How to play demon hunter?

Demon Hunter
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Being a barbarian main and wanting to try something different, I thought I’d give Demon Hunter a try for hardcore mode, and couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. I felt that by and large (at least from 1-70) that my attacks either weren’t doing enough damage or hitting enough targets, and that anything that could clear a room had either an overlong CD time or used too much hatred. Most of my damage was done through Bolas/Sentries/Multishot which could either clear a room instantly or do almost nothing to the enemies. I guess what I’m trying to ask is that if I try this again for S27, can you recommend something starting out?

On a side note, I don’t understand strafe. Considering what a demon hunter is, wouldn’t diving headfirst into a mob be the last thing you want to do?

To clarify: Vault, Fan of Knives, Sentry, Vengeance, Bola, Multishot.

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https://d3.maxroll.gg/resources/season-start-1-70-leveling-guide

Whilst this is for an earlier season, this is an example…

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If you don’t want to watch the video, here’s some basic tips.

You want to craft a level 70 dagger and upgrade it in the cube when you get the cube. You’ll either get Karlei’s Point or Lord Greenstone’s Fan. For leveling, LGF is better but it you don’t get Fan of Knives until level 14, so that portion of the leveling process (level 1-14) will take a little bit of time. On the other hand, you can use Impale at Level 2 and so Karlei’s is usable from the get go and packs enough damage to get you to level 40-50 just slightly slower than LGF.

You also want to create a level 1 Witch Doctor and craft a level 70 bow with him/her. A few crafts should get you a bow with life per hit as a main stat and a cc effect as a secondary. Bows crafted by the Witchdoctor don’t roll with discipline so by re-rolling the other secondary you should get a level reduced affix pretty quickly.

Also at level 1, you want to gamble bracers until you get Wraps of Clarity, they’re a huge boost to defense once you can wear them allowing you to get in close if you occasionally fire a primary ability to let loose a Fan of Knives or Impale depending on which dagger you have in the cube. Once you get the bracers, keep the rest of your blood shards to gamble at level 36. If you run Rifts until that level you should be able to replace all of or most of the shards you spent to get the Wraps of Clarity.

At level 36, you want to gamble on quivers because you get the chance at a Ninth Cirri Satchel, Sin Seekers, Spines of Seething Hatred, Emmenei’s Duffel or Holy Point Shot, any of which will help in the leveling process.

Once you get to the level you’ve reduced the bow you crafted and rolled with Witchdoctor to, you’ll be doing plenty of damage to run Torment 4-6.

At levels when they become available you want to have Vault, Companion, Shadow Power or Smoke Screen, and Sentries on your bar. If you have problems with Hatred, Campanion Bat, and Preparation Punishment should be on your bar and should solve that problem.

Depending on your skill level, you should level pretty quickly with these tips, somewhere between an hour or 2.

Edit: Also, the Demon Hunter while leveling is really an elite hunter. You can kill trash when needed but you really want to try to get to elites and kill them mostly. Makes the rifts a bit quicker and so leveling is quicker.

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So going off of what you’re saying, DH work better in a group rather than soloplay?

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The DH is actually one of the fastest solo levelers in the game, but there’s a small caveat. It’s also one of the classes which requires the highest skill to pull off.

The DH has the slowest start of any class, because until 12, you’re single target. Bolas will do damage against other nearby enemies, but even those don’t come until 11. So, you have to ask yourself, how do you get to at least 11. One mistake people make is going after the cube. This is almost never a good strategy timewise. Get some levels for speed, and then go grab the cube.

  1. There’s the normal way of just killing monsters. This will take you roughly 25+ minutes. Mainly, because they don’t do damage. This works on consoles, and is HC & SC viable.

Expected Time Savings until 14 + Cube: 0

  1. There’s using HoA 1 blades on T6. This is potentially the fastest approach, as low as 4 minutes to get to 12. But it requires finding them first, which can be tricky. And then, you have to actually survive. Die too many times, and you need to restart. This approach does not work too well on consoles. Really, it’s a PC only strategy. And it’s SC only.

Expected Time Savings until 14 + Cube: Potentially 20 minutes

  1. There’s the Mira trick. Level yourself up to 5. Then run the campaign up through the point of killing Haedrig’s Wife. Don’t turn it in though. Set the difficulty to T6, and turn it in then. If you’re not 11+, set the difficulty back down, and repeat killing Haedrig’s Wife and turning the quest in on T6. This works on consoles & PC, and is SC & HC viable. It’s also super easy to pull off, and very consistent in terms of time.

Expected Time Savings until 14 + Cube: 5 minutes

  1. Snapshotting Eternal Woods.

Set the difficulty to Master/T1. Craft 2 Level 5 Hand Crossbows. Teleport to Ruins of Sescheron and go right into the Eternal Woods. Just run around opening the map. Don’t kill anything, to keep the monster level to 1. Once the entire map is opened up, blast away and get a huge massacre bonus. When you’re Level 5, equip the 2 hand crossbows.

On T1, drop @ 200 monsters.
On Master, drop @ 250 monsters.

That will get you to level 12.

While this sounds easy, it’s a somewhat different strategy, thus, many people make mistakes the first time around. And you need to be good with massacre bonuses. This is just a very simplistic overview, and there’s more to this strategy, but that would take a big write up.

This only works on the PC, but is SC & HC viable.

Expected Time Savings until 14 + Cube: 10 minutes

As far as leveling though, unless you’ve practiced, and it will require practice, playing in a group is a better approach than going solo. LGF can potentially get below an hour, but most people tend to be over 2 hours. And Karlei’s is even worse. It’s the same with doing HoA1 blades until 70.

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No. You can solo level with a DH. Leveling in a group is always faster but I play SSF every season and so solo leveling is what I do every season. BehindTimes is kind of right though, it takes some practice to get really good at it. But I think even a novice can get the hang of it relatively quickly.

The only problem with starting out with a DH is other classes have items with higher damage multipliers to make for the cube when starting out. Our advantage though is that there’s only 2 daggers so it’s a 50/50 shot at getting a LGF which is really fast or a Karlei’s Point which is a bit slower but decent for leveling with.

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To clarify my comment, I didn’t mean to say that you couldn’t solo with a demon hunter, but rather it seems to specialize in focusing on elites while others are more suited to deal with the mobs.

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If going for speed, you need to avoid elites like the plague. This puts you into one of three situations:

  1. Karlei’s Point - You need the Overpenetration Rune. This though will require lining up tons of enemies.

  2. Lord Greenstone’s Fan - This actually works well for killing stuff, but requires grouping up lots of enemies due to a cooldown.

  3. Chakram - This is your best friend leveling up for just random monster killing.

All of this leads to running Temple of the Firstborn, regardless of the above, as there are tons of little monsters. It’s not the best experience, but it’s quick and easy massacre bonuses.

And yes, for the leveling process, you will be weaker than practically most other classes. Different classes require different strategies for speed leveling.

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It depends on what items you wind up with while leveling really. Early on, you can kill whites and elites. Things can pick up once you get your quiver at Level 36. That’s were you’ll be deciding whether going for elites or massacre bonus is going to work for you.

I do have a question though, are you looking for advice on speed leveling or just looking for ease of leveling?

I’m not a “speed leveler”, so I can’t really help you much there and BehindTimes will have better advice. But if you’re looking for leveling advice about how to get to 70 with DH with the greatest ease and in a reasonable time frame, then my advice is going to get you there within about 2 hours.

But BehindTimes will get you there quicker and be able to give you locations and strategies. I’m not that guy. I just run regular rifts with the set up I mentioned earlier.

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At this point, not even leveling, but rather just a build that feels comfortable once I hit 70. Like I said, my big problem with the class is that it feels like I’m having trouble clearing mobs, and that most of the primary skills aren’t very good. I had the most success with bolas (nice AOE, but the problem is the 1-2 second detonation time just seems to slow me down). I feel that right now, how effective I am largely depends on if vengeance is on CD or not.

For context, right now I’m playing T1.

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The easiest approach here is to run 2 normal rifts & get Greater Rift keys. Then run 2 Greater Rifts, and you will get a Legacy of Dreams gem. Provided you have no set bonuses, this should grant you a significant increase in power.

The issue with the Demon Hunter, is that most of the sets (excluding Shadow) are pretty terrible until you get your 6 piece, as they don’t really provide any significant offense, compared to other classes. LoD though is a way to offset this fault in the early stages.

To expand upon this, almost the entirety of the Demon Hunter offense comes from two areas:

6 piece Set Bonus
Weapon Bonus

Almost all of the armor (i.e. the cheap gambles) are defense oriented. Even the quivers are really just complementary to the weapons. That is, they’ll increase power a little, but you still need the weapon to see any true benefit.

This is unlike any other class. The other classes all get a cheap gamble upgrade in terms of armor that can skyrocket their DPS. And nearly all of them can be acquired very cheaply (i.e. <500 blood shards). That’s just not true with the Demon Hunter. And half the classes, those cheap upgrades give nearly constant DPS increases, whereas with the DH, your weapon upgrades drain your Hatred really quickly.

Now, the balance here comes with the fact that every other class but the necromancer can whiff on their season start. It doesn’t happen often, about once every 6 seasons, give or take. But that rare season, their leveling time now jumps to 4+ hours. The Necromancer though is different in that they can’t whiff, similar to the Demon Hunter. And they’re super powerful to getting Haedrig’s Gift. Their balance though comes in the fact that they’re more of a support class until they get their full build. The DH on the other hand just needs to get a good weapon.

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I’d argue most DH builds actually don’t.

  • GoD - only the bolas build requires a weapon to be moderately functional at T16 and low paragon.
  • Marauder’s (cube the 2h xbow for CA) - can run with pretty much any weapon once up to GR100+ - then can farm a Yang’s leisurely.
  • UE: you can run with a scuffed/cubed Yang’s, it’ll do to farm a new one.
  • Nat’s: lol. who uses that?
  • Shadow: cube KP and use any old 1h. You can farm without Dawn: plenty of damage mitigation options other than Vengeance.
  • LoD RF: :laughing:

Depends on your definition of good, I guess.

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He’s without a 6 piece though. So, from my understanding, he’s trying to get to a point where he can do damage.

Excluding any weapons and jewelry, or LoD, which is horribly expensive, what armor can you get that allows you to play T4+? That’s what I’m saying. Every other class gets something easy to acquire.

So, there’s Karlei’s & LGF. Karlei’s though is a huge Hatred hog. LGF has a huge cooldown.

Monk? Crudest boots (which you can gamble @1 for a few blood shards) can carry you through T4. And the Water Allies are practically up full time.

Necro? Grasps of Essence (which you can gamble @1 for a few blood shards) can carry you through T4. And all you need are Corpses. Kill anything for Corpses. Land of the Dead, Corpse Golem, and even Skeletal Mages can all create corpses.

Wizard? Disintegrate is pretty powerful, and has huge uptime, and Etched Sigil can carry you through T4.

Witch Doctor? Scrimshaw is a 50% gamble, and Zombie Charger can carry you through T4. And they can pretty much keep mana.

The Barbarian has bracers which skyrocket damage. You still have to generate fury though.

The Crusader can get multiple early armor pieces to significantly buff Blessed Hammers.

What does the Demon Hunter really have that’s easy to get? The HC Waistguard is pretty bad. Really, all that you have available is Sin Seekers for a semi easy damage buff. And even that’s not T4 capable alone.

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I like to use the Cain and Sage sets along with whichever dagger I cubed. Running act 1 bounties and stacking massacre bonus while trying to get lucky on a RoRG. Upon reaching lvl 70, run the 2 Neph and 2 Greater Rifts to get LoD. Remove any sets and wear as many legendaries as possible, crafting legendary items for any unfilled slots. Finish off the rest of Chapter 1-4 of the journey to get the Gift Set.

This season will be UE set, so hope for the strafe power on the season Crucibles and use Strafe UE to farm for any other desired sets and items.

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On a side note, why does everyone keep taking Strafe? Isn’t the center of the mob the last place a DH wants to be?

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It’s not great for UE long term, but works great for starting out. The seasonal power auto target and fires spenders better than can be done manually. So it works well to farm for the better set combos.

Mostly it requires a modified play style. With GoD you run over things to apply debuffs and rain hell on them, but with UE you need to keep distance, so you will slide back and forth at the edges to avoid losing your UE defense bonus.

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