RedCell : I’m a thirty-year-old guy with a wife and six-year-old son. We live in Wisconsin where I work as a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Specialist. Essentially, my job is to assist with the maintenance of a large natural gas utility network that is stored on an ESRI ArcFM server.

RedCell : I have a passion for the shooting sports and fishing. A recent hobby that I picked up is building custom PCs. I just finished my first one last month, and now D3 looks better than ever. Oh, I grill a pretty mean steak as well.

RedCell : Back in 1997 a friend introduced me to Diablo. I played through game as a Warrior and remember really liking the item game and how the character looked. He wasn’t some goofy, spikey haired character like the ones in the JRPGs I had played. Rather, the Warrior made me feel like I was controlling one of my childhood heroes from the Knights of the Round Table.

I never got involved online and pretty much just played Diablo to beat the story and then moved on (I have since played through D1 with all of the classes).

When D2 came out, I didn’t know or care. D1 was just a fun game that a friend let me play. Furthermore, I was firmly in the console camp without a care in the world about what was going on in the world of PC gaming. Well, that same friend began to tell me about D2. About how awesome his sorceress was etc, then he mentioned his necromancer’s skeleton army… Yeah, I went out, bought the game, and created a necro (remained my favorite class).

D2 proved to be a different animal than D1, as far as I was concerned at least. I didn’t stop after killing Diablo, but continued improving my necro. In the matter of a few weeks I had completely blown passed my friend in power. The years wore on and I continued to play D2 almost exclusively, until the launch of D3 in 2012.

RedCell : I’ve been enjoying playing Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga with my son; though, sometimes he finds a bit too much enjoyment from using the dark force to electrocute my poor Bounty Hunter.

I’m also spending a little time playing Dungeon Siege III (I got it free with the purchase of my video card). The systems and combat are actually pretty interesting and fresh. That said, the controls and camera are a little problematic.

RedCell : I’m currently focused entirely on my Demon Hunter. However, I really like some of the Crusader’s active/passive skills and the fact that he feels so much like the pally from D2. So that, coupled with the absolutely epic Darklight Flail I found while playing my DH, makes me want to take him further.

RedCell : I’m an officer of The Prime Assassins. Our clan sprung from a heated debate regarding the efficacy of ranged play during an era when the Tank DH reigned supreme. Two principle members in that argument, FLIGHT and DiEoxidE, made a video showcasing ranged DH gameplay at a very high level. After the creation of that video, the two decided to create a clan, the Glass Cannon Build clan (GCB).

GCB instantly took off with lots of players seeking membership, players who desired to play a ranged DH but were told by everyone that it was: impossible, inefficient, a waste of time, the wrong way to play.

We have since changed our name to The Prime Assassins because the main objective of the GCB, that being advancing ranged play, had been achieved. The new name has multiple meanings. “Assassin” pays tribute to one of the Demon Hunters precursors from D2. The word ‘prime’ encapsulates our approach to the class, we want reach the top, the pinnacle, of DH gameplay.

RedCell : I’m searching for a Witching Hour with VIT.

RedCell : A few weeks after D3 launched I was playing in a public game on nightmare difficulty with another DH and a wizard. I was minding my own business using Gloom’s lifesteal to tank mobs when the other DH said, “RedCell, you’re a bad Demon Hunter.”

That was all he said. He didn’t offer any pointers or suggestions.

RedCell : This is an easy one. The most awesome moment for me was attaining the Emperor’s New Clothes achievement, which involved killing the act bosses in Hell difficulty or higher with no gear equipped. Prior to attempting this feat, I read up on what others were doing and basically heard every one say you couldn’t do it as a DH.

Well I did it as a DH, and what a ride it was. Some players said you could whittle down the boss with your gear on and then unequip it for the killing blow. Yeah, that didn’t work, at least for the patch I did it in. I had to do the entire fight naked. Wow, what a crazy build I had to use to do it too: Spider, Preparation, MfD...

Essentially, you had to buff your follower’s damage and focus on evasion. Belial and Azmodan fell pretty easily, but the Butcher, oh the Butcher butchered me a countless number of times. I literally had to do a flawless run or I’d get greased.

Finally, after hours of attempts, I, err, Lyndon smote him down with his crossbow.

To this day I still have the angel sigil awarded for that achievement on my banner.

RedCell : The fantasy behind the Demon Hunter as conveyed through the 2008 Demon Hunter trailer is what really piqued my interest. That and the name; hunter of demons, eh… ok, where do I sign.

RedCell : I prefer archery themed ranged play.

RedCell : That would have to be Night Bane, the most unpopular* rune of a not so popular skill, Shadow Power.

With the launch of ROS, the Night Bane rune was changed from hatred per second to a slowing effect. I didn’t see many players talking about the new Night Bane, at least in a positive light, but there was just something intriguing to me about it. My logic was this: why use Glide to outrun the mobs when I can just slow them?

So I started experimenting with Night Bane and the other Shadow Power runes to see how each meshed with my playstyle. Using Night Bane and then replacing it with Glide really let me see the holes left by Night Bane’s absence.

Then one day I discovered a new tactical use for Night Bane that just made it a pure joy to use. I began to notice that sometimes when I used Night Bane, the monsters in front would get slowed thus causing the normal speed monsters behind them to crash into them creating a dense cluster of enemies presenting the perfect scenario for the Area Damage affix.

In short, Night Bane completely changed the way I approached monster slaying in D3, and now it informs my entire mode of play.

*According to Diablo Somepage.

RedCell : I’m still running variations of my “Archer of the Stars” spec that I came up with shortly after the launch of ROS. It’s a Multishot/Vengeance build with Vault and Night Bane as my defensive/tactical measures.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/13203850297#1

RedCell : One of the biggest problems facing the DH class is that the most effective way to manage our hatred is to not, and simply let sentries cast our spenders for zero cost. Furthermore, I didn’t just want to create a legendary power that made Multishot obliterate everything on screen or cast five Impales at once; rather I wanted a legendary power that was contingent upon the DHs gameplay. Lastly, I’ve seen several threads wherein players were asking for a buff to Vengeance because it’s such an awesome skill, one that can be used in a variety of builds.

Therefore, I came up with the following power:

Spending 25-50 hatred reduces the cooldown on Vengeance by 1 second.

What this legendary power does is place control directly into the player’s hands. The more efficient they are at generating/spending hatred, the better the legendary affix will perform. With it comes another benefit for pushing up their APS. Also, players would start taking a second look at the IAS boost from Gogoks or the hatred from Mortal Enemy etc. But most importantly, players will be thinking about how to best manage their hatred so they can once more become the embodiment of Vengeance.

RedCell : What comes next? What happens after smoke screen or shadow power wears off? What happens after you vault?
My point is, each use of you defensive/tactical skills should leave you in a better position than you were before, both offensively and defensively. If you get swarmed, vault, and are instantly swarmed again, then something in your tactics needs to change. Maybe work in some slows and stuns.

RedCell : It would have to be Zei due its power (damage bonus is multiplicative) and the stun bonus at rank 25.

RedCell : “Be swift and silent.”

What can I say; I like typing /bye before leaving games. :)

RedCell: Alagos#3786

I don’t know much about Alagos outside of his posts on the forums, but from the threads I have read, Alagos comes across as a very inquisitive player, one who I would like to hear more about.

RedCell: What are your thoughts on the Demon Hunters generators?