Last Updated:February 4, 2025|Changelog
Introduction
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The Unhallowed Essence Set is a staple of the Demon Hunter class and has been one of the best speedfarming setups in the game for years. It's simple, fast and embodies the core of what DH gameplay is about: incredibly mobile, long-range, heavy damage burst, stutter-stepping and a high mechanical skill ceiling.
This build is very easy to get running and has perks that make it accessible to less experienced players. As one of the top dogs in T16 Rifts, and one of the Bounty builds of all time due to its versatility, damage and high speed, it will always find a place somewhere in the META. It's not the best for pushing the highest tiers, but it can hold up decently against other higher end builds, especially after the most recent buff of +9 GR tiers in Patch 2.7.5 / Season 28.
Multishot is the main skill in the setup. It hits everything on your screen at once and you can fire it multiple times per second. In Nephalem Rifts up to Torment 16 you can even oneshot everything, instantly clearing entire screens as well as a couple of unlucky mobs outside of it.
Many enjoy the build for being easy to play and an effective farmer. For Bounties, there are only very few builds that hold up against it. If you are playing anything except Monk it will cost you approximately 30 minutes and 2,000 Death's Breaths to create it from scratch and you will be able to run Bounties faster than almost anything else.
Beginner-friendly ✔
Top farming build ✔
Huge AoE potential ✔
Very high skill ceiling ✔
❌ Pushing is difficult
❌ Low synergy in groups
❌ Weaker than other push builds
❌ Requires resource management
Core Setup
Items
- Unhallowed Essence provides roughly x2339 Multishot damage increase, 60% damage reduction and also allows you to restore your Discipline with your Primary skills.
- Yang's Recurve is one of two key legendary items, on top of the 200% damage bonus and 50% Attack Speed, it also adds up to 50% Resource Cost Reduction as a free fifth primary roll.
- Dead Man's Legacy is another huge damage buff of 200% and the double-hit effect, which translates to approximately 43% increased DPS.
- Dawn will be your cubed weapon slot for permanent Vengeance uptime.
- Squirt's Necklace can give you up to 100% damage bonus when you don't take damage.
- Captain Crimon's Trimmings set is used to fit the Cooldown requirements for Vengeance and for great defensive synergy with Yang's Recurve
- Ring of Royal Grandeur is necessary to get full benefits from both sets. It's placed in the cube in every variant, because of bad guaranteed primary rolls.
Season 34 Sanctified Items
Originated from Season 27, 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:
- The best power for us is the Sanctified Strafe because it allows us to play this build similar to a GoD DH: Spin to Win! This massively increases damage output because of the high frequency of attacks while allowing us to move at all times.
- The Sanctified Vengeance power technically does something but not much as we use this skill infrequently and it has a low impact, so go for the one listed above.
- The Sanctified Cluster Arrow 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:
- Yang's Recurve
- Dead Man's Legacy
- Squirt's Necklace
Global Stat Priorities
Especially important for almost any DH build is reaching permanent Vengeance uptime. This is achievable through the 65% Cooldown Reduction effect provided by Dawn (Cubed) and having 37% Cooldown Reduction on your character, which is easy to achieve thanks to Captain Crimson's Trimmings (2) Bonus.
Aside from that, Maximum Discipline is the best stat you can have, which is a secondary roll on Bows, Quivers and Cloaks. Make sure you get as much as possible, but don't worry too much about one or two missing points (1 Discipline is worth roughly 1.2% DPS when you are near the maximum, more if not). Other than that, you want to stack damage stats wherever possible, especially Crit stats, Fire Damage, Multishot Damage, and lastly Area Damage (only for pushing). The rest goes to defense - especially All Resistance on Pants, Boots, Shoulders is important - mixed in with some Vitality rolls and perhaps Elite Damage Reduction on your chest piece. In addition to its regular benefits, Resource Cost Reduction is also a decent defensive option due to the set synergy.
1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cube Legendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!
2. Gather the full Unhallowed Essence set. Each piece can be gambled from Kadala for Bloodshards. Do not salvage any duplicate pieces you find! Instead convert them to another part of the set with Recipe 4 in Kanai's Cube. If you have extra materials you can use Recipe 3 to craft the remaining pieces, but this is expensive and not recommended for new players.
3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:
- The full Unhallowed Essence set
- Dead Man's Legacy
- Nemesis Bracers, Warzechian Armguards and Wraps of Clarity
- Goldwrap and Krelm's Buff Belt
- Stone of Jordan, Focus and Restraint
- Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan and Visage of Gunes
4. Craft using Recipe 3 in Kanai's Cube in this order:
- Bows to get Yang's Recurve
- Hand Crossbows to get Dawn
- Amulets to get Squirt's Necklace and The Flavor of Time
- Create a level 1 Witch Doctor and upgrade Maces to get Echoing Fury
- Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired
5. Do Bounties to acquire several important items for this build:
- Act 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
- Act 2: Gloves of Worship
- Act 3: Avarice Band and Pride's Fall
- Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
- Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings, Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny
6. Use Primordial Ashes in Kanai's Cube with the new Curiosity of Lorath Nahr recipe to obtain a free Crafted Primal Ancient. Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to focus matters! Great candidates are Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend getting one of the following items:
- Yang's Recurve
- Dead Man's Legacy
- Squirt's Necklace
| SLOT | ITEM | STAT PRIORITY |
| Main-Hand | Yang's Recurve Dawn (Cubed) Odyssey's End (Cubed) Echoing Fury (Cubed) | 1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 3. Maximum Discipline (Secondary) 4. Damage % 6. Area Damage 7. Dexterity |
| Off-Hand | Dead Man's Legacy | 1. Maximum Discipline (Secondary) 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Multishot Damage 4. Area Damage 5. Dexterity |
| Maximum Discipline as Secondary is needed on Weapon and Off-Hand for Unhallowed Essence (6) Bonus. | ||
| Helm | Accursed Visage Pride's Fall (A3 Bounties) | 1. Multishot Damage 2. Socket Flawless Royal Diamond 3. Critical Hit Chance 4. Dexterity |
| Gloves | Fiendish Grips | 1. Critical Hit Chance 2. Critical Hit Damage 3. Area Damage 4. Dexterity |
| Shoulders | Unsanctified Shoulders Mantle of Channeling (Cubed) | 1. Dexterity 2. Area Damage 3. Resource Cost Reduction 4. Cooldown Reduction 5. All Resistance 6. Vitality |
| Chest | Cage of the Hellborn | 1. Maximum Discipline (Secondary) 2. Sockets Flawless Royal Diamond 3. Dexterity 4. Vitality 5. Elite Damage Reduction 6. All Resistance |
| Maximum Discipline as Secondary is needed on Cloak for Unhallowed Essence (6) Bonus. | ||
| Pants | Unholy Plates Captain Crimson's Thrust (Crafted) | 1. Dexterity 2. Sockets Flawless Royal Diamond 3. All Resistance 4. Vitality |
| Boots | Hell Walkers Captain Crimson's Waders (Crafted) Sage's Passage (Crafted) | 1. Multishot Damage 2. Dexterity 3. All Resistance 4. Vitality |
| Ring 1 | Focus Avarice Band (A3 Bounties) Stone of Jordan The Compass Rose | 1. Socket 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Damage Range 5. Area Damage |
| Ring 2 | Restraint Convention of Elements Ring of Royal Grandeur (A1 Bounties, Cubed) | 1. Socket 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Damage Range 5. Area Damage |
| Bracers | Wraps of Clarity Nemesis Bracers Warzechian Armguards | 1. Elemental Damage 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Dexterity 4. Vitality 5. All Resistance |
| Amulet | Squirt's Necklace Traveler's Pledge | 1. Socket 2. Critical Hit Damage 3. Elemental Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance 5. Dexterity |
| Belt | Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle (Crafted) Sage's Ribbon (Crafted) Goldwrap | 1. Dexterity 2. All Resistance 3. Vitality 4. Life % |
| Potion | Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid | For breaking walls to pull enemies and increase DPS |
- Zei's Stone of Vengeance - Simply the best DPS gem for ranged builds.
- Bane of the Trapped - Overall a very strong DPS gem when you can apply Crowd Control, which we do with Thrill of the Hunt.
- Taeguk - With Sanctified Strafe a great option to include during this season.
- Other popular choices are Bane of the Stricken for solo pushing, Boon of the Hoarder for Torment farming and Bane of the Powerful for a good mix of extra DPS and defense in farming, Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard to protect your Squirt's Necklace and Pride's Fall buffs, and Wreath of Lightning for Movement Speed in Bounties.
- Strafe is required to make Sanctified Strafe function.
- Multishot as our main damage dealer. Arsenal is used for most activities because of its superior single target damage and convenience added by heat-seeking missiles. However, in the solo push variant Full Broadside is used for its higher AoE damage.
- Preparation Invigoration is a must have for +20 Maximum Discipline, which translates to ~25% DPS increase thanks to the Unhallowed Essence (6) Bonus.
- Vengeance provides 40% extra damage and either 10 Hatred per second or 50% damage reduction, depending on which rune is used (or both with Visage of Gunes).
- The last two skill slots are mostly free. Entangling Shot Chain Gang or Evasive Fire Focus is used in versions that run Bastions of Will set. Otherwise, popular skills are: Smoke Screen Displacement, Wolf Companion or Boar Companion, Shadow Power Shadow Glide.
- Ambush is used in nearly every variant due to its synergy with Dead Man's Legacy.
- Tactical Advantage is the best mobility passive for Demon Hunters and has a place in every variant except solo push.
- Ballistics is 100% multiplicative bonus for Arsenal's rockets and is used in every variation featuring that rune.
- Other options include Steady Aim, Thrill of The Hunt, Hot Pursuit, Blood Vengeance, Awareness and Cull the Weak.
| Core | Offensive | Defensive | Utility |
| 1. Movement Speed | 1. Cooldown Reduction | 1. All Resistance | 1. Area Damage |
| 2. Dexterity | 2. Critical Hit Damage | 2. Armor | 2. Resource Cost Reduction |
| 3. Vitality1 | 3. Critical Hit Chance | 3. Life % | 3. Life per Hit |
| 4. Attack Speed | 4. Life Regeneration | 4. Pickup Radius |
1 Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 750,000 Life is recommended for Solo Push).
The Altar of Rites is a tree that grants tremendous powers to your entire account in exchange for sacrifices. It requires you to farm Bounties, kill the Ubers, craft the Staff of Herding, and more. Completing all 26 of these tasks, along with sacrificing 6 Primal Ancients grants you extra Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops and 3 Potion Super Powers. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!
Note: The suggested path assumes you are playing Solo and used the Challenge Rift Cache to help you level up.
Optimal Path
Node 2: Choose Anointed to gain a full set of 70 yellows from level 18-70!
Node 6: Rush to gain double Bounties to help unlock other Nodes in the Altar.
Node 7: Take Vigor to help your build sustain its resources.
Nodes 8-14: These are the last Nodes you can gain until the Challenge Rift resets. Take at least 1 Node at the bottom of each path to unlock all 3 Potion Super Powers. Pick up the Mirror Node at the top for a colossal 41% extra XP all season. Remember to unlock Father once you clear GR70 solo and have your first Primal!
Nodes 15-26: Pick up the final Quality of Life, Damage, and Defense Nodes (in that order) to finish the Altar.
Potion Super Powers: Take Father first, then Mother, and finally Mortal.
Disclaimer: The Mortal and Mother Potions require you to salvage 2 and 3 Primals respectively. Unlock them as soon as you have those materials as they don't cost a point!
Use the Scroll Bar to see Altar Progression
Notable Build Changes
Compared to the nonseason version of the build, you can run with Smoke Screen instead of Vault after you unlock Revelation.
In addition, Vigor enables us to skip Seethe and replace Visage of Gunes with other choices such as Stone Gauntlets, St. Archew's Gage, Hexing Pants or Aquila Cuirass.
Patch 2.7.0 revamped the follower system giving all 3 hirelings new powers and the emanate system. The first thing you should do is read our complete follower guide and remember the key takeaways:
- The emanation system allows followers to share certain legendary and set powers with you. The most important ones are: The Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, Avarice Band, Sage’s Journey and Cain’s Destiny. Click the guide above for the full list.
- Follower’s powers are based on their main stat (maxed at 25,000, but they have a 2.5x multiplier so you only need 10,000). This means we stack Intelligence on the Enchantress, Dexterity on the Scoundrel and Strength on the Templar.
- Guardian's Jeopardy (2) Bonus works for followers by improving their inherent stat multiplier from x2.5 to x3.5, making it slightly easier to hit the 25,000 main stat threshold if needed.
- Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
- Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
- Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
- Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.
Select Follower
For T16 we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is T16 content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death.
Stat Priorities:Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
- The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
- Nemesis Bracers: For extra Elites, Death’s Breaths and In-geom procs.
- Avarice Band: For the insane pickup radius.
- Ring of Royal Grandeur: To complete our sets.
- Gloves of Worship: For 10 Minute Shrine Buffs.
- Sage’s Journey: For double Death’s Breaths.
- Cain’s Destiny: For 25% more Greater Rift Keystones.
For speed Greater Rifts we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is speed content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death.
Stat Priorities:Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
- The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
- Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
- Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
- Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
- Hellfire Ring, Leoric's Crown and Cain's Destiny: For more Experience and Attack Speed.
GR Pushing Templar
For Greater Rift pushing we recommend this Templar setup for the sustain from Heal, 10% increased damage from Onslaught, and the very powerful cheat death mechanic from Guardian. This is the only follower build that stacks Cooldown Reduction because it works with Heal.
Stat Priorities:
Since we have the immortality relic, we do not need to stack survivability on our Templar.
Strength > Cooldown Reduction > Toughness.
Key Items:
- The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
- Gloves of Worship: For 10 Minute Shrine Buffs.
- Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
- Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
- Unity: For 50% damage reduction if you're also wearing one.
- Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
- Leoric's Crown and Captain Crimson's Trimmings: For more Cooldown Reduction on Heal.
- Fire at least one Multishot at the start.
- Hold down Strafe to activate Sanctified Strafe.
- Make sure to keep your Discipline high, as your set's damage bonus scales with current Discipline, not with Maximum Discipline.
- Keep up Vengeance at all times (use once every 20 sec) and activate Preparation to refill your Discipline when you run low.
- Make sure to use your generator at least once every 5 seconds to keep up the buffs from Wraps of Clarity and Bastions of Will.
- When fighting enemies, try to stay at a distance to maximize your Zei's Stone of Vengeance and potentially enable Steady Aim as well as keep up Unhallowed Essence (4) Bonus.
- Use your high mobility to reposition yourself frequently and place most enemies into your cone-shaped AoE.
The build is overall quite tanky and a great choice for Hardcore players. Additionally, you have permanent immunity to Crowd Control effects and high mobility to get out of dangerous situations with ease when you have to. Replace Ambush with Awareness if the variant doesn't already include it.
Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
Concept
The idea here is to keep enough damage to pretty much oneshot anything you can encounter with a single Multishot while adding everything we can to make it faster. Your follower will be decked out with Avarice Band, Nemesis Bracers, The Flavor of Time, Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny. Meanwhile you will be running with Boon of the Hoarder and Goldwrap, Stone of Jordan and Tactical Advantage. Pride's Fall is a great tool to keep your Discipline up and allows you to vault near-infinitely.
Gameplay
Hunt elites and kill the big trash packs on the way, just make sure you don't starve yourself of Discipline so you still deal enough damage.
Setups
If you run into resource issues, you can cube Pride's Fall to help with that.
If you want extra speed, you can drop Dawn for Echoing Fury.
In groups, you will have to drop Rechel's Ring of Larceny for Avarice Band and replace Captain Crimson's Trimmings with Sage's Journey if you still want to gain the extra Death's Breaths from elites. Warzechian Armguards need to be replaced with Nemesis Bracers.
Concept
The main objective is to reach your Bounty target quickly while still having enough damage to finish it within a few seconds maximum. We add Wreath of Lightning for 25% Movement Speed, Warzechian Armguards for another 50% Movement Speed as well as the two passives Hot Pursuit and Tactical Advantage for a combined bonus of 80%. Shadow Power Shadow Glide has another 30% when active, which overall adds up to over 300% Movement Speed. Pride's Fall cubed helps with Resource Cost Reduction and makes your life easier.
Gameplay
Keep up your speed buffs, rush to the objectives and clear them as fast as possible with Multishot. Make sure you don't run out of Discipline while spamming or else you can't deal any damage.
Setups
If you run into resource issues, you can cube Pride's Fall to help with that.
Select Build Version
Concept
This version goes for maximum speed, adding Echoing Fury and Krelm's Buff Belt in the cube and extra speed from Smoke Screen Displacement, Hot Pursuit and Tactical Advantage. The target time is 50-90sec per run on a low tier (around GR90-100) to maximize loot.
Gameplay
Activate Vengeance at the start of the run and whenever it's ready again.
Spam Smoke Screen while rushing forward. Due to the high resource costs of your skills, make sure to collect all Health Globes to refill them with Blood Vengeance. If your Discipline drops below 70%, use Preparation and spend less Discipline until it's ready again.
Setups
With enough extra Resource Cost Reduction on your gear you shouldn't have any resource issues and can replace Blood Vengeance with Ambush for extra burst damage.
If you want to include Awareness, drop Hot Pursuit for it.
Concept
This version goes for maximum damage and consistency. The target time is 2-3min per run on a noticeably higher tier than the fast version to increase XP and key efficiency.
Gameplay
The gameplay here is very straightforward. Stay at range and use Smoke Screen to keep your Squirt's Necklace buff. In general, you want to kill almost all the mobs in the room before actually entering it. When you click a Pylon, always activate Smoke Screen immediately after, otherwise you risk getting (sometimes fatally) smacked.
Setups
If you want to include Awareness, drop Cull the Weak for it.
Concept
The solo push version goes for maximum damage, using the Bastions of Will set, Bane of the Trapped, Cull the Weak and Odyssey's End. It's highly recommended to get at least 1 Life per Hit roll for recovery.
We use Multishot Full Broadside, because in solo push you usually gather huge packs of mobs where increased AoE damage is worth more than the rockets.
Gameplay
The main gameplay is still Spin 2 Win, but compared to just holding down Strafe you now have to also include frequent Entangling Shot casts to apply the slow for your multipliers and the Odyssey's End debuff. This is best achieved by permanently channeling and holding down "Force Attack", then tapping your generator roughly once a second.
In addition, you don't have permanent Vengeance uptime, so focus on using it in situations where it matters to get the most out of it, but don't let it sit ready for too long.
Setups
A more forgiving version uses Dawn in the cube, which brings back permanent Vengeance but deals a lot less damage in long encounters. This also requires to switch Perfectionist to Thrill of the Hunt to apply the slow, and allows to swap the generator to Evasive Fire Hardened.
Another option is going with Multishot Arsenal and switching Perfectionist to Ballistics. This version is more consistent, can finish off elites much easier and has a significantly shorter bossfight. However, with enough fishing, Physical will beat Fire by about 1.5 tiers.
Concept
For Echoing Nightmares we are changing a few things from a regular Speed GR build because we don't need as much movement speed or damage. For more information check out our full Echoing Nightmare Guide and take a look at our Echoing Nightmare Build Tier List and META post for the best builds and strategies!
Gameplay
Click Speed Pylon as soon as the challenge starts and all the other Pylons at around wave 90. At wave 122 you can stop attacking and run to the corner to let the timer run out.
Stay at range and use Smoke Screen to keep your Squirt's Necklace buff. Mow down everything with Multishot while staying out of explosions to survive.
Video Guide
Mechanics
- Multishot damage is increased by 1700% per point of Discipline you currently have.
- This bonus adds up as one big multiplier - you won't get a multiplicative bonus for every point.
- At 86 Discipline, missing 1 point means a DPS loss of ~1.2% (increasing slightly the less you have).
- The 4-piece damage bonus is a separate 1.6 multiplier and stacks multiplicatively with the 6-piece bonus.
- The double-hit effect can occur on the first shot if that brings the target below the 60% HP threshold.
- This item makes Ambush a better than usual DPS choice for this build. It provides 11.3% DPS increase instead of regular 7.7%.
- The extra hits produce their own damage number and double the total proc coefficient value, too.
- The slow effect is applied after the damage, making this passive a pretty bad choice for very fast paced activities such as Nephalem Rifts and Bounties. It's only useful against enemies that take multiple hits to kill.
Summary
- Reach the necessary Cooldown Reduction for permanent Vengeance (37%) and use it every 20 seconds.
- Keep up buffs (Wraps of Clarity, Bastions of Will) at all times.
- Position yourself to hit most enemies with your cone-shaped Multishot AoE.
- Keep your Discipline high as it directly scales your damage output.
We hope you enjoyed this guide! Unhallowed Essence is an ideal build for both beginners and veterans alike and will bring joy to anyone seeking to mow down enemies with a barrage of arrows.
Credits
Written by Northwar & wudijo
Updates by wudijo