For those of you still sitting on the fence on whether to buy the game, let me say two things: Find a more comfortable seat—fences are no place to seat—and buy D3 now! Why? Imagine if we could take Christmas, pumpkin pie, cute puppies, the smell of a new car, a supermodel, Taco Bell, and a La-Z-Boy recliner, condense them into a glove, put that glove on Will Smith, and then let him bitchslap you with it. Yeah, that’s D3 in a nutshell.
For the intelligent folk out there that have already bought the 9th wonder of the world, I salute you. And since I’m one of you, I salute myself. I haven’t quite worked out the logistics of it.
The point I’m getting at (finally) is that I know why most of you fine folk are here. Let me say thank you for coming. We’ll be posting build analyses weekly in the hopes that, as a community, we can weed out the bad builds and usher in the good ones. Yes, without actual theory-crafting, some of this insight is subjective, but I’ll try to be as objective as I possibly can. That being said, if I post something that you know to be utterly wrong, or your experiences differs greatly from my conclusions, I would appreciate it if you let me know in the comments below. Hopefully you do it in a constructive way, but even saying, “Hey, stupidface, this ain’t right” works too. Just know that If I had feelings they would be hurt.
With a whopping 254 votes (as of this writing, though the number keeps increasing), the “Rapid Death Rocketeer” build is by far our highest voted build thus far. Twincannon created it, and here is what they have to say: “Combines Ballistics rocket skills with a Rapid Fire / Marked for Death combo. Mortal Enemy generates 3 hatred for each attack, and Rapid Fire shoots quickly. Put down a Turret, Caltrops, get max hatred and then Rapid Fire until you’re empty (or Cluster Arrow for big packs).”
To be completely honest, I’m trying to find holes in this build but I’m not coming up with much of anything. With the rune and the Grenadier passive, Grenades generates a massive 8 Hatred per attack, not to mention the Hatred that is generated through Mortal Enemy or Vengeance. The rune on Caltrops helps you lock down an area no problem, while Sentry lets you kite and kill with equal ease. Cluster Arrow and Rapid Fire both provide heavy single target damage to take down those tougher mobs, though their runes also provide a good amount of multi-target damage (as does Sentry’s rune). This is all tied together with the Ballistics passive which increases the damage of all the rockets by 50%.
The ONLY worry I have for this build is the potential lack of Discipline, but I guess you have to sacrifice somewhere. Plus, I’m not even sure if this would be much of a problem. You’d probably have Caltrops out the most, which is only 6 Discipline, followed by Sentry, 10. But that still leaves with you nearly half of your maximum Discipline per fight. That’s at least two more traps if needed, and that doesn’t include the regeneration that will come from collecting health globes through Vengeance. Marked for Death would be saved for champions and bosses, and in that case you could probably sacrifice a Caltrops or two if need be.
This build is wonderful. A strong 4/5.
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I had to adapt this build for a lower level for quite a while, and even with minor editing (using Marked for Death: Valley of Death and Caltrops Jagged Spikes), it was incredibly efficient. During my low level run, I also got rid of Cluster Arrow as it was too expensive without Grenadier, and I replaced it with Rain of Arrows: Dark Cloud.
Now, at a higher level, I still find myself using a customized variant of this original build. I opted out of Cluster Arrow, finding it redundant with Rapid Fire. I replaced it with Shadow Power: Blood Moon, and it has been a quick and easy heal skill when no health orbs were around. I also keep a Bat Companion around to further my hatred regen. I love the rocketeer.