http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#fPgSVd!ZYe!bcYYbb

For quick Act 1 farming.

Evasive fire is a nice instant aoe and clears out most whites in one hit for me. Cluster arrow LfB is for elites, sometimes I switch it for cluster bombs. I find that I don't have any trouble with cc affixes, but I always had to switch weapons for reflects damage which I found annoying, so that's why I have shadow power instead of ss. Vault is just to move faster. I actually find myself mostly using prep so I can vault more.

Here is what I use for Act 1 MF runs. I skip most whites and just tumble past them, but I use multishot for big groups and rares. Using tumble + tactical advantage makes it easy to sweep the map and find rares quickly.

Here is my Act 1 MF gear.

My build:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#aRXgYS!ZeY!caZYbZ

I farm Act 2 pretty exclusively doing a run that nets me between 10 - 15 champs which takes right around 22 - 23 minutes.

I have also Tanky DH which is really fun to play.
she got 650resist all, 43k hp and 1200 LOH
DPS is low -13k
with the below skill u can farm act 2 but with low DPS it is taking time to kill some elits.

LOH and Resist is must for this build and - kinda expensive build if you want to have both with good DPS.

Skills:
grenades - gas grenades
spike trap - - Scatter
Smoke screen - special recipe (lower dis by 2)
preparation - battle scars
caltrup - bait the trap (10% more cric chance)
chakram - shuriken cloud

after alot of changes i use the below passives:
Archery - (I use 1 hand croos bow with shield)
numbing traps
night stalker - going well with caltrup - bait the trap and helps me to spam ss and caltrup. with night stalker my cric chance is 34%

For more DPS you can use sharpshoter but it will make u less diffensive.
I prefer smoke screen and not shadow power gloom because i need to get out from freeze and jailure wen needed.

I hope it helps someone

Good Luck ALL

I haven't found Shadow Power to be as useful as Smokescreen when I'm in trouble. I love Spike Trap - Scatter for it's min 550% damage if you place it right compared to Cluster Arrow. I will definitely be trying Shadow Power - Gloom and Cluster Arrow now given how much people are using them.

I've found Impale - Overpenetration to be the best answer to Invulnerable Minions, but with the patch removing Invulnerable, Impale will be completely useless no matter how they buff it.

How much of these builds are gear dependent? I find that Evasive Fire - Covering Fire does more damage than Hungering Arrow for me, particularly in mobs. Maybe my Attack Speed isn't high enough or my dps isn't high enough to one-hit most monsters with a Hungering Arrow.

I agree with ecocd, that Shadow Power - Gloom doesn't seem to do the trick vs. Smokescreen when I'm in trouble - I want to run away not stand and fight to gain life. Maybe I'm not playing it right.

I have been very impressed with Spike Trap - Scatter.
Caltrops - Bait the trap is pretty good and cheap.

Now I use a Bat companion, gear is up to 6 Hatred per second, and I use Rapid Fire as my main assault falling back to Evasive Fire when I run out. This works for me, but I can't believe no else uses it!?! I may be playing a little glass cannon like in the facts that my resistances are only around 200, 33K in life, and that I am using Archery, Sharpshooter, and Steady Aim for massive amounts of damage. When I am channeling Rapid Fire, it is just a sea of yellow numbers.

Sometimes I try with Sentry - Aid Station, but it doesn't do much damage or regenerate my life back quick enough to hold my ground. I tend to use is when in multiplayer for Barbarian and Monks who tank in front of me and I think it may help them somewhat, but as I gain more experience I am starting to believe it is a wasted slot.

So I'm using
1- Caltrops - Bait the Trap
2- Spike Trap - Scatter
3- Smoke Screen - (the rune where you leave behind the 700% bomb)
4- Bat Companion

L- Evasive Fire - (changing the rune all the time)
R- Rapid Fire

My experience so far is this set-up works well through all of my farming of Act I inferno. I start to have some troubles as I make my way through Act II, I think this is mainly from 1-2 hit kills of my DH. Need more resists.

I have a huge amount of trouble with Reflect Damage Elites. What do you do when you come across these guys?

Holy necro Batman. We covered reflect damage a little in a previous thread, because I was having a lot of trouble with that too. A big part of the problem for me was that my Spike Trap and the like were doing such huge damage when they crit that I was killing myself often enough to be annoying. For me, the solution was a Life On Hit offhand bow (I dual-wield), other players suggested keeping one in the inventory and switching to it when the pack appears. Then I adjusted my play style to focus on consistent hits to proc the LOH instead of single Big Boom skills like Spike Trap Scatter. I can throw a few of those in there, too, but only when my life is high enough to take the hit.

Now I have a LOH + Life Steal bow which helps compensate for both consistent and Big Boom damage. Smoke Screen prevents damage from being Reflected so if you're looking to continue to use Spike Trap one option is to pop SS before right between the Spike Trap triggers. The timing is difficult and the Discipline cost is steep, but it does work. LOH switch weapon is still probably the best option.

You're also right about adding resists for the jump from Act 1 to Act 2. You'll find you need the same jump moving Act 2 to Act 3. I'm a bit tanky in my build and I'm up to about 450 AR for Act 3 - you won't need nearly as much for Act 2. The one thing I was neglecting was my Armor. Armor functions the same as Resist All and can often be a lot cheaper. You might consider +Armor mod items as a cheaper upgrade path than AR armor. I also found that Fire damage was substantially more dangerous than any other element due to Mortar so you can also opt to try cheap Fire Resist armor instead of expensive AR armor.

Have fun!

i use this build, love the stability and control/range of DR and the mobility of FoT, both in 1 magnificent build.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#abgXSk!XUa!acabca

love it!

@mowuffe That is the funniest looking Demon Hunter I've ever seen. How can I get One With Everything and Fists of Thunder on my DH? ;-)

@ecocd hey i can hit from a range too! :) lol i didnt realise it was dh only post

Alright now I have my MF geared up to 210 with no NV. Resists @ 400. Life only at 29K. I have switched my skills around in preperation for 1.0.5. This seems good to me, what do others think?

Q - Bat Companion (adds 3 sec hatred regeneration + 3 on gear for 6, hit once and let it go)
W - Preparations - Battle Scars (all discipline + 60% life better than a purple potion in D2)
E - Caltrops - Bait the Trap (10% CHC)
R - Shadow Power - Gloom (I get it now, do damage, stop damage, gain life)

Lm - Cluster Bombs - L4B (always fire this first with Sharpshooter Passive)
Rm - Hungering Arrow - Scatter Shot (personal choice, seems that the piercing/second hit is faster than anything else)

Passives
Archery
Sharpshooter
Steady Aim (should I switch with Vengence or Nightstalker?)

Anyone have data on how long it takes to use each skill?

@whirlingd17 It matters at least a little bit which weapon you're using on the skills you choose. Since I'm dual-wielding, my build is based on critical hits, attack speed and procs so Hungering Arrow - Overpenetration is actually the best rune for me.

Cluster Arrow is a popular choice and perfectly valid, but with the major chance to the Custom Engineering passive, a DH can have 6 Spike Traps out at a time. Spike Trap - Scatter drops 3x 275% damage traps. One the PTR you can spam 2 of them immediately on top of each other. Since Sharpshooter affects all attacks within 1 second, both traps will trigger with a Crit. If you time it exactly right, you can sent in a Hungering Arrow to get another crit in. It's a lot trickier to pull off than a Cluster Arrow, but it does a metric f***tonne of damage for the same Hatred cost. In general, a well-placed Caltrops complements Spike Trap very well.

With only 29K life (we have pretty much the same stats), you're not going to be taking more than 2 hits against mlvl 63 monsters so Steady Aim seems like a reliable damage boost. The fundamental problem with Vengeance is that DHs kite which means we don't pick up health globes until after the battle is complete. I need Hatred while I'm kiting not after I'm done, so it loses its primary usefulness. Your experience may be different.

Holy cow did you see the increase in damage with the new hatred spending Sentry! 175%! Wow!

@ecocd So, I started farming in Inferno with the above build, I am using a bow with increased CHD 100% DPS 1019, I found Cluster arrow to be a little over rated. It hits hard, very hard, but I just found the AOE was too small, sometimes I would pop a group of skeletons in the Festering woods that were not moving yet, but in the later acts you never seem to sneak up on packs that aren't moving making Cluster arrow's AOE part of the skill less effective. I switched to using Spike Trap scatter last night before I read your post this morning. I found it put more damage out there in tight spaces much more effectively, and it seriously didn't seem to eat up my hatred like cluster arrow did, and so I think I may just drop the bat companion. I'll try your trick with Custom Engineering this weekend and tell you how it goes. What passives do you run with?

I mix up my playing style depending on whether I play alone or publicly. Alone - I kite and caltrops and spike traps are huge heroes. In public games I tend to push my damage dealing and often end up in one spot for a period of 5-8 seconds, with Caltrops - Bait the trap and Shadow Power - Gloom this is effective. Public games I am sure Sharpshooter Passive is very effective, in private games, I can't always kill elite packs quick enough, and find if I hold my ground too long I end up with a repair bill if you know what I mean.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do this weekend, except change it up again and see how well running without a bat works, I plan to switch out Cluster Arrows with Spike Trap, and will try the Sentry with 175% damage. How often does the Sentry fire? Does it interact with increased attack speed? Does it proc, now that it doesn't critically hits? The game has changed so much since May, the BradyGames guide I bought on the first day is pretty much useless now.

Enjoy 1.0.5 this weekend.

Oh, PS I found a Ring of Hallowed Whispers, it sends out these ghosts from Raiders of the Lost Ark and does some significant damage to small scorpions and spiders. It's only the second ledgendary item I have found in my 250 hours playing. It's not a great ring, but it is sure fun to play with.

@ecocd you can simply add some pickup yard bonus to your gear (not too much) and you'll be able to pick up health globes and restore your Hatred.

Posted by whirlingd17 at 10/05/2012 05:02 AM

Oh, PS I found a Ring of Hallowed Whispers, it sends out these ghosts from Raiders of the Lost Ark and does some significant damage to small scorpions and spiders. It's only the second ledgendary item I have found in my 250 hours playing. It's not a great ring, but it is sure fun to play with.

that is really bad luck.
I found 3 or 4 (useless) legendaries with my Barb, with no MF (or maybe 10%), while levelling to 60 (took me 14h in total).
In more than 200h play, I found around 15 Legendaries (including only one Set item), only the Set item was useful, and nothing worth more than 1Mio.
With my first character (DH), it took my 70h to get my first legendary, and I was having 80% MF at least, usually much more.
It could be that you dropped a few legendaries but you never noticed.
I know I once almost missed one. The orange color can be vrey hard to notice on some dungeons like Areat Crater in Act 3.

How well do you survive Act 3 with your 400 Resist?
I have very low Resist and get one-shot by anything.
I am considering adding more Resist but not sure it's worth it, would love to hear your opinion.

@Venoom I was at <200 Resist all and could not get through Act II Inferno without major repair costs. Now that I'm up to ~400, I made a run down the Arreat crater last night and died three times fighting all the way to Azmoda, with a Barbarian 60 (10), a Barbarian 60 (0), and a DH 60 (9) who was also using spike traps. Once was completely my fault, as I held my ground too long, once was just didn't see everything, and once I was at the Keep clicked on the Barbarians Banner and teleported to the exact middle of an Elite encounter, couldn't move, dead. I played solo doing the imprisioned angel quest to get to the butcher, including a side trip into the festering woods for NV, twice, and I believed I may have died twice, once to the butcher and once in the festering woods as soon as I started.

The first character I played for a long while was the Wizard, and when I got to Inferno with all of that INT, I was rolling, so when my DH got to inferno I was excited to see what all of the damage dealing would do...not good with fast, reflect damge, and many of the other elites. Generally I wasn't prepared for the increase in HP of the monsters especially elite packs, so I couldn't take more than one hit. Increasing the Resist all helped, to the point I would say that in Act III I can take two hits melee, maybe 3 or 4 from ranged attacks, without hitting a potion or Preperation Battle Scars.

As far as MF, I didn't have much for the first 200 H of play, as I really took my time leveling up my wizard, doing everything solo. The Demon Hunter I did solo up until Inferno.

What do you think about the Sentry damage upgrade?

Have you tried the damage upgrade? I tried the 85% and it was laughable. I doubt 175% will be much better. How often do you stand in one place in Inferno to be able to drop a Sentry and stay in its general vicinity so it can do damage? It costs as much as Spike Trap and if you get two Spike Traps to hit, you're talking 550% damage with probably around a 40-50% chance to Crit as a DH. That means even the new Sentry will have to hit the same enemy about 3 times to compare to the non-crit damage output and probably 9-12 times to do the same as a critical hit. As is, they're probably fantastic against Beliial, but otherwise it just can't be doing enough damage to make a difference. Let me drop two immediately at the beginning of battle, base their damage on primary hand weapon, allow critical hits and a reasonable proc coefficient and halve the Hatred Cost and it might compete with the DH's existing skills. It's like they never bothered to test it at all.

@ecocd

Decided to try the new Sentry, you are right it's crap. Even when it does damage, it doesn't fire fast enough, I'm not asking for a rapid fire sentry, but what ever it is set at now 1/sec is too slow.

As far as farming is going...MP4 appears to be too much of a challenge for me. Well, I'm plowing through the Festering Woods to get a good feel for the difficulty. With my current DH, she does 44K, 400+Resists, 52% DR, 230 base MF, at MP1 I'm fine, just takes longer, at MP2 it's okay I'll die in the Festering Woods, at MP4 it is hard for me to make it through an elite pack without dying. Now I tried dropping some of MF gear and upping my damage to 55K, doesn't really help. Need to get to about 100K damage to handle some of the upper MP lvls.

Current Farming Build includes Companion - Ferrets, Preparation - Battle Scars, Shadow Power - Gloom, Spike Trap - Scatter, Multishot - Full Broadside, and Hungering Arrow - Scatter Shot. Sticking with Steady Aim, Archery, and Sharpshooter.

What is the general consensus now, do you wear your best gear and up the MP lvl or just go MF gear all the way at MP 0?

@whirlingd17

Funny you should mention Sentry, because another forum member pointed out that Sentry can be built around and sure enough it's surprisingly effective if you build your entire DH around the skill. I believe he called it a "Nester DH." I'm at 26k dps, but very heavy defense which means I can take hits in MP4 and still survive. There's a n enormous amount of synergy within the Demon Hunter skills to rely very heavily on Sentry. Look for cheap aps and Dex/Vit/AR gear and play around with Sentry on MP1 or something to get a feel for it and you might be surprised. I know I was. I stopped using Gloom and I'm even considering taking off Preparation for Companion - Boar.

I think Sentry firing rate scales with attack speed so that might be why you're seeing it fire so slowly.

That said, the cooldown is still asinine since all I do is set up one then stand around doing nothing for 8 seconds and drop another before kiting monsters back to them (setting up a 3rd when I get back). Hands up everyone that thinks it's fun stand around doing nothing for 8 seconds!

When I first saw the changes to Shadow Power Gloom, I thought it was an even change. My conclusion is that I can't stand and fight like a used to with it. I hit Preparation only for the quick boost in life and discipline when I need it. I'll give Sentry a try and switch from my Crossbow to my Bow to see the rate of fire increase. I'll give it a try with Custom Engineering. The DH is a tough character, there are almost too many options to build around.

I've recently gone to a hybrid nester / crit build and I'm really liking it. Focused a little less on survivability and Dex than a Nester and a little more emphasis on defense than a glass cannon. I can only take a handful of hits instead of a pack of hits, but I kill said pack much faster. My profile will switch between my dps and my MF gear, but my skill set is pretty much tuned now. With Smokescreen as my only Discipline skill, I maintain a high Max Discipline through my gear and dropped Preparation entirely. I've found I don't really miss it and Rain of Vengeance - Beastly bombs more than makes up for it with massive AOE damage. The 30 second cooldown rarely interferes moving between elite packs.

The 8 second cooldown on Sentry is still stupid.

Hey guys, donno if people still read this, but since I'm new and like this forum, I figured I'd share my builds/ideas

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#WQdlgV!eXf!ZabZYc

My most basic build used for farming.

1. Bola + Thunder ball. I really like this skill cos of this rune! With higher AS, you can pretty much keep your primary target stunned 60-70% of the time. I experimented using a hand xbow and IAS items, with an AS of 3.08, most of my primary targets were perma-stunned. So I think its awesome for dual weilders who love their crazy high AS. I mean if you could keep a mob stunned at a good distance from you, it could make steady aim a viable passive at higher MPs, given the mob densities though.

2. Spike trap + Echoing. Since I started using spike trap months ago, I just can't seem to let it go from my skill bar. And with this new rune, its just amazing! I've done some unbelievably high crits with this, and it just works great at taking out large clusters of mobs rushing towards you if you line them right.

3. Vault + Tumble. After the necessary nerf of trail of cinders, I switched to tumble just cos it made it easier to speed through runs, and kite more often. Also when I do key runs with a party, its nice to be quick on your feet to find elites and key wardens so your friends can just port to you. I tend to use tactical advantage when I do key runs just for that reason.

4. Rain.O.V + B.bombs. I honestly only started using this skill a few weeks ago, but I am still impressed by it! A lot of people use cluster bombs, and I do agree its a great skill, but I just never really liked it. For one this skill doesn't cost any hatred, and it deals great AOE dmg in my opinion, if used at the right time. I think its great for those face tanking DHs. With Gloom on, it also helps recover hp quite quickly, not to mention its ability to clear large clusters of trash mobs. I want to use this skill to try the massacare challenge that I saw posted.

5. Shadow + Gloom. I don't think much explaining is needed for this skill. It's pretty much what keeps most DHs from alive after the massive ass whoopin' we get by mobs on higher MPs.

6. Prep. + Back up. Since I recently started to slowly pull away from using my legacy nats set, I feel the need for this skill again. The refreshing and death quenching feeling of having full disc. in a heart beat, really does help. But when i do switch to my legacy set, I find this to be unnecessary, unless I intend to do a lot of gymnastics with my vault.

Passives:

Archery. Generally I feel the 50% CD or 10% CC bonus to be a great dps boost. But lately I've been looking at how effective overall that 50% CD is for me since I have a decent amount of CD. And I do think if I get a better amulet with 30% more CD, I may give this up for something else, like custom engineering if I can sort out a hatred regen issue. Then I can spam 6 spike traps!

Night stalker. Well, like I said above, I've recently started trying to pull away from my legacy nats dependence, so night stalker is a great passive to help me deal with the disc. regen withdrawals I am am going through. But I think its very important to have high CC to make this rune effective. I'd say a minimum of 45% would be ok, but with CC, we just can't get enough.

Perfectionist. Lastly we have the run that has helped me in so many ways since MP lvls were introduced. I know this isn't new to everyone, but man do I love how much this rune helps. In my constant battle trying to balance Dex, HP and Res, this rune makes it that much less stressful. Sometimes I use a boar just for MP 10, but in all honesty, I don't like farming that high often, just cos of how long it takes me to kill a pack.

In certain situations I do tweak this build a little here and there to fit the situation. Things like switching beastly bombs for Sentry + Guardian turret for Uber farming, just so I can vault next to my melee friends and plant a sentry there to give them a little help dealing with all the pain they go through to keep me from turning into a stick in the ground.

I do mess around with builds often, but recently realized that my build is actually common, and considered a cookie cutter build (I guess everyone has been spying on me and copying me :P just kidding). But all in all this build just happens to work with the play style I enjoy. And I do have another build in mind, that I am currently working on acquiring the necessary items for. The numbers seem to work, but how it fairs in play style I have yet to determine. I hope this long, boring post helped someone, or gave someone new ideas. I love looking at other ideas people have and hope to see some new ones.

PS: Has anyone else messed around with Rapid Fire + Bombardment ? Cos I've tried it a few times, and I feel like there is something good there, but I just can't figure out what to do to make that skill viable, or for what type of play style it will work best.

Thanks guys!

This thread is useful to me now as I'm leveling each class to 60 and now I'm DH. I'll keep all this in mind as I really enjoy this character! Hatred/Discipline. Thats exactly how I run my life. The fact that DH uses technology and athleticism resonates with me also. Maybe I'll drop my wiz later...

Posted by Khan at 11/26/2012 05:13 PM

Maybe I'll drop my wiz later...

Posted by Baldy at 11/26/2012 05:35 PM

Posted by Khan at 11/26/2012 05:13 PM

Maybe I'll drop my wiz later...

hah! It would certainly be a sad day in Sanctuary...

I see where he's coming from though, the DH is my 2nd favorite class.