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Demon Hunter Class Overview

Last Updated: January 6th 2024

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Introduction

Demon Hunters are on an eternal quest to bring every walking and crawling hellspawn to justice. They employ an array of ranged attacks, devices and incredible utility skills to outmaneuver and defeat their targets. They are the archer type class in the game and finish their job quickly and efficiently - alone, if necessary. For that, they use the unique dual-resource system of Hatred & Discipline, both of which have to be carefully managed to succeed. There are some core traits recurring in almost every DH build:

  1. They are always on the move, dodging incoming attacks with grace while positioning themselves to deal the most damage.
  2. Timing abilities while managing both resources and additional cooldowns for their most effective use.
  3. While it's a ranged class, it's easy to build it defensively and survive lots of incoming damage.

Demon Hunters are great to start a season (or the game) with and farm lower difficulties like T16 Nephalem Rifts and Bounties extremely quickly due to their amazing mobility. They excel on their own and have a lot of unique builds to choose from, especially for Greater Rift pushing. Most builds offer their own interesting play styles and strategies despite the heavy focus on ranged attacks. Overall, the class is a fairly balanced mid-tier choice.

They are always a welcomed addition in groups, especially because of their incredible support capabilities & the strongest offensive party buffs in the game.

Lore

Those who call themselves Demon Hunters are not a people or a nation. They owe allegiance to no king. They are but a remnant – an echo – of those who’ve lost their lives to hellspawn. When their homes are burnt and their families butchered by demons, most newly scarred refugees give up on living – but a few bury their dead, band together, and swear vengeance.

Though they are small in number, hunters track and corner demons in the hopes that, if they can save even one life, their world will be better for it. At the end of a day’s hunt, most still close their eyes and have nightmares in which they see the horrors that brought them together: gore-caked claws, and men and women drowning in their own blood.

Awake, Demon Hunters see much the same. But, now, in the present, they finally have the power to retaliate.

They dare not dream of victory, or, even less likely, peace. And yet, they hunt. They can do nothing else.

Read the full story of the Demon Hunter here

Resources

Primary - Maximum Hatred: 125

  • +25 from Paragon points
  • +30 from Blood Vengeance

Passive Regeneration: 5 per second

  • +5 from Vengeance Seethe
  • +4.5 from primary rolls on gear
  • +1 from Bat Companion
  • +1 from Archery
  • +1 from Inspire

Active Generation: 4 per attack with a Primary skill

  • +3 per attack from choosing the right rune
  • +4 per attack from Nightstalker
  • +30 with Preparation Punishment
  • +50 with Bat Companion
  • +6 from casting Rain of Vengeance

Additional Hatred sources:

  • Unhallowed Essence (2) Bonus
  • Marked for Death Mortal Enemy
  • Blood Vengeance
  • Krede's Flame
  • Karlei's Point
  • Spines of Seething Hatred
  • Kridershot

Secondary - Maximum Discipline: 30

  • +36 from secondary rolls on gear
  • +20 from Preparation Invigoration
  • +10 from Stone of Jordan

Passive Regeneration: 1 per second

  • +3 from Preparation Invigoration

Active Regeneration:

  • +0.3 per attack with Bolas Bitter Pill
  • +75 with Preparation
  • +1 per Primary fired with Unhallowed Essence

Additional Discipline sources:

  • Blood Vengeance
  • Perfectionist (10% RCR)

Demon Hunters have a unique dual-resource system, using both Hatred & Discipline to power their skills. Keeping an eye on both at the same time is often crucial to success.

Hatred is the primary resource, used for offensive skills and attacks. It regenerates passively over time and is refilled through Primary skills and other effects. This resource is also the one that effects such as Aquila Cuirass or Krede's Flame are based on.

Discipline is the secondary resource, used for movement and utility skills. It regenerates very slowly and has only few other sources of replenishment. Running low on Discipline means either a huge loss in speed or defense and usually leaves you in trouble during a fight. Preserving it as much as possible but spending it in the right moment is the key to survival!

Depending on the build and stat rolls Hatred & Discipline management might be easier or more difficult. Generally it's easy to solve any issues related to Hatred with effects such as Vengeance Seethe or Blood Vengeance while Discipline is something that always needs to be watched with closer attention. The main way of recovering it is waiting for the slow passive regeneration or using Preparation.

Equipment

Demon Hunters are specialized in ranged attacks and typically use only a small variety of ranged weapons. As a bonus not available to other classes, they can equip a Quiver in their offhand slot together with a two-handed ranged weapon. Apart from that they can wield any one-handed melee weapon (Daggers, Maces, Axes, Swords, Spears) and Shields (but rarely do so).

Bows & Crossbows

Bows & Crossbows

Bows and Crossbows are the bread and butter of Demon Hunters. Most builds use one of these for their powerful legendary affixes. While they can be equipped by other classes, they are mainly designed for the DH and provide the most bonuses to them. Despite being two-handed weapon types, both use the same damage range as regular one-handed melee weapons.

  • Secondary rolls
    • 9-12 Maximum Discipline (can only roll for DHs)

Hand-Crossbows

Hand-Crossbows

The Demon Hunter's unique weapons are Hand-Crossbows. They are very fast (1.6 base APS) and can be either dual-wielded or used with a Quiver. Combining melee and ranged weapons is impossible. Hand-Crossbows use the same reduced damage range rolls as Daggers.

  • Primary rolls
    • 1.35-1.5 Hatred per Second
  • Secondary rolls
    • 9-12 Maximum Discipline

Quivers

Quivers

Quivers are Demon Hunter-specific offhand items that cannot be equipped by other classes and work with any of the above ranged weapons. For builds that have the option to include all of their necessary legendary affixes either dual-wielding or running with a Hand-Crossbow + Quiver, the choice is typically close enough to favor the better-rolled items.

  • Primary rolls
    • 15-20% Attack Speed (cannot be removed)
    • 1.35-1.5 Hatred per Second
    • 10-15% Damage to any Demon Hunter skill
  • Secondary rolls
    • 9-12 Maximum Discipline

Cloaks

Cloaks

Demon Hunters have access to a special body armor type called Cloaks. Some sets use a Cloak instead of a regular Chest piece.

  • Primary rolls
    • +1.35-1.5 Hatred per Second
  • Secondary Rolls
    • +9-12 Maximum Discipline

Sets and Builds

Embodiment of the Marauder
The Shadow's Mantle
Unhallowed Essence
Natalya's Vengeance
Gears of Dreadlands
No Six Piece Set

Embodiment of the Marauder

  • (2) Bonus gives you a total of 7 pets. When combined with Zoey's Secret you gain 63% damage reduction. After adding The Cloak of Garwulf to this combo the damage reduction goes up to 81% for a toughness increase of 94.7% (with perfect rolls).
  • (4) Bonus makes each Sentry fire certain hatred Spenders when you do, as well as automatically around once a second. The skills fired by your Sentries benefit from all the skill and generic damage multipliers, Sentry Damage on gear, and Enforcer. There is one exception to this rule: The Shadow's Mantle (2) Bonus does not increase their damage. It is possible to combine the Embodiment of the Marauder (4) Bonus with the Natalya's Vengeance (6) Bonus (the so-called N6M4 builds), but those generally turn out weaker than a full Marauder setup.
  • (6) Bonus is a massive damage buff to both your and Sentry damage. It also buffs Vengeance and Companion, but their contribution to the overall damage done is next to zero. Most of the damage comes from Hatred spenders fired by Sentry, so their positioning is crucial to success.
  • The attacks fired by Sentry proc Area Damage as normal but have no proc coefficient.
  • Certain item effects that change the behavior of a skill (Hellcat Waistguard bounces, Holy Point Shot extra knives) don't work with Sentry attacks.

Embodiment of the Marauder is inherently a slow set, but works with many different skills. With the buffs in Season 25, both Cluster Arrow and Multishot have become strong alternatives and the Hungering Arrow playstyle lost a lot of its viability.

Also nicknamed M6, this build allows you to set up your wall of turrets to decimate your enemies using either a Cluster Arrow or Multishot setup. It's a slow-paced, very strategic build that requires careful placement of each Sentry. It makes up for that with massive damage, which is the highest the Demon Hunter class has to offer right now.

The Shadow's Mantle

  • (2) Bonus requires you to wield a melee weapon to function.
  • Melee weapons can't be combined with ranged weapons so that a combo between The Shadow's Mantle (2) Bonus and Natalya's Vengeance (6) Bonus is impossible.
  • Unlike most other set bonuses in the game the (6) Bonus adds Weapon Damage to the first hit of your Impale, so it's not a direct damage multiplier (instead the damage done is 750% + (6) Bonus value). This allows for either an AoE-focused playstyle using Impale Overpenetration that hits further targets for 1/3 of that value or a heavy single-target DPS setup using Chemical Burn which deals double damage, but only to one target at a time as the burn effect gains the same bonus as the hit. The other runes are generally not played.

The Shadow's Mantle carries the fantasy of a melee assassin, throwing knives to seek and eliminate the right target. With the set's rework in Season 25, different playstyles became available that enabled either mobile or stationary setups both with a single-target focus or AoE focus, depending on the chosen Impale rune.

Shadow Impale - Beginner Friendly

This is the only Demon Hunter set that uses melee weapons. Karlei's Point and Holy Point Shot allow you to play a knife-throwing assassin that either focuses on one target at a time with Impale Chemical Burn or massive AoE with Impale Overpenetration.

Unhallowed Essence

  • (2) Bonus gives you additional resources when using a Generator (includes Elemental Arrow with Kridershot and Chakram with Spines of Seething Hatred).
  • (4) Bonus is a separate 1.6 multiplier and stacks multiplicatively with the 6-piece bonus. The timer resets regularly multiple times a second when at least 10 yards away from any enemy. This is a great way to learn how to play with Steady Aim as this passive has no UI indicator but the same requirement.
  • (6) Bonus increases Multishot damage 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).

Unhallowed Essence gives incredible buffs to Primary skills and Multishot depending on your current amount of Discipline, making this a very valuable stat to stack. Since there are no other mechanics in its builds, they are very straightforward to play and very mobile.

UE Multishot - Beginner Friendly

This is the signature Demon Hunter build of all time. Yang's Recurve, Dead Man's Legacy and a great combination of AoE and single target damage make it an agile, fast-paced and super fun ranger build that excels especially at farming lower difficulties. Easy to play and hard to master.

This build is a no-Strafe variant for Hungering Arrow, using Hunter's Wrath and The Ninth Cirri Satchel alongside some other bonuses to boost damage. It's essentially a slightly weaker, more clunky version of the typical Gears of Dreadlands builds.

Natalya's Vengeance

  • Natalya's Vengeance (2) Bonus removes all costs and cooldowns for Spike Trap, increases its damage by 100% when combined with Caltrops and refills Discipline rapidly all the time.
    • The 100% damage bonus can be triggered by other Demon Hunter's Caltrops.
    • The Discipline recovery happens unconditionally at the time of each detonation.
  • Natalya's Vengeance (4) Bonus allows Caltrops to pull in enemies when hit by Spike Trap and provides 75% damage reduction. Holding down Spike Traps continuously resets and increases the timer of the damage reduction buff up to a maximum of 10 seconds.
    • The pulling effect only works on unsprung Caltrops, so they have to be placed at the same time as you trigger your Spike Traps if there are enemies in the area.
    • Too long chain reactions detonate with too much delay which prevents the later Spike Trap explosions from pulling in enemies. The optimal way to pull enemies together is detonating small chains with 2-4 Spike Traps while setting up new Caltrops.
    • The pulling effect pixelstacks enemies (ignores their collision boxes) and has around 50-60 yards range (roughly the distance from the center to the edge of the screen to the left or right).
    • This pulling effect does not work for the Lightning Rod rune.
  • Natalya's Vengeance (6) Bonus provides a 10,000% damage bonus to Spike Trap and increases their damage by 25% for consecutive explosions of the same chain reaction.
    • The consecutive bonus is multiplicative with all other bonuses but additive with itself.
    • This bonus can stack up to 9 x 25% = 225% bonus for the final tick of the chain reaction, raising the average damage of all Spike Traps in a full chain reaction by 112.5%.
    • This stacking damage effect does not work for the Lightning Rod rune.

Natalya's Vengeance has been reworked in Season 28 to move away from a weak, generic set towards a new unique trap-based playstyle revolving around Spike Trap and Caltrops.

This build is all about toying with your enemies, good positioning and timing to maximize your damage output. It's relatively slow-paced but powerful with satisfying damage bursts. Core items include Chanon Bolter, The Demon's Demise and Trag'Oul Coils that combine various extra effects and damage bonuses.

Gears of Dreadlands

  • (2) Bonus provides a Momentum buff lasting 4 seconds on using a Primary skill. 5 successive casts provides the maximum bonus (20 seconds). Each stack/second left adds a 10% multiplicative damage for your Primary skills. There are some bugs that sometimes prevent you from getting a Momentum stack just cast it again. Additionally, there' a 5 second delay after the last application before the buff timer starts counting down.
  • (4) Bonus also adds up to 160% Movement Speed and 60% damage reduction. Strafe fires your last used Primary skill when it hits an enemy. This effect can occur once every 9 frames (game runs at 60 FPS, max. 6.67 procs/s). Rockets from Rocket Storm can proc it when the cooldown is ready (using that rune can increase your DPS by a small amount). The ground effect from Icy Trail can not. Projectiles generated from the set gain full effects of Hatred generation, Area Damage and proc coefficients.
  • (6) Bonus buffs your Primary skills but not Strafe so trying to deal damage with that skill is futile.

Gears of Dreadlands doesn't push extremely high but is a powerhouse of a farmer and one of the most well-rounded builds in the game. While theoretically other Primary skills can be used with it, the main build revolves around Hungering Arrow because it has the best legendary item support.

GoD Hungering Arrow - Beginner friendly

This build is extremely mobile through its massive Movement Speed bonus during Strafe and uses automatically generated Hungering Arrow projectiles to destroy everything around. It's very easy to play but offers many small gameplay tricks for advanced Demon Hunter enthusiasts to learn and distinguish themselves. The core damage boosts are Hunter's Wrath, The Ninth Cirri Satchel and Depth Diggers.

Legacy of Dreams/Legacy of Nightmares

For skills which don't have a dedicated Set, there's always an option of making a build around the Legacy of Dreams gem (or Legacy of Nightmares set), which provide a 97.5x damage multiplier with 13 Ancient items. Demon Hunters have fairly strong sets so generally these setups are outclassed by other choices.

While theoretically it's possible to play anything with these setups, the only really important build is Rapid Fire, which is used to get on the No-Set Leaderboard.

Support Demon Hunter is one of the best zDPS classes in the game due to its incredible damage buffs and a welcome addition to any group.

This build is the absolute opposite of what a Demon Hunter is about: you have to stand still, face-tank everything and not let go of Rapid Fire until everything around you has died because it heavily relies on Pain Enhancer to snapshot high Attack Speed values. Wojahnni Assaulter, Sin Seekers and Hellcat Waistguard boost this channeling-based setup.

Support DH - Beginner Friendly

This is the strongest damage-boosting support character in the game, in large parts thanks to Odyssey's End and various other buffs like Multishot Wind Chill and Companion Wolf Companion. There are many variations but the typical setup is very easy to play as it includes the Gears of Dreadlands (4) Bonus allowing great mobility with Strafe while supporting.

Legendaries

Apart from their class sets, Demon Hunters have 54 unique Legendary items, most of which provide various bonuses to skills. There are some more that have no effect at all.

Bows

  • Cluckeye
  • Etrayu
  • Kridershot
  • Leonine Bow of Hashir
  • Odyssey's End
  • The Raven's Wing
  • Uskang
  • Windforce
  • Yang's Recurve

Crossbows

  • Bakkan Caster
  • Buriza Do-Kyanon
  • Chanon Bolter
  • Demon Machine
  • Hellrack
  • Manticore
  • Pus Spitter
  • Wojahnni Assaulter

Bracers

  • Wraps of Clarity

Quivers

  • Augustine's Panacea
  • Bombardier's Rucksack
  • Dead Man's Legacy
  • Emimei's Duffel
  • Fletcher's Pride
  • Holy Point Shot
  • The Ninth Cirri Satchel
  • Sin Seekers
  • Spines of Seething Hatred

Hand-Crossbows

  • Balefire Caster
  • Calamity
  • Dawn
  • The Demon's Demise
  • Fortress Ballista
  • Helltrapper
  • K'mar Tenclip
  • Lianna's Wings
  • Valla's Bequest
  • Danetta's Revenge
  • Danetta's Spite

Rings

  • Elusive Ring

Daggers & Swords

  • Karlei's Point
  • Lord Greenstone's Fan
  • Sword of Ill Will

Cloaks

  • Beckon Sail
  • Blackfeather
  • The Cape of the Dark Night
  • Cloak of Deception
  • The Cloak of Garwulf

Belts

  • Chain of Shadows
  • Crashing Rain
  • Hellcat Waistguard
  • Hunter's Wrath
  • Omryn's Chain
  • Zoey's Secret

Helmets

  • Visage of Gunes

Below are listed select few items that have mechanics which aren't immediately obvious from their description.

Buriza-Do Kyanon

Calamity

Chanon Bolter

Dead Man's Legacy

Fortress Ballista

Hellcat Waistguard

Karlei's Point

Odyssey's End

The Demon's Demise

Trag'Oul Coils

Valla's Bequest

Wojahnni Assaulter

Passives

The Demon Hunter has a great variety of both strong overall and impactful situational passives. Only very few of them are terrible and essentially never used, especially Brooding and Night Stalker. Below you will find more details for each of them.

Ambush

Archery

Awareness

Ballistics

Blood Vengeance

Brooding

Cull the Weak

Custom Engineering

Grenadier

Hot Pursuit

Leech

Night Stalker

Numbing Traps

Perfectionist

Sharpshooter

Single Out

Steady Aim

Tactical Advantage

Thrill of the Hunt

Skills

Primary Skills

Hungering Arrow

Entangling Shot

Bolas

Evasive Fire

Grenade

Most of the time, the main reason for using a Primary skill is to activate legendary effects such as Bastions of Will and Wraps of Clarity. In cases where no specific Primary is required for any other purpose, Evasive Fire Focus is the way to go due to its simplicity. There are also some generator DPS builds focusing on Hungering Arrow Devouring Arrow or Bolas Imminent Doom as their main source of damage, and support builds or variants including Entangling Shot for the Odyssey's End effect. Most other skills and runes see little use. Unlike other classes' Primary skills, all of these generate Hatred even when no enemy gets hit, so they can be used together with "Force Stand Still" to shoot into nowhere.

Hatred Spenders and Damage Skills

Impale

Rapid Fire

Chakram

Elemental Arrow

Fan of Knives

Multishot

Cluster Arrow

Chakram and Elemental Arrow are lacking legendary item support and while you can make a build around them, they will be very weak.
Multishot is both a great AoE damage ability and used by supports with Wind Chill.
Cluster Arrow allows massive nuke damage at a high resource cost.
Fan of Knives with Pinpoint Accuracy has a special playstyle that releases a single big explosion once every 32 seconds.
Impale and Rapid Fire each have their own distinct builds but usually revolve around standing still and tanking monsters.

Core Defensive and Mobility Skills

Demon Hunters fuel their defenses and utility with Discipline. Being resourceful with this valuable resource is crucial for efficiency and survival. To tap into this potential, almost every single Demon Hunter build in the game uses one out of these two:

  • Smoke Screen
  • Vault

Generally, channeling builds (Rapid Fire, Strafe) use Smoke Screen while most regular attack builds go with Vault. Staying mobile and dodging incoming attacks is how you play a Demon Hunter the right way. While Smoke Screen outright makes you invincible for its duration, Vault also provides a short immunity period during its animation, allowing skillful maneuvers to prevent incoming damage.

There is also one important way to recover Discipline besides the passive generation:

  • Preparation (usually Focused Mind or Invigoration)

Including this ability into a build allows more uses of Discipline skills to enhance mobility and survivability. This way, both Resource Cost Reduction and Cooldown Reduction become valuable stats for many Demon Hunter builds to scale their usability. Another way to increase Discipline generation is Blood Vengeance.

Utility Skills and Buffs

The remaining skills on Demon Hunter are either buffs for yourself or party members, debuffs you can apply to your enemies or trigger various effects to deal damage.

  • Companion is frequently included for resources (Bat Companion), defensive bonuses (Boar Companion) or a damage buff (Wolf Companion). When playing with Embodiment of the Marauder, you get them all and more!
  • Shadow Power is used for its defensive (Gloom) or speed bonuses (Shadow Glide) or part of the core setup when playing with The Shadow's Mantle.
  • Marked for Death Contagion or Valley of Death is typically used by supports.
  • Caltrops don't have much of a purpose outside of very niche cases in the early game and rarely as a damage buff with Bait the Trap.
  • Sentry is the centerpiece of any Embodiment of the Marauder-based setup. They are required to activate set bonuses and fire your Hatred Spenders. With Guardian Turret they also see use in Support DH builds.
  • Strafe is most prominently used in GoD DH and Natalya FoK builds but doesn't deal significant damage by itself. Instead, it provides mobility, buffs and triggers set bonuses.
  • Rain of Vengeance is used mainly to activate the Natalya's Vengeance set bonus. While it's possible to make DPS setups around it, they are generally very weak due to lacking legendary item support.
  • Spike Trap is technically not a utility skill but has no reason to be included in any build due to lacking legendary item support. The only situation where it makes sense to deal damage with it is on the journey from 1 to 70 when no buffs to other skills are available.

Ultimate Ability

Demon Hunters have one prominent long cooldown self-buff ability that sees use in almost every single build:

  • Vengeance

It provides crowd-control immunity, a 40% multiplicative damage increase and is usually combined with Dawn to achieve permanent uptime together with 37% Cooldown Reduction on a perfect affix roll. Two runes in particular stand out as the most common choices:

  • Seethe - Adds 10 Hatred per Second
  • Dark Heart - Adds 50% Damage Reduction

Other runes see little play but Side Cannons has a niche for being one of the most powerful life recovery effects in the game, especially for tanky builds such as Rapid Fire. From the Shadows can be used to immediately freeze enemies when engaging them.

Below are listed select few build-relevant skills with their mechanics explained in detail.

Cluster Arrow Cluster Bombs

Entangling Shot

Hungering Arrow Devouring Arrow

Rapid Fire Bombardment

Sentry

Shadow Power

Vengeance Side Cannons

Summary

I hope you enjoyed this Demon Hunter class overview! Since the release of the game in May 2012 it has been by far my favorite and most played class. No one can confront hordes of demons in style like us! Its great mobility and flow of combat makes the class feel agile and super fun. With their easy to play, hard to master builds, the class is equally suited for beginners and veterans. (Just avoid anything with Rapid Fire if you want to enjoy yourself!)

Credits

Written by wudijo
Contributions by Northwar
Review by Northwar & Raxxanterax

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