Fogtreadder - Demon Hunter

[cuchulann]

"The fog creeps in on little cat feet," -Carl Sandburg


Primary Function: Crowd control. Fogtreadder uses a combination of skills to ensnare and quickly take down large numbers. He maintains a distance between himself and his prey as often as possible using evasive tactics (running in circles) alternated with strong AoE attacks.

"Can I hit a moving target? That's my specialty!"

Active skills:
   Primary: Entangling Shot / Chain Gang. Right from the start Fogtreadder seeks to keep his prey weakened, as many as possible.
   Secondary: Elemental Arrow / Ball Lightning. Damn, do I love this skill. In a hatred to damage ratio nothing else compares. I have seen one of these do two critical hits to a single target. One on approach and again in passing. It does not happen all the time but it does happen. Also the range of Ball lightning is wider than Nether Tentacles. I have tested this. Really this skill is the closest to D2s Frozen Orb. Straight line motion, uninterrupted, a wide area of effect, with a chance to hit targets multiple times.
Additonals:
   Caltrops / Hooked Spines. I used to use jagged spikes for additional damage but it became necessary to slow enemies even more so to allow more opportunities to strike while being pursued.
  Marked for Death / Grim Reaper. After trying the different variants it became clear that it was best to use a damage boost that would stay on the target and affect others around it, since the monsters move in packs. True those within the area and not marked receive a significantly lesser amount of damage. But when you target a boss and his minions take the lesser it works out okay.
   Vault / Tumble. So often you really need to get away fast, over and over again.
   Rain of Vengeance / Dark Cloud. A DoT AoE skill that follows you dealing damage to nearby enemies. That means I can keep running and with just enough distance, still do damage without having to stop.

Passive Skills:
   Vengeance: Though Elemental Arrow is the only hatred using skill and pretty inexpensive it can burn out. Also this skill recovers 2 discipline as well.
   Cull the weak: A marked foe enters a caltrop or I hit it with my primary, Yes I want to do even more damage to it.
   Sharpshooter: Is there a DH that does not use this? This build also requires a bit of patience. With a fully procced crit rate holding for one second, that means a whole stream of Ball Lightning can wash a horde with crits from the start. Step carefully, mark your target before it is aware of you, and then let em rip!

Weapon of Choice: Bows or dual hand crossbows. Hand cross bow and shield option if available.

Known weaknesses:
Life: Really low on this, Fog is a one hit wonder in both directions. Still hoping for gear that will give me what I really need.
Single boss fights: Since the focus is on AoE it takes a long time to handle unique and elite bosses. Not impossible, but it can get pretty hot and close.
DISCIPLINE!!!!! Oh lord have mercy,  for a passive skill that would halve your hatred regen for more discipline regen! Items witch give more discipline are few and I have not seen any that can even support one caltrops. Resource recovery only applies to hatred. Current viable solution: Run like monkey!

[420]

Here are direct links for the more visually inclined:

Build: Skills

Profile: Fogtreadder

   Secondary: Elemental Arrow / Ball Lightning. Damn, do I love this skill. In a hatred to damage ratio nothing else compares. I have seen one of these do two critical hits to a single target. One on approach and again in passing. It does not happen all the time but it does happen. Also the range of Ball lightning is wider than Nether Tentacles. I have tested this. Really this skill is the closest to D2s Frozen Orb. Straight line motion, uninterrupted, a wide area of effect, with a chance to hit targets multiple times.

Try Arcane Orb (Celestial Orb rune) with your wizard. Very similar effect, and you can definitely get at least 2 crits off a single target sometimes.

DISCIPLINE!!!!! Oh lord have mercy,  for a passive skill that would halve your hatred regen for more discipline regen! Items witch give more discipline are few and I have not seen any that can even support one caltrops. Resource recovery only applies to hatred. Current viable solution: Run like monkey!

I found a quiver with 10 Discipline awhile back and a bow with 10 Discipline this week. Unfortunately they are both very low quality, but I'm going to try to use them to get the "The Madness Contained" achievement. Let me know if you want to try them out.

Also, why not use Preparation? Don't want to take up the space on your skill bar?

-420

[cuchulann]

Also, why not use Preparation? Don't want to take up the space on your skill bar?
-420

Well, I have been trying out preparation and I find that I only used it in boss fights. So most of the time it is an idle space on the bar. Faster regen would be preferred. I used in place of marked for death but now I have gone back.

Known weakness critical: Fog has 1000 fewer armor points than my lowest char out of normal.  I have found a lot of nice gear and all the ones with good defense have not been those that can improve him. Ouch! Guess I need to try crafting a good shield now.

[cuchulann]

Profile: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Fogtreadder-1202/hero/6443656

Old build:
Primary: Entangling Shot / Chain Gang
Secondary: Elemental Arrow / Ball Lightning

Additonals:
Caltrops / Hooked Spines
Marked for Death / Grim Reaper
Vault / Tumble
Rain of Vengeance / Dark Cloud.

Passive Skills:
Vengeance
Cull the weak
Sharpshooter

After a while I changed Marked for death to Spike trap for some extra damage. It worked well for a while but the monsters seem to be more erratic in their movements now and don't step on the traps as much anymore so I began to play with some other options. I switched out the passives many times and found some things that worked but none that really made anything special out of the build.

Current build:

Primary: Evasive Fire / Hardened, replaces the back flip with a 3 second armor boost of 25%
Secondary: Elemental Arrow / Ball Lightning. Still love this one!

Additional skills:
Marked for Death / Contagion
Vault / Tumble
Sentry / Chain of Torment
Rain of Vengeance / Dark Cloud

Passives:Custom Engineering, Archery, Brooding, Awareness.

So what has happened is Fog has gone from a very mobile char to one that stands fast in the face of danger. Kind of funny since he's still not very tough but it is working. The crux of the changes came from spike trap not doing what I needed anymore. It ate up a lot of hatred and rarely got to fire off. Monsters now seem to be unwilling to walk across one even if I'm standing right over it. So i tried out different sentries for more reliable damage and got to like Chain of Torment. I swapped out caltrops to bring back Marked for Death, this time under the contagion rune. So the best way to use that is target the weakest enemy and start killing. Once it dies everything near begins to take extra damage. So put this and sentry together with custom engineering and they last long and I get 3 sentries on the screen. With the right placement it makes a cat's cradle zone of pain. The trick is that as the fourth point in my lovely parlor of death I have to hold still. That's where evasive fire and most importantly, brooding come into play. Evasive fire is a no brainer, its boosts your armor. Brooding can now stack 1.5% regen up to 3 times if you just stand still. Fog's base regen is 4.6K with brooding fully stacked it's 21.5K.

I am holding onto my elemental arrow and rain of vengeance skills because they still work just the way I liked them. Vault could be changed though. I thought of bringing back caltrops with either Bait the Trap or Jagged Spikes for more damage but sometimes I need to get the smeg out of the fire right away. Thinking of going to action shot or trail of cinders. The Awareness passive is interesting but it could be changed for something else especially if it makes for a good synergy.

[420]

Don't like the new level 61 Vengeance skill? I replaced Gloom on my primary DH with it. Dishes out a lot of damage, can't wait to see what the various runes do.

-420

[cuchulann]

Don't like the new level 61 Vengeance skill? I replaced Gloom on my primary DH with it. Dishes out a lot of damage, can't wait to see what the various runes do.

-420

I'll save my opinions of that for my second DH. So far it is not really doing anything I need. The chain web of hurt is more reliable for its versatility.