6 comments on “My Season has slowed down

  1. Yes, the wording is rather dumb. Maybe “produce” would be a better verb.

    Sorry if you already know this, but:

    In Diablo 3, your default left-mouse-button skills are labeled “Signature” or (confusingly) “Primary.” They should more properly be called “Generator” skills because their main purpose is not so much to inflict damage as it is to produce or “generate” your Primary Resource — that stuff in your right-hand bubble in the UI.

    You need Primary Resource (e.g., Wrath for a Crusader) in order to use your real damage-dealing skills. Primary Resource is “spent” every time you use a big skill and has to be regenerated. This is why people refer to non-Primary skills as “spenders.”

    The Demon Hunter is unusual because she has two Primary Resources to manage — Hatred and Discipline. Each resource applies to a range of different skills with different purposes. In general, the Hatred skills do damage; the Discipline skills pertain to escape moves, survivability, and damage enhancement. So the Unhallowed Essence bonus is saying that every time you use your Primary (left-mouse button) skill, you generate 2 additional units of Hatred and 1 additional unit of Discipline, which is a very helpful thing. Because you’re attacking things so quickly, you can expend your resources pretty rapidly. They have to be regenerated rapidly as monsters become more threatening. In this build, Hatred replenishment is essential for constant Multishot hits. Discipline is essential because the set provides a big damage bonus for every point of this resource you have.

    The trick is to balance resource management with damage output. Anything that contributes to resource uptime while not interfering too much with damage is a godsend for the demon hunter. The more resource I generate, the less often I have to use a low-damage Primary skill and the more often I can use a high-damage “spender” skill.

    • I guess I missed the part where they renamed “Mana” to a bunch of different things based on class. Sorry, I’m a scrub. 🙂

      So does the demon hunter get an extra ball thing on the UI?

  2. An interesting example of this dynamic is how my melee wizard works. She takes advantage of a wand called Aether Walker, which gets rid of Teleport’s cooldown and replaces it with a resource-usage penalty. I can teleport at will but only if I have enough resource. To overcome this, I use various items to increase the attack speed of Spectral Blade. The attack speed affects another skill that generates extra Arcane Power (the wizard’s resource). Part of my defense also depends on my resource never dipping below a certain level. The accelerated Spectral Blade (the “generator” skill) ensures that I always have a very high level of Arcane Power.

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