The Big Roller Demon Hunter guide: Equipment

For all its flaws, Diablo 3 is a great overall game, and a lot of fun to play. For the past week I’ve been having a blast playing the Demon Hunter, a dark killer with a large toolkit that lets you push lots of buttons, exert crowd control, and do things with crossbows that are so far beyond the laws of physics it passes the realm of impossible to a place known as the possimpible.

I strived to create a build that focused on good control without sacrificing so much DPS that clicking on things doesn’t result in dead things, and without using any of the skills that have been described as mandatory by the community at large.

What I’ve found to be the optimal build is this. Unconventional by all standards, it focuses on dishing out huge amounts of critical damage and reaping the rewards.

In this installment, I’ll be going over the most important thing you’ll need for this build: LOOT! In part 2, I’ll go over the reasoning for each skill, alternatives, and what you low level scrubs can use until you’re awesome enough to use these. Finally, for part 3, I’ll give you my tips on how to use the build most effectively, and the boss fights you’ll want to modify it for.

The Concept

The general concept of the build comes from the following reasoning:

1. The more buttons we can press, the more DPS and control we will have
2. To push lots of buttons that kill things, we need lots of hatred
3. The faster we can shoot our primary, the more hatred we’ll have
4. To kill things, we need to not be dead
5. To not be dead, we need lots of discipline
6. Multishot with Suppression Fire costs too much hatred (less buttons for dead things)
7. Fuck Preparation
8. Considering #7, we are left with with Night Stalker
9. If you feel like a bad-ass, you’ll play like a bad-ass

The Weapon

So we need to attack fast, crit a lot, and do anything else we can to generate lots of resources. Two-handed bows and crossbows are out, because not only are they slower than your mother trying to figure out what the hell we’re talking about, they can’t have Demon Hunter specific properties like +hatred regen and +max discipline, which we want. Hand Crossbows are our best bet here, because not only are they fast, but with Archery we’ll be critting more, which means more dead things and more not dead us.

All of this only requires our main hand to use a hand crossbow. But in our off hand, we could potentially use a quiver. But we won’t. If we dual wield, we’ll be attacking faster than with a quiver. Attacking faster means more hatred from our primary and more chances to crit, which means more not deadness and more happy big numbers. In addition, hand crossbows can have more stats than quivers (Have I mentioned that big numbers are good?). Best of all, your character is no longer physically capable of reloading, and the more you break the laws of physics, the more of a badass you are.

Also, fuck quivers.

You’ll want your weapons to have at absolute minimum these affixes:

• Bonus damage of any element
• Socket

The Gems

For gems, most people use rubies. Those guys are idiots. Rubies scale exceptionally poorly, and since damage alternates between your two weapons when dual wielding, their bonuses don’t stack. Since we’re already going to be critting a lot, emeralds are our best choice. After all, they make your big numbers bigger, and I like big numbers. If you’re having survivability issues, don’t have much crit gear, or are low level and haven’t unlocked Sharpshooter yet, amethysts aren’t a bad choice either. A dead demon hunter kills nothing.

The Cloak

While a weapon is nice, naked Demon Hunters tend to have (very minor) issues in Inferno. You’ll probably want to find some clothes to wear so your opponent isn’t laughing at you. Each class has a unique armor type that the other classes would look too ridiculous if they were to equip it. For Demon Hunters, it’s a cloak which uses the chest slot. When selecting a chest piece, you’ll always want to use a cloak. Cloaks are able to get Demon Hunter specific properties that standard chest armor cannot. And you’ll look like a ninja (other than the being invisible bit). Who doesn’t want to look like a ninja?

You should look for as many of the following affixes as possible:

• Hatred regeneration
• Maximum Discipline
• Dexterity
• Vitality
• Life %

Stay tuned for part 2, where I’ll explain why I chose the skills I did, and what some solid alternatives are.