use, even if it is extremely lackluster. Chaingang entangling shot works great with a combo of cull the weak and aoe spells for when you are in co-op games and can't rely on enemies walking into your caltrops. I use hungering arrow with the split rune right now because it's reliable AoE and single target damage. 115% damage with a 35% chance to split into 3, but the 3 splits become pseudo homing arrows and seek out targets. I'm not sure on the mechanics exactly, but I'm pretty sure I've seen the arrows reverse and hit belial 3 extra times.

Rapid fire is great but once again, single target. Chakrams are amazingly fun in co-op, throwing out twin chakrams to make a field of death. Arcane chakrams are rather like hammer-dins back in d2. Elemental arrow is great AoE damage and has a lot of great rune effects. Screaming skulls is fun, lightning ball makes you a wizard, and frost arrow is amazing with cull the weak and has high damage to begin with. Not to mention nether tentacles look amazing.

Shadow power is pretty good, but caltrops is more useful for most of the clearing you need to do. The devices tree has some good choices. On the one hand, spike traps deal amazing damage vs slow or stationary targets (371% damage for 30 hatred). It doesn't match rapid fire, but you get to see some pretty big numbers (6500 crits at level 39) as opposed to the small stream you get from rapidfire. Sentry is damage from discipline though, so normally the best choice. I think I will have to switch out to evasive fire so I can stop using vault though. Vault is just so amazing that I don't use any of the other hunting abilities, even though MFD is 12% flat damage dealt.

Really though, I hardly think the abilities are as cut and dry as you say. Strafe isn't very good, especially when you've mastered shoot and scoot, but multishot is very good with the reduced hatred cost, cluster arrow is pretty fun to use, and rain of vengeance is just cool.

I think you should try out 3 or 4 man co-op because when the mobs have that much increased hp and damage, you can't take more than a few hits without dying, and you can't even rely on shadow power lifesteal. I think that's where a lot of these abilities really shine. It doesn't make the game difficult in normal mode or anything, and you and your party should still melt everything pretty quickly, but you can't face tank anything and the desecrating plagued waller rares will obliterate you occasionally.

Does anyone? They sell for like 10g

Edit: Seriously though, get yourself a helm with a socket and put a +exp gem (ruby) in it. I'm running 17% experience in my helm. 17% faster leveling. I haven't killed maghda in act 2 of nightmare yet and I am level 39.

Don't rerun through bosses looking for gear. It's cool to kill act-end bosses, but you only get increased magic find the first time you kill them. They don't want people doing mephisto runs like d2.

Also, I find that caltrops is more useful than shadow power but that may just be personal opinion. Being able to set two or three caltrops in a row then just aoe down the line against large packs will help more than the 20% lifesteal I feel. If you can shoot without taking damage continually instead of trying to lifesteal tank you will normally come out ahead, but that may be the co-op talking.

Don't try to "play" the AH too heavily. You can only have 10 auctions up at once so be careful how much you invest attempting to resell. Use the search filters though. I picked myself up some 70DPS 1hxbows with 100ish dex on each for 10k total by using the filters. Otherwise you end up sorting through crap and when you find a good item at a good price, it's been bought out already.

 

Churchey is entirely correct.

I know the other classes are fun, but the Demon Hunter is really fun to play. Co-Op or single Player, they do great damage, have awesome maneuverability, and managing two types of energy in the middle of a co-op 3s or 4s and the game changes entirely for how they play. But they're sill unique and require very high reaction times.

Not like, for instance, witch doctors. Who have Plague of Locusts (OP ass ability with high INT. A friend of mine can just cast Plague of Locusts once and the occasional summon/re-summon to win 85% percent of fights. Half the time he chases gold or health potions instead of working on killing things. Since his pets and one plague of locusts cast is enough to clear most fights.

I actually find that kind of boring, so I really appreciate the complexity of it. An okay Demon Hunter is going to be useful, but still sort of meh, but a good or amazing one is going to be a significant asset.

 

At some point I am going to replace both of my hand crossbows with spears.
I will use this http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#Uegdkl!Ycg!baYcaZ as my skillset.
Because javazons aren't dead.

 

This is my current build (DH as well). Level 28 currently.

 

I am doing Act II in Hell right now with monk, and I have to admit that I can't even begin to imagine how hard Inferno is going to be. By now people in Hell are getting items from friends that are in Inferno so it's not as bad. (read, instead of running past a blue/gold mob, you die 25 times but you finally kill it)

Here is what happens, from time to time you will find an elite that is enchanted, waller, vampiric and plague. It runs with 6 of its minions, throws down laser turrets that take 40 % of hp in half a second you stand in them. They create walls around you, make pools of green stuff around them that take down my 23k hp monk in few seconds AND heal themselves with the dmg they deal.

In conclusion, anyone who says this game is easy, is thoroughly and irreversibly retarded. Here is to the 50 k gold I spent for repairs due to deaths already.

 

A few things about that.
1. You can only dual-wield hand cross bows as a Demon Hunter. You could go Spear and Shield though, which is traditional Javazon setup anyway.
2. How useful would 'Cull the Weak' actually be, when none of your moves slow enemies? Are you relying on slows from your allies?
3. Without a traditional ranged spam move(unless Grenades really is enough), I wonder also how useful Steady Aim is. Well, how often you would maintain that range of 10+ yards, to be more accurate, also considering the lack of slows or snares. I suppose this may also be reliant on the presence of allies to remain effective.

Not trying to look down on the build, as I am also interested in the idea of a Demon Hunter without a bow-type weapon.