Demon Hunter Shadow Impale Build

Last updated on Sep 13, 2023 at 09:00 by Deadset 72 comments
1.

Introduction

The Shadow's Mantle set offers several viable playstyles revolving around the themes of high mobility and assassination. This Impale variant places and even greater emphasis on singling out and bursting down priority targets, an elite hunting playstyle that is geared towards Greater Rift progression. We also have group progression and speed farming variants that you can access by clicking the links below.

2.

Quick Reference

2.1.

Skill Setup

The basic skill setup of the Shadow Impale Demon Hunter is displayed below. Read the dedicated Skills page for detailed information on choices, alternatives and build customization.

Active Skills
Left Mouse Button Impale Icon Impale Overpenetration Overpenetration Right Mouse Button Companion Icon Companion Wolf Companion Wolf Companion 1 Vengeance Icon Vengeance Dark Heart Dark Heart 2 Fan of Knives Icon Fan of Knives Bladed Armor Bladed Armor 3 Vault Icon Vault Rattling Roll Rattling Roll 4 Shadow Power Icon Shadow Power Gloom Gloom
Passive Skills
2.2.

Gear Setup

The required gear setup for the Shadow Impale Demon Hunter is listed below. Check the Gear page for detailed information on choices, alternatives, gemming, Kanai's Cube and Paragon distribution.

2.2.1.

Season 29: Paragon Cap

Season 29 introduces a season-specific cap to stat benefits from Paragon levels, all while updating how Paragon point distribution is handled. For the duration of this Season, you can only assign 800 Paragon stat points to your character, removing the long-standing practice of main-stat stacking (with some gearing implications — see below) after you reach Paragon 800.

On top of that, you could only allocate 50 Paragon stat points to each of the four stats in a given Paragon category (Core, Offense, Defense, and Utility). In Season 29, you can allocate up to the full 200 points per category into any attribute, allowing you to more easily reach necessary build breakpoints (as outlined in the Gear page of the guide) for Cooldown Reduction, Resource Cost Reduction, etc.

With the changes to Paragon in mind, we recommend using the following Paragon distribution for this build:

  • Core: Movement Speed: 200 points.
  • Offense: Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage: Allocate points so they are as close to the desirable 1:10 ratio between the two stats, as displayed in your Character Details sheet. For bow-and-quiver builds (or dagger-and-quiver, in this case), this is usually achieved with the full 200 points spent into Critical Hit Damage.
  • Defense: Life and All Resistance: Allocate points to maximize survivability; for Demon Hunters, this is usually achieved by evenly splitting 100 points into Life (directly increasing your Health pool) and All Resistance (to complement the naturally high Armor stat of Dexterity-based characters).
  • Utility: Area Damage: 200 points.
2.2.2.

Season 29: Gearing Considerations

In terms of gear, keeping the Paragon cap in mind is paramount, as it stymies the traditional endless supply of main stat after Paragon 800. This means re-rolling mainstat off your gear is no longer desirable, and full equipment augmentation with your main stat is even more critical. Additionally, you should take a careful look at your build and consider if you can fit the following changes to strengthen your damage and survivability:

  • Guardian's Jeopardy: This is a craftable armor set, and the recipe for its creation drops from Bounty farming. Guardian's 2-piece provides a decent damage reduction bonus, but the true powerhouse of the set is the 3-piece bonus, which nets you an additional 100% of your main stats from equipped items. This is a tremendous benefit in an 800 Paragon capped Season. If the Guardian set can fit into the build with minimal sacrifices (other craftable sets, tertiary damage multipliers, etc.), consider its implementation. The available pieces are Guardian's Aversion Guardian's Aversion (Wrists), Guardian's Case Guardian's Case (Waist), and Guardian's Gaze Guardian's Gaze (Head). Of course, you can wear 2 pieces of the set and complete the full 3-piece bonus with a Ring of Royal Grandeur Ring of Royal Grandeur (found from Act I bounty caches).
  • Endless Walk:This is a jewelry set consisting of The Traveler's Pledge The Traveler's Pledge (Amulet) and The Compass Rose The Compass Rose (Ring), and is randomly found through farming, gambling Blood Shards, and/or Kanai's Cube recipes. The Endless Walk set is a nice compromise between damage bonuses (building up while stationary) and defensive bonuses (building up while moving). It can replace glass cannon choices like the Bastions of Will set (Focus Focus and Restraint Restraint) and Squirt's Necklace Squirt's Necklace with acceptable losses to DPS.
  • Unity Unity: A character wearing this ring, along with another Unity Unity on their follower plus an immortality relic for them (i.e., Enchanting Favor Enchanting Favor), will reduce their damage taken by 50%. Unity Unity can roll excellent offense-oriented stats and has an innate Extra Damage to Elites roll, which somewhat offsets losing all-out offense jewelry.
2.3.

Legendary Gems

2.4.

Kanai's Cube

3.

How to Get This Build Going?

In this section, we will briefly go over how to kickstart this build into reality; which items you should aim for with priority when farming and gambling, and what is their relative priority for the functioning of this spec. Note that these suggestions are exclusively aimed at getting you up and running into endgame farming, and might not reflect the gear you need to wear for high-end Greater Rift solo or group pushing. This section also assumes a fresh Season's start, which usually is the point where most players work on assembling their first build with a particular set.

If the Shadow set is part of the Haedrig's Gift for the Season, your simplest and most straightforward path to assembling the build is to complete the Seasonal Journey chapters up to Chapter IV. The Seasonal Journey chapters will gradually give you a complete class-specific set, giving 2-3 pieces for Chapters II, III and IV.

From the pre-game menu, choose and do this week's Challenge Rift. When successfully completed, this weekly event will grant you 5,1 million Gold, 475 Blood Shards, 370 Reusable Parts Reusable Parts, 350 Arcane Dust Arcane Dust, 125 Veiled Crystal Veiled Crystals, 35 Death's Breath Death's Breaths, and 15 of each Bounty cache material: Khanduran Rune Khanduran Rune, Caldeum Nightshade Caldeum Nightshade, Arreat War Tapestry Arreat War Tapestry, Corrupted Angel Flesh Corrupted Angel Flesh, and Westmarch Holy Water Westmarch Holy Water. This will allow you some early Seasonal leeway to extract and reforge items in Kanai's Cube, speeding up the assembly of this build with the items recommended below.

Having some materials at your disposal, either from farming or the Challenge Rift, is particularly important when you get duplicate pieces of your desired set. When you do, you can use Kanai's Cube Skill of Nilfur recipe (10x Forgotten Soul Forgotten Souls, 10x Death's Breath Death's Breaths, 1x Set item) to convert into another item from the same set. You should never salvage duplicate pieces of a desired set before you have it assembled.

In order to assemble a Shadow Impale Demon Hunter, you should do the following.

  • Gather the full 6-piece Shadow set using the advice above, or by spending Blood Shards at Kadala. In order of gamble chance, you should spend for: Shoulders, Pants, Boots, Gloves, Helm, and Chest. A trick you can also use is to gamble for duplicate pieces with an easier gamble chance (i.e., Shoulders) and convert them into another piece from the same set using the Skill of Nilfur recipe in Kanai's Cube.
  • Upgrade rare (Hope of Cain recipe in Kanai's Cube) Daggers to get Karlei's Point Karlei's Point, which you might have lucked into with your level 1 crafts as per our Seasonal Starter Guide. This is a build-defining weapon that bolsters your damage and enables resource management for Shadow DHs.
  • Gamble Quivers for Holy Point Shot Holy Point Shot, which also might have been your lucky gamble from a level 31 gambling session. This quiver produces the signature "shotgun spread" playstyle of Impale Impale that encourages you to point blank priority targets to get all 3 hits on one enemy.
  • Gamble Belts for Chain of Shadows Chain of Shadows; this item will greatly improve your mobility and will enforce an interesting shoot-vault-shoot dynamic in the build, so that your Vault Vaults do not tax your Discipline too greatly. While gambling Belts, you can also stumble into Goldwrap Goldwrap, which is a cornerstone standard rift farming item that makes you nearly invulnerable as you pick up gold.
  • Upgrade rare Hand Crossbows to get Dawn Dawn; its legendary power needs to be slotted in the Cube asap, as it will greatly cut down your Vengeance Vengeance cooldown and, at the 37% sheet CDR breakpoint, will allow you its permanent uptime.
  • Gamble helms for Visage of Gunes Visage of Gunes; this is a convenience item that you will eventually replace with Stone Gauntlets Stone Gauntlets (but not before you get permanent Vengeance Vengeance). It nets you the Dark Heart Dark Heart rune for free, and allows you to run the supreme resource gain of Seethe Seethe.
  • Do Act I bounties to attain the act-specific Ring of Royal Grandeur Ring of Royal Grandeur from Bounty caches. This will be helpful either in completing the basic set bonus, or mixing other helpful sets in (Aughilds) as described in the Gear page. Bounties will net you the craftable set recipes to begin with, so you will be killing two birds with one stone. Bounties will also net you Avarice Band Avarice Band (Act III), another farming-oriented staple for most builds and classes, this one included.
  • While largely undesirable due to high costs, gambling or upgrading rare Jewelry is also possible; Elusive Ring Elusive Ring and Convention of Elements Convention of Elements will both bring massive value to the build, with other standout pieces that can also substitute or be temporarily helpful in the face of Stone of Jordan Stone of Jordan, Squirt's Necklace Squirt's Necklace, or Oculus Ring Oculus Ring and The Flavor of Time The Flavor of Time for your Follower.
4.

Changelog

  • 13 Sep. 2023 (gear page): Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
  • 13 Sep. 2023 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 29.
  • 13 Sep. 2023 (this page): Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
  • 22 Feb. 2023 (gear page): Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
  • 22 Feb. 2023 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 28.
  • 22 Feb. 2023 (this page): Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
  • 26 Aug. 2022 (gear page): Added Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
  • 26 Aug. 2022 (skills page): Skills and passives reviewed for Season 27.
  • 26 Aug. 2022 (this page): Added Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
  • 13 Apr. 2022 (gear page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
  • 13 Apr. 2022 (skills page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
  • 13 Apr. 2022 (this page): Guide reviewed for Season 26.
  • 09 Dec. 2021 (gear page): Guide revised and added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
  • 09 Dec. 2021 (skills page): Guide revised for Season 25.
  • 09 Dec. 2021 (this page): Guide revised and added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
  • 21 Jul. 2021 (gear page): No changes required for Season 24.
  • 21 Jul. 2021 (skills page): No changes required for Season 24.
  • 21 Jul. 2021 (this page): Added note regarding Ethereal weapons for Season 24.
  • 01 Apr. 2021 (gear page): Added follower recommendation.
  • 01 Apr. 2021 (skills page): No changes required for Season 23.
  • 01 Apr. 2021 (this page): Added follower recommendation.
  • 18 Nov. 2020 (gear page): Added S22 Cube recommendation.
  • 18 Nov. 2020 (skills page): No changes required for Season 22.
  • 18 Nov. 2020 (this page): Added S22 Cube recommendation.
  • 06 Jul. 2020 (gear page): Reverted guide recommendation back to the lightning version of the build; included additional clarifications for variant playstyles of the build.
  • 06 Jul. 2020 (skills page): Reverted guide recommendation back to the lightning version of the build; included additional clarifications for variant playstyles of the build.
  • 06 Jul. 2020 (this page): Revised the guide to better reflect the current meta.
  • 30 Jun. 2020 (gear page): No changes required for Season 21.
  • 30 Jun. 2020 (skills page): No changes required for Season 21.
  • 30 Jun. 2020 (this page): No changes required for Season 21.
  • 12 Mar. 2020 (gear page): No changes necessary for Season 20.
  • 12 Mar. 2020 (skills page): No changes necessary for Season 20.
  • 12 Mar. 2020 (this page): No changes necessary for Season 20.
  • 21 Nov. 2019 (gear page): Added 2 pieces of Aughild's set. Replaced Kanai's Cube jewelry recommendation to Ring of Royal Grandeur as a result. Expanded the stat priorities, paragon points, and gems sections. Added a potion section.
  • 21 Nov. 2019 (skills page): Changed default run for Vault.
  • 21 Nov. 2019 (this page): Skills and gear revisions for Season 19 (added 2 pieces of Aughild's set). Complete revisions of the variations.
  • 23 Aug. 2019 (gear page): Reviewed for Season 18.
  • 23 Aug. 2019 (skills page): Reviewed for Season 18.
  • 23 Aug. 2019 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 18.
  • 16 May 2019 (gear page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
  • 16 May 2019 (skills page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
  • 16 May 2019 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
  • 17 Jan. 2019 (gear page): Added suggestions for the baseline Ring of Royal Grandeur for Seasonal characters.
  • 17 Jan. 2019 (skills page): Updated for Season 16.
  • 17 Jan. 2019 (this page): Guide was revised with additional recommendations for Season 16.
  • 20 Sep. 2018 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 15.
  • 14 Jun. 2018 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 14.
  • 30 Oct. 2017 (this page): Slight wording changes to reflect small tooltip changes in Patch 2.6.1.
  • 01 Jul. 2017 (this page): Updated guide for 2.6 and moved it to the new format.
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