[Guide] How to Multishot - A Speedfarming DH Guide

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Introduction

I still remember the first time I ever used Multishot. It was back when I was first leveling my Demon Hunter, after trying out both the Monk and the WD in 1.03 and finding neither much fun. A new hatred spender pops up on level, I go back to and equip it out of disgust for stuff like Impale and Chakram, but without high expectations. And then I go to use it.

Instantaneous damage. No projectile.

It was love at first sight. Of course at first there were Hatred problems, but soon enough Fire at Will became available at it hasn't really left my right-click spot since. Other people came up to me and said "try Frost Arrow" "try Ball Lightning" "try Loaded for Bear" but I always came back, sticking through it where others had given up hope. And I'm not trying to make like it was all roses — for a good part of that, I was struggling. Trying to spam a 20-hatred ability in 1.03 was difficult. However, since 1.04 I've been doing great, and now that I am pretty sure I have something amazing I feel confident sharing it with the community.

Why make a Multishot Build?

Pros:

• Best build possible (any class) for quickly and efficiently beating weak content. Stellar for rushing your friends through any difficulty (Inferno included), getting speed-based achievements, etc.
• Under the 1.05 Monster Power system, as I pretty much prove in this thread, this pretty much makes this DH build the best build possible for gathering loot. In any class. I'd say that's a very strong pro.

Cons:

• This build is absolutely wretched against more difficult content, due to a dependency on health globes dropping. If you dream of farming the higher Monster Power levels, either for ego or for a Hellfire Ring, you have come to the wrong place.
• Since this build is optimized for weak content, you'll rarely be having serious challenges. Sure, you can die, but most deaths fall under "oops, forgot to activate Gloom against Reflects Damage," or "I'm out of discipline, maybe I shouldn't have vaulted around like I was a rabbit on crystal meth," and are pretty easily corrected on Take 2. For the most part, it'll be one-shot kills vs things that can barely hurt you. Might get monotonous.
• This build isn't good for bragging rights. You're going to be doing several things that, while effective at PvM, set limits on your stat-sheet DPS and other stats, so you're unlikely to be recognized "best DH in the world" and other Demon Hunters might notice their (stat-sheet) DPS is higher than yours and make a couple jokes at your expense. If you feel like it, challenge them to an elite-killing contest (or try to get a top score in that category on the ladder website of your choice), which you'll probably win easily; if you don't feel ego-driven, just go farm more loot then sell some gold to fatten your PayPal account.

In short, if you look at Brother Laz's demographics (which he very cleverly stole from one Mark Rosewater), this is a very Spike build, focusing on resource management and timed trials. If you're a Timmy, you might still enjoy this (big numbers! instant speed!), but you'd still need a bit of Spike in you to be happy with this. If you're a Johnny, this build doesn't proc anything, sets nothing up, and really does nothing but kill things; run away now.

Skills

http://diablonut.incgamers.com/skil...uZV9CK1J1bmVfRCsxNTU3MTQrMjE4Mzg1KzIwOTczNCsx

Right Click: Fire at Will. The only choice for Multishotting; as cool as Suppression Fire sounds, it has a prohibitive cost and will never work. Keep this on right click so you always have control over where it goes and don't have to play any stupid hold-position games. This does instant damage without a projectile, so the Missile Dampening affix has no effect on you, and it's pretty easy to interrupt ranged-attack trash-mobs trying to fling crap at you by attacking them into a hit recovery animation. If you're going to be a little suboptimal and try spamming some other skill like Ball Lightning or something*, put it here and keep the build otherwise the same.

Left Click: Trail of Cinders. This is the preferred Vault rune. Since the 1.05 nerf, a lot of people instantly switched to Tumble, but I enjoyed Trail a lot in 1.04 so I gave it a chance. Trail proved itself to me as the correct choice. Here's the easiest way to explain it: why go with with something whose only benefit is reduced discipline cost unless you are continuously running out of discipline while Preparation is still on cooldown? If you are running out of discipline, you can fix it by getting the legendaries I recommend below, then use Trail. If you are truly poor (or just too cheap) and can't afford even those legendaries, then Tumble might actually be okay, if it is truly helping you with discipline management. As soon as you don't need it any more, switch to Trail.

...what did you say?... oh, you want to know why this is in the left click? Well, with a proper build you really don't need hatred generators, at all. When 1.05 came out I was running Evasive Fire - Hardened in there, partly because it allowed me to destroy piles of bones at instant speed (no projectile) without Discipline loss, and partly because trololololol. After a while I realized that, if these were my top 2 considerations when picking a hatred generator, I simply needed to do better. I also realized that you can set "hold position" to any key you want, including your previous Vault hotkey. So I switched hold position to "2," and that's what you should do too (not necessarily 2). It takes a while to get out of the left-clicking-on-everything habit, but in a couple hours you can retrain yourself, and you've just freed up a skill on your skill bar.

If your hatred-regen kung fu is weak, but you still want some Multishot practice, you can put a hatred generator here... the closer you get to hatred-regen mastery, the less and less you'll use it, so virtually anything is acceptable here, but a little bird told me Hungering Arrow - Puncturing Arrow is the choice of serious players (something about it having the best median, not mean, damage per shot, or something, I wasn't really paying attention).

1: Spitfire Turret. After the 1.05 upgrades, this skill is now officially amazing and pretty much superior to all versions of Rain of Arrows*. The longer any particular engagement lasts, the better this gets, and with 175% weapon damage a shot (plus some random rockets) it doesn't take long for one quick action to equal thousands of % weapon damage, dealt while you're Multishotting away. Any time you roll up on an elite pack, you want to drop one of these as a DPS multiplier a la WD's Big Bad Voodoo. These also compensate nicely for some of Multishot's issues with monsters that like to swarm (soul lickers), monsters that like to pop up one at a time (winged molocks, cliff-climbing ghouls, cloaked snakemen), or monsters that appear solo and take too long to kill (tremor demons, colossal golgors). The one thing to keep in mind is that this has a cooldown and is best saved for elite battles, so using it on "annoying" whites can be a little risky; Vigilant Watcher might lose some damage but provides some serious competition with its reduced cooldown. Don't waste your time with the aura-turrets, their area of effect is too small and you're too mobile.

2: Gloom. We don't want to pay extra for life leech on our weapon if we can avoid it (even if we do, for some reason we can't get 6% life steal like the other classes can (unless we dual wield, which sucks)). Gloom is the best for making a glass cannon somewhat tanky, but Night Bane and Blood Moon both have some things going for them. However, the core skill is mandatory, or Reflects Damage will rape you. I recommend putting this right next to Spitfire Turret on your controls so you can get in the habit of pressing both at the same time when you see an elite pack. Who actually takes the time to check affixes on elites before firing at them? Answer: not you. Gloom up first, ask questions later. Actually, forget the questions, just shoot them.

3: Invigoration. Again, the core skill is mandatory, but we have a couple rune choices here. Backup Plan is the high-risk, high-reward, while Invigoration is the consistent option. I like me some consistency. Don't both with Battle Scars, you get more than enough healing with Gloom.

4: Bat Companion. You need the hatred regen. Mandatory. You only need to press this once per run (plus once per death) so keep your fingers over "hold position" and skills 1-3, with this somewhere off to the side.

Mandatory Passive: Vengeance. This is the bread and butter of the build and is absolutely mandatory. Without this there is no way you could possibly keep up on Hatred (20 per globe!), and almost no way you could keep up with Discipline (that one way is 4-piece legacy Nat's, which kind of gimps you and costs an arm and a leg. I'll pass). The extra 25 max Hatred is just gravy.

Mandatory Passive: Tactical Advantage. If you don't run this, you've just let all those barbarians outrun you (they have Sprint last time I checked). So much for claiming fastest farming class then.

Passive of Choice. Your third passive actually allows you to make some choices. The usual suspects are Archery and Steady Aim, both of which have their pros and cons. Steady Aim has a greater damage potential, but it encourages kiting and discourages damn-the-torpedoes, full-speed-ahead pathing that leads to a faster run time. Archery has a much weaker effect, but is up all the time and doesn't encourage suboptimal pathing; also, as your crit chance increases as you get better and better gear, it becomes less of a sacrifice (although Steady Aim will always do more when you have your distance). If you have high DPS but have really neglected your survivability and/or Discipline, Perfectionist isn't a horrible choice. However, those are your main three options; the other passives don't compare well.

*Variation: No-Generator Bow Ball Lightning Build

• Use a bow instead of a crossbow (most likely Windforce, since the knockback allows for multihit combos).
• Use Ball Lightning instead of Multishot.
• If using Windforce, drop Sentry (no proc rate = no knockback) for Rain of Arrows - Dark Cloud.
• Still keep your Hatred regen up and refuse to run a generator like Hungering Arrow, and just spam Ball Lightning.

Gear

"Required" Legendaries
There are three legendary items that any Auction House user with 10 million or more gold as a budget would have to be crazy not to get for this build. Keep in mind that you don't need awesome ones, very cheap versions will suffice.

• Inna's Temperance. Okay, there are other items that can get you to 24% movement speed, but you need to be wearing a cloak so Tyrael's Might is out, and you want a lot of crit chance so only the most expensive Lacunis can fill the requirement.
• Stone of Jordan with Multishot skill bonus. You need to get to at least 65 Discipline, and this ring's bonus against elites is flat-out awesome anyway. No, it won't show up on your character sheet, but you'll like the way you look when killing elites. I guarantee it. Getting an awesome Multishot bonus like 6 or 7 isn't cheap, but getting 4 is pretty easy and, for your build, equivalent to 4% crit chance from a rare ring (that's also stat-sheet invisibile).
• Either Xephirian Amulet or 4-piece Natalya's. Again, you need more Discipline. One of these things is much cheaper than the other, thanks to the obscene price on Nat's Reflection, so it's pretty clear what the budget option is. Plus, it has a crazy amount of MF and GF built-in. Getting a moderate amount of Dex is very cheap, but getting crit chance (which you'd prefer) is a little more expensive. Crit chance and damage? Hope you're good at sniping auctions (if one's even available).

Offense (highest priority until benchmarks are met, then low priority)

• Weapon Choice: For Multishot, crossbow is mandatory, no exceptions. Try to get one with physical damage (instead of elemental damage), since you'll be getting at least 5% elemental damage on your Stone of Jordan and these crossbows tend to have the highest minimum damage. Of course critical damage and a socket are both good. Low-to-no priority for Multishot are attack speed, life leech, life on hit, and "chance to" effects like freeze or knockback; for the Ball Lightning variant, attack speed and "chance to" effects both gain value.
• Attack Speed: If a Multishot DH is a Jedi Knight, then the Increases Attack Speed affix is Force Lightning. Yes, it's powerful. It even has that something that gives it a popular appeal. However, it is of the Dark Side, and will lead to fear, suffering, etc. Why? Sure, more attacks per second increases your stat-sheet DPS... but it increases your damage per hatred zero. That's nothing. It also does nothing to help you one-shot trash mobs; it just lets you two-shot them faster (spending double hatred). I'm not saying attack speed is all bad; hell, on your Inna's pants and your quiver it's inescapable, and a 20% on a Dead Man's Legacy is better than a 10% by quite a bit. I'm just saying if someone is asking you to part with your hard-earned gold trying to get more attack speed, don't fall for it. It's a trap. (Okay, okay, no more Star Wars references.)
  NOTE: After you meet the offensive benchmarks — and only after meeting offensive benchmarks — you can try dabbling in this a little. Also, the Ball Lightning variant likes attack speed significantly more because 1) attack speed increases projectile travel speed (Multishot, without a projectile, gains nothing in that department) and 2) the cost is lower, so you can get up to 1.95-2.31 attacks per second and spend hatred as fast as a multishotter with 1.3-1.54 attacks per second.
• Crit Chance/Multishot skill bonus: These are the same thing by the way, and if you can get a deal on Multishot bonus in lieu of "true" crit chance for a budget build, go for it. Anywho... when it comes to Act 3 trash mobs, even on MP0, it's pretty difficult to one-shot them without a critical hit. Okay, it's not that hard on little crap like the scorpions, but big guys like the two-handed axe skeletons and the phase beasts simply aren't going down to a non-critical, and these are guys you want to one-shot. So you want insane amounts of crit chance, everywhere and anywhere you can get it, both of the type that shows up on your statsheet and the type that doesn't.
• Crit Damage: Up to a certain point, this mod lets you one-crit those big bad trash mobs mentioned earlier. Past that point, this is just extra damage against elites. I'm not saying that's bad, and it's definitely better than getting attack speed, but this isn't as big a priority as crit chance. Even then, up to 200% on your weapon is too much to pass up and getting crit+socket is more important than on-weapon Dex.
• Dexterity: If you're really poor, this one starts off as offense priority #1 (you don't need crit chance to one-shot trash mobs in Act1 MP0, and maybe not even Act2 MP0 but I haven't tested), and eventually moves down to offense priority #3 when you graduate to Act3, when crits are pretty much mandatory and you will sacrifice all to ensure a very high crit chance. (It's #3 because with so many crits, crit damage starts to gain value.)
• Benchmarks: Instead of telling you "you need this much DPS," a better test is just to try farming some content and seeing how the run goes. You're "there" on damage if:
  • You kill most trash mobs in a single critical hit (for Act 3, two-handed skeletons and phase beasts need to go down in one, tremor demons and colossal golgars don't)
  • You crit with Multishot over 50% of the time (both true crit and skill bonus apply here)
  • Against an Extra Health elite pack, you can drop Sentry, spam away with Multishot, and don't run out of hatred
  
  

Resources and Adventuring (high priority, you can't get too much of these until they're maxed out or near-maxed)

• Max Discipline/Hatred Regeneration: Both are required on both quiver and cloak. No exceptions. However, you don't need max, +9 Discipline is still okay, and cloaks and rare quivers maxed at 1.17 hatred regen in 1.04 (now upped to 1.33 in 1.05), so you'll find a lot more of those available if you lower your standards to 1.00 or higher. Even two 0.70s is better than a single 1.33.
• Pickup Radius: This is a health-globe based build. Need I say more? You need at least one piece of gear to have this affix or you will go insane trying to make this work; even that is really skimping. Two or three is a much more reasonable number. However, this isn't like a Grave Injustice build where the enemies need to die within your pickup radius... this affix merely helps you optimize your pathing and is kind of like getting even more movement speed. If you're undergeared and having trouble, keep it at one or two affixes, and once you feel like you've mastered Act3 MP0 go ahead and pile on some more of this mod.
• Magic Find and Gold Find: Both of these are really good, the latter since you have to get some pickup radius anyway. Here's one way to look at this: you can either upgrade your gear to the point where you are effectively farming two MP levels higher, or you can get 3 items with MF/GF, or you can level to Paragon 100. Guess which one's easiest? Try to get to 300/300 with rares as soon as possible, then graduate to expensive legendaries slowly as you Paragon over the 300/300 mark.

Defense (medium priority until benchmarks, then zero priority)

• Life leech/life on hit: Utterly worthless to you. Shadow Power > that crap. Don't get it unless it's free.
• Armor and resist all: Although it's less efficient in terms of pure EHP, this is your preferred method to gain EHP. Why? In a way, Gloom is to you what Diamond Skin is to a windup wizard — this continually regenerating shell of life. If you increase your armor and resists, that shell absorbs more damage. If you increase your Vitality, you might have more EHP, but your Glooms don't get stronger. At a minimum, you need enough mitigation where you are at least breaking even when Glooming through Reflects Damage mobs — somewhere around 75% total mitigation, or 50% each in armor and resists (3150/315). The more you surpass this minimum, the more life you gain when attacking Reflects Damage under Gloom. Because monster health outpaces monster damage (and Reflects Damage doesn't change) as you gain MP levels, you don't necessarily need more of this going from one MP level to another; the increased DPS translates to enough increased life regen to keep on truckin'.
• Vitality/EHP: As mentioned earlier, you don't want vit to be the primary focus when gaining EHP, but you can't ignore it completely. In most cases, when you can get a +dex/+x affix, you want x=vit; armor and resist all affixes do a much better job than strength or intelligence ones, so you should still end up with a decent amount of vit from gear. However, avoid straight +vit affixes on your equipment (unless the deal is too good to pass up). The thing to understand here is that which Gloom up and you continuously doing damage, you'll be gaining vast amounts of health from life leach every second, so as long as you're not reduced from 100% to 0% in less than a second you'll be surviving as long as you have hatred and plenty of targets to shoot; you can be a glass cannon on paper and still tank as long as you're making the right moves.

Which MP level should I be farming? (Recommended stat levels)
Keep in mind that DPS needs to be hatred-efficient and we're talking about optimal farming speed (you can't just beat the content, you have to dominate it).
MP 0: 100k DPS, 200k EHP. The vast majority belong here.
MP 1: 150k DPS, 225k EHP. Most veteran multishotters will get here with time and dedication.
MP 2: 225k DPS, 260k EHP. Only elite multishotters belong here; the highest MP setting to realistically aspire to.
MP 3: 325k DPS, 300k EHP. Only the best DHs in the world belong here; this is not a realistic goal.
MP 4: 450k DPS, 340k EHP. Most likely impossible.
MP 5: Definitely impossible.

Other Notable Legendaries

• Dead Man's Legacy. If you find one with max discipline, this quiver has everything you could possibly want under one roof, except for MF and GF. Guaranteed crit chance, guaranteed skill mod (not necessarily Multishot but you'll find it), guaranteed hatred regen, a bunch of vit and dex. This quiver is good enough that you might want to skip a MF/GF quiver at low paragon levels and jump up to this.
• 2-piece Natalya's. Okay, technically this isn't one legendary, but getting the 2-piece set bonus for 7% crit chance up as soon as possible is important. I don't think it's "more-important-than-max-MF" important, but it's definitely high on your list after getting your paragon level up.
• Mara's Kaleidoscope. Technically, this is the best-in-slot amulet, but you can't go below 65 discipline so you'd want to get 4-piece Nat's online first. At best this can have a substantial amount of dex, vit, all resistance, crit chance, crit damage, and Multishot skill bonus. Although you'll no doubt love your Xephie to such an extent that you nickname it, the uberrich will eventually want to trade it in for this monstrosity. Be warned, though, the price on such a thing would be astronomical.

Follower
Last but not least, your follower. Actually, all three options are at least somewhat viable:

• The Templar does nothing to increase your DPS, and his DPS is horrible, but he does help with Hatred regen. A solid choice if you're undergeared by either lacking hatred regen from gear or having trouble one-shotting trash.
• The Enchantress does the most DPS (especially with her awesome, Mark-of-Death-like Erosion) and can equip the Grand Vizier, making her one of the best at boosting your MF and GF. She does increase your attack speed though, so if you were thinking about using the Templar to solve your resource problems, avoid her.
• The Scoundrel gives you the biggest (non-Erosion) DPS boost, and did I mention how awesome more crit chance is for you? However, his DPS is a little weaker than the enchantress and there are no good MF/GF weapon options for him, so you'd have to get it all from rings. The best paragon 100 choice, but quite possibly not the best while leveling up.

Version History
13-14NOV: Compiled and uploaded higher-quality version of same YouTube videos; edited YouTube links.
15NOV: Gave Tumble a more positive review in skills section. Reformatted Ball Lightning variant and gave it more treatment in gear section. Renamed and edited "required items" section to be more self-found friendly. Rated affix categories in order of importance. Added offensive benchmarks and included comment on how attack speed might be okay after meeting them. Added some benchmarks for each MP level.

 

A great guide! I glanced through it and it's well written and thorough. I'll give it a closer look when I get home from work but I can already say that for the most part I agree with it. MS is THE low mp level farming skill.

 

I disagree weapon choice and I believe that Windforce is made for this build. The proc rate for knockback on multishot is insanely low, it has a high attack speed, inherit life leech (which is very nice), and inherit hatred regen.

I have been running a build very similar to this for a few months now using:
Vault (Tumble), gloom, preparation (backup plan), and bat companion.
Primary skill is hungering arrow, with cinder arrow for the elites. This skill has a great proc rate and it combos nicely with windforce to keep the elite packs away from you.
Secondary skill (which I never stop firing) is multishot (fire at will).
Tactical advantage, vengeance, and archery are my passives.

The play-style is to basically find routes with as many trash mobs as possible (more trash mobs = more health globes) multishot them a few times, vault through their dead bodies to pick up health globes, then vault to the next pack.

My gear choice is the new Natalya's set (for the +20 discipline bonus), inna's pants, a good dead man's legacy, and a windforce. I have other items that boost attack speed, pickup radius, resists, run/walk speed, etc.

 

Technically you're correct about one thing: the proc rate for multishot being extremely low is a benefit so that monsters aren't knocked out of Multishot range. That's because knockback is a drawback for this build, sometimes making shots miss yet not being consistent enough (low proc rate) for Steady Aim (especially since there's only one optional passive and Archery provides stiff competition on bows). That's a con for Windforce with this build.

The pro of Windforce is that it's the only bow with Hatred regen. However, it's still not enough to reduce the bow's #1 con: low damage per attack (dpa). The dps is still okay, but only due to attack speed, which as mentioned before is the devil.

Perfect Windforce (socketed) = 549-1259 (904 avg) base dpa = 631-1447 (1039 avg) dpa after Archery = 42.1-96.5 (69.3 avg) damage per hatred
My crossbow (not perfect but good) = 976-1489 (1232.5 avg) dpa = 65.1-99.3 (82.2 avg) damage per hatred

Perf Windforce Multishot weapon damage per second gained from hatred regen (10.99) = 462.7-1060.5 (761.6 avg)
My crossbow weapon damage per second gained from hatred regen (9.66) = 628.9-959.2 (794.1 avg)
From perf Windforce to my bow: 35.9% increase min, 9.6% decrease max, 4.3% increase overall

Perf Windforce weapon damage per health globe: 842-1930 (1386 average)
My crossbow weapon damage per health globe: 1302-1986 (1644 avg)
From per Windforce to my bow: 54.6% increase min, 2.9% increase max, 18.6% increase overall

Notice also that bow damage is much more swingy than crossbow damage, you're more likely to have brief bouts of unluck and run out of hatred that way.

Finally, as said before, life leech is virtually irrelevant due to Gloom.

So my non-perfect crossbow is better for this build than a perfect Windforce, because on top of having more hatred efficiency (even with Windforce's hatred regen), I have 110% more crit damage and some Vitality. At any price point, you should be able to find a crossbow that will work with this build better than any similarly priced Windforce.

So if Windforce isn't the best weapon for this build, is there another build that is better for Windforce? Yes. Ball Lightning goes great with Windforce, because it benefits from higher attack speed (faster moving projectile) as well as from knockback (chance to hit monsters more times as it pierces through) as well as from higher proc rate (50% vs 17%), plus the hatred cost is lower so you can afford to have some bouts of unluck and maybe even get some attack speed from gear (for a faster projectile). That's why I suggested that Windforce users drop Multishot and use the same hatred-maintaining concepts on a Ball Lightning build.

 

Great guide but a lot of your principles seem to contradict other ones that I've seen. I'm not really an expert so I'll try to just bring up the points and see what you have to say and why you decided on what you did.

For white mobs, your description of attack speed seems to imply that it doesn't matter if you 1-shot with 0.5 APS or 2.0 APS. Doesn't attack speed not only decrease the amount of frames in between attacks but also the frames of the attack?

Additionally, for elite mobs, attack speed seems to directly translate to actual DPS as long as you don't run out of Hatred. However, your guide focuses on Hatred efficiency but from your video it seems like it is possible to give up Hatred efficiency for faster killing, essentially making Hatred regen not a top priority.

This idea of sacrificing Hatred efficiency is used in the Cluster Arrow build. There's another school of thought that focuses on Cluster Arrow in order to maximize how fast you kill elites (disregarding a lot of other factors). Since elites are your main target for getting loot (at least for legendaries?), it seems like that one might be more relevant to speed farming while this one seems to be better at killing both elites and white mobs, increasing experience.

Also, Tumble seems to offer more than Trail of Cinders at this point. A 25% decrease in Discipline cost over two Vaults seems to be better. 25% of your suggested 65 Discipline is 16.25 less Discipline you need (not factoring in that you need Discipline for Gloom). It seems like you can use this freedom in your gear to more than make up for the DPS you lose from dropping Trail of Cinders.

 

He is (rightly) operating under the assumption that attack speed is not 'free'; you lose something else to get it. In which case, a relatively minor decrease in animation speed and a (theoretical) decrease in elite kill speed is not worth the tradeoff in damage per hatred spent/damage per attack that you could gain by having, instead, more critical hit chance, critical hit damage, dex, or min/max damage.

Keep in mind that multishot is for power levelling and speed runs; if a player with gear just good enough to use multishot loses a little kill speed on elites to gain hatred efficiency, that's okay. It is faster to kill white mobs in one or two shots than three, even if the three are each slightly faster. The trade-offs of using a bunch of attack speed just aren't worth it until you're doing enough damage per hit that you're running a surplus of hatred and kill speed (like Dethklok is). Better to write a guide assuming people don't have fantastic gear than one that assumes people do; the former helps anyone who tries it, while the latter can instead usually make any build they try work.

I haven't personally seen any evidence that elite mobs account for a larger percent of legendaries dropped than white mobs; my experience (highest plvl 84 & has had max mf at all times since ~plvl 30, not to mention significant pre-1.04 farming) indicates that they're about half and half. If anything, I get more of my rares from elites. I wouldn't make too many assumptions about either one being optimal for gear farming without significant hard data on elite and non-elite monster drops and the comparative kill speed of each build with whatever quality of gear you're referring to. Assuming white monsters drop anywhere near 50% of legendaries, Multishot will tend to become relatively more efficient as gear quality increases.

This is one spot where I think you may have a strong point in certain cases, but I'm not sure that the build will really run into discipline problems outside of maintaining Gloom long enough to kill elites. Vengeance + the health globes that white monsters hemorrhage is really quite insane; even with a build less efficient at killing white monsters and much less max discipline, I rarely have to use preparation for traveling.

P.S.
Thanks for the guide Deathklok! If you can't tell by the above, I am/used to be a Multishot advocate before 1.03. The gear for using it in inferno wasn't there for me yet, but I knew it could blow nt/ball lightning/chakram out of the water if you could get your hands on it. I might give it another shot if I decide to invest more in my DH.

 

Awesome!

I was wanting to give MS a shot but didn't really know where to start.

I will throw out there that I think about half my Legendaries come from trash.

What is a reasonable DPS to shoot for? Armor/AR? What is a reasonable starting point to be able to handle act 3?

 

That's because they're wrong, at least when it comes to Multishot. If they were right, I wouldn't feel compelled to author this.

My attack speed advice is rather specific to Multishot, which travels instantaneously, no projectile, and can have hatred issues spamming it if you don't control attack speed. At 0.5 APS (if it existed) with a 1-shot kill, you'd kill everything in that cone in 1 frame, then be idle for 119 frames; at 2.0 APS with a 2-shot kill, you'd kill everything in 31 frames, then be idle for 29 frames. In one sense, you actually kill faster with the 0.5 speed. However, such extreme examples don't really exist; after quiver and Inna's Pants, you'll have at least 1.30 aps, more likely 1.40 or higher, while windup wizards struggle to break the 2.74 breakpoint; the actual difference between someone who cares not one bit about APS and a hardcore attack-speed devotee is attacking about twice as fast (at least with demon hunters). If you one-shot with your Multishot, you'll be killing at least as fast as even the fastest-attacking Multishotters who can't one-shot.

This isn't necessarily true with some other skills. If you have enough time to fire a second Ball Lightning before your first one hits, and you had double your attack speed, you could have connected with two projectiles in the same amount of time (because projectile speed also doubled). In other words, the core mechanics of Multishot and the hatred cost encourage a relatively slow-attacking build that focuses on other elements of DPS, much more so than other skills.

That said, overkill is overkill. If Mr. Amazing Demon Hunter is already one-shotting everything you fight 100% of the time (elites included), obviously increasing crit damage isn't going to speed him up at all. So at a certain point attack speed becomes a more viable path to optimization.

I'm not saying attack speed isn't powerful. Force Lightning is powerful too. I'm just saying you shouldn't focus on it too much or you'll end up with an unworkable build, and for that reason I can't give DPS breakpoints as benchmarks to hit because people would just cheat with attack speed. If you're one-critting Act 3 whites, you have at least 50.5% effective crit chance (skill bonus counts here), and you can spam away at Extra Health elites and kill them before running out of hatred, then it's working for you. Notice that attack speed helps you achieve none of those benchmarks.

Let's take my build. I have a Dead Man's and a Stone of Jordan. With skill mods, I could do three different things.
1) Cluster Arrow now costs only 40 Hatred. If we equip Grenadier, it drops to 30 Hatred, but I lose 9% DPS, which is sort of like reducing Loaded for Bear's skill damage to 277% main strike, 91% secondary strikes.
2) Multishot gains 15% Critical Chance. This raises my effective Multishot DPS 17.7%, which is roughly equivalent to raising Multishot skill damage to 194%. If I went Full Broadside, it would be 253% damage, and cost the same as Loaded for Bear with Grenadier; Loaded for Bear would only do 9.5% more damage, and against a smaller area. Arsenal would be 194% plus three 70% rockets, which might match it.
3) Elemental Arrow gains 26% damage, which is just like raising Elemental Arrow skill damage to 195%.

If we added a Mara's to the mix where 2 of the random mods were the same cc and cd I have on my Xephirian.
1) Cluster Arrow now costs 35 or 25 Hatred. Same numbers for equipping Grenadier (277/91).
2) Multishot DPS +25.9%, approximate skill damage 208%.
3) Elemental Arrow +38%, equivalent to skill damage 214%.

Now if we say phooey to Nat's +20 discipline bonus and go for Skull Grasp as well:
1) Cluster Arrow w/ Grenadier costs 21 Hatred at 277%/91% skill damage. Hey, it's kinda spammable now!
2) Multishot DPS +33% to 219% skill damage. Full Broadside here would do 286% damage, which isn't really that far from Loaded for Bear + Archery (304%, about 6.3% more than Broadside against a smaller area). Arsenal would be 219% plus three 80% rockets.
3) Elemental Arrow +49% to 231%.

There's a skill I'm worried may outclass Multishot at killing things fast, but it's not Loaded for Bear. The Sentry + Multishot combo is very effective at eliminating trash then allowing the Multishot + Sentry to both tagteam elites for high amounts of damage. Right now cost-reducing skill mods are really overvalued, but making an overcosted skill spamable with them is almost never as good as making a spamable skill awesomer. (HotA is a notable exception;

As I was showing above, you flat-out want Stone of Jordan anyway (it's really a cosmic joke, by far the best DPS ring in the game while adding hiding all its effects from the stat-sheet), so the real question is "should we drop Xeph's amulet?" My answers was: yes, eventually. I guess if you have 60 or less Discipline feel free to equip Tumble after trying out Trail. If you have 65+ like I suggest, there's no reason not to get that extra damage in.

 

A very nice and well-written guide.
My notes:

You don't need 60+ discipline to pull this one off
I run around with generalist equipment and a discipline pool of 47, I never get below even 60% after using preparation to cross a wide gap or two. Granted, I use tumble but ToC isn't much of a loss for someone who doesn't use it for the style points like you
Also, being tanky is a great aid as around 600 physical resist 4-4.5K armor and 40K hp you no longer need gloom to kill 95% of reflect packs.

Physical damage weapons are the best by far
They have the best min damage rolls and get full bonuses from +%elemental damage. As a bonus they can be used with things like +cold legacy puzzles and suppresssion fire/unruned rain of vengeance to permaslow the whole screen. I was farming with puzzle/spray of teeth/suppression/archery/cull the weak/steady aim for quite a while when my dps was too low and I needed to constantly kite.

Multishot works almost as well with a bow
Even using a crossbow, you won't kill whings like heralds and blood clans without crits in 1 shot. A crit is a death with either weapons. Just get a physical bow with good min damage roll( 550+ ) and look for jewelry with 50+ average damage that shows something like 25-35 dam. This means it has a min-max and a min damage roll, display for double min damage rolls is bugged. Some time ago I got a nice 8x dex/+66 min damage/cd/cc ring for 15m, I still use it as it handily outperforms anything under 150m. Since mainstat/average dam/cc is a cheap combo bows can be pretty easily brought up to almost crossbow levels.
Again, the added bonus is you don't run around with a ridiculous-looking xbow twice the size of your character. The girly man with scoliosis look can't be helped, should've rolled a female dh instead


Also, forget follower dps They can't kill a fluffy little rabbit even when they are doing their best, so might as well could just grab the templar for 30% mf and +1 hatred/sec. The scoundrel cc is a very nice alternative, the tradeoff is 13 less mf and no hatred regen.
If you really want to lay back a bit and make them actually hurt things put a hellfire+maximus on the enchantress and get it out of your system

To sum it up imho the only hard gear dependency is the 45-50 discipline pool and around 55% cc with multishot. If you don't lock yourself into 1 build too much you can still use tank/echoing for higher mps when you feel like it or bola with the always awesome loaded for bear. Just not ball lightning, seriously, fk that skill.

Edit:
Well, didn't see your last post at the time of writing.

 

Answered in previous reply which you probably missed due to timing.

At an absolute minimum, you want enough to allow you to Gloom through Reflects Damage, which means at least 4x EHP multiplier from armor and all-res combined. 3150/315 would work; I have 3635/295 and that works too. If you have Gloom up and you're still taking damage from Reflects, you need more. I think that's still very glass cannon compared to pretty much everything else out there. Also note that Reflects Damage + Health Link on blue elites is possibly bugged, it seems you don't get leech credit for the off-target damage while still getting Reflects penalty for it, and this particular combination is likely to slow you down unless you have some trash mobs to leech back up on, alternating your shots.

Other than that, you pretty much only need enough EHP not to get one-shot. Gloom + high DPS + Multishot + multiple targets = instantly refill your health globe from 10% to 100%, with a great deal of control over how and when (instant speed damage). The catch is you need to be dealing damage (usually involves standing still), but you can't be overwhelmed or take certain types of hits, such as succubi balls or stuff that sends you into a hit recovery animation. Trail of Cinders and Sentry are both really good here, allowing simultaneous maneuver + damage; it's not just style points, Draba. Just to give you an idea, I'm barely over 200k EHP, although I'll admit that's a bit on the frail side.

But you definitely want it.

Blasphemy. Here are 6 better ideas:
1) Get more Discipline on gear so you can Gloom anyway.
2) When previous Gloom is up, Trail of Cinders into elite pack half-way through battle to collect globes, gaining discipline. Simultaneous damage + Gloom fuel (at 8 cost instead of 14) + hatred refill.
3) Use affix slots to get more MF/GF, unless you're maxed out.
4) Use affix slots to get more DPS.
5) Use affix slots to get more pickup radius, use increased pickup radius to get more health globes mid-battle for Gloom fuel.
6) If you did Step 4 already, increase your tankiness, but instead of not Glooming, increase MP level, getting +25 MF/GF without cap, then still Gloom.

True story. Probably should have mentioned it. Part of the reason I didn't mention Manticore even once; 1os is worse than a decent rare, and 2os is probably still not best-in-slot (although a good one is still very, very good).

Blasphemy. All things that aren't elites should be one-shot, and chilling things you one-shot is a waste of time. If you like chilled elites, grab a scoundrel.

Yes, you could get some sweet min-damage rings to make a bow work. Or, you could just skip that, get a crossbow, and put your mods in better places.

For all further inquiries, here is the mapping of DH skills to weapons:
2h Crossbow = Spam Multishot, forsake all other attacks except DOTs like Sentry
Bow = Spam Elemental Arrow, forsake all other attacks except DOTs like Rain of Arrows
Hand Crossbow = Spam Hungering Arrow, maybe toss something in to actually spend some hatred
If you are not spamming one of these three skills, you are wrong. If you are spamming the wrong skill for your weapon, you are wrong. If you aren't using a 2h crossbow... you might actually not be wrong. I have a preference for Multishot, but I have nothing against bow-wielding Ball Lightning users. At least they're doing it right.

The base attack of the followers is indeed horrible. However, the attacks that give a weapon damage work the same as yours and don't get the "follower penalty." If you have an enchantress with 2900 Intelligence and a 1300 damage weapon (no Maximus needed), her Forceful Push deals 39k damage (10s cooldown) and her Erosion is 112k over 5 seconds (15s cooldown). With those two attacks alone, she's adding 11k DPS plus 5% of your DPS before you even factor in the APS increase; add in her base attack and it's probably closer to 17 or 18k + 5%. The swingy nature of it is good too; she might not be spamming Erosions, but when she lays one down on a trash mob you can often ignore them with your attacks, confident their death is imminent. I'm not saying that she can solo and you can just sit back and watch, but it's enough DPS to notice.

 

i replaced preparation with shuriken cloud because i did a few rund with the suggested build and used it 0 times just don't need it
shuriken cloud is very good because you dont have to waste hatred to open doors and helps when you surrounded

 

1. More discipline is always very good, no questions there. The thing is, on mp0 there is a practical limit to its usefulness: gloom to keep you topped and keep 100% ta up when not shooting. After reaching it more damage/ehp can be equally as good. I think the only place where 65+ disc could possibly be a top priority is the mythical pvp.
2. Imho you hop around a bit too much Just park at half effective range and push multi, do or do not ask questions later when everything is dead, vault forward for a refill and the next pack.
3. Again, more mf is always good. I just didn't want to gimp myself/keep 2 gearsets so dropped all on my char around paragon 60. There is not too much difference between 385 and 475 total mf, and you can get a ****load of extra damage for the same cost.
4. At mp0 everything dies from a stern look, and some almost best in slot tank pieces are below 100m anyway( 150 dex 150 vit 70+ allres 2 socket 600+ armor pants are common and around 50, I got one that has 164dex/176vit for only 24, same for shoulders ). The 170+ mainstat 5%+ cc mempos are still a ***** to get, though
5. I ran around with 2x radius trying to get the 1%er achievement, I didn't notice real improvement in killspeed between 6-7 and more.

I was talking about full inferno difficulty when getting above 50k+ dps costed an arm, both legs and the soul of your firstborn Granted, snare from cold is mostly useless now as in low mps you don't need it and at high ones you always need more damage. Still could be useful later in pvp.

For guys with bows the average damage affixes are top priority anyway, they just happen to be a godsend for multishot, too No change in gearing priorities there.
+I can't stress enough that while min damage is very important, a very high crit chance is much better( in really top gear you can get well above 70% for multi ). A normal hit is not always a death but a crit is, so bows can catch up a bit with their faster base speed. Even 1 hander/quiver is surprisingly good as with 70-80% crit chance it's almost guaranteed that everything is dead in 3 hits, with a ridiculous attackspeed.

A more accurate mapping would be:
2 socket dex manticore = Absolutely everything, best possible dh weapon
That thing is as broken as it is butt ugly. Every other weapon is just flavor, but you thankfully can make all of them work. Multishot with bow is just as fast as ball lightning or multi with xbows, I can make the standard 65M xp/hour if I really want to do the mind numbing shortrun tango 5+ times in a row

I had no clue, that's nice to know.

 

Bought a bit of gear this morning and did a run. Really loved it, even though my gear was sub-optimal to say the least.

30k HP, 4k armor, 450 AR so I think my EHP is fine. I was using a bow though, and had some major Hatred problems. Got a Xbow on bid, and I think that will help out a lot.

I also only have about 56k DPS, and I was 2 shotting most trash, so a bit more DPS and I should be in good shape.

I will agree that you don't need to use tumble, and I will put ToC on my next run. I think I burned prep only once in my run and that was with only 49 max discipline. I can see that ToC would be great for elites when you need to grab health globes mid fight.

 

Thanks for the guide, I think this build is great just for a change of pace. I only have 30 discipline, 400 AR, 35k HP, 57K DPS, and 12% movement speed. I am missing most of the "required" items. I'm also using Hungering Arrow instead of Vault because, come on, 30 Disp. But the Hatred regen + multishot + turret still works just find.

(My DH only uses self-found gear, and I don't really care about farming speed since I farm on a much higher plevel WW Barb. I love this guide because the DH is my second favorite character and multishot is my favorite DH skill.)

 

Would Multi/Suppression Fire used in conjunction with Prep/Punishment be viable for an incredibly poor, undergeared DH in theory? I've been playing A HotA Barb for awhile and my DH has languished on the side lines with a horribly spike-damage cluster arrow build that always died. My rare Hellion X-bow was the ****...back in 1.03, not so much now, and I've grown too reliant on Sharpshooter due to lack of crit/Dex gear.

 

ive been using mulitshot for a while but as part of a build for higher mp's (3-6). the build and items i was using were great for farming in groups, especially with fast barbs. when it came to solo farming it was far too slow and inefficient

have got rid of my manticore, got inna's belt/pants and am loving this!, i lost about 130 res all and 10k life but gained about 30k base dps,

playing on MP0 doing the (or similar to) Alkaizer run. first 2 efforts were 11mins and about 9mil XP

getting better with it as well as i had a very slow build before and this one is ridiculously fast

not a very social one though but ive kept my more Def gear for coop and ubers

cheers!

 

If you have a poorly geared DH - like 25-30k dps kind of DH - then you want to run a sentry build. Something like:

LMB - Bola Shot - Thundering Ball (cc against enemies, not really for damage)
RMB - Sentry - Spitfire Turret (your main source of dps)
1 - Shadow Power - Gloom/Smokescreen - Lingering Fog
2 - Caltrops - Torturous Ground
3 - Preparation - Battle Scars
4 - Rain of Vengeance - Stampede for more cc, or Beastly Bombs for more DPS

Even if you have crappy dps, this will let you farm mp0 or mp1 without dying much, if at all, if you play smart. Work up to 100k dps and then switch over to a faster build. When 1.0.5 hit and my character had 30k-ish dps, this is what I did and now I am 170k dps after lots of farming and playing with this DH. It works.

The best thing about the above build is that you don't need crit damage or crit gear. It helps to have it, but you don't need it. It works best with a faster bow that does good damage and has some dex on it.

 

Thanks, I'll give it a try. I think without Sharpshooter I'm at 40k DPS on my DH with a whopping 10% crit chance- good to know it isn't heavily reliant on the crit stats which is a bit of a refreshing change.

 

Go with archery, perfectionist and whatever else you want. Sharpshooter is pretty crap, whether you have high crit or not. This build though - like you said - doesn't need crits anyway.

Just search for a bow or crossbow with dex, high average damage and vit if you have the budget. You can probably get such a bow for super cheap since you don't care about sockets and crit damage right now.

Slowly work up to gear like I have, and you won't go wrong.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/scala-1900/hero/6639721

 

Suppression Fire is generally much worse on resources than Fire at Will:

1) When you lose normal Prep, you essentially lose discipline per second. With Invigoration and 30 max discipline (the minimum), you lose 0.89 discipline per second. With Invigoration and 80 max discipline (the maximum is 90, but let's say 80 is plenty), you're losing 2.0 discipline per second; at that level, removing preparation is equivalent to being able to have legacy nat's 4-piece bonus and saying "nope, don't want it" — so the benefit needs to be pretty substantial. Still, you were talking low gear levels, but if we assume at least 35 max discipline we're still talking about losing 1.0 or more discipline per second.

2) If you have Punishment and Vengeance, each point of discipline gets traded for up to 6 hatred (up to 5 without Vengeance), assuming you're awesome and can time your Punishments for when you're at exactly zero hatred... but in reality you'll have 0-29 hatred when you activate Punishment, I'm going to assume an average of 15 and say you gain 5.4 with Vengeance and 4.4 without.

3) With Vengeance, health globes become an important part of resource regen. With Fire at Will, each globe is 1.33 Multishots, plus 2 discipline. With Suppression Fire, each globe is either 0.67 Multishots (half as much) plus 2 discipline, or you could convert the discipline to hatred and make it 1.07 Multishots and 0 discipline (which is still much worse).

4) Undergeared setup: assuming Vengeance, 1.1 aps crossbow with rare 14% attack speed quiver (1.25 aps) and 30 max discipline (no bonuses at all), you'd need to be hitting an average of 3.49* enemies per shot for Suppression Fire to equal Fire at Will on resource efficiency. In order to notice a significant improvement you'd have to beat that average by a significant amount, plus a cushion for the health globe difference.

Note: The amount of hatred regen on gear does not factor into this equation; the question we're answering here is "which one works better?", not "which one works?" If you're undergeared and having resource issues, the best advice I can give is to use the more efficient choice and see if it works; if it doesn't, neither would have.

5) Optimally geared setup: assuming Vengeance, 1.1 aps crossbow with 20% Dead Man's, 9% Temperance, and 9% Reflection (1.52 aps), as well as 80 max discipline, you'd need 4.09* enemies per shot on average, plus health globe cushion.

So what does all this mean?

1) For all Multishot spammers, asking an average of 3.5-4.0 monsters per shot to break even is asking a lot. Spamming stops being spamming if you're suddenly concerned about exactly how many monsters are in your cone. This is especially true for well-geared DHs, because the more max discipline, the better the lost Invigoration was, and the more they need to hit with each shot.

2) Suppression Fire adds a "feast-or-famine" element to your resource regeneration. Trash scorpions? Refueling time! Phase beast & succubus fight? Might empty the tanks. For those with high max discipline, this is less of a problem, since they can stash the scorpion fuel for those hard fights later. However, those with low max discipline won't be able to fill past full and will have less gas to power through the harder fights later.

In conclusion, Suppression Fire has a tough standard, an internal disincentive as your discipline gets higher, a separate internal disincentive as your discipline gets lower, and just straight-up less benefit from health globes. If you're having resource management issues, fancy Punishment builds aren't going to make your life easier, so just stick with Fire at Will (or use a different build entirely, just don't use Suppression Fire) and try to save up for some better gear.

*(30-15)/5.4+0.89/1.25=3.49
(30-15)/5.4+2/1.52=4.09

edit @ mysticc & Drytchnath: This is a Multishot thread. Please take your (actually quite interesting!) discussion elsewhere.