Anybody else starting with DH as their first character? Kinda seems like one of the less popular classes at least on the other forums, but I thought it was pretty cool. I really like the style and gameplay, which revolved more (compared to wiz) around kiting/mobility than CC at least based on the beta. I'm a little bit worried how viable DH is for solo play on later difficulties, fooling around with the skill calculator seems like Wizard would be much stronger choice to solo with all the CC, but maybe the high mobility of DH can offset that a little bit.

I guess I'll be playing mostly with party so it probably won't be such a big problem, but as it looks like inferno monsters get quite a lot stronger when playing multiplayer I'm wondering if being able to solo/2-man well is going to be important to farm efficiently.

A month from now I'll probably be laughing at how wrong all my predictions went, but whatevs.

I think near the end of beta the consensus was running 1Her + quiver was better overall than 2x 1Hers. My experience playing her in beta was that she's overall pretty weak in comparison to the rest of the cast, but she's got high mobility and if you're soloing you'll probably have to kite around a lot. This is going to be a major bitch if you are in narrow spaces (Maggot Lair lolol) so hopefully there aren't too many of those.

Playing the beta it seemed like DH was maybe the most played class.

dh will likely be my second class, behind wizard. planning on using one with a friend co-op, and the other will be solo/other people. just haven't decided which will be what.

loved the amazon in d2, and the first skill i tried in beta was aimed shot, between that, their machine gun shot, and their defense (vault, smoke bomb etc) i think they will be a great boss killer, and decent with groups (but not as good as wizard at that).

Will dh be the new huntard?

I plan on rolling deman huntard likely. Someone tell me how to be good in a game that's not yet released.

ktxbi

Guns & projectiles, how can she lose! Probably will be hard to kill with her evasive maneouvers too

Yeah, now that I think of it there was a lot of DHs in the beta. Kinda seems like a lot of more casual players went for DH (IT'S A FLIPPIN' NINJA!!!) while in dedicated Diablo forums it wasn't so popular.

They're all just sandy that the class isn't a meathead or glass cannon (read: barb or sorc)

new archetypes, ahhhh, scary!

DH all the way to start for me, never tried it in the beta.

Will I still be able to spam something comparable to strafe/leech/knockback and basically own everything?????? :-D

stand way far back, spam attack that seeks out targets, collect loot

Didn't play the beta, and haven't looked at the dedicated sites, but is there a Windforce equivalent that everyone is going to be tring to get? Or a poor man's ballista equivalent (all I played in D2 were bowazons).

Buriza, wf, eaglehorn. All back.

Sweet. Reading up on the skills now, can't wait to actually play.

im playing the DH. so far kinda meh, but way more fun than the zon thats for sure

What abilities have you guys been primarily using?

I've stuck with Entangling shot and Rapid fire for 90% of my damage. Vault, Evasive Fire, and Caltrops for my defensive abilities.

Also using steady aim as my passive ability.

For now I've been doing piercing shot for hatred regen + double chakram and with caltrops and vault it's super easy for now. Constantly trying new stuff before it gets too tough.

almost the same as what I am running, but I have the fire damage on hungering arrow and havent unlocked double chakram yet. Just started to use spike trap as well and that seems pretty good.

Piercing shot w/ piercing rune for hatred regen, multishot w/ 20 hatred rune for DPS, impale with stun if somebody gets close & to stunlock bosses, tumble w/ speedrune for moving around quickly and kiting, caltrops w maxslow rune to help with kiting/survival.

Didn't really make that much difference on normal what skills you used, probably won't end up using these when the content gets harder.

i may be a lowbie, but my leeching bow of the eel is so op it should be renamed the faceroll bow of wtfpwn

i should try that. i've been stacking dex for the most part, using mark of death (15% extra damage for everyone in your party on one mob, works great for bosses and harder monsters) and the passive rune that gives 10% more damage to things that are snared (and i drop caltrops everywhere anyways).

between caltrops, smoke bomb, and vault, most things just never touch me, only really have problems on ranged monsters and teleporters (and only slightly, smoke bomb is amazing).

how are you guys finding aggro is working? I'll be playing initially w/ barb & WD...will I still get a lot of attention if they engage first?

it seems different monsters behave differently, sometimes i'll be way out of the way, and a monster will beeline towards me, i'll smoke bomb, they will turn around and go to other guy, then come back. sometimes, they go straight for other guy, and i snipe, and other times, they come for me, i smoke bomb, and then they leave and never come back my way.

so i guess different monsters have different ai's.

Loving my lvl 25 DH. Current build is:
Bola with explode radius
Rapid fire with slow
Caltrops with extra slow
Vault with attack
Sentry
Multi-arrow with the lightning rune.

It's pretty cagey

wtf does cagey mean?

i can't figure out if that's good or bad

I can't tell either.

I think the rune halving the hatred cost on multiarrow is the only way to go if you want to use that skill, it's gonna deal absurd damage to groups anyway but burns out your hatred very fast, so damage/hatred is way more important than short term extra DPS.

BTW does higher APS mean faster hatred gain or something? If it doesn't, wouldn't that mean that slower weapons would be much better for resource management? eg. Weapons with 1 and 2 APS, the other one has twice the damage so they both have same DPS. However, the slower weapon with double damage can spam twice as long (still with same DPS) than the faster one, before they run out of hatred.

Blizzard HAS TO have thought of this and balanced it somehow, or not? Am I an idiot for using 2x hand crossbows and running out of hatred in less than 2 seconds spamming multiarrow? If the balance is simply the fact that faster APS can spam hatred generators faster, I don't think it's even nearly enough to offset that advantage as big part of hatred comes from passive regen.