My friend recently joined on Diablo 3 so I decided to give the Demon Hunter another try (meaning re-level a new demon hunter….hey there’s an achievement for that!). This time around with my gold resources and various hand-me-down pieces of gear, it’s a breeze. One unusual thing I decided to try was using a Spectrum as a Demon Hunter.
You might think, “Hey, I didn’t know Demon Hunters can go melee!” Technically, they can’t. In fact, using a melee weapon prevents Demon Hunters from using certain attacks. However, they are capable of using Grenades, Impale and Chkram. Now, most of these aren’t particularly ideal for a Demon Hunter, but the damage a Demon Hunter can output with a well rolled Spectrum or Horadric Hamburger far outweighs any inconveniences.
Unfortunately, you cannot dual wield a Spectrum and Horadric Hamburger at once. However, you can use a shield (strangely enough) so I opted for a slightly defensive setup considering that I’m in melee range most of the time. Quite honestly, I love the play style. I got tired of Hungering Arrow and Elemental Arrow. I still use near similar defensives as my main Demon Hunter, but I might change that out too just to try out a different playstyle as I level.
Eventually, I want to try the strafe build or the stunlock grenade build. I’ve seen a few other interesting builds like the bola shot build for Monster Power 10. In general, I wanted to have separately geared up Demon Hunters. I might even try doing the self-found gear route just as a challenge (that includes finding drops on my other toons).
With my witch doctor, I did some pretty nice upgrades recently, pumping my unbuffed DPS to over 160k. Right now in Monster Power 2, I practically one shot all white mobs and elites are not much of a challenge. I’m trying to upgrade my ring and helmet to see if I can obtain a little more DPS. I did manage to try Monster Power 3. While white mobs went down reasonably, elites and champion mobs posed a lot more of a challenge. The worst situation would be finding multiple champion and elites as I kited one group to the next. While I managed to survive, it wasn’t easy without burning cooldowns and potions quite often and doing very long kite paths.
I feel that if I add another 20-30k DPS, Monster Power 3 will be pretty easy. The main thing outside of kiting is just having enough DPS to unload to get those mobs down. You’re forced to spam your nukes against mobs pretty hard. Even if you clear out all but one of the mobs, you’ll still be spending a bit of time trying to finish off that last mob.
Some people say that the way to go as you hit higher Monster Powers as a witch doctor is to move to a spec like Zombie Bears or Zombie Dogs. Zombie Dogs are not really an option because of the cost. Also, I heard that it’s not as effective as people may say. I haven’t tried Zombie Bears, but I’ve read that it too has issues because of the melee-like proximity you’re forced into with this spec.
Truthfully, I really don’t want to sacrifice (heh heh) his Thing-of-the-Deep item because I really love the pick up radius on it. I know top Witch Doctors use the Uhkapian Serpent but the convenience of the pick up radius vs the increased damage for me does not seem worth the cost at the moment.
At any rate, my Witch Doctor feels more like my main at this point than my Demon Hunter. It’s a real fun class and it has pretty smooth game play without the incredible amount of micro management that I find with other classes. I hope that I can re-gear my Wizard for the Archon spec just to have another fun farmer.
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