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N6M4 Cluster Arrow Demon Hunter Guide

Last Updated: January 8th 2024

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Disclaimer: This guide is the Season 27 Guide for the N6M4 Build which does not exist anymore due to the Natalya's Vengeance rework. For up-to-date Natalya guide, go to the Natalya Spike Trap Guide!

Introduction

N6M4 Solo Push
View all variants

Historically Embodiment of the Marauder playstyle was entirely Sentry-based, dominating the leaderboards during Season 1 thanks to the auto-firing Sentries in combination with the "Slowball" Ball Lightning, before the set got reworked a first time for Season 2 so that Sentries would only shoot when you do.

Over the Seasons, the power creep brought progressively to the (6) Bonus unfortunately tore apart the original Marauder playstyle, to the point where Demon Hunters were dealing 98% of the damage themselves and Sentries would just produce visual effects.

However there was a workaround! N6M4 is a hybrid build that uses two sets at once, Natalya's Vengeance and Embodiment of the Marauder, giving us a Demon Hunter build where the entire playstyle revolves around Sentry. In this setup, our Sentries are doing all the damage, your job is to place them strategically and signal them to attack.

In Season 25 with the rework to Embodiment of the Marauder, N6M4 has become somewhat obsolete since that set produces a similar playstyle revolving around Sentry damage, going back to its roots. The main reason to play it is the solo push on the Natalya's Vengeance set leaderboard, but there are more powerful options for that.

This build is an Area Damage (AD) build, since Sentries, and most importantly Cluster Arrows they shot, can proc it. This build develops a completely unique playstyle with intriguing interactions (see Mechanics), where you become a tactician, deploying Sentries in strategic spots and letting them wreak havoc on the battlefield at your signal. The build, however, is slow-paced for Nephalem Rifts, Bounties or Solo Greater Rift Speeds where the GoD DH or Sentry Marauder win by a large margin.

Cool Visuals ✔
No Cooldown Dependency ✔
Unique Sentry-Based Playstyle ✔
Includes a Personal Petting Zoo ✔

❌ Slow and Clunky
❌ Limited Item Choices
❌ Low Single Target Damage
❌ Vulnerable to Crowd Control

Core Setup

Core Item Build

Items

  • Natalya's Vengeance set provides 60% damage reduction and 14000% increased damage to all skills and attacks.
  • Embodiment of the Marauder set lets Sentry fire Cluster Arrows together with you as well as automatically once around every second. Also we get access to all Companions, thanks to the (2) Bonus.
  • Ring of Royal Grandeur is necessary to get bonuses from both sets. You need to get 3 Marauder pieces and 5 Natalya pieces. That means you always have Marauder's Spines, Natalya's Slayer and Natalya's Reflection. The Chest should be Natalya's Embrace, because it can roll Hatred Regen. The other 4 items—Boots, Pants, Helmet and Gloves—can be any combination of 2 Marauder and 2 Natalya pieces.
  • Manticore increases the damage of Cluster Arrow by 300% and reduces its Hatred cost by 50%.
  • Bombardier's Rucksack lets us summon two extra Sentries and also gives +100% Sentry Damage, which applies to Cluster Arrows fired by Sentries. Additionally the quiver provides another 200% damage boost to Cluster Arrow.
  • Zoey's Secret, a complementary item to Embodiment of the Marauder set, provides 63% damage reduction.
  • Wraps of Clarity give another 50% damage reduction, a natural choice in a build that uses Generators.

Season 27 Sanctified Items

Angelic Crucibles are new consumables that drop anywhere once you're Level 70. Using them on items reforges them into Sanctified Items with Primal Ancient stats, and adds one of three new unique Class Powers listed below. For full details on how they work, check out this Seasonal Guide by Chewingnom!

Let's look at our Class Powers and see how they apply to our build:

  1. The best power for us is the Sanctified Cluster Arrow. It boosts our damage by combining the total weapon damage done (impact, rockets, grenades) into a single beam. This allows us to play with Cluster Bombs, which has a bigger total damage output.
  2. The Sanctified Vengeance helps us a little bit but it's not as good as the top power.
  3. The Sanctified Strafe power doesn't help us, so go for the one at the top.

Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to craft it on matters! Great candidates are Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend Sanctifying one of the following items:

  • Bombardier's Rucksack
  • Zoey's Secret
  • Squirt's Necklace

Global Stat Priorities

N6M4 completely ignores Cooldown Reduction and Attack Speed. There aren't any important heavy cooldown skills in the build, and your damage output is mostly limited by amount of Hatred you can generate. For that reason we invest quite heavily into Resource Cost Reduction and Hatred Regeneration. Overall, your priority for offensive stats looks like this: Fire Damage > Sentry Damage > Cluster Arrow Damage > Critical Hit Chance & Damage > Hatred Regeneration > Resource Cost Reduction > Area Damage.

For toughness, it is business as usual: you get Vitality, All Resistance and if possible Life % on your Boots, Pants, and Belt. N6M4 usually doesn't get a lot of Vitality from items, because its normal spots are occupied by stuff like Resource Cost Reduction, Hatred Regeneration and Skill Damage. For that reason you will need to invest quite a few Paragon points into Vitality.

Since there is no Vengeance in N6M4, Crowd Control Reduction is an incredibly valuable secondary Affix to roll on both Rings, Amulet and Helmet as we are very sensitive to Hard Crowd Control effects and mitigating these will ease up our gameplay significantly. Make sure to get the Primary Affixes locked in before attempting to get CCR though.

Assembling the Build

Item Stat Priorities

Gems

Skills

Passives

Paragon Points

Follower

Gameplay

Hardcore

Variants

GR Solo Push
GR Solo Speeds
N6M4 Solo Push

Unfortunately N6M4 is not really good for anything except pushing. Having to move your Sentries all the time makes speedfarming impossible.

Concept
We use The Cloak of Garwulf in the Cube for extra protection. While two more wolves don't look like much, they increase the damage reduction form Zoey's Secret from 63% to 81%, effectively being a x1.95 toughness multiplier. Our amulet is Squirt's Necklace. While we don't have any shields to protect the buff, it's still possible to get a few stacks here and there when the mobs are distracted by pets or frozen by Flying Strike. However, the main reason we take this amulet is the bossfight. Without Bane of the Stricken it can take a very long time on push tiers, and it's relatively easy to dodge all Rift Guardian's attacks and keep the 100% damage bonus.

Gameplay
You want to park your zoo together with your follower somewhere in an open space. After that you need to attract the mobs from around you and make a pull. One Sentry goes inside the pull, the rest go in the spot where they will shoot into the pull, and preferably where they can "see" forward into the map. Sentries will attack the closest to them target, so you should try and avoid having stray mobs walk up to your Sentries.

Putting all Sentries into the pull is a fool-proof way to make sure that they shoot where you want them to, but it makes moving to the next spot more difficult. Do that when your pull is really big and you gonna spend quite some time killing it. You should stay outside the pull to maximize your Zei's Stone of Vengeance bonus and possibly activate Steady Aim.

Setups
At high Paragon (4000+), when toughness is less of an issue, you can swap The Cloak of Garwulf for Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan. It's extremely important to never stop moving, because losing Hatred regen really hurts. But you should be stutter-stepping all the time anyway.

Conversely, if you are struggling with toughness, you can switch to Cold damage and use Cluster Arrow Maelstrom for extra healing. Also switch Single Out for Ballistics. This version is weaker but it's tankier and more consistent.

If you have too much trouble keeping your Squirt's Necklace up and you don't want to play around Convention of Elements, you can replace these with Endless Walk. But if you do so, prepare for endless boss fights.

N6M4 "Speed" Farm

If you absolutely insist on "speed" farming with N6M4, here's how you do it. It's not a well-suited playstyle for that and you are most likely better off with another build.

Concept
We play Cold Cluster Arrow and remove all Area Damage, replacing it with Cooldown Reduction, which is necessary to move Sentries forward. We also remove some toughness to fit in Reaper's Wraps. Finally, for our passives we take Cull the Weak, Ballistics, Blood Vengeance, and Tactical Advantage. You should farm a GR tier where you get most of your Hatred from Blood Vengeance and passive regen, if you have to use Evasive Fire a lot, you are going too high. You need to stack at least 10 Pickup Radius for GR farming.

Gameplay
In speedfarming you just Vault forward, drop two Sentries when you see a pack of mobs, shoot Cluster Arrow 4-5 times to kill them all, pick up globes to refill Hatred and go to the next group. When you find an Elite, drop a third Sentry before you start blasting, and eventually the fourth. Don't forget to cast Rain of Vengeance every 10 seconds.

Setups
If you're doing Nephalem Rifts, switch Bane of the Trapped to Boon of the Hoarder, Zoey's Secret to Goldwrap, The Cloak of Garwulf to Warzechian Armguards, Convention of Elements to Stone of Jordan and Cull the Weak to Awareness.
When farming Nephalem Rifts in group, swap Reaper's Wraps with Nemesis Bracers and Stone of Jordan with Avarice Band.

Video Guide

S23 N6M4 GR121 Gameplay Showcase

Mechanics

Embodiment of the Marauder (2) Bonus

Embodiment of the Marauder (4) Bonus

Summary

  • Ignore Cooldown Reduction and Attack Speed, stack Resource Cost Reduction and Hatred Regeneration.
  • Place Sentries in strategic spots.
  • Make sure you have Hatred for your Fire Convention of Elements cycle.
  • Be careful on Elites with CC Affixes or Waller, don't neglect Crowd Control Reduction on gear.

N6M4 lets you play tower defense in Diablo III, how cool is that?

Credits

Written by Northwar.
Contributions by Chewingnom.
Updated by wudijo.

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