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 |
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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
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.
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 (Wrists),
Guardian's Case (Waist), and
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 (found from Act I bounty caches).
- Endless Walk:This is a jewelry set consisting of
The Traveler's Pledge (Amulet) and
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 and
Restraint) and
Squirt's Necklace with acceptable losses to DPS.
Unity: A character wearing this ring, along with another
Unity on their follower plus an immortality relic for them (i.e.,
Enchanting Favor), will reduce their damage taken by 50%.
Unity can roll excellent offense-oriented stats and has an innate Extra Damage to Elites roll, which somewhat offsets losing all-out offense jewelry.
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 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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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.
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