Demon hunter

Remove all ads!

I'm loving my Demon Hunter, but can't help but think they are underpowered. Teen Snook's Barbie has almost triple the health and is doing way more damage.

Here's some quick questions for any other Demon Hunter's out there.

I'm currently using a two hand bow and a quiver. I believe I'm doing more damage then using a one hand crossbow and a shield or two one hand crossbows. What is everyone else doing?

Leech- Does it work on bows? If it does does it work when you use multi-shot. I'm thinking if it does, that could be an instant way to regain health as I swear I must fire a hundred of them at a time.

 

Bow and quiver is the way to go as far as I know. In a while you and your son will have to take very different gear routes where he will be forced to turn himself into steelball who can take a lot of punishment but is about as dangerous as a fluffy bunny. You on the other hand do not need to be close to the enemies so you will get to focus on your damage. The beauty about being ranged is that pretty much everything will one or possibly two shot you anyway so why bother cranking up the defence? Instead we can focus on the fun stats, the offensive ones!

 

Demon Hunters all about about damage. For quite a while they were considered OP in solo play because glass cannon DHs were almost unmatched when it came to both evading and dishing out damage against solo-mode monsters. Multiplayer is another thing though and the improved monsters can actually hurt the glass cannon DH, since he normally relies on killing these ASAP. Because of this, it might be prudent to take a 1 or two more defensive passives/skills than usual.

DH damage relies on two things: stacking crit/crit damage/attack speed, and filling the screen with as many skills as you possibly can at once. He's very similar to a wizard in this respect, except DHs gain way more buffs to crit/crit damage/attack speed so be sure to stack as much of these as you can - normally you will never be able to beat a wizard when it comes to defensive/utility skills, so unless you really know what you're doing don't try.

Life steal/Life per hit works on all but a few offensive skills. The question you should be asking though is how well life steal/life per hit would work with the skills you're currently using. The developers came up with some kind of system that made certain skills more effective at life leech than others in attempt to balance out certain skills that, for example, fired three projectiles at once. You'll need to test these skills out yourself unless you don't mind sifting through the official D3 forums (drama alert).

At lower levels two socketed hand crossbows with Flawless Square Rubies will generally beat the crossbow/bow+quiver setup, but somewhere around level 30's to 40+, when quivers start spawning really good enchantments, (theoretically) a bow should give you higher sustained damage while a crossbow would give you higher burst damage. Using two hand crossbows is still viable but you'll need to keep an eye out for really powerful enchantments like +critical damage and has sockets. Ideally you'll also want +attack speed on these. Be warned though, hand crossbows with these bonuses are among the most expensive things in the game come 50+.

Don't mind barbs. They are ridiculously powerful early game, though you could certainly try to kill off his targets first. This usually drives them nuts since it forces them to run around chasing things.

 

I'm in Nightmare act 2 and killing things is slow going. I'm using the acid strike bolo and the screaming skull elemental arrow. It seems to be working well as the skulls keep bad guys from swarming me. I have learned to be afraid when my templar says "Look at that enemy over there". That is usually good for at least one death.

Last night I watched Teen Snook beat Asmodan in Nightmare without dying (he is like 9 levels ahead of me). He is constantly getting 3K+ critical hits. I have critical hit envy as the best I seem to hit is 1K

 

You just need better gear I think. If you want high damage crits just check the AH for a socketed crossbow with crit damage. Socket a Flawless Square Emerald in there (check the AH if you haven't found one yet) then start a battle by using Vault to dash in, plant a few slowing traps and possibly a turret or that rain of arrows skill, then vault back out. If you're using the passives Cull the Weak/Steady Aim/Archery then once you start shooting stuff you see some really high numbers float up.

Improving your crit rate is easy if you search the AH for cheap +crit rate items. Amulets, rings, bracers, gloves, helms and quivers can all spawn with +crit chance. I suggest you try searching for ones which also have +dex or +experience gained. As for chest armor/pants/belt/boots, you'll want ones which grant vit and dex. Possibly movement speed for those boots.

So you don't end up spending too much on the AH first do an overall search and sort items by DPS/armor. Then start adding in a max buyout amount (lower left area). Start with 1k, and compare the DPS/armor drop with the best items you got from your search earlier. Raise the buyout price by 1k if the dps/armor drop is too high, until you reach 5k. If the armor/DPS drop is still too high, try again later.

 

Holy crap was that good advice. I went to the AH and found a crossbow that was doing over 100 with an empty socket. I know I overpaid as I paid 29K, but it was the best one I saw for under 50K. I put in the best Emerald I had and my crits went up to I think 166%. Now I'm seeing crits between 2700-3000. I was able to finish off Khule (sic) with ease and now I have to face Belial to finish off act 2.

I still have around 50K gold so I'll have to go back to the AH and do some searching for crit hit stuff (as you suggested). Its a shame I'm tired, but I have a feeling if I went to the AH I'd be up for at least another few hours.

 

You know, there is a real money auction house as well. I am sure you could find some wicked items for a few cents.

 

Yep, scounging the RMT for low-end gear is much more lucrative, especially if you can't log in much during the weekends (most of the cheap stuff gets posted then).

 

Demon Hunters are pretty fun, until you reach inferno. Then it gets a bit hard. You get hit, you die, simple as.

 

If you guys play on the American server I wouldn't mind searching the AH for pre-50 gear if you know what you need. Thanks to my current job arrangement I'll be constantly online for a few weeks, though the best I can do is check the AH for high-end freebies every few hours. In general prices are screwed atm but there are still a few people selling decent gear for only old a few hundred gold.

 

I am now level 60 and just started inferno mode

I"m looking for tips for inferno.

My current set up is

Hungering arrow- Spray of death
Elemental arrow- Skull (althouth I'm thinking about giving "nether" a tryout
Shadow Power- Glide
Companion- Bat,
Sentry- I'm using the last one. Does anyone know if I get the benefits also or is it only my companions?
Rain of death- The one that is like a battering ram, although I'm going to tryout the last one
Steady aim, perfection, archery

For equipment I fill most sockets with either dex or vit

My crits are around 30.5 and doing +250%
Life= 27,000
Armor 2603
Damage- 17,260
Resists are all slightly over 100

Thoughts?

 

The last bit was fast. Do not know much about Demon hunters, my hunch is that your gear is enough to slog through act1. Do that a couple of times, make a million or two and you should be able to buy gear that double/triple all your stats for very little money.

As for build many dhs go with the bat but when I team with them I have much hate for said bat. It keeps pulling stuff you don't want to pull and it triggers goblins and stuff which is bad.

How are you experiencing inferno? My first taste was a bit of a shock. You are in the fun gear stage now though, will be able to get massive upgrades for not much effort and that is always nice. It is the next step of equipment that starts to get tricky and expensive.

 

I have very limited experience with DHs in Inferno, but I can help with the general stuff.

First you should decide whether to go glass cannon (best for solo) or a build with more survivability (great for multiplayer). If you pick the latter 100 resists is going to be too low, you'll need around 500-600 along with ~25k HP to avoid getting one-shotted by most attacks in acts 2+.

Your crit is good for act 1, but I suggest you try to reach at least 100k crit before moving on to act 2. Like joacqin said this is actually easier to do than it sounds, just start stocking up on ilvl 61+ gear (you should be able to see the item level of items now that you're 60).

For Sentry, "allies" generally refers to everyone, including other players. It's a very nice rune but I wouldn't use it unless you have something like 3 or more people in your game. For 2 players or less, as a general rule, killing monsters ASAP takes precedence over a bonus to survivability (unless you and your ally are stacking lots of these bonuses). In 2 player games there will be mobs your tank will be forced to kite.

If you need more survivability for multiplayer Smoke Screen can do wonders. Most monsters generally won't change targets once they've picked one to attack, but when they first appear on the screen they have a tendency to randomly target any player, which is why vortex skills like Cycone Strike are a must for any tank characters playing with non-DH dpsers.

 

Time for an update

Armor- 3160
DPS- 33369.82
Crit %- 33.5
Crit Damage- +181%- This went down as I changed from the crossbow to the hand crossbow
Resists- 218-254
Life- 43,030

I think I'm going to take your advice (from the other thread) and try act 2 solo as multiplayer has been a disaster

 

I just beat inferno level. I admit, I would have never been able to do it solo.

Armor- 3243
DPS/Sharpshooter- 46791.36/106962.41
Res- 246-334
Life- 40396
Paragon level 5

 

Congrats. Very nice DPS.

 

Beat it proper, took your way throughout all of act3 and 4? I must admit to not even having tried to go through act4. A friend gave me the Diablo checkpoint and I killed him but haven't done anything else of act4.

 

Proper all the way. Some of the quests took many attempts as some elite mobs were just unbeatable with the party mix we had.

Probably one of my favorites was in Act 3 when you have to plug the breach in the castle and beat Ghom. It ended up being me and a monk. The monk had an amazing build (and I'm guessing equipment). He did very little DPS, but he was unkillable. I don't know if he was unhittable or if he had such amazing leach and healing that nothing ever seemed to make his health drop and if it did he was back up to full almost instantly. The two of us made a great pair as I was pounding out 100K criticals, but would typically die if hit more than twice.

 

Good tanking monks are hard to find, but you gotta love 'em when you find one.

I hate that area due to the sheer number of demented fallen-type monsters in there. Being a witch doctor I don't actually kite things as much as rely on the summons to delay them a bit I spam nukes, but these things have a habit of ignoring the summons line and heading straight for my character.