Disclaimer: This guide is the Season 27 Guide for the Natalya Fan of Knives 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
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The combo between Fan of Knives and Lord Greenstone's Fan offers a unique playstyle with long setup times culminating in a big nuke. Played especially back in Seasons 5 to 8, it has been one of the longest running META builds for the class so far (although using the Legacy of Nightmares Rings back then). While it is still possible to use such a variation, the introduction of various items (Captain Crimson's Trimmings and Squirt's Necklace) along with buffs to the Natalya's Vengeance set has slowly lifted this build up over time. These days, it has fallen out of favor and is far behind the top dogs but it is still a build that can reach into the higher Greater Rift Tiers if optimized and played correctly.
Due to the nature of the slow-paced gameplay and the strong arsenal of speedfarming options available to the class, Fan of Knives is primarily a pushing build and doesn't really fit into any other scenario.
With some tweaks it can be changed to also work in Nephalem or low Greater Rifts, but it's losing a big part of its otherwise huge strength that lies in preparing large pulls for phenomenal Area Damage value and the unique trait of gaining the full 200% benefit from Convention of Elements for almost all of its damage done without making concessions for it. Because of this, it is not competitive with builds like Impale, Multishot or GoD for farming, but can still be used in Nephalem Rifts with close to similar success and a bit lower in Greater Rifts.
In addition to this, the build also offers a Shi Mizu's Haori variation as the best possible setup, only due to the shielding mechanics available to Demon Hunters through Fortress Ballista (see Mechanics). By living on the edge and playing around never taking any damage while at low life, you can improve your damage tremendously while gaining 100% consistency in your damage output. If you are looking for a challenge without worrying about your ranking on the leaderboards, this could be the build for you.
High Skill Ceiling ✔
Satisfying Big Nukes ✔
Very Unique Playstyle ✔
Huge Area Damage Value ✔
❌ Long Setup Time
❌ Not Beginner Friendly
❌ One Shot One Opportunity
❌ Low Single Target Damage
Core Setup
Items
- Natalya's Vengeance provides a 14000% damage increase and 60% damage reduction after using Rain of Vengeance. This skill is used both as an activator for the set bonuses and to soften up enemies before your big nuke.
- Lord Greenstone's Fan is the core of the build, increasing the damage done by your next Fan of Knives Pinpoint Accuracy by 400% every second, stacking up to 30 times (for a maximum of 12000%).
- Convention of Elements provides a 200% damage increase for almost all of your damage done with correct timing. When using Rain of Vengeance Anathema, you will actually use both the Fire and the Lightning cycles to deal damage at different times.
- As this is a channeling build revolving around Strafe, Taeguk is a great fit and always used, giving up to 80% additive damage bonus and 20% Armor.
- Mantle of Channeling synergizes well and adds 25% Damage and Toughness for free while using Strafe.
- Dawn will be used to ensure permanent Vengeance Dark Heart uptime with the right Cooldown Reduction rolls, giving 40% multiplicative damage increase and 50% damage reduction at all times.
Global Stat Priorities
Stack the typical damage stats such as Critical Hit Chance, Critical Hit Damage and Lightning Damage on every piece possible. Despite some setups using a Fire skill with Rain of Vengeance Anathema, it's still better to fully optimize for Fan of Knives Pinpoint Accuracy, but Dexterity over Lightning Damage on the Amulet is still a solid option (more than on other builds). Next you want to add Fan of Knives damage rolls to your Cloak and Shoulder slots. Other item rolls go to Area Damage (for Greater Rifts) or extra Cooldown Reduction (especially in Nephalem Rifts), Damage Range (Rings) and Defense whenever you can fit it in.
Resource Cost Reduction or Elite Damage can be used on Off-Hand or Shoulders. Due to the special behavior of Cooldown-based skills (Rain of Vengeance and Fan of Knives) that scale only off your Main-Hand, you do not require a Damage Range on your Off-Hand Weapon, so it can be used as a Stats Stick.
Since we rely on shields for Squirt's Necklace (and potentially Shi Mizu's Haori, you won't need any recovery stats such as Life Regeneration or Life per Hit, as you strive to either be permanently at full or low HP. Instead, you can stack Vitality to raise your Toughness until you reach a sweet spot as we take advantage of Fortress Ballista to generate Shields based on our HP pool. This means Vitality and Life % are very important as they double dip into Shields. This is the reason why you want to aim for a decent HP pool in Greater Rift Solo Push.
As with most other Demon Hunter builds, you are aiming for permanent Vengeance uptime by using Dawn and some Cooldown Reduction rolls. With a perfect 65% Dawn, you will need 37% Cooldown Reduction, which can be achieved by 10% Paragon, 12.5% Flawless Royal Diamond in Helm and 3 Cooldown Reduction rolls on your items. Alternatively, when using Captain Crimson's Trimmings, you can skip all rolls on your gear and just go with Paragons + Diamond.
Assembling the Build
Item Stat Priorities
Gems
Skills
Passives
Paragon Points
Follower
Gameplay
Hardcore
Variants
Concept
In Torment 16 we want to go fast. This difficulty is low enough to deal damage with Rain of Vengeance, which will be used to kill most trash monsters, while Fan of Knives will mostly be used on Elites. This build is based on Physical damage, which you want to roll on your Bracers and Amulet instead of Lightning now. Captain Crimson's Trimmings adds additional useful stats with 20% Cooldown and Resource Cost Reduction and increases to Damage and Toughness based on them. Ring of Royal Grandeur is required to allow combining the two sets. Stacking more Cooldown and Resource Cost Reduction helps to smooth out the gameplay; Area Damage is not very useful here.
Gameplay
Same as in pushing, keep up all your buffs and move around quickly. With Rain of Vengeance Dark Cloud you can kill smaller enemies quickly as you pass them, then find big packs or Elites to blow them up with Fan of Knives. The Rain lasts 8 seconds and can be stacked up to 5 times, so try to cast it once every 1.5 to 2 seconds and focus less on Evasive Fire.
Setups
If you feel tanky enough, you can remove Goldwrap from the Cube and use Harrington Waistguard instead. When you're over-killing enemies by a lot, Archery could be replaced with Hot Pursuit. If you struggle with Hatred regeneration, change your Vengeance rune to Seethe. Once you have acquired high level legendary gems, you could also swap Bane of the Powerful to Pain Enhancer, which can kill small and medium-sized trash on its own after just touching them with any crit.
Additionally, Natalya's Vengeance has the ability to pair with Cain's Destiny and keep all bonuses active. You can do so by swapping Pants, Boots and one weapon to Natalya pieces instead after you have spawned the Rift Guardian. This allows you to get 25% extra Greater Rift Keystones when farming Nephalem Rifts. You won't need to do this when you are alone since your Follower can Emanate Cain's Destiny to you but this is an easy way to keep those Keys coming while farming in groups without losing our damage the entire Rift.
Concept
Due to the slow-paced nature of the build, it is not really suitable to be used in speedfarming to great success without giving up a lot of damage.
Gameplay
Same as in regular pushing: Keep up all your buffs from Vengeance, Rain of Vengeance and Strafe. Keep up your Hatred with Evasive Fire and pull enemies together from all sides while waiting for your Convention of Elements Lightning cycle to come around. Other than that, use Rain of Vengeance Anathema as much as possible to nuke down small and medium trash and spawn Oculus Rings.
Setups
For better survival, consider adding Wraps of Clarity in the cube. For even more toughness, you can add the Perfectionist, Numbing Traps or Awareness passives. For lower Tiers, use Bane of the Powerful instead of Bane of the Stricken.
Concept
This is the setup described in the Core & Gameplay sections of the guide. We want to make large pulls and nuke them down with one big shot of Fan of Knives Pinpoint Accuracy if possible, while keeping up our constant barrage of Rain of Vengeance Anathema to soften them up and potentially spawn an Oculus Ring.
Gameplay
Keep up all your buffs from Vengeance, Rain of Vengeance and Strafe. Keep up your Hatred with Evasive Fire and pull enemies together from all sides while waiting for your Convention of Elements Lightning cycle to come around. Preferably nuke once every two cycles to maximize Area Damage and Ambush value, unless you can be sure to destroy most of the pull even earlier. Try to use your Fire cycles to deal massive AoE damage with Rain of Vengeance Anathema and spawn Oculus Rings you can jump into for your Fan of Knives.
Setups
For better survival, consider adding Aquila Cuirass in the cube, but it will make Hatred management a bit more difficult. Another option without the resource trouble is Stone Gauntlets, which might however not be at full capacity after you haven't taken damage for a while. For even more toughness, you can add the Perfectionist, Numbing Traps or Awareness passives.
Concept
This setup is much harder to play than the regular, but gives you another 3-4 potential Greater Rift Tiers in raw damage from permanent 100% Crit Chance using Shi Mizu's Haori. In order to achieve this, Fortress Ballista is used to never take any damage. Like this, we can roll off all our Critcial Hit Chance on gear in favor of other stats. Captain Crimson's Trimmings adds 20% Cooldown and Resource Cost Reduction and increases to Damage and Toughness based on them. Due to that, we can roll off some of the Cooldown Reduction from our items. Ring of Royal Grandeur is required to allow combining the two sets. Since we rely on shields for the Crit bonus, Squirt’s Necklace becomes a great synergy, effectively doubling your damage as long as you don’t take damage.
Gameplay
Same as the regular setup, but now we play around Shi Mizu's Haori and try to stay at low life at all times. In order to do so, you have to let enemies break your shield on purpose and get to low health, preferably very close to dying as possible, as you have at least 6000 Life Regen from Captain Crimson's Trimmings that will slowly heal you up over time. After releasing a nuke, try to collect all Health Globes in the area so you won't accidentally collect them later, then immediately work on getting to low HP without dying afterwards. You can fine-tune your incoming damage with positioning, stopping to Strafe or even attacking altogether. Depending on your Fortress Ballista stacks and the incoming damage this can be a bit tricky and require some experience to fully understand all the incoming damage. Make sure you don't go into low HP range too short before a nuke as you also need to give Squirt's Necklace a whole 12 seconds to recover to its maximum potential. Lastly, make sure to never activate a Shield Pylon for obvious reasons and be wary of Paragon level ups, as they will heal you to full HP.
Setups
I don't recommend to change anything on this setup. If you have trouble staying alive/at low HP, add more Vitality from Paragons. Having the updated Enchantress by your side will help a lot, providing a decent damage boost, The Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers and another Cheat Death. Again you need to avoid using the Templar's first 2 skills if you pick him for this build as you need to be able to manage your Recovery due to Shi Mizu's Haori.
Video Guide
Check out a gameplay video of this build here:
Mechanics
Fortress Ballista
Hellcat Waistguard
Summary
- Keep up your buffs from Vengeance, Rain of Vengeance and use Strafe at all times.
- Weave in Evasive Fire around once per second to keep your Hatred up.
- Try to kill small enemies with Rain of Vengeance to save your big nuke for later and spawn Oculus Rings.
- Use Smoke Screen to move, survive and potentially keep up shields provided by Fortress Ballista.
- Gather large pulls and blow them up with Fan of Knives Pinpoint Accuracy when your Convention of Elements cycle turns to Lightning.
- Kite leftover enemies to the next pull or move on without them when it's not worth to do so.
I hope you enjoyed this guide! Although part of a quite slow-paced build, Fan of Knives is a very satisfying ability to use after preparing the right setup and provides a great challenge for solo players looking to try one of the most difficult and sophisticated setups in the entire game with the unique Shi Mizu's Haori variant.
Good luck!
Credits
Written & Updated by wudijo.
Contributions by Northwar.