Demon Hunter Class Overview

• Makes your projectile attacks pierce 1-2 times.
• Has a 0.5sec internal cooldown.
• Does not increase the amount of pierces done by Hungering Arrow.
• When used with the Gears of Dreadlands set, it very slightly increases the amount of projectiles fired by the (4) Bonus (~1-2%) because Strafe may hit at a better moment for the set's internal cooldown.

• This item has been very useful in the past and heavily nerfed after Season 6 (Patch 2.4.2).
• This effect does not stack with Marked for Death anymore, instead it applies that skill (or the chosen rune from your skill bar) to any enemy hit.
• The effect can only be active on one enemy at a time.
• Essentially, the only use of this item is to boost the DPS on a single enemy (especially Rift Guardians) when you DON'T intend to have Marked for Death on your skill bar.
• For certain very fast Speed-GR setups running this weapon together with Marked for Death Valley of Death allows you to apply the effect for a split second to one enemy before you hit the next. This can help give a marginal DPS increase to your party in situations where you don't have time to cast it yourself.

• The Taunt effect focuses enemies attention towards the center of the Spike Trap that taunted them.
• Taunt is a crowd control effect that raises monsters' crowd control resistance. This directly interferes with other, more desirable effects such as the knockbacks from Natalya's Vengeance (4) Bonus or Ground Stomp Wrenching Smash from a Support Barbarian in groups, so they might not always work as expected.

• The double-hit effect can occur on the first shot if it 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 the regular 7.7%.
• The extra hits produce their own damage number and double the total number of hits.

• Gives a shield that stacks up to 10 times for a maximum of 30% of your total life.
• The shield lasts permanently and snapshots your Maximum Health at the time of application.
• Each time you attack you get at least 1 stack of the shield, however you often get more (sometimes all 10 at once), making this item significantly stronger than it appears at first glance.
• Taking damage without breaking the shield protects the buff given by Squirt's Necklace.
• Keep in mind that your shield takes more damage with this setup as long as you have the amulet's buff.

• Each grenade has a 50% chance to start bouncing X number of times the first time it hits the ground. A grenade bounces as many times as the legendary affix roll says once it has started doing so.
• A bouncing grenade deals 150% damage on the first impact, then 50% more damage on each consecutive one, finishing at 800% damage on the final one. For a 5 Bounces Belt the sequence is 150%, 200%, 250%, 300%, 800%.
• Bouncing grenades can proc Area Damage and on-hit effects and have the same proc coefficient as the original skill.
• On each bounce the grenade moves 11 yards in a random direction.
• Grenades disappear when they hit obstacles or walls.
• The randomness of bounces makes the effectiveness of Hellcat Waistguard vary depending on the size of the target and explosion radius. A bigger target is more likely to be hit by multiple bounces and the 800% final bounce. A higher number of bounces makes the average spread of grenades wider, however it almost always deals more damage on average even to the smallest targets.
• That rule is only broken when you are fighting in a tight spot and grenades are likely to stop bouncing before they reach the final 800% bounce. The graph below simulates the different legendary affix rolls on various target sizes:

• Hatred only returns starting on the second hit.
• Impale Ricochet can give you Hatred back on the first attack (due to bounces).

• Hitting any enemy in the pull slowly spreads the slow effect to more and more targets nearby (even if the target was already under the entangle effect).
• The visual effect is not always displayed properly, but you can be sure that enemies are slowed after a while or see it from the slow animation at their feet.
• Refreshing the debuff on one monster of the chain refreshes it on all of them.
• If you lose the debuff, you have to re-apply it to every single monster again.
• The damage bonus of this item is in the additive category.
• With multiple Demon Hunters in the party the effect can be stacked if different runes of Entangling Shot are chosen.

• After getting hit by Spike Trap, this weapon produces a secondary explosion emanating from the enemy hit. The timer is indicated by a small icon above an enemy's head.
• This explosion deals the same damage as the original hit that triggered it.
• Multiple explosions can stack up and occur over time if the enemy is hit frequently.
• Lightning Rod only produces one extra explosion per trap even if all 3 ticks hit an enemy, making the item significantly weaker for this rune.
• While it's a proc, this effect can trigger Area Damage.

• The "deployed twice as fast" line doubles the effective attacks per second for laying Spike Traps.
• Scatter's 1160% weapon damage is overwritten by the selected rune.
• A full chain reaction of 10x Spike Trap takes ~65 frames (~1.1 seconds) to complete.

• Valla's makes all Strafe projectiles pierce. This is useful when combined with the Gears of Dreadlands to proc its (4) Bonus more often. The item doesn't add anything to the Hungering Arrow itself.
• Piercing projectiles can proc the 4-piece bonus again as long as the Cooldown is up (9 frames).
• In big density, you almost guarantee a 4-piece proc immediately when the Cooldown is ready.
• The overall DPS gain over wearing another random weapon is between 0% (single target) to 25% (high density).
• Valla's comes with one extra primary stat and an item-specific Strafe damage roll that can be removed (Strafe damage does not affect Hungering Arrow damage).
• When used with the Demolition Rune, the effect causes grenades to bounce once if another enemy is located behind (relative to the player's position) the first enemy.

• Gives 10 stacks for each second spent channeling Rapid Fire, regardless of Attack Speed.
• Each stack gives up to 100% additive Rapid Fire damage for a total of 3000%. This makes all other rolls (helm, boots, quiver) and buffs worthless.
• All stacks are immediately lost when you stop channeling.
• The damage bonus is fully dynamic. You need to have the buff up when Rapid Fire hits enemies.

Mechanics
This passive provides a 40% multiplicative damage boost for targets above 75% hp. In the hypothetical scenario that you do very small hits without overkilling at the threshold, the overall damage gain is around 7.7% DPS, increasing the bigger your hit is compared to the monster's remaining HP.

The value of this passive can also increase by a lot depending on other effects that scale with enemy HP. In scenarios of infinitely small hits, the DPS changes by these values:

• 11.4% with Dead Man's Legacy
• 8.6% with The Executioner
• 9.2% with Frailty
• 9.5% with Frailty Early Grave
  

Best use

Core offensive passive, extremely strong for high damage nukes and low-end content

Ambush is a solid option that fits into almost any Demon Hunter build. Especially strong for lower end content such as Torment farming or for big nuke builds like those using Fan of Knives with Lord Greenstone's Fan, as you apply the 40% bonus damage to the full hit when you oneshot the enemy.

Mechanics

• Bows: 8% damage, which is additive. Very useless.
• Crossbows: 50% Critical Hit Damage is too weak to be useful due to lack of passives on typical Crossbow-wielding builds (especially Embodiment of the Marauder).
• Hand-Crossbows: 5% Critical Hit Chance is quite useful and fits into some builds that use them.

Best use

Niche offensive passive

This passive is only really used in one-handed (or dual-wielding) builds because the other bonuses are rather weak. It's pretty much last in line when you really want to squeeze out some more DPS at all costs.

Mechanics
When you die, you are instead saved and turn invisible for 2 seconds, gaining 15% Movement Speed, 50% Life and the Illusory Boots effect (no collision).

Best use

Core defensive passive

Fits into almost any Demon Hunter build and protects you from oneshots or just getting cornered. Definitely recommended in most situations as some builds can be quite squishy. Can also be an offensive tool, for example to use Oculus Ring effects when you otherwise couldn't.

Mechanics
100% multiplicative damage bonus for your rockets. Insanely strong if it applies to your build!

Best use

Necessary passive for Rocket-focused builds

Must have if you use Multishot Arsenal or Cluster Arrow Maelstrom / Shooting Stars.

Mechanics
Every health globe restores resources, even when picked up by your nearby group members. One of the only very few ways to generate Discipline for Demon Hunters.

Best use

Torment and low GR farming

Very useful to fuel your skills when you kill lots of enemies (especially elites) quickly, as they produce a lot of health globes. Top tier passive for farming.

Mechanics
Stand still for a while, get a stacking Life Regen buff that disappears when you move again.

Best use

Absolutely useless besides some fluff

Never take this passive for serious builds. There is, however, a funny interaction you can abuse to have some fun in creating a big shield with it by following these steps:

• 1. Go in town and put all paragon points into Vitality, equip gear with Life % and Vitality
• 2. Stand still and stack up Brooding
• 3. Insert Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard into one of your sockets
• 4. Remove Vitality, equip your normal gear and enjoy your 1m+ shield
• 5. The shield stays with you until it's broken, the gem is unequipped or you enter a Greater Rift

Note that the shield also resets if you got hit and stopped being hit in the last 4 seconds, as it reactivates the gem's shielding mechanic with your current character values.

Mechanics

20% multiplicative damage boost, very strong and the highest DPS passive that Demon Hunters have to offer. Usually paired with an easy way of applying a slow such as Bane of the Trapped or Thrill of the Hunt.

Best use

Top-tier DPS passive

Included in every high-tier GR build. Not necessarily used in every farming build however, due to the CC-requirement.

Mechanics

Improves your devices and traps, mainly useful for the additional Sentry it allows you to add. All durations of the mentioned skills are exactly doubled.

Best use

Goes with the Marauder set, otherwise very niche

One of the best passives for any build using the Embodiment of the Marauder set. Adding a 5th Sentry is equivalent to around 40% extra DPS.

Mechanics

Increases size and damage of your Grenades by a significant margin. The larger explosions are more impactful, as you can cover more area or just hit the same target with more grenades. You typically combine it with randomized bounces coming from Hellcat Waistguard.

Both the radius gain and the damage bonuses are multiplicative, making it essentially a default choice for any build revolving around Grenades. The only bad part about it is the on-death mechanic: It knocks back most monsters far away, potentially even off-screen and destroys your prepared pull. Avoid dying at all costs when playing a build with this passive chosen.

Best use

Must-have for any Grenade build

If Grenade, Rapid Fire Bombardment or Cluster Arrow Cluster Bombs are your main damage source, use this passive!

Mechanics

20% extra Movement Speed, stacks additively with all other sources of MS.

Best use

Rather niche speedfarming passive

Use this only for the really low-end content, when you are absolutely sure you will not suffer time losses from lack of DPS. It's the last piece of the puzzle when adding more Movement Speed to your build.

Mechanics

Straight up increases your Life per Hit stat, and can be boosted by your item rolls.

Best use

Useful defense for semi-tanky builds

If you manage to acquire a lot of Life per Kill secondary rolls on your items, you really feel the impact of this passive, as you can restore large chunks of your total life pool in a single hit. Good to add for builds that don't risk dying to oneshots and want another bit of survivability.

Mechanics

Increases your Hatred gain per primary cast by a flat amount.

Best use

Generally weak offensive choice

There is almost no scenario where adding this passive would be better than any offensive passive.

Mechanics

It is applied by almost all sources of slow, for example including things like the Bane of the Trapped aura, Multishot Wind Chill or by simply hitting with the mentioned skills. It also works with every single Cold damage skill the Demon Hunter class has to offer, making it a solid choice and easy to apply whenever you use that element.

The effect produces a small visual cue above the enemy's head. Elite affixes that have a duration (e.g. Plagued, Orbiter) are usually snapshot from damage reduction mechanics such as Numbing Traps, so it needs to be applied before their cast.

This passive stacks multiplicatively with multiple Demon Hunters in a party.

Best use

Very strong defensive passive and support choice

If you need defense for your solo push, this is typically the go-to passive. And just in general, you can bring it for strong group utility even if your role is DPS, as it benefits everyone.

Mechanics

Adds the equivalent of 10% Resource Cost Reduction for Discipline skills. The bonuses to All Resistance and Armor are additive. Keep in mind that the passive's value diminishes by a good margin in case you are using Stone Gauntlets.

Best use

Typically mediocre defensive choice

There are better defensive passives, but for builds that also make use of the Discipline bonuses, it can be quite effective.

Mechanics

Adds 4% Crit Chance to your character every second until you reach 100%. You can watch your sheet DPS increase as a result. The bonus can never be lower than 4%, even when you are permanently in combat.

This bonus is not consumed when your Companions hit enemies, as long as you don't attack yourself.

Best use

Weak offensive choice

Usually the worst of the offensive passives, only used if you really want to squeeze out the last bit. Currently there are no real builds that benefit from the waiting mechanic, so it's just marginally better than a 4% Crit Chance buff in most situations.

Mechanics

Gives a hidden 25% Crit Chance buff that can bring you to 100% in combination with other effects. Usually worth around 20-30% DPS when active.

Best use

Extremely strong Rift Guardian Killer passive

If you ever find yourself in a RGK role, use this passive. It works well for a lot of bosses and gives you a big damage boost when it's active.

Mechanics

20% multiplicative damage boost when no enemies are nearby. The best way to learn the 10 yards radius is to equip 4 pieces of the Unhallowed Essence set and watch your buff bar as you approach enemies, as the bonus has the same distance requirement. Typically, almost anything just a bit outside of melee range is fine.

Best use

Strong offensive choice for ranged builds

Very useful passive, especially for farming builds that also include Zei's Stone of Vengeance.

Mechanics

Short burst of speed after using the mentioned skills. The 60% Movement Speed stacks additively with any other source of MS.

Best use

Top-tier utility passive

Use this for anything that resembles speedfarming, such as Torment rifts, Bounties, low GRs. Can even be useful in pushing scenarios, as the extra mobility helps you dodge or gather enemies.

Mechanics

The slow is applied after the enemy was hit, so your first attack will not be buffed by effects that require Crowd Control on the enemy. This works with any skill that spends Hatred (even if they otherwise wouldn't, e.g. Fan of Knives Knives Expert) or would usually spend Hatred despite not doing so due (e.g. Sin Seekers, Kridershot, Spines of Seething Hatred).

Best use

Used only as a combo

This passive naturally always goes along with Cull the Weak and Bane of the Trapped. On its own, the slow is rather useless, but it's an enabler for powerful damage buffs.

• This skill launches a big grenade in an arc that flies over enemies and drops an additional 4 grenades along its path 0-18 yards away. The big grenade lands 32 yards away.
• The initial shot deals damage exactly like the smaller grenades.
• An enemy can be hit by multiple grenades if they are large enough, resulting in big monster types taking disproportionately more damage compared to others.

• Applying Entangling Shot to an enemy also entangles nearby targets that weren't hit.
• The application works even when the main target is already part of the chain (adding one at a time, three with Chain Gang).
• The visual effect of the debuff is not always properly displayed, but the effects are active as long as you see it on some enemies.
• If the debuff runs out, it disappears and has to be reapplied on all targets again.
• With multiple Odyssey's End in the group: only different runes allow the effect to stack.

• Due to The Ninth Cirri Satchel this skill pierces up to 4 times, but is not guaranteed to do so when no enemies are in its path.
• The maximum travel distance is 120 yards total or 90 yards distance from the starting point.
• The arrow periodically turns around and seeks out a new nearby target.
• The Devouring Arrow rune adds a 70% damage increase stacking additively with itself that is multiplicative to the base damage (First hit = 100%, second hit = 170%, third hit = 240%, fourth hit = 310%, fifth hit = 380%).
• Devouring Arrow momentarily Chills the enemy hit with no duration, applying the Numbing Traps debuff. This Chill happens after the damage and does not activate Cull the Weak or Bane of the Trapped.

• Fires grenades dealing 181.6667% weapon damage each.
• Has a maximum range of 50 yards.
• Has an Attack Speed Coefficient of 3.0. The highest possible breakpoint (4 Frames Per Attack) is achieved at 4.0001 sheet APS.
• Attack Speed is snapshotted at the start of the channel. Meaning that if you make a large pull giving you a lot of Pain Enhancer stacks and then start a 4 FPA Rapid Fire, it continues firing 15 grenades per second even if you reach 100% progression and all mobs despawn.

• With Embodiment of the Marauder equipped, Sentries fire a Hatred Spender when you do. Sentry typically shoots towards the closest enemy within line of sight, regardless of the distance.
• Sentry Damage on your items and Sentry Damage from the (4) Bonus are both their own separate damage multiplier for Sentries and Hatred Spenders they shoot.
• Hatred Spenders fired by Sentries can proc Area Damage, but they cannot proc other effects such as Life on Hit or Hellcat Waistguard.
• Hatred Spenders fired by Sentries benefit from Pet Damage like Enforcer.
• The damage multiplier from Zei's Stone of Vengeance depends on the distance between the player and the monster at the moment of impact, the position of the Sentry is irrelevant.

• Life per Kill from Bottomless Potion of Mutilation can be snapshot during its effect, as long as you don't use Shadow Power again without it. This increases your healing overall and is very useful, especially for pushing.
• This snapshot lasts permanently with The Shadow's Mantle equipped (same as all other effects besides the Slow from Night Bane).

• Fires two piercing shots (lasers) every time you perform an attack.
• This effect has 0.9s/APS internal cooldown.
• Each laser heals you for 3% max HP per enemy hit.
• With high Attack Speed thanks to Pain Enhancer and each of your lasers hitting about 10 enemies, you can restore upwards of 200% max HP per second.