Demon Hunter Keyfarming / Tank Build

Demon Hunter Keyfarming / Tank Build submitted by hackjob.

Since 1.0.5+, all of us that are still playing are farming keys for our hellfire rings. With that I though I'd send in a build that will help you push the limits of what your Demon Hunter can do and get those keys as quick as possible.. sort of.

The main thing about this build is that it relies heavily on defenses. That means you'll be sacrificing dex for vit and all resists so that you can take some hits. A high crit is necessary too.

The point of this being that there's no reason to die on every other elite which wastes your time and gold. Instead, what you'll be doing is using Shadow Power to it's fullest advantage and shifting away from using a spamable secondary attack and into using Spike Traps.

The Build:

  • Primary: Hungering Arrow - Spray of Teeth
  • Secondary: Your choice
  • Slot 1: Shadow Power - Gloom
  • Slot 2: Spike Trap - Echoing Blast
  • Slot 3: Companion - Bat Companion
  • Slot 4: Preparation - Battle Scars
  • Passive 1: Night Stalker
  • Passive 2: Perfectionist
  • Passive 3: Archery

First thing to note: you will not be mowing though enemies as you might be used to on your farming runs. The point of this is build is strictly to maximize your survivability so you can farm at higher monster power levels. Higher MP = better chance of key drops.

How it works: Spike Traps do a ridiculous amount of damage and echoing blast allows each one to explode 3 times for every trap you drop. It's completely possible to do a grand total of 2475% weapon damage to a single target in about 10 seconds (I think less actually) assuming not one of your nine spike trap explosions crit. All the while you'll be restoring 15% of that as life. With a reasonable amount of crit chance you'll be restoring discipline as fast your spending it thanks to Night Stalker.

This should allow you to keep up shadow power almost constantly. When you do take damage or run low on discipline you can instantly restore it with Preparation. Since your spike traps do so much damage, this allows you to spend your hard earned gold on items that have higher vit and not the usually more expensive items with high dex. You'll still have to keep you crit chance as high as possible so you can keep getting discipline back, but that's really about all you have to do. Any extra dex or crit damage you can get will speed things up but they're not necessary until you have the gold to blow obviously.

Here's how you'll be fighting with this build:

Drop your spike traps at your feet or somewhere that you know your mobs will be walking through. As soon as your targets begin walking through your traps, hit shadow power. Gloom provides 35% damage reduction while shadow power is active which will allow you to basically stand in place fire a few arrows while your hatred regens.

As your hatred comes back, kite 20 yards or so or around any chunk of the environment, drop traps, hit shadow power, and repeat til dead. With this build, you can for alot of elite packs, stand in place and simply stack spike traps underneath them while you constantly restore health.

The End: Killing stuff isn't going to go very quickly, but you'll be able to play on your highest possible monster power without dying nearly as much. And you get to be one of very few people who can say they have a tank DH. I hope this helps you guys get your keys! Good luck!