I've been a Demon Hunter since the beginning of the game, love the class and love the build diversity. This particular build is extremely efficient and fun when done right and I will do my best to teach you.
This build is not effective in groups unless you are with other strafe dh's. Don't try going above mp1-2 with this build, you don't need to go any higher anyway.

Gearing:

Weapon: Slow and hard hitting (Manticore or other xbow)
Bring that BOOMSTICK
You want to have a slow weapon for a reason. Strafe scales with your attack speed. So the faster you attack the faster you will lose hatred and this will not work if you don't have any hatred.
If you can find a weapon with life steal, great, if not you will need to stack some loh and some life regen.

My biggest pet peeve is when I see streamers using a calamity for this build yeah it has hatred regen but its not nearly enough to be effective. Do not use a calamity for this!!
Streamers need to be setting an example for their viewers. If you're going to demonstrate a build, do it right and the most effective way possible.

Quiver: Dead Man's Legacy

This is the best choice and you can find some for a decent price. You want as high dex and vit as you can possibly afford with Crit chance and about a 1.2-1.3 hatred regen.
Crit chance is going to be one of the most important parts of this build and you will see why later.

Rings: SOJ is always nice to have but not a requirement. If you can get a SOJ look for the one that has critical hit chance of strafe
a hellfire ring with crit chance and crit damage<for paragon leveling only unless you have a really nice one that you wear all the time.
main thing is high dex, crit chance and crit damage, stay away from attack speed.

Gloves: Same as rings really but try to get some sort of defensive stat if possible (all res, +armor, vit)

Pants: You want to have pick up radius here. High Dex, Vit, 2 sockets, all res or armor or both. You definitely need pick up radius here though.

Belt: I used a witching hour but that is not necessary and can hurt you if you don't have good hatred regen. pick up radius here as well if you can find it.

Bracers: Dex, CC, defensive stats

Boots: Nat's boots are nice and you can find some for cheap. try to get pick up radius here as well.

Chest: Nat's chest has some really nice stats for this build. I would recommend looking into the Critical hit chance for strafe pieces. go for high dex vit and if you want some max disc or pick up radius.

Shoulders: Vile Wards have everything you need in a shoulder. If you're on a budget look for a rare with high dex, vit, all res, armor, pick up radius just whatever is suitable and fits your budget.

Helm: Nat's helm (although not necessary can be very useful for set bonuses) If you're on a budget look for a rare with high dex, all res, crit chance and a socket.

Neck: Same as your rings. If you need some loh try to stack it here. also try to get a high crit damage (they can roll up to 100%) and crit chance.

Summary of Gearing:

This build is based around your passive skills. Which are absolutely critical. This build will not work well without them. You need the pick up radius for vengeance, crit chance for night stalker. If you find that your dps is lacking don't completely count out some attack speed.
You want to try and keep your Attacks Per Second under 2.0. Nat's 2 set bonus is really nice for this build as you will need that extra crit chance.

SKILLS:

1: Strafe w/ Demolition Rune

The rune choices are pretty limited. I've run with most of them just to test them out and found that Demolition to be the best, especially for a3 paragon runs. Demolition also has the highest proc coefficient for skills and effects as well as loh. (testing was done thoroughly by my friend ZzEzZ)
This is important for the simple fact that you will be replenishing your discipline almost as fast as you can spend it. Strafe works like the barbarians whirlwind in that you can walk right through mobs.

2: Chakrams w/ Shuriken Cloud

This skill is more or less just utility and for the simple fact that I dislike opening doors in the keeps. and also does decent passive damage as you strafe through mobs.

optional skill: Grenades w/ tinkerer >use this if you are having problems keeping up your hatred. it generates 6 hatred per attack and does decent damage.

3: Vault w/ Tumble

This is for efficiency and mobility. other options are Trail of Cinders but I only recommend using that if you don't have problems generating discipline.

4: Companion w/ The Bat

Passively deals damage to mobs and gives you a huge increase in hatred regen. absolutely crucial for this build.

5: Shadow Power w/ Night Bane

What?!?! a demon hunter not using gloom? no way?!!? yes way. you still get the life steal bonus and for the duration of shadow power you also get 3 hatred per second totaling to 15 hatred regen. a very nice skill to have and spam when in a long winded battle.

other options> smoke screen with breathe deep: a nice skill and a good instant 12 hatred recovery with invulnerability. i personally like night bane better as i like the hatred over time vs an instant recovery.

6: Preparation w/ Back up Plan

There are a few viable runes for this skill and depending on your gear this skill may be swapped out for something else. viable runes: Punishment- to restore hatred. Focused Mind - discipline regen over time



Passive Skills

Vengeance
Night Stalker
Tactical Advantage

These are an absolute must. If you swap out one it wont be as efficient as its supposed to be.

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My initial thoughts on this build was "OMG Strafe? What a troll build!" then it grew on me. I started noticing how much faster and easier I could move throughout the map. No more stopping to shoot, easy to farm gold, fun to watch packs explode.

I was able to average about 60m experience per hour with this build, about 350k gold/alkaizer run. yes per run. the gear pays for itself in the long run. I have had a lot of fun with this build and would recommend it to anyone that is looking for something new and definitely not cookie cutter.

I have video evidence that this build works on my stream channel and will be more than glad to answer any questions, do gear checks and whatever else you need. I will check this thread every now and then and answer any questions that may arise. hopefully i covered everything in a way that its easy to understand. I'm not an english major by any means and i understand there are a few grammatical errors but oh well. =D have a great day, good luck out in the field and if you try this build be sure to post how you like it or don't like it or if you have any other suggestions to make this the best it can possibly be i will gladly test and retest anything you have a concern about. cheers.

If you can pull it off efficiently best build ever!

Can you list Pro's and Con's?

nice guide especially for the gear part. For the skills a more complete guide already exists here, d3mon's guide, 1 month old => http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=65637091&f=142&p=. Dunno why its not in the sticky. D3mon's guide has Pro's and Con's.


anyway this is still a good guide, lot of good advice for gearing. I'm not sure if you really need more than 1 piece with pick up radius, but yes one piece with it is mandatory and will get the job done.


What's really nice is the focus put on Strafe crit pieces, ie Natalya Chest and SoJ. This is really important, if you can reach around 65% crit (easy with 7% crit on SOJ and 8% on chest) you will make a shitload of discipline with nightstalker. This will make you on par with Legacy Nat and you will also have more hatred with Preparation - Punishment, so these %crit on strafe will really make the build stronger.

This post was edited by bouzigue on Jan 2 2013 04:05pm

it's fun and different, but still not faster than lightning ball

and my strafe build is more efficient, with legacy nats + preparation punishment i do 100% movespeed non stop strafe @ 190k dps buffed with archery

if i pick up night stalker as one of my passives, with even more disc i can non stop shadow power with 30% movespeed as well with keeping my hatred full

I can gurantee you that Jason can keep up with you perhaps even go faster than you in your ball of lightning build. I'm a legacy nats I run no preparation and no max disc gear no problems with discipline (i run night stalker) but I also run at 201k unbuffed (no ss no archery no steady) with 26 pick up radius. I can, however, give you that this build would not be faster in mp2-3 with a good (200k unbuffed) ball of lightning calamity DH because the dmg needed to run a very efficient mp2-3 with Strafe is around the 220-230k UNBUFFED mark, if mobs don't die fast then you are stuck wasting more hatred and getting less health globes and stuck spinning around in one area for too long rather than just constantly running through.

Main issue here for me is XP per min and nothing beats a well made stafe build in mp0 or 1. At some point the stopping and shooting (even with calamity) of the ball of lightning will slow you down a lot in comparison to strafe build.

I added Jason's suggested Chakram/Shiruken Cloud and it works really well -- for the legacy DHs I reccommend that you drop Preparation and put on caltrops/Jagged Spikes and drop them as you go (don't just SPAM it but space em out if u see little things chasing you that you dont want to run back for drop it etc...) -- Since its hard to match the dps of a Non-Legacy DH these jagged spikes skill closes the gap quite a bit -- And use the reccomended passives in the build mentioned here they are a must

This post was edited by donkilluminatiV on Jan 2 2013 06:26pm

The passives are not a must. Depending on your Discipline pool, your gear, and resource management, you can get away with using something else such as Perfectionist in place of Night Stalker.

This post was edited by VVR4ITH on Jan 2 2013 08:46pm

Ah yes sorry, I was running perfectionist for a while too, this works I only modified it to Night Stalker so I could spam the Caltrops more and it works better assuming you have added caltrops to your build. But if your build does not have another disc spending kill besides Vault and Shadow Power then you are probably going to be better off with Perfectionist specially if you are Legacy and lack some survivability. I think the #1 thing people need to understand about this build its that is meant for mp0 or 1 and mp2 if you have really GG dps. But the high proc rate from Strafe/Demolition NS upkeeps your disc a lot better so then it won't be an issue and you can ignore more Disc in your gear. Perhaps Jason can adress the Disc issue better with his experience as to why he prefers Night Stalker over Perfectionist. Frankly, I believe that max disc should not be used anywhere but the chest piece as the EHP/DPS losses in the DML are huge if you go disc on it, better off getting it from an SOJ/Chest as mentioned.

When I have my own guide up, I'll post my take on the build. There are things you can get away with that weren't mentioned in this guide.