So to start, Demon hunter is probably one of the most fun to play, but horrendously under powered characters in the game, and the balancing act that applies to other characters doesn’t really apply to demon hunters. the reason i’ve been able to single out for this is simple: it’s quivers faults. unlike other off hands, Quivers can be used with any weapon combination, such that a two handed weapon can’t be allowed to roll higher damage to compensate for the lack of off hand, but still doesn’t exclude the demon hunter from dual wielding for the extra crit damage gem… a change may need to be made to this system, but for the time being, i believe this basic mechanic is why demon hunters manage to consistently be at the bottom of the pile while simultaneously boasting some of the largest set bonuses in the game. that said, lets move on to the set breakdown, as this game very thoroughly revolves around sets to do practically anything.
Natalya’s: This set is the unfortunate red headed step child that has to inform every other set design for the entire class. due to it’s inclusion of not one, but two off pieces in the form of a ring and weapon, it can be hybridized in to practically every build such that the other sets have to avoid putting anything useful on their two or four set bonuses so as not to anger the wrath of natalya. the encumbrance presented by it’s versatility aside, Nat’s suffers from an unfortunate lack of directional focus, as rain of vengeance doesn’t have enough support to be relevant, and outside of providing a marginally more powerful alternative to a couple of LoD builds, there’s not really something that Nats is “good” at.
Unhallowed essence: Mechanically, this set is technically sound. personally? i hate it. the main reason is the min maxing relying on squeezing every single point of discipline into this build as possible, also i feel there’s a bit of conflict of interest with the newer GoD set in terms of buffing primary skills, but if we’re being honest with ourselves, this set wasn’t really meant for primaries…
Shadow: ah yes, the set that asked the question: what if our multiplier was a really really really big number? while it served it’s niche as a boss hunter for a hot second, shadows has entered that weird realm of balancing where it can’t be made more powerful for what it does without becoming the only viable option at what it does, and thus we are left with the grand decision “do we use the set that kills bosses in 20 seconds, or the set that kills everything in the room in 25 seconds?”
GoD: you probably thought i’d mention this one last, since it’s the most new, but i have a lot to say about marauders… my beef with this set is more in terms of theme rather than execution, since i’ve always enjoyed the idea of a strafe build, and even spent several seasons gearing up either a LoD or post buff nats build for strafe farming, as going BRRR through a rift and everything dying is fun to me, although i acknowledged then, and even more so now that strafe was never meant to push… until GoD, but even then it’s less strafe thats doing the pushing and more primaries, but you do you set… probably the most fun of the 5 new sets to play.
Marauders… it is time…: This set was and has been by far my favorite set for demon hunters since the beginning of reaper of souls, however that doesn’t stop it from having some pretty glaring and at some points in time hilarious weaknesses. in case you didn’t know (or don’t remember) the original version of marauders was: you place your turrets, they do the work, you move on to the next pack. blizzard decided that this wasn’t interactive enough, so they made it to where the turrets only do work when you do work, and the set really hasn’t been changed since then aside from multiplier tuning to adjust for power creep. this leads us to the modern day issue in that, the set’s simply just out of date.
the 2 set: you get all of the companions, NEAT! but what do they do? the answer is nothing, as there is no support for companions and only one belt to give a fairly negligible amount of damage reduction by modern standards (i’m looking at you wizards with your 3 stack-able 80%'s) so the 2 set is mostly there to look pretty and give you a reason to use companion of your bar for the slew of on demand cooldowns that themselves have decent utility.
the 4 set: your turrets cast your nonsense when you do, and deal a little bit more damage. this set bonus is problematic. originally it was designed to be the main feature of the build, but then they moved it to the 4 set and suddenly natalya’s rage kicked in and forced it to become worthless. follow up, the turrets don’t benefit from legendary affixes, so not only do they hit with wet noodles (even with nat’s 6 bonus) the quirky effects added by deadmans and holy point shot don’t even apply, which is unfortunate, but not as unfortunate as what the 6 set does.
the 6 set: Your nonsense that would get cast by your turrets (and also primary skills for some reason) deal (insert large number) more damage for each active turret (which naturally caps at 60,000%, as 5 turrets is the current maximum possible) the problem with this set bonus is that it makes your turrets pointless. sure they cast your nonsense, but they don’t get the 60,000% bonus, so they’re just an extra wet noodle to clump up your screen and make the battlefield less and less readable. also there’s no functional reason why this set should buff primaries, but it does (and technically more than unhallowed essence, too) furthermore, most of the skills that it does launch out of your turrets themselves don’t have any significant support items like elemental arrow and chakram, and while it also fires out impale, multishot, and cluster arrow (the latter being the only thing this set is equipped for anymore), because the sentries don’t deal damage, and there are other sets which give equal or greater buffs to those specific abilities, there simply isn’t a point to using them.
Please rework the marauders set, it deserves better than what it’s getting.