LoD Rapid Fire Demon Hunter Skills and Runes
On this page, we explain how to choose and use your skills when playing LoD Rapid Fire Demon Hunter in Diablo 3. Updated for Patch 2.7.8 and Season 34.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Rotation
The LoN Rapid Fire build has a fairly simple rotation — it
begins runs by activating
Vengeance, which has permanent uptime with a
combination of
Dawn and CDR on gear, and reapplies it on cooldown. The
same goes for
Fan of Knives, which is added to the build simply for the
defensive value of
Bladed Armor. Try to be slightly more conservative
with
Shadow Power, as it chews through Discipline, and juggle its
defensive value with the
Smoke Screen
Vanishing Powder cooldown. Once you
have a dense pack of monsters engaged, you should trigger your
Wolf Companion for a decent temporary boost of damage. Try to sync it
with other sources of increased damage, like the Fire cycle of
Convention of Elements and/or when you are standing in the circle of an
Oculus Ring proc. Needless to say, all of your damage will come from
channeling
Rapid Fire — simply plant yourself in place and
channel away.
Skills and Runes
Rapid Fire is the primary damage dealing skill of the build —
a channeled, low-to-mid range cone AoE with a rather expensive Hatred cost,
which you will eliminate almost with a combination of
Sin Seekers (for
the channel cost) and
Cindercoat (for the activation cost). The rune
of choice is
Rapid Fire
Bombardment, as it not only has elemental
synergy with your Fire-based item options, but also Grenade-based synergy with
Hellcat Waistguard (see this build's Gear
page for more information).
A trio of strong defensive skills will bear the brunt of your protection.
The staple steroid skill of Demon Hunters, Vengeance, is included not
only for its baseline 40% multiplicative damage increase, but also the 50%
damage reduction of the
Dark Heart rune. Note that this rune will come
for free from a worn
Visage of Gunes, so you are free to take defensive
utility even further with the health sustain rune
Side Cannons. While
Vengeance requires 37% cooldown reduction for permanent uptime (also
noted in the gearing section below), you will do well to bump up your CDR
slightly higher (three 8% CDR slots for nearly 40% CDR is quite enough), which
allows you practically permanent uptime of the 40% armor buff of
Fan of Knives
Bladed Armor as well.
Fan of Knives will also serve as
a proc for
Cull the Weak,
Bane of the Trapped and
Numbing Traps (if you choose to run it) in a single, extremely
convenient shot. Lastly,
Shadow Power will be taken with the
Gloom rune for a short emergency bump to your damage reduction.
Note that for high-end Greater
Rift pushing, you can swap either Fan of Knives or
Shadow Power (depending on your playstyle) for the Crit Chance increase
of
Caltrops
Bait the Trap, which suits the static fighting playstyle of
Rapid Fire quite well — simply drop it at your feet and enjoy the
DPS bump.
Rapid Fire-based builds make good use of Smoke Screen as an
emergency protective pop, since the skill does not interrupt channeling. You
have some freedom when it comes to your rune of choice, but our general
recommendation is
Vanishing Powder, as it removes the Discipline cost
(freeing up more of that precious resource for
Vault movement), and
forces you to use the disappearance mechanic more strategically. Remember to
cast
Smoke Screen or
Shadow Power at least once every 8 seconds
to trigger the damage reduction of your cubed
Elusive Ring.
With multiple utilities to pick from, the LoN Rapid Fire Demon Hunter is
generally recommended to take the DPS buff role for the Companion
skill through the
Wolf Companion rune, boosting you with a temporary
multiplicative damage increase. While the
Wolf Companion buff sports a
generous 10-second uptime, the skill has a reasonably long cooldown and is
only up 50% of the time — so try to pop the
Companion active in
sync with other buffs like the Fire
Convention of Elements cycle,
Oculus Ring procs, or taking a Pylon buff.
Passives
Ambush complements the burst-oriented nature of the build,
front-loading your damage potential against newly encountered enemies. The
multiplicative nature of the passive further sweetens the offered 40% damage
increase.
Cull the Weak is a Demon Hunter mainstay, bringing a multiplicative
damage increase against Slowed or Chilled enemies. You will easily reap the
benefits of this passive with the help of the
Bane of the Trapped and
Bladed Armor slows. Those slows, of course, come from the inclusion of
Numbing Traps, which also bring valuable, near-permanent damage
reduction debuff on affected enemies. If you find
Numbing Traps to be a
defensive overkill, especially as you push this build to its upper GR limits,
you can swap this slot for the versatile mobility of
Tactical Advantage, allowing you to more easily scout for favorable
fights.
Grenadier is understandably a signature passive for grenade-based
builds, bringing a 10% multiplicative damage increase to the related skills
and increasing their explosion radius by 20% — a bonus that is hard to
quantify, but undeniable in effectiveness. For softcore players, it also
brings an amusing on-death detonation that fully benefits from the
grenade-related bonuses in the build.
Changelog
- 19 Jan. 2025: Skills and passives reviewed for Season 34.
- 22 Oct. 2024: Skills and passives reviewed for Season 33.
- 09 Jul. 2024: Skills and passives reviewed for Season 32.
- 10 Apr. 2024: Skills and passives reviewed for Season 31.
- 08 Jan. 2024: Skills and passives reviewed for Season 30.
- 13 Sep. 2023: Skills and passives reviewed for Season 29.
- 22 Feb. 2023: Skills and passives reviewed for Season 28.
- 26 Aug. 2022: Skills and passives reviewed for Season 27.
- 13 Apr. 2022: Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 09 Dec. 2021: Reviewed for Season 25.
- 21 Jul. 2021: No changes required for Season 24.
- 01 Apr. 2021: No changes required for Season 23.
- 18 Nov. 2020: Added S22 Cube recommendation.
- 30 Jun. 2020: No changes required for Season 21.
- 12 Mar. 2020: No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 20 Nov. 2019: Swapped Preparation for Smoked Screen.
- 23 Aug. 2019: Added a note about Smoke Screen as an alternative (in Preparation's slot).
- 16 May 2019: Guide added.
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