Every time I use Cluster Arrow with the Loaded for Bear rune, my DPS drops from 41K to 16K. what is happening and what should I do?
Diablo – Cluster Arrow+Loaded For Bear=low dps, what should i do
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Related Solutions
From the standpoint of your weapon: Weapon Damage is king. Above all else, you want the highest possible amount of raw damage and DPS possible. Beyond that, you'll want to take a look at this formula to understand the value of other stats.
In short: at low levels, nothing is going to beat raw +Damage on any slot where you can get it (Rings, Neck, Offhand). As you increase in level, you'll eventually reach a point of inflection where the multiplicative scaling gained from adding +Dex is more valuable than the straight + Damage. This point of inflection will vary with other stats, and particularly with the base DPS of your weapon - your best bet is to simply keep an eye on the +Damage portion of the tooltip when comparing items.
As for stats like Crit and Attack Speed, the same basic rules apply. In general, .1 attack speed is worth 10 Dex, but this ignores the defensive benefits of Dexterity, and since attack speed bonuses are provided as percentage multipliers, you'll need to do some math. You'll need to run similar calculations with +Crit and +Crit Damage, but in general, unless you use skills or passives that rely on Crit, you can assume those stats are less valuable than the others.
Really, all of this comes back to one key point: Trust the Damage Stat on your Character Sheet. So long as you're doing the basics right (using a level appropriate, high DPS weapon), it isn't going to steer you far wrong. Beyond that, Dexterity is King, and everything else depends entirely on the magnitude of the stat that you get. An item with +Crit might be better than an item with +Attack Speed, based purely on how much of it is there.
So, any Demon Hunter Build is going to divide its skills into two basic categories. Tools You Use To Stay Alive, and Tools You Use To Kill Things. In general, these two categories are largely separable, with the former category being the one that changes radically in Inferno. I'll cover both here for completeness sake, but keep in mind that the latter section allows substantially more flexibility.
Staying Alive
There are two schools of thought for staying alive. The first is built on maximizing Smoke Screen uptime at all costs, through the use of the Lingering Fog rune, Preparation with either Focused Mind or Backup Plan (to taste). Multishot with Suppression Fire, as are the Nightstalker, Perfectionist, and Sharpshooter passive skills. These builds have become somewhat less popular after the most recent round of hot fixes, as the maximum possible uptime has been reduced considerably, but Smoke Screen is still an essential element of most builds, regardless. Since the most recent hot fix, you may also consider replacing it with Shadow Power with the Gloom rune. You'll experience a higher uptime of less damage reduction (-65%, rather than -100%). If you go the Shadow Power route, you'll probably want to focus on offensive skills that provide more health regen (see below for options there).
The other school of thought is to maximize your kiting ability. While Smoke Screen is still essential to most of these builds, they may forego some of the other +Discipline stacking options in favor of abilities like Caltrops and Vault, particularly in combination with the Tumble rune, which makes it near-spammable.
Either way, the key is to select skills that maximize your ability to not be hit. Whether you do this by increasing your invulnerability uptime, or by augmenting your mobility is up to you.
Killing Things
On this front, you have much more flexibility. Elemental Arrow is incredibly popular as a main attack. At a cost of only 10 Hatred, you can almost spam this exclusively in most encounters - Hatred builders aren't often needed, (especially if you use the Bat Companion, see below) which means that you can rely on this skill primarily for damage. The two most popular runes are going to be Frost Arrow, which offers high single target damage, decent AE, and a snare effect, and Nether Tentacles, which offers the best damage on single-target encounters, as well as a decent life-leech effect. Screaming Skull is favored by more kite-centric builds, as the fear effect offers a tremendous amount of crowd control - it's not as reliable as some other options, but it's potency and spammability more than makes up for it.
Rapid Fire is also quite popular, particularly with the High Velocity or Bombardment runes.
Hatred builders, by contrast, are much more to taste.
Evasive Fire is a very popular Hatred builder, but the risk of spending Discipline by vaulting unexpectedly is often enough to make it less useful than the alternatives - especially when action bar slots are scarce after stacking Defensive skills. Additionally, the damage isn't terribly high, and it offers a minimal AoE coverage or additional utility.
Entangling Shot is probably the most popular alternative, as the slow is handy, though the damage is pretty lackluster. Bola Shot and Hungering Arrow have proponents as well. This slot on your bars in particular, is largely going to be to taste.
And Then What?
At this point, you have a Hatred-Spending attack, a Hatred-Generating Attack, and probably 2-3 skills allocated to defense. (Smoke Screen or Shadow Power, and some combination of Prep, Vault and Caltrops). You can fit 1-2 more skills on your bar. What do you take? There are a few major contenders:
Companion, probably with the Bat rune - this is an easy attention-free source of additional damage. More importantly however, by generating 3-hatred per second, it allows you to use Elemental Arrow 5 more times (or get 5 more ticks of Rapid Fire), give or take, before running out of Hatred. That's a Really Big Deal, and a lot of extra damage, before even factoring in the 45% Weapon Damage that the bat does on it's own.
Marked for Death, particularly with the Death Toll rune is popular for Shadow Power and Nether Tentacles based builds for maximizing health regen. It's less useful if you're doing a lot of kiting, or concerned with AE damage. It's also very potent in combination with Nether Tentacles -- especially in 'true' single target (i.e. only one thing on the screen to hit) situations.
Multishot with Suppression Fire, as mentioned above, is a popular option for maximizing Discipline Regen. Alternately, with the Fire At Will rune, it becomes a popular AE option for builds that are more focused on single target damage with other skill choices (i.e. (Rapid Fire)
Spike Trap, particularly with the Scatter rune is popular for kite-centric builds - dropping one at a tight choke point can be devastating.
Passives
The only really important one here is Archery, which, in combination with a 2H Bow or Crossbow, is a massive increase in damage. If you're stuck using a Hand Crossbow, this is less important, but you should really be trying to get your hands on a two handed ranged weapon as soon as possible in order to use this passive. It provides an absolutely staggering amount of additional DPS.
Beyond that, it's largely to taste. If you're focused on SS/SP uptime, you'll want some combination of Night Stalker (possibly with Sharpshooter to support it), Perfectionist, and Vengeance. A kiting focused build may want Cull the Weak or Tactical Advantage. You have a lot of flexibility here.
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Best Answer
While consecutive rune unlocks are generally upgrades, the actual difference is relative to the situation you use it in. Consider a level 70 player:
Cluster Arrow deals up to 1100% base damage as fire to a target location.
Dazzling Arrow deals up to 1100% base damage as lightning to a target location, and also applies the stun effect.The stun effect will only have an impact on DPS if you have any abilities that amplify or impart damage if an enemy is stunned, or if you are otherwise being hindered in your ability to damage the enemy by the enemy's attacks. You will likely have a higher DPS against enemies that freeze with attack, for example, as you will be able to stun them to limit being frozen.
Shooting Stars deals up to 1800% base damage as physical.
Maelstrom deals up to 2250% base damage as cold, and heals you for every enemy hit. Healing has almost no effect on DPS. Consider that you might have an item that gives you guaranteed critical hits at below 20% health, and that the healing could potentially bring you out of that automatic critical buff, reducing your expected damage output.
Cluster Bombs drops a bombing line of explosives, each dealing 525% base damage as fire. You will likely find this rune a lot less effective against smaller groups of enemies, as most of the bombs along the line will probably miss the target. This will be far more useful against larger clusters of enemies, or larger bosses, where you can ensure maximum grenades hit an enemy along the line.
Loaded for Bear increases the initial impact, giving you a potential 1320% base damage in fire against an enemy.
Taking the element into account goes a long way, given you can have buffs to damage of a certain element, and certain enemies are strong against a particular element.
Looking at the comparisons, Loaded for Bear is only giving you a more powerful, condensed, fire attack. Unless you are in a situation where fire is most favorable, you could expect a better damage output from pretty much every other rune, excluding Dazzling Arrow.
Numbers taken from the battle.net entry for Cluster Arrow.