Diablo III Demon Hunter Inferno Series Guide I - Gearing Hello and welcome to my demon hunter guide series suited for inferno play. As you most likely already know, game “begins” at inferno difficulty. If you have spent any noticeable amount of time on general chat, you most definitely noticed people saying “If you are not in inferno, your opinion does not matter”. While this may seem as an elitist behavior, it is actually not far from the actual truth. World changes when you enter inferno. This guide is meant for players who are entering inferno, to make their lives a little bit easier. In inferno, in order for your farming to be pleasant, you unfortunately have to outgear the content. This is achieved in two ways, either farming or scrounging AH for affordable items. Before patch 1.0.3, you could not farm Act I and get any worthwhile gear so AH was mandatory. Now you can farm Act I (which is actually pretty enjoyable compared to the rest of the game) and have a chance at the best items the game have to offer. Granted, it is a really miniscule chance, but it is there nonetheless. Well, with intro laid out, it is time to get to the meat of the guide. Actual gearing guide, gameplay guide and farming strategies. As far as demon hunter gear go, you have two options, you either go defensive gear with as much dps as you can get, or you go “glass cannon” build where your main focus is not getting hit at all and do as much damage as possible. Changes in 1.0.3 made it possible to survive with much less hp and resistances than before, so adding some defensive stats in the mix is always a good idea. Stats you want to prioritize are Dexterity, Critical Hit chance and damage with attack speed as a bonus if possible. “Dualwield or weapon+quiver” Forget about dualwield. It has the potential to do more dps when you are a virtual billionnaire or multiple lottery winner, but for the most part it will do inferior dps. You should first invest in best weapon you can afford, that gives you most damage. Take note when buying the weapon that you plan on using for a long time is that DPS is not “be all end all”(as in, 1000dps weapon without a socket is inferior to 950 one with a socket). What you are looking for on a weapon is High dps and a socket at the bare minimum, or 60+ crit dmg on weapon if it is without a socket. If on a budget, just get any weapon over 1k dps and you will do fine. Best quality emerald in the socket goes without saying. Also, what i have to mention is that %damage and % attack speed bonus are ALREADY INCLUDED in the weapon DPS figure.
Then i would advise you to go glass cannon route because it is MUCH CHEAPER than “defensive” gear. Learn to play by not getting hit and when you can take more than 2 hits, you will be virtually unkillable. After the weapon, i would go for pure dex items, like shoulder/belt/legs. On these i prefer to get max dex and vit as i can get (blue items for these slots are really good) for as low price as possible. Only thing that really matters on these items are DEX and VIT for start. Of course, you can go for defensive stats, or utility stats if you have the money for it. After that, get boots with 12% movement speed and as much dex as possible on them. Again, vit is good, resists are good but expensive as hell. Movement speed is CRITICAL for glass cannon DH’s. Also, get +max discipline on Chest and Quiver, it will make your life MUCH easier. Now, what about rest of the items? Well, they require a lot of AH searching to get deals and if you have patience, by all means, search for them whenever you can. Stats you are looking for, again, are high DEX, crit % chance, crit % damage and possibly % attack speed (if is in addition, it was severely nerfed). Pieces that can potentially give you most dps are gloves and amulet followed by rings. If you do not know it yet, Natalya’s Set is extremely good for demon hunters (doh), but skin-off-yourback expensive.
II - Hatred Generators: Number one choice in hatred generator for new farmers(or really, almost anyone) is :
Hungering Arrow I will go into more detail on this skill than any other. It just deals the most damage out of all hatredgenerating skills and rivals most hatred spenders as well. Runes that are most useful for this monster of a skill are : Devouring Arrow My personal favourite because it gives the biggest damage numbers and is the strongest single-target rune for Hungering arrow. 70% damage after each pierce coupled with seeking properties of the arrow is insane. Puncturing arrow Gives you 15% better piercing chance, which in turn amounts to more damage. Smarter people than me did the math and hungering arrow amounted to more damage. But, it certainly is not a large margin and more pierces = more crits = more fun !
Spray of Teeth Is an AoE rune. Needless to say, since it activates on critical hit, its value is dependant on your crit chance. It gained popularity after 1.0.3 as a reliable trash mob killer due to nether tentacles being severely nerfed. What makes Hungering arrow the best hatred generator? It is simple, DAMAGE. This skill is hardest hitting generator that demon hunters have in their arsenal. Not to say that it actually seeks targets, so you can shoot in the general direction of a monster and it will hit it. It is most user friendly skill that i have seen in a long time. The arrow has a pretty sick range as well, one of its uses is to fire it into distance(off screen) and if you hear that it hit something, you can reposition accordingly. I use it for this all the time. Fire off a shot and start moving towards it, if it hits, move back and fire more. Next viable hatred generator is:
Entangling Shot This skill gives you most control out of all hatred generators due to slowing effect. One thing to point out is that Elite/Champion packs have innate resistance to slow which means they get slowed less. In any case they DO get slowed, that is why entangling shot still retains its viability. Also, it is good to mention that it synergizes with passive skill Cull the Weak(15% more damage on slowed monsters) Viable runes are Chain Gang Makes entangling shot hit 4 targets. Simple, effective, cool! Justice is Served Raises hatred generation to 6 per shot, good for using hatred spenders more. Bounty Hunter Gives 6% of damage as life. Useful against reflect damage monsters only, still useful if you can actually survive 1-2 hits in the area you are farming. Also viable :
Evasive Fire This hatred generating skill along with its damage brings a defensive backflip if a monster is very close to you at a cost of discipline if you backflip. There is only one viable rune for it in my opinion and that is:
Covering Fire This rune makes evasive fire shoot at 3 enemies at the same time. Really useful for clearing trash mobs. You get to hit three monsters at the same time and if any one of them gets too close, you backflip! The biggest disadvantage of evasive fire is its low range. You need to be fairly close to monsters, you cannot shoot off screen etc.
III - Hatred Spenders There is not a clear winner in this group since Nether Tentacles were ( in my opinion justifyably so ) severely nerfed not to hit a target more than once. I will just add that they should have given nether tentacles higher life steal to compensate but that is just me. Anyway, lets move on to the list of newly viable hatred spenders. First on the list is single target monster:
Impale Strongest single target hatred spender. At 25 hatred per knife, it deals massive damage to a single monster and is more or less hatred efficient for its damage. There are three runes for impale that i would consider using. Chemical Burn This rune gives your impales added 125 % damage over 2 sec. Two seconds are not much considering you will be using this on high-hp targets that do not go down in one or two shots. Pretty solid choice if you are lacking in critical % chance, since it gives you reliable damage. Overpenetration “Skill Shot rune� Called like that because of the positional requirement to do most damage. It will pierce through your enemies and hit anything in its way, potentially doing double or triple or quadruple damage in total. The downside of this rune is that is really really hard to position yourself to make the most use of it. I would rather take one of the other two runes, but that is just me. All i am saying is that this rune is not a bad choice. Grievous Wounds My favourite impale rune. It deals HUGE damage on critical hits which ,coupled with sharpshooter passive skill, occur pretty often. Of course, the more critical chance you have equals more value to the rune. If you are sitting on reasonably high (30+) critical hit chance, take this rune and you will never look back.
Next spender in line is Xena’s favourite.
Chakram I am including chakram here as a “good” skill because it potentially can do absolutely huge damage. The downside of chakram is that is extremely annoying and hard to use properly. Whenever it hits a wall, it dissappears! If you can think you can master the art of chakram-throwing, by all means try it out. I personally have tried using it and went back to other skills. I would suggest only 2 runes as viable for chakrams and those are. Twin Chakrams Double the excitement! Double chakrams look cool, are fun to use and they annihilate large groups of monsters in an open area. They are double prone to hitting the walls though, so watch where you aim. Razor Disk If you have played Diablo 2 as a paladin, you know that this as “Blessed Hammer”. It does not deal that much damage but is still useful because you can throw it at the exact spot you want to, and it will start spiraling outward. Some people say that this is the new nether tentacle. In any case, try it out and see if it works for you. Most used up until patch 1.0.3, and most likely still one of the best options is:
Elemental Arrow What makes elemental arrow so good is its low hatred cost. This means skill is spammable in most situations. There are couple of viable runes for this one. Frost Arrow Makes your elemental arrow slow targets. Does small aoe and it flies fast. It is a good rune if you couple it with Cull the Weak passive skill. It really has a small area of effect so targetting is kinda tricky to use it to maximum effectiveness. Ball Lightning This skill is a watered down version of Nether Tentacles(how they used to work). Its flight speed is slow and it has a pretty big aoe radius so it is ideal for groups of monsters. However, every hit will do 50% of its intended damage but in return it will hit most of the targets twice. I did not find it that useful since i still remember what Nether Tentacles used to do and it is just not it.
Screaming Skull Now, this rune is pretty viable, i used it on multiple occasions myself. It will give you more time to do damage by making monsters run away from you. It flies fast and it does not have large aoe radius but for elite packs it is really really good since in most cases you can catch multiple monsters in the skull. What you want to do with this skill is to find a narrow passage and lure monsters there. For the end i would just like to mention that i found Nether Tentacles rune extremely useful even post patch. It may be that i just got used to it and that i know how and where to shoot them but to the day i still use this rune for my farming runs. Spike Trap This specific hatred spender require some preparation and synergizes with caltrops the best. There are several runes i would consider when using spike trap. Also, worth to mention, spike trap is hard countered by Shielding or Invulnerable Minions affix. Bandolier This rune makes you able to place a maximum of six traps at any given time. Not really worth it in the heat of combat, but it is excellent for a careful planner. You can stack them on top of each other and if you have sharpshooter stacked to max, they will deal HUGE damage. It is a good rune for spike trap but what i dont like is that it takes too long to set up and recover hatred in orded to get maximum usage from it. Long Fuse I like this one, simply because if you use it with caltrops, 2sec arming time does not pose a problem. Still, if you are used to it exploding normally, you will need to adjust to new arming time and place them accordingly. I do not consider any other rune for spike trap really useful, i mean they all have some merit to them but i am listing here what are my “best� runes for new inferno farmers. Next skill is my personal favourite up to inferno, or when i outgear farming location: Multishot I would like to say that out of all Demon Hunter skills, i love multishot the most. It is the most fun skill to use(in my opinion). It deals damage instantly, it has a huge aoe radius(some would disagree) and it is really fun to use. I used multishot from when i got it all the way until Act 1 inferno. What is the problem in inferno is that multishot relies on killing monsters in 1-2 hits, everything more and it is a problem since either melee monsters come too close or ranged monsters get to shoot at you. In any case, multishot is a great skill if your gear is up to par.
Runes that i consider viable in both of these are: Fire at Will In my opinion, absolutely best rune for multishot. It halves the hatred cost, making you able to shoot 5 of them in succession on 100 hatred. Nothing more about it, that is just so simple and sweet. Suppression Fire This rune will regenerate discipline, depending on how many monsters you hit with it. Its main usage is to recover discipline you spent on Smoke Screen. If you manage to hit 7 monsters with each salvo, you just got a free SS out of it. Full Broadside Not really worth it in terms of efficiency, but this rune might enable your Multishots to one-shot or twoshot targets. I usually take this rune when i am at the below the line of overgearing content i am farming. Since for me, main usage of multishot is to 2shot targets, when this rune makes me accomplish that, i take it. Next skill is really only viable with one rune, and even then you might like it or not. Cluster Arrow First off, the hatred cost on this skill is outrageous. Fifty Hatred cost makes you able to fire off only 2 of them in succession. As such, there is only one viable rune for this skill and that is the rune which makes those 2 shots COUNT. Loaded for Bear This rune increases the damage to whooping 290%. This means that you fire off almost 6 times your weapon damage in 2 shots. However, this is only at the impact location, your cluster “grenades� will still hit for their normal damage. Since cluster arrow flies pretty fast and the range is not really that great, and you have only two shots off the bat, targetting is of utmost importance.
IV - Passive Skills All the skills will be reviewed from their usefulness in Glass Cannon(low survival, high damage) Demon Hunter build. In this particular build i prefer to go pure dps on passive skills and utility/damage on active ones. I will give you my preferred ones and alternatives to them.
Demon Hunter Passive Skills (my preference). Sharpshooter: The most debated skill in demon hunter arsenal, this skill gives you 3% crit chance every second until you land a critical hit. The thing to note here is that full critical chance bonus lasts for one second AFTER you make a crit, after which it resets. Sharpshooter is extremely valuable passive and gives A LOT of dps to lower geared characters. It will begin to lose value when your base crit chance excedees 30%, but i would have it always on, since however you want to look at it, Sharpshooter is a crit increase passive. Only one more thing to know is that your sharpshooter will not reset if you destroy anything in the environment. Steady Aim: Second Demon Hunter DPS passive is Steady Aim. It gives you 20% damage if you are 10 yards away from monsters(where you should always be). Nothing much to say about this passive except that it is AWESOME and you should have it. Archery: This is the third DPS increase passive in demon hunter arsenal. No matter what kind of weapon you have, it will give you damage boost. This is the slot that you will set on your bars and forget about ever switching it to anything else. It is THAT good.
Demon Hunter Passive Skills (viable options). Tactical Advantage: Mobility increase passive. 60% movement speed after you use Smoke Screen is really really good. It can even increase your dps by giving you more dps time, so it is highly recommended as a passive. However, it does not actually do anything for your actual dps, so until you are killing monsters at a fast pace, stick with dps increasing passives. Once you feel you are killing packs rather fast, you can switch to Tactical Advantage for the utility it brings. Cull The Weak: Dps increase passive, but “situational�. It will give you 15% damage increase on slowed monsters which is really good, but the downside is that you dont get anything if the monsters are not slowed. I would rather have a passive that is not conditional in nature, it gives me more flexibility in choosing skills. That does not mean that i disregard cull the weak. It is a strong passive and if you build your active skills around it, it can outdamage sharpshooter.
Night Slayer: Discipline regen. Every crit will have a chance to regen 1 discipline. The chance is not really good but it is not bad either. Night slayer is a passive that will give you more utility and more freedom in spamming discipline skills. It becomes more useful the more crit you have. I personally am not a big fan of it since it is not that reliable and it does not give you more damage. But dont think the passive weak, it is just situational and therefore not my first choice for a passive skill. Hot Pursuit: This passive gives you 15% movement speed which coupled with 10% ms boots gets you at movement speed cap(which is 25%) when on full hatred. The deal with this passive is that if you do not use hatred spender, it is on 100% of the time. This gives you huge survivability since you can outrun most melee monsters in the game. It also gives you potential dps by offering you more time to shoot by requiring you to move less. I do not take this one personally because i still enjoy using hatred spending skills. Those were the skills i would recommend you to consider for your build. Other skills are far more situational and,compared to previously mentioned ones, give less damage or utility or just plainly suck(looking at you “Brooding�).
V - Hunting Skills Hunting and Defensive lines are the only 2 that have all really useful skills.So, lets begin with the first skill :
Vault The main usage of Vault is to get away from bad spots or to reposition yourself in order to do damage more effectively. Vault is usually coupled with Tactical Advantage passive skill, which gives you extra movement speed after you vault. There are few drawbacks to the actual skill. First, your vault does not go off instantly, it has a small delay which, by my opinion, is pretty annoying and can get you killed. It is much better to react to a tossed spear or fireball by using SS. Vault you use when you want to get the hell out of somewhere. Second drawback is that you can be hit while vaulting from one location to another. It has happened to me on numerous occassions. Even with those drawbacks, i consider vault pretty useful skill since everything that adds mobility to a mobility-based class is good. Runes to consider for vault are :
Tumble With this rune, you can get off two vaults in succession for a total cost of 12 discipline, instead of 16. It is kinda useful, but i found out that main usage of this rune is to get to places quicker. I personally used it before on goldfarming runs to make them faster. If your gamestyle is not centered around vault and using it frequently, i would suggest avoiding this rune. But if you want to get to places quicker, or skip trash mobs, it is amazing. Acrobatics This rune removes the discipline cost of vault, making it free! It however comes with a 15sec cooldown. Is the trade off worth it? In my opinion, no. If i have vault on my action bar, i want to use it whenever i feel like it, i do not like the cooldown restricting me in that. Now, when i have said that, why is this rune useful then? In most of the cases, you need to vault once(or not at all) per champion/elite pack. That is why it is so good, since it does not cost you anything. If you find yourself needing to vault more, choose Tumble. Next skill is more or less mandatory for every Demon Hunter out there.
Preparation Simple, yet so beautiful skill. Discipline is Demon Hunters bloodline and running empty mid-fight means almost certain death. That is where preparation comes in, instantly refilling it to maximum and allowing you to pull more tricks on your enemies. There are only two runes for it that i consider viable. Focused Mind This rune makes your discipline not fill up instantly, but it will regenerate 45 total discipline. That means you get a free SS out of it. Now, this rune is only useful if your discipline maximum is under 45. Also, with this rune, you will use your preparation wisely, not when you are empty but when you are at about half and you know you will need more discipline shortly. I used this rune for a long time before switching to my new favourite rune for it: Backup Plan This rune is absolutely amazing. Yes, it has 30% chance to trigger and it might not trigger when you need it the most, but it will make your life sooo much easier when it does. You will love the added benefits when it triggers. I had as much as five consecutive backup plan procs.
Next skill on the list is :
Companion Useful skill, but only for two reasons. Raven and Ferret. Raven gives you hatred regen which is really useful, coupled with templar you will passively regenerate quite a bit of hatred. Ferret for goldfarming runs. Simple. All other companions just plainly suck. Last skill from the hunting line is:
Marked for Death This skill gives you more damage done on opponents and as such is best used in groups. But, it also has some single player utility as well. Runes for this skill all give the same benefit, 12% to damage so i wont really go into detail on them, just pick whichever you think will give you most staying time on monsters. Only rune i would single out is: Mortal Enemy This rune has a twist to it, it gives you 3 hatred per attack. It was mostly used with Nether Tentacles, since they used to hit the same target multiple times. Even now, if you are using a skill that hits multiple times, or you have fast attack speed, this rune will give you back your spent hatred in no time.
VI - Defensive Skills I will leave out Smoke Screen because when i started to write about it, i realized it needs a separate part on its own.
Caltrops You get this skill at level 4, start using it then and if you fall in love with it, you will never remove it from your bars again. At least i did not. The amazing slowing utility coupled with several runes that are simply awesome makes this skill a real contender for your action bar space. Several runes make this skill viable in any situation.
Torturous Ground Adds a root effect to your caltrops. Duration of the root is not really 2 seconds for any elite or champion pack but it is enough to stop them in their tracks for a bit, to make you either gain ground or position yourself better, or even give you that one impale more to finish them off. This rune is absolutely amazing and it will save your life on more than one occasion. I personally love this rune and use it always. You can kite melee mobs while firing pot shots almost indefinitely with this one. Jagged Spikes This rune got a “nerf” last patch, but it is still pretty viable. What you do with this is couple it with spike trap and lay as many caltrops as you can on one spot. Whatever stumbles into that “Deathtrap” is...dead. Pretty cool rune to use but personally i never liked the trapper approach so it is not for me. Dont let that discourage you, it is really viable rune and if you like careful and planned approach to combat, it is perfect for you. Carved Stakes This rune gets its viability by making you able to place literally a field of caltrops that your enemies need to cross. If you have Natalya’s set, if you are on 0 discipline, you could place a caltrop every 2 seconds ! Other than that, i dont find it really viable since if you do not prepare a field of them, they just do not slow enough. Bait the Trap If you find yourself not in need of slowing enemies, but for means of dispatching them faster, coupled with some slowing utility, this rune is for you. 10% crit chance while standing on a trap is kind of a big deal. You can always move away from it, place another one and keep the bonus. You can even set up a caltrop line for you to back off and shoot from. Personally, my gripe with this one is the same with carved stakes. It does not slow enough. Now, the “I hate you reflect damage” and “tank” skill.
Shadow Power This skill has such cool animation, it is a damn shame that we can not get it as a passive, even if it was 5% lifesteal. But beside the cool animation, it has its uses, namely in defeating “Reflect Damage” affix, which more or less all demon hunters hate. Yes, you can get a life on hit weapon and some armor with that particular stat, but we are trying to farm up to that point, which is the purpose of these guides. Shadow Power will make your life as a Demon Hunter easier.
Of course, basic functionality of Shadow power is not that great, but with a specific rune, it becomes really really useful. The only rune i would ever consider using on shadow power is : Gloom Damage reduction on a lifestealing skill. Yes please! 65% damage reduction, coupled with 20% lifesteal, is absolutely amazing. Not to say that with shadow power on, you can more or less take a hit from practically anything. With some gear, you can actually tank elite or champion packs while you have shadow power on. Also, reflect damage will not do anything to you as long as Shadow Power is active. Since i personally HATE reflect damage packs, shadow power is just frikkin awesome.
VII - Smoke Screen I considered placing smoke screen in my defensive skills part, but as i wrote on, it came to me that it should have its own part. So, lets see why this monster of a skill is considered bread and butter for Demon Hunters everywhere.
Smoke Screen (SS) First off, i will go into this skill with great detail. But before i begin, know this: You NEED the Lingering Fog rune. All other runes are plainly speaking, crap. It does not sound much, 0.5 seconds, but in practice those .5 seconds are invaluable. Smoke screen makes you able to farm content you are not really prepared for yet. It lets you out of tight spots, it lets you survive EVERYTHING while it is up. Main usage of smoke screen is to avoid death, not dps, so use it when you have to, do not spam it. If you adapt yourself to this kind of thinking, you will get much more mileage out of it. Worst thing that can happen is that you used up your 3 smoke screens for dps and then get “jailed� and a frost orb pops beneath you. There is a smoke screen tactic for almost every affix, i will give few examples. For vortex packs, you wait until you get pulled to use it so you can get away. For molten you need it to cross the fire, jailer=get out of jail free card. What you need to remember is that in most cases, Smoke Screen is used reactively, so your reflexes need to be sharp. In some cases, you use smoke screen before a monster even comes to you. Example of this is when you are fighting an elite pack which is at the end of your screen. If your follower is dead and you use smoke
screen when they are pretty far away, they will start to walk towards their original location and, if you positioned yourself correctly, away from you. This gives you time to fire off more shots.
What i do with packs that are not that easy to kite is to keep them at the edge of view and use smoke screens in succession while firing off shots. Hopefully, that will let me kill at least few minions or few champions in those 5-6 seconds. What you want to accomplish here is to kill at least one minion/champion per SS cycle, so you could retreat after and let your discipline regenerate, while not having to worry about them getting to full.
Also, you can use SS while running away, if you keep running and use three smoke screens one after another, you can escape everything but fast monsters.
SS is really useful against reflect damage packs. As long as SS is up, you will not take any damage from the reflect damage affix. It gets a bit tricky with Devouring Arrow since you have no control when and how it will pierce. I love to use it with Impale for example, but in order to manage 3 impales during Smoke Screen, you have to cast it while first impale is flying towards the target, somewhere mid way.
As i have mentioned before, you need good reflexes to use this skill to full potential. Teleporter monster just appears in your face, you need to press that SS button straight away or it is almost certain death. The trick to lowering the reaction time here is to anticipate what monsters will do. That comes with some practice. For example, teleporter monsters have a range from which they can teleport from. If they are far away, you do not need to be tense and ready to press the button. When they come to their actual “casting range�, then you need to be on the edge since at any moment they can teleport to you. What i would like to mention that is a bit contradictory to my previous statement is : Dont be stingy with SS. What i mean by that? I mean that you do not want to save your SS for when you will absolutely need it, use it every time you think you will die. With practice and experience, you will see when you used it for no reason and you will stop using it when there is no need.
VIII - Honorable Mentions I would like to start this guide with a skill that just barely did not make the cut ( and some of you will hate me for that )
Rain of Vengeance Biggest reason of me not putting RoV in other guides is that it can not really be defined as any of those. It is not a hatred spender, it is not a defensive skill since it deals damage and so on. The skill in its base form damages everything around you. Now, if it was a barb or monk skill, it would be godlike, but since demon hunters generally avoid melee or anywhere close, it falls short. Runes are what makes this skill good. I will list only two that i found rather useful. Stampede This rune transforms your rain into a bull-rush stampede. Knockback works on every monster there is and it is really good since it gives you all that time that monsters are knocked back as stand-still-andshoot time. It sounds amazing, and in some cases it is. It absolutely destroys melee packs. Imagine a line of caltrops and these beasts pushing them into it over and over again. Why i dont like is because of the cooldown on it, i would rather have something that i can use over and over again when i need it. Flying Strike Similar in functionality as Stampede, flying strike will instead stun enemies for 2 seconds. What i did not like about this rune is that i need to specify a location for them to fall, some times i would miss and expecting monsters to be stunned, i get my ass handed to me. Or in bigger places, they somehow manage to avoid it altogether. All in all, pretty nifty runes, if you need just a bit of OOMPH in order to kill packs, these will give you that. Next two skills are not really worth it in solo play, but they do hold some merit to them. I welcome you to experiment with them. Who knows, maybe you will find them a lot more useful than what i think.
Sentry Our own homemade turret. What it translates is free damage. If you plan on fighting in one area, either by circling around it or making a chokepoint, this skill will net you a lot of damage overall. The problem is that damage is not burst damage which is all too important in inferno, but sustained damage. Sentry comes with few nifty runes to further enhance its usefulness.
Spitfire Turret will give you more free dps in form of 8% weapon damage rockets ! Vigilant Watcher is a duration boost of 10 seconds. More uptime=more damage. Chain of Torment is player’s version of Fire chains. I havent really used this once, does not sound all that good to me. Aid Station I can see being useful in groups, since for me 1% life/sec sounds pretty damn useless. But, if you find yourself in need of a healer constantly, you might want to give this rune a try. Guardian Turret range is just horrible. Benefit is great, 15% damage reduction is nothing to scoff at. But the damn small range seems more useful for a melee class than for a Demon Hunter. And the last skill i will review is :
Fan of Knives It is a shame this skill does not get much use. I predict this will be GREAT skill in the future when survival gear becomes cheaper and more common, but for now it is just not worth it. For 20 hatred, 320% damage sounds insane. The trick is 10 yard range. You need to be in the thick of things in order to get maximum damage out of it. And there is where you will die... I would consider only 2 runes out of all and those are: Hail of Knives This rune doubles your effective range on this skill, making you able to be a bit further away from enemies. Problem is that 20 yards is still too low. If you can manage to constantly be on razor’s edge and survive, you will love this rune. Fan of Daggers Gives your knives a chance to stun targets. That chance is also pretty high. Almost always, you will get that stun off in 3 casts and you will likely get it in 1 or 2. There are situations that you really cannot escape something getting in your face. In those situations Fan of Daggers can help you survive and do good damage while doing so.
IX - Farming Act 1 I presume you have either read previous parts of this e-book or you have geared yourself appropriately for the difficulty you need to farm. While i did not give any specific numbers , i will now tell you what DPS you should have in order to farm efficient. All information on farming here assumes a Glass Cannon demon hunter build (miniscule survival with huge dps). Before i start Act 1 guide, to mention the most important thing now for farming.
After getting 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor(NV), Elite and Champion packs have a guaranteed ADDITIONAL rare(yellow) item. Act 1 : DPS required : At least 20-30k, if you are below 20 farming will not be efficient. First Inferno act starts easy as ever, normal monsters are slow, very few of them have range attacks and is pretty straightforward for a demon hunter. Before the 1.0.3 patch, the most profitable way was to go warden and butcher runs. After the patch, warden is still worth killing but butcher can be a problem for most new farmers, so i recommend skipping him entirely, especially with this specific style(glass cannon). Butcher WILL oneshot you from time to time, sometimes even on multiple tries. With new repair costs, dying is penalized pretty harsh so you should avoid butcher unless you are 100% sure you can kill him fast enough, so you do not die from bad fire spawns. I recommend starting your farming run on “The Cursed Hold� quest as you will have access to both warden and butcher, while having most waypoints available to you. Next, you should farm 5 stacks of NV and proceed to actually get guaranteed loot. You start at Halls of Agony lvl2 waypoint and work your way to The Cursed Hold. You should have at least one elite on the way, most likely 2 of them. On the way to cursed hold you have a chance for event which will give you one more stack. In the cursed hold itself, there can be anywhere from 1-3 elites. Do not break the doors to Cells as it will force you to fight trash mobs. If you have 5 stacks after clearing it, go kill warden. After warden(or before, if no 5NV) i would recommend you to go scout other areas for Elite/champion packs. The way i do it is check the area immediately around every waypoint, killing as least trash monsters in the process. If there is not an elite close by, i go on next waypoint.
You can basically check everywhere and it would not be a waste of time. However, i find that it is better to start a new run whenever you clear all high-density elite spots. Depending on how fast you kill trash, it may be more profitable to clear more or less everything. The Festering Woods waypoint is a great place for elites and you should scout the entire area there. Warrior’s Rest and Crypt of the Ancients contain one elite each. In any area, Dungeons and portals will yield few elites so they are worth going in to. I would advise you to skip the places with annoying monsters, like goatmen spearmen and burrowing leapers. Perfect example are the Fields of Misery. Why i would skip those is that they can spawn with affixes that may make it impossible for you to kill them and they can cause you a lot of deaths. It is always better to stick with monsters you can reliably kill with as little deaths as possible. Remember, Farming is about EFFICIENCY. I can not tell you what is perfect for your character, i can only give you guidelines how to go about things. You will have to find the route you are most comfortable clearing in the least amount of time.
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