Demon Hunter Shadow Impale Build
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.
Quick Reference
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 |
---|
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Passive Skills |
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.
- Helm:
The Shadow's Mask
- Shoulders:
Aughild's Power
- Gloves:
The Shadow's Grasp
- Chest:
The Shadow's Bane
- Belt:
Chain of Shadows
- Pants:
The Shadow's Coil
- Boots:
The Shadow's Heels
- Bracers:
Aughild's Search
- Amulet:
The Traveler's Pledge
- Ring 1:
The Compass Rose
- Ring 2:
Convention of Elements
- Weapon:
Karlei's Point
- Offhand:
Holy Point Shot
Legendary Gems
- Legendary Gem 1:
Bane of the Trapped
- Legendary Gem 2:
Gogok of Swiftness
- Legendary Gem 3:
Pain Enhancer
Kanai's Cube
- Weapon Slot:
Dawn
- Armor Slot:
Stone Gauntlets
- Jewelry Slot:
Ring of Royal Grandeur
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, 350
Arcane Dust, 125
Veiled Crystals, 35
Death's Breaths, and 15 of each Bounty cache
material:
Khanduran Rune,
Caldeum Nightshade,
Arreat War Tapestry,
Corrupted Angel Flesh, and
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 Souls, 10x
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, 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, which also might have been your lucky gamble from a level 31 gambling session. This quiver produces the signature "shotgun spread" playstyle of
Impale that encourages you to point blank priority targets to get all 3 hits on one enemy.
- Gamble Belts for
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
Vaults do not tax your Discipline too greatly. While gambling Belts, you can also stumble into
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; its legendary power needs to be slotted in the Cube asap, as it will greatly cut down your
Vengeance cooldown and, at the 37% sheet CDR breakpoint, will allow you its permanent uptime.
- Gamble helms for
Visage of Gunes; this is a convenience item that you will eventually replace with
Stone Gauntlets (but not before you get permanent
Vengeance). It nets you the
Dark Heart rune for free, and allows you to run the supreme resource gain of
Seethe.
- Do Act I bounties to attain the act-specific
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 (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 and
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,
Squirt's Necklace, or
Oculus Ring and
The Flavor of Time for your Follower.
Changelog
- 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 (skills page): Guide revised for Season 25.
- 09 Dec. 2021 (this page): Guide revised and added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 09 Dec. 2021 (gear page): Guide revised and added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 21 Jul. 2021 (this page): Added note regarding Ethereal weapons for Season 24.
- 21 Jul. 2021 (gear page): No changes required for Season 24.
- 21 Jul. 2021 (skills page): No changes required for Season 24.
- 01 Apr. 2021 (skills page): No changes required for Season 23.
- 01 Apr. 2021 (gear page): Added follower recommendation.
- 01 Apr. 2021 (this page): Added follower recommendation.
- 18 Nov. 2020 (gear page): Added S22 Cube recommendation.
- 18 Nov. 2020 (this page): Added S22 Cube recommendation.
- 18 Nov. 2020 (skills page): No changes required for Season 22.
- 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.
- 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.
- 30 Jun. 2020 (skills page): No changes required for Season 21.
- 30 Jun. 2020 (gear 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 (this page): No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 12 Mar. 2020 (skills page): No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 21 Nov. 2019 (skills page): Changed default run for Vault.
- 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 (this page): Skills and gear revisions for Season 19 (added 2 pieces of Aughild's set). Complete revisions of the variations.
- 23 Aug. 2019 (this page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 18.
- 23 Aug. 2019 (gear page): Reviewed for Season 18.
- 23 Aug. 2019 (skills page): Reviewed for Season 18.
- 16 May 2019 (this 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 (gear page): Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 17 Jan. 2019 (skills page): Updated for Season 16.
- 17 Jan. 2019 (gear page): Added suggestions for the baseline Ring of Royal Grandeur for Seasonal characters.
- 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.
More Demon Hunter Guides
Builds from Other Classes
Farming Guides
This build is presented to you by Deadset, one of the very few professional Diablo 3 players. Deadset regularly publishes video guides on Youtube and streams on Twitch, where you can see how this and other builds play out in practice.
- Diablo Immortal Reaches Over 10 Million Downloads
- Diablo Immortal Hotfixes: June 6th
- Diablo Immortal Known Issues, Hotfixes, and Patch Notes for PC Open Beta
- Don't Forget to Turn on Auto Loot in Diablo: Immortal
- Diablo Immortal Blizzard Store Update and Health Potion Collector's Box
- New Diablo Immortal Wings and Pet in Diablo 3
- Diablo Immortal Guides and News Section Launch
- Diablo: Immortal Launch Guide: Global Release Times, PC Pre-Download and More