So if you’re here, it’s because you’ve managed to find yourself a rather unique and amazing legendary bow for the Demon Hunter. As a heads up, this build is targeted around a very specific item and is tailored completely to it. However, this build can easily be applied to many other builds by simply swapping out Entangling Shot with Justice is Served Rune for Elemental Arrow with the Frost Arrow rune.
Enter; Kridershot
So the important thing to note with the bow is the hatred generation on Elemental Arrow. It can vary from 3-4 Hatred, but either or is typically OK. 4 is definitely preferred however, as that is 30% more hatred regen than 3.
So the first question is likely, “How is this better than Entangling shot with Justice is served? Won’t a one handed crossbow (or 2x one hands) provide faster hatred regen than this elemental arrow setup?”
And you would be completely correct; the Entangling Shot setup with one hand crossbows will be better for hatred regen.
There’s one problem for me though. The entangling shot build is heavily reliant on cluster arrow to get it’ damage through, and while entangling show will still do OK single target damage, it is just that, single target damage.
“But that’s the premise of the Demon Hunter Cluster Arrow build; incredibly strong single target damage with small AoE on the Cluster Arrow.”
Again, correct. It was the premise of the build.
Frost Arrow completely changes the premise of the build and I would say that it arguably makes the demon hunter better for higher level torment play.
The reason is this;
“Shoot a frost arrow that hits an enemy for 330% weapon damage as Cold that then splits into up to 10 additional frost arrows. Enemies hit have their movement speed slowed by 60% for 1 seconds.”
So your hatred generator is no longer a single target point damage skill, it is now an AoE crowd controlling skill with a high damage output.
And those are on the low end of my average. Without companion wolf active.
This simply means that you are far less reliant on cluster arrow to clear mobs. Frost Arrow does the leg work and cluster arrow cleans up the big boys. It also means that cull the weak is more effective on more enemies.
Now for the build:
Like I said, this is going to be very similar to the pre-existing cluster arrow.
Cluster Arrow / Set for Bear;
- This is pretty straight forward. 770% as fire, then 4 grenades that deal 220% weapon damage as fire. Nothing new.
Vault / Tumble;
- Vault is the closest thing to teleport, and extremely important in disjointing frozen and other effects. Definitely necessary.
Marked for Death / Mortal Enemy;
- We definitely want to maximize hatred generation. I’ve tried other runes and this ended up just doing the most work with being able to fire off more cluster arrows.
Companion / Wolf;
- The new removal of the crit damage on pets makes companion SO much better, and the active on the wolf is by far the best. 30% damage bonus for 10 seconds is no slouch of a move.
Vengeance / Seethe;
- The additional hatred regen on seethe means that you’re pretty much just firing cluster arrows with this build while in vengeance mode.
Elemental Arrow / Frost Arrow;
- I’ve already explained this in pretty good detail. There are fire skill runes, but the damage is far less and has way less utility. It’s not worth it.
Passive Skills;
This is where you are open to some variation. I’ll talk about the skills I chose, and then some of the others that I chose not to go with and why.
Cull the Weak
- This transfers over from the Entangling setup. Your Frost Arrow is performing the same task in slowing enemies as your Entangling shot did. Fairly straight forward skill as the 20% damage bonus is always relevant and is always active given FA’s AoE damage.
Archery
- This is a straight up 8% damage across the board. There is one specific passive option that swaps with this one that I’ll discuss.
Perfectionism
- This one seems a little odd at first, but the 10% bonus to each toughness aspect is super relevant and very good. It gives you some more survivability.
Blood Vengeance
- This is one that a lot of people will swap out. That’s completely fine. I like keeping it in, however, and if you for some reason or another don’t have Reaper’s Wraps, this skill is essential. The resource healing on health globes is too good to pass up. Even with Reapers Wraps it’s too good as it just means more shot’s for Cluster Arrow.
The not chosen passives;
Archery is probably the most replaceable skill when looking at these honorable mentions, so all will be addressed with replacing archery in mind.
Steady Aim
- I didn’t find that this improved my Real-world DPS over archery. If anything it was lower on average, simply because enemies would sneak into the 10 yard range and lower my damage. Sure I can vault away, but I’d rather be able to just stand there and kill something instead.
Sharpshooter
- Any good, long term demon hunter player will tell you that this skill is a trap and that it actually does nothing for you. It’s cool at low levels to have your crit chance creep up to a higher amount and then blow them all with one high crit attack, but in reality the skill does nothing once your crit chance is high enough. It also tricks you into thinking your damage is higher than it is. This is not an honourable mention at all. This is here to keep you from choosing this passive.
Single Out
- This is the honorable mention passive. The additional crit chance against bosses is nice, but again, this is not consistent damage, and the 8% damage from steady aim is just all the time, and its actual damage. We’re going to have high crit chance as is.
Ambush
- Another honourable mention. However, you’re dealing 12% more damage for the first 25% of the creep or boss’ health, and then 8% less for the last 75%. That means steady aim deals 8% more damage overall, and should theoretically kill 8% faster.
Gear:
So first let’s talk about the targets we want to hit with our gear.
39% attack speed increase – no more, no less. It’s not hard, but it’s necessary. You want to hit 2.00 attacks per second and 39% is the magic number. You don’t need higher, as you’ll just waste precious damage slots on gear mods.
47% crit chance – this is where things get interestingly better for the number of crits you’ll see. You can stretch it higher, but other damage mods start to become better until you hit 60% crit chance where you get another jump in damage it seems.
400% crit damage plus – the more the better. The higher it is, the more damage you’re going to do
700k sheet DPS – this is actually easily attainable with only a couple of the mentioned items and rares or 6 prop legendries to fill the slots. This is simply my recommendation in order to do T1 efficiently. 1 mill sheet is much better and turns T1 into normal. This is with passives and without the companion wolf active. The reason I list what you want your sheet to be is because all of your damage is static. It fluctuates very seldom. This sheet DPS is a perfectly fine reference without the %skill damage rolls and %fire damage rolls.
4 mill toughness – this is just simply a good number to be at. You should have about 375k to 425k life. Your resistances are a little low, but you’ll do just fine for torment 2. Increase it for higher level torment.
Items;
So there are two main routes with this. The one I’m going to mainly suggest is the “Sets out the ass” build, and then there’s the typical Cluster Arrow build. Slots where these come into conflict I’ll mark with an * so that you know what the options are in the secondary build.
The “Sets out the ass” setup is utilizing ring of royal grandeur with 3 sets; Embodiment of the Marauder, Natalya’s Vengeance, and Cain’s Destiny. Now there is some room for slot swapping, but essentially you need to have 3 pieces from Marauder’s, 2 pieces from Cain’s, and 2 pieces from Nats. The one slot that cannot be flexible is Nat’s ring, as it can’t trade with any of the other set pieces. There is also a 4th set that can be substituted in for Cain’s if you’d like. The Shadow’s Mantle does have a nice 2 set bonus in that it auto casts smoke screen if you fall below 25% life. This is a nice survivability option, but I feel this is also going to be more restrictive on the gear, because you lose 8% increased attack speed. You have to make up for that loss across 2 items that don’t even fit into the slots that cains habit and cains travelers fit into.
With the set bonuses, your total set bonus will be;
+500 Dex
+250 Dex
+10 Max Dis
+10 Max Dis
7% Crit Chance
8% Attack Speed Increase
50% increased Magic Find
50% bonus Experience
Companion calls all companions to your sideThe 4 set Marauder’s bonus is absolutely insane. You get all 6 companions, and all of their actives when you activate the ability. Now that there is no cap on pet’s crit damage, not only is this amazing for survivability, it is an insane amount of damage, especially for boss battles where the raven gives you basically an additional cluster arrow every 30 seconds.
Weapons:
Main;
1. Kridershot
- There is only one choice. The ideal bow roll is dex, black damage, % damage and a socket. If you’re lucky enough to get black damage and a socket, re-roll for the % damage. It will be good.
Offhand;
So what are we looking for here? You want Dex, Crit Chance, Hatred regen, and Vit or %Cluster Arrow damage. The skill damage will depend on how much life you have.
1. Dead Man’s Legacy: this is the best quiver for a Demon Hunter right now, simply because at lvl 70 it initially rolls with 4 SET primary stats. It is guaranteed to roll Dex, Vit, Crit Chance, and Hatred regen. None of the other quivers will roll like that. This gives you the opportunity to re-roll unfavourable stats, or if you get lucky and don’t need to reroll the stats, you can reroll the vitality to Cluster Arrow damage if the rest of the build permits the extra damage. IF you are lucky enough to get an initial roll that is high enough on this, the random stat can be re-rolled to %Cluster Arrow damage.
2. Emimei’s Duffel: This is Choice #2 simply because it has a hatred regen roll on it. Hopefully you drop dex on it, and then re-roll for crit damage if you don’t get it, or vit/CA% if you need it.
3. Archfiend Arrows: craftable quiver that guarantees crit chance. It’s not #2 because it doesn’t guarantee hatred regen.
4. Rare crafted Quiver: craft one or get one from kadala and re-roll it. You really do want a legendary quiver as the attack speed difference between rares and legendaries is too large.
Armour:
Bracers;
1. Reaper’s Wraps: This is the one and only choice. It’s a guaranteed plan drop and the mats are easy to farm. You’re a primary resource heavy character that needs to heal as well. These seem to have a high chance to roll %elemental skill damage on them as well. You’re looking for 20% fire skill damage, high dex, high vit, and 6% crit chance on these.
Belt;
1. Lvl 70 Witching hour: It’s the best belt. There’s no way around it. Attack Speed and Crit damage is better than everything else.
2. Legacy Witching Hour: It’s still the second best. The crit damage and attack speed outweigh the 2.0 stat rolls on other belts
3. Hellcat Waistguard: increased attack speed and increased % damage to elites makes this the next belt in line.
4. Fleeting Strap: another attack speed belt that doesn’t have damage to elites, but is a good belt to roll all res or life regen/LOH on.
5. Rare stats belt: again, roll what you need. You should look for dex, vit, res, and skill damage.
Amulet;
1. This is the most flexible slot by far because there isn’t any one specific be all end all amulet that you want here. Ideally you want some version of the Mara’s or Aranach cycle in your preferred element, simply because it completely invalidates one element against you. The stats you’re looking for on the amulet however are;
a. 17-20% Fire skill damage
b. 80-100% crit damage
c. 9-10% crit change
d. Dex OR Flat damage, depending on your current total dex this option is flexible. Flat damage with a high enough roll will sometimes give you more overall damage and be much more efficient, but dex does give you more dodge chance. I personally prefer the dex in this slot.
Rings *;
1. Ring of Royal Grandeur / Natalya’s Reflection; This is a non-flexible slot. You need both of these to make the ideal setup work. What you should be looking for on stats for these rings is Dex, average damage, crit chance, and crit damage. On the nat’s ring, you’re getting attack speed increase, so swap out the average damage instead and go for your standard dex trifecta combination on it. Ring of royal grandeur has no need for attack speed increase which I’ll cover at the bottom.
2. *Krede’s Flame / Grandeur / Damage ring: this is if you’re going with the standard crossbow cluster arrow setup. Ring of grandeur is probably still suggested, as you might still be going after bot the nats and marauders set bonuses. Krede’s flame is an amazing ring. It restores your primary resource when you take fire damage, and rolls 4 main stats. Taking damage is not ideal, but this is one legendary ring where the bonus actually seems to do something useful. However, any damage ring can work. Because we’re not using cain’s, both of the rings need attack speed increase, unless your kridershot rolled ASI on it.
3. Any combination of rare or legendary damage rings with the preferred damage stats. Again without the cain set bonus you want both rings to have attack speed increase unless your kridershot has an attack speed roll on it. Then you can substitute it on one of the rings.
Shoulders;
In this slot you’re looking for Dex, Vit/% life, All Res, and 15% Increased Companion Damage. The increased companion damage is a lot, especially now that
1. Marauder’s Spines; this is your top slot option regardless of your setup, because you’re going to look for the 2 set bonus regardless of which setup you’re using, and marauder’s is fairly flexible being a 6 slot set.
2. Vile Ward / Corruption / Homing pads; all good options with their own merits
3. Rare shoulders with appropriate stats
Gloves *;
So because you’re getting so much increased attack speed from your quiver, belt and cain’s set bonus (even with 8% on your WH, you only need 18% on your quiver and the minimum on Nat’s ring to hit 39%), the glove stats are going to be devoted to Dex, Crit chance, Crit Damage, and a defensive stat of your choice between vitality, Life on hit, and regen. Regen is always preferred to LoH, and I do prefer vitality over both.
1. Marauder’s Gloves / Cain’s Scrivener; pretty straight forward. We’re looking for set bonuses here. Remember that if you use cain’s gloves here, you must either use marauder’s boots or pants.
2. * Magefist; if you’re not using the sets out the ass setup, this is your number one choice. On this you’re looking for 20% fire damage and the other primary stats. Best gloves by far for a non-set bonus build.
3. Pender’s Purchase; your 6 prop craftable legendary glove. Always a good choice when you don’t have anything else.
4. Appropriate rare gloves.
Helm *;
The stats you’re looking for here are pretty straight forward. You’re looking for crit chance, dex, a socket, and 15% Cluster Arrow damage. Obviously we can’t all be perfect, but prioritize the cluster arrow damage last. It’s really good, don’t get me wrong, but the other stats are preferred. If you can’t get cluster arrow damage, vitality or %life are perfectly fine. You can put an Amethyst or a Topaz in your helm based on your preferences. The higher the difficulty, the more towards amethyst you want to lean.
1. Natalya’s Sight / Marauder’s Visage; Nats helm is definitely preferred here, simply because you’re going to roll dex and a socket on it guaranteed. If you’re lucky enough to roll main stat crit chance, you can reroll for 15% cluster arrow damage. If you use Marauder’s visage, you MUST use Nat’s embrace for your armour.
2. *Andariel’s Visage / Mempo of Twilight; these are your desired choices with the non-sets build. These helmets are amazing in giving you attack speed on them and rolling high stats as well.
3. Rare helm with the appropriate stats.
Torso *;
Here you’re looking for dex, 3 sockets, vitality and all res. You can get 15% companion damage, but we want to dedicate some slots to toughness and the bonus companion damage is a little less relevant. Plug your sockets with the highest Emeralds you can afford.
1. Marauder’s Carapace / Natalya’s Embrace; pretty straight forward. You want the set bonuses. This can really go either way. Nat’s is guaranteed 3 sockets, but Marauder’s guarantees all res and has a very high chance of getting vitality or % life and then skill damage which can reroll to sockets if need be. Nats IS easier to re-roll though, as the %life can pseudo replace the vitality stats. If you use nat’s armour, you must use marauder’s helm and vice versa.
2. *Cindercoat; This is bar-none the best armor for your non-set build. You’re looking for 20% fire skill damage, Dex, 3 sockets, and vit/AR.
3. Blackfeather / Cloak of the Garwulf; So these options are based on what you want. Both are amazing armour and I’ve had both. I personally prefer Garwulf, simply because having three companions is still a big damage increase, and it adds an element of survivability because those wolves will tank for you. A lot. The 800% rock damage proc that blackfeather has is really nice too.
4. Cloak of deception; I’m not going to list a rare option, as this armor is pretty easy to farm from a2 caches. It’ll increase your survivability with its unique quality and just provide a good overall armor.
Legs*;
Pants are identical to torso in the desired stats. Fill your sockets with high emeralds. If you feel you want to be more tanky, amethysts and diamonds can be used here as well.
1. Cain’s Habit / Marauder’s Encasement; if you use marauder’s here, you must use Cain’s gloves.
2. *Marauder’s Encasement; this is in the 2 slot and the 1 slot because it works in the 1 slot, but it is definitely preferred in the 2 slot if you’re not using the sets build. You can still use it with the shoulders and the boots with the ring of grandeur to get the 4 set bonus. That 4 set bonus really is amazing, and with cinder coat and magefist it’s actually the highest damage output build. That just doesn’t make it the best build for survivability
3. The Shadow’s Coil; this means you’re not using cain’s or Marauders and is in my opinion a lot weaker. You’re forced to get more attack speed increase elsewhere and its set bonuses are weaker than the others. It’s good survivability, but it’s not enough to warrant it over the other choices.
4. Skelon’s Deceit / Rare legs; pretty standard replacement pieces. If you don’t have the above options, skelon’s deceit is cool.
Boots;
The boots slot is fairly straight forward. You’re looking for 12% move speed, Dex, Vit, and 15% Cluster Arrow Damage.
1. Cain’s Travelers / Natalya’s Bloody Footprints / Marauder’s Treads; Cain’s or Marauder’s is preferred for this slot, simply because Nat’s forces you to use Cain’s scrivener, Marauder’s Carapace, and Visage. It restricts your overall choices for specific slots meaning you must find a certain thing as it ousts 3 set options, not just 1.
2. The Shadow’s Heels; this is only if you’re using the Shadow’s Mantle set. Again, not preferred but just fine.
3. Legendary boots of your choice; there are lots to choose from, form Boj Anglers to Boardwalkers, to Fire Walkers to Mudsputters. I personally like Mudsputters for the move speed based on life missing.
So I believe that’s everything!
Oh! I almost forgot. Secondary stats are far less important, but ideally you want health globe regen and resistances. We feed off health globes and it’s nice when a single globe heals us completely.
These lists of gear are designed for high difficulty end game results and will put you far above the target sheet dps and actual output dps, as the skill damage options are massive. You can easily do well with the basic gear options and crafted or gambled rares in place of the sets or optimal cluster arrow gear.
This is how far I am at the moment. This is that 1m sheet point I talked about where t1 becomes like normal for farming, which is good considering that most people are farming normal due to its speed.
You can see that wolf hasn’t been activated and that my crit chance is normal. It’s not a faked sheet with sharpshooter or steady aim. The only damage modifying passive currently is archery, and it’s a flat 8% that doesn’t change.
And yes, my healing is low. It's never been a problem. We want more damage and we just can't afford those regen spots now that we only have 4 slots for primary stats. If you want regen, sub some of the vitality or all res slots for regen, but the health globe healing is very helpful, as is life per kill when you're offering so much AoE kill potential.
I hope you enjoyed this and it was helpful!