Diablo 3: Barbarian Cold Leapquake

This build is something I've been having a lot of fun with lately. In the past, Fire Leapquake was the clear cut winner due to raw damage alone, but with some recent buffs the cold variant of the barbarian's earthquake skill is much more viable than it was before. I love playing this build because it offers great crowd control; everything is pretty much constantly frozen. Plus, it's really fun hopping around the map dropping earthquakes all over the place. While the damage output is not as high as fire, I would argue that it almost evens out because the cold variant offers more survivability and control over mobs.

This build revolves around a few key items. The most important being the Might of the Earth set and the Legendary boots Lut Socks. These items have great synergy together, as MoTE leaves a free earthquake every time you land from using Leap, and Lut Socks give you a total of 3 Leaps before the cooldown starts.

The Gear:

As you can see from the first picture, I am wearing the full MoTE set + Lut Socks. I opted not to wear a Ring of Royal Grandeur so that I can use a rare ring that gives me better stats (CC/CD/CDR/Socket). If you have a good royal ring you may want to consider Leoric's Crown for some extra CDR, or Frostburn gloves for more cold damage/utility.

Cooldown Reduction is king for this build, so the more you have the better. About 30% I'd say is the bare minimum, while upwards of 50% would be ideal with a perfect gear setup. I've got it on my gloves, shoulders, helm (socketed diamond), one of my rings, and my weapon. Now I've got a couple of different gear pieces that I swap in and out to try and find what is most optimal, but I usually hover around ~40% CDR. The more you have the faster you can Leap all over the place.

The rest of the gear is up for debate. Just try to stack cold damage and elite damage wherever possible, and try to get sockets in your rings/amulet so you can use legendary gems. The great thing about this build is that it only requires a few key items, so you are free to mix and match with different sets and legendary items (especially if using a royal ring) to try and find what works best for you/with what you have.

The Skills:

I'm using a pretty standard setup here. You definitely need Earthquake - Chilling Earth, as that is the centerpiece of this build. Which rune you choose for Leap depends on if you want to be more offensive or defensive, I'm using Call of Arreat because it synergies with my Strongarm Bracers, but if you're having trouble surviving I would recommend switching to one of the more defense-oriented runes. War Cry - Impunity is pretty much always on my skill bar, as it provides extra resistances and armor, while also serving as a backup fury generator. Plus if you're playing in groups it helps out your teammates as well. Battle Rage and Wrath of the Berserker are purely included for extra damage. Call of the Ancients are included to help with single target damage (tough elites and rift guardians).

As far as passive skills go I'm using Ruthless because that helps a lot on the larger monsters with large health pools. Berserker Rage is great because you are pretty much constantly at full fury (thanks to War Cry + Leap), so you can maintain the damage bonus fairly easily. Boon of Bul-Kathos is great because it lets me use nearly all of my skills more often, it lowers the cooldowns on Earthquake, WotB, and CotA by a substantial amount. And finally Rampage, because it is great in that it provides a survivability and damage boost by increasing your Strength by a percentage for each enemy killed, stacking up to 25 times.

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That's pretty much all I have to say on this build! Give it a try if you haven't already. I promise it's a lot of fun.

Deadmau5 plays Diablo

Screenshot from his twitter

Here he is making a joke about the item Nemesis Bracers, which spawns an elite/champion pack if you have them equipped when you click on a shrine. Rare items have randomly generated names consisting of two words, and every so often you can find one with a hilarious name or in this case, a name already being used for another item. If you're not familiar with Diablo 3, no one actually keeps the Nemesis Bracers equipped, because there are other, better items you can and should be wearing in that slot instead. So what happens is people get to a shrine and they stop, open their inventory, swap on the bracers really quick just to hit the shrine, and then swap back to their better bracers before closing to fight the spawned elites. Really the only time this is actually beneficial is in Rifts, where the "free" elites from shrines help you reach the monster cap faster. Some people care to mess with it, others don't. But the people that do care will often times get really upset if you hit the shrine before they can get to it, thereby "wasting" it and not getting the bonus elite spawn.

I myself don't really care, as it becomes tedious after awhile with all the gear swapping and inventory opening/closing in the middle of a game, especially if you happen to be lagging even a little bit because it can slow things down significantly. It can be a nice bonus for extra chances at legendary items and crafting materials though, if you really want it. Either way, it's always fun to mess with people right? ;) Deadmau5 seems to think so. I like his sense of humor.

Here's his profile if you want to see his characters/gear. He's pretty decked out, and from the looks of it he only plays hardcore.

Diablo 3: Demon Hunter Strafe Build

Intro:

Tired of M6 sentries? Me too. I have a lot of extra gear laying around so I've been messing around with Strafe lately. Until recently I was lacking a few key items to really make this build work, but I've managed to throw some things together and have been mucking about in T5. My setup is by no means BiS, this is just what I have available to me. I believe if I had slightly better gear/leveled up gems I could take on T6 without a problem.

*As a side note this build is not meant for Grifts. I mainly use it for running bounties and regular rifts. The damage/survivability are just not there in this build to tackle higher level Grifts.

The Build:

LMB // Chakram - Shuriken Cloud
RMB // Strafe - Demolition
1 // Shadow Power - Night Bane
2 // Fan of Knives - Fan of Daggers
3 // Preparation - Punishment
4 // Companion - Boar Companion

Passives:
Blood Vengeance
Perfectionist
Archery
Grenadier

As far as Strafe goes, there are two rune choices (for element=fire), Rocket Storm or Demolition. I tested both with their respective passives and the damage/AoE potential on Demolition was noticeably stronger. My resource management through gear/skills is pretty solid so I have no need to use a generator. Instead on my left mouse I have Chakram - Shuriken Cloud, which is basically free damage while you're strafing through enemies.

(1) A somewhat controversial choice I have made for my 1 hot-key is forgoing the usual Smokescreen for Shadow Power - Night Bane. The extra LoH helps keep me alive as I am constantly in close range, and the movement speed monster debuff is a great for applying the extra damage from the legendary gem Bane of the Trapped. I've actually grown to like Shadow Power, and I wish I could incorporate the Shadow Set somehow to utilize it's 4-piece bonus but that would require me losing either Cindercoat or Hexing Pants (neither of which I want to give up), and using my sub-par RoRG (Dex/Vit/IAS/CHD) in place of the rare ring (Dex/CC/CHD/Socket) I am using instead.

*I have tested out a physical variant of this build, but it seriously lacks AoE and it does about half the damage my fire variant does. Which is a shame because my Shadow Set pieces are actually rolled quite well (better than some of my fire at least). The one good thing I will say about it is I was practically immortal with the 4-set Shadow Set bonus. If I had a few more things (like a physical SoJ, and a better RoRG for starters) I might be able to bring the damage up to more closely compete with fire, but as it stands now it just wasn't worth it over fire.

(2) Fan of Knives - Fan of Daggers. This skill also ties into keeping as much uptime on Bane of the Trapped as possible with a 3 second stun. Plus it is fire damage so it synergizes well with the build, all on a 10 second cooldown which is not so bad (even without CDR, of which I have none). The damage is nothing to overlook either, I often see it critting for 10-15 mil.

*I have a legacy Sash of Knives which I was testing out for awhile, which seemed great on paper as it has 46% Fan of Knives bonus and 6% resource cost reduction, but I found that I was using this skill more for the utility than the damage, so I ended up switching to 2-piece Blackthornes (belt + boots) for the extra Vit and elite dmg which I sorely needed.

(3) Preparation - Punishment. This is here pretty much exclusively for the longer fights (boss, RG), where my hatred sustain tends to fall short. Otherwise like I said I generally don't have resource problems.

*For awhile I was testing Rain of Vengeance - Anathema (as it synergizes with Grenadier) but I didn't like that you have to stop strafing to cast it so I ended up switching it out. It did help with the single target damage though so I feel it is still worth considering in this slot.

(4) Companion - Boar Companion. This is here because my all resist is a bit low, as well as missing some Vit on some key slots which makes me squishier than I'd like. It is purely for defensive purposes. If I could I would be using the Wolf Companion for the extra damage.

(Passives) Blood Vengeance is because I lack Reaper's Wraps (the ridiculous amount of arcane dust to craft them and the well-rolled RoRG to use them and maintain 3-piece Aughild). Perfectionist is to combat my aforementioned toughness issues. Archery for that sweet CHD from using a 2H Xbow, and Grenadier for the extra bonuses to grenades.

The Gear:

I'll be highlighting what I feel are the key pieces to truly making this build work (read: cannot do without). To see all of my gear in full detail you can visit my armory.

What's a fire build without a Cindercoat? While I wish mine had a Vit roll instead of Armor, the resource reduction for fire skills is absolutely necessary for indefinite strafing. Diamonds in the sockets instead of emeralds because I need the AR.

Any movement-based build these are pretty much BiS. These pants and Cindercoat combined are enough to keep me strafing for a long time (I pretty much only get low on hatred in boss fights). Plus a 25% damage bonus, icing on the cake.

The 2-pierce Buriza makes all projectiles explode 2 more times. This is great for all of the grenades firing off all over the place in this build. Although admittedly this is the only 2H Xbow I have so I really can't say how much better this unique effect changes the damage potential of this build. A well rolled 2H Xbow should have around ~2500 DPS minimum so if I find a better one (or a Rama's gift) I intend on testing it out to see what kind of difference it makes. I am hoping a better weapon will help me push into T6 but I have yet to find one. In the meantime the 10% RCR on this Buriza makes up for it's lower damage, and the chance to freeze is a nice bonus.

And finally, my amulet. Legendary amulets can roll up to 20% fire, but I needed one with a socket so I'm using this craftable in the meantime. I am only using one other legendary gem, Bane of the Powerful, which is in a crafted rare ring (Dex/CC/CHD/Socket). Neither of them are leveled up yet because I haven't had the time lately (another thing I am hoping will help me push into T6).

As for the rest:

Shoulders/Helm/Bracers - Aughild

Gloves - Magefist

Belt/Boots - Blackthorne

Quiver - Archfiend Arrows (for the elite dmg)

Ring 1 - Unity (I mostly solo, and I don't have a fire SoJ)

Ring 2 - Crafted Rare

Conclusion:

This build is a lot of fun and is definitely worth a try if you get tired of the usual grind. I am hoping to perfect my gear in the near future so I can comfortably take this into T6. The damage is pretty much there, I just need some more toughness before I can really make the jump. If you play in pub games you will want to switch out the Unity for a SoJ, RoRG, or whatever else you have laying around. And if you are having resource troubles there are a couple changes you can make to compensate such as avoiding IAS as much as possible (and making sure to use a slow 2H), Captain Crimson's 3-piece bonus, RCR rolls on shoulders, etc. Again this is by no means a BiS analysis, I am sure there are better combinations of gear/skills that have yet to discover or am unable to test at this time. So until then this will be a work in progress...

Thanks for reading :)