GamingDrunk.com

Game Information

Game Title: 

Diablo III

Game Publisher: 

Blizzard

There are many demon hunter builds roaming the internet forums and blogs focusing on damage per seconds and nothing else. While that looks great when your looking at your character window looking at that big damage number, go into inferno and get walled once and your probably dead. Congrats, you made a one hit or die character and those could be fun to a minority of gamers that can spend huge amounts of cash repairing their armor in Diablo III. I used a few of those skill-sets and got ticked off and hated the demon hunter for a while, until I started to think on my own and come up with my own build and strategy. Now is it the best? Probably far from it. But it has been keeping me alive and that is why I am sharing it with everyone.

Let me explain my thinking before just writing what I use and leaving you to guess why it is in the build and how to actually use it. I wanted a build to kite with, meaning hit with substantial damage that could produce an area of effect damage as well. Then be able to get away and repeat, doing damage while surviving. Many people might see this and think "run away". Kind of, but not quite. See in most instances in inferno difficulties in Diablo III, you can not run away. The champion packs will wall you, teleport to your character, and then let the death begin. What I mean by running away is stay on the permiter as much as possible of the battle. If you get stuck, be able to dodge damage and heal to survive to get back to that permiter area. That is my idea of running away and what I fashioned this demon hunter build to accomplish. So let's get right into the passive skills for it.

Passive Skills

I chose the passive skill archery for one simple reason, I use a two-handed crossbow and critical hit damage rules for the demon hunter. So if you are not using a crossbow or like the dual hand crossbows, maybe choose something else that fits your play style. But for this build, using a two-handed crossbow is the reason it works so well as you will see later.

Sharpshooter works right in line with archery, as this allows for more critical hits to actually occur. So you are not waiting for that additional 50% critical damage with the two handed crossbow, it is happening on a consistent basis. Also this means that your first shot when you encounter a group should be the best area of effect damage skill you have, since while walking your critical hit chance is probably almost at 100% and your next damage dealing attack is going to be huge.

Steady Aim is for me untouchable. If you don't like using it, your not playing the demon hunter right nor will you survive long in inferno difficulty in Diablo III in my opinion. The key is to stay on the perimeter, just far enough from the enemies that you can lay down some serious firepower and in this case another 20% damage. It is paramount to be away from the damage dealing enemies anyways, so why not gain some advantage by using Steady Aim from having to do it anyways. Comment if you disagree, but it better be a damn good argument

So quick math recap of our passive skills:
20% damage increase + 50% critical damage increase + huge increase to likelihood of critical hits occurring = WINNING!

Mouse Skills

I use bola shot on my demon hunter in diablo 3 just because it does massive damage along with an area of effect damage that helps. Even though it has a fuse, with the kiting method it really doesn't matter because you are moving away from damage and at the same time the critical damage from bola is pretty nice. Hungering Arrows are nice as well but bola shot is for me.

Elemental arrows with either fear effect or the life drain effect are great at crowd control or for healing your demon hunter. The Nether Tentacles are slow, but at the same time can hit multiple units for good damage while giving you 3% of that damage in health. If it crits, that is even better for your health regeneration. And with fear, you can push the crowds away from you in a tight situation which I sometimes go back to because it just plain works. Why run when you can make your enemies run?

Action Bar Skills

If you don't use Preparation after gaining the ability to get all your discipline back and 60% of your health there is something wrong with you. This skill by itself has saved me many times from imminent death for allowing me to use my skills and gain health when getting cornered. Nothing else to write other than put it in your action bar and shut-up.

Probably the most underused skill by novice demon hunters, Smoke Screen is so powerful many think it should be altered because of how it can break the game. I disagree because the nature of demon hunters is that we are glass cannons, and therefore need a somewhat overpowered skill to balance it out. Smoke Screen when activated allows for 1 to 1.5 seconds of pure dodging damage, faster running bliss for a demon hunter. About to get one-hitted? Nope, smoke screen. Oh crap the arcane swirling traps of doom are coming towards me, what do I do? Poof! No damage and can move around. Oh no that enemy trapped me! Not trapped anymore, SMOKE SCREEN. Use it, love it, and hope Blizzard doesn't change it.

Spike Trap is my be-all-end-all AOE damage skill. I normally use it first so that it does critical damage and one-hits a majority of mobs. Especially when you can lay all three at once, the Spike Trap skill becomes so good you might break the key it is on using it so much. Again, huge damage, AOE, what is there not to love?

For your last skill, use whatever. Honestly, I switch it out a lot. Sometimes use the bat to gain some hatred regeneration, sometimes use the protection sentry, most of the time I use rain of vengeance, but it doesn't matter. If you have a good choice, leave a comment below and I might alter this last one.

Leave a comment below if you agree or disagree with anything or hit up the video comments on Youtube and leave a comment there. Always willing to hear about new builds and ideas so please hit me up. If you want to play with the guys at GamingDrunk.com and me, leave a comment and we might just add you and play. Thanks for reading!

Multimedia

Sorry, you need to install flash to see this content.