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 2.6.10 and Season 22.
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.
This concludes the overview of the Active Skills, now let us look through the Passives.
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
- 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.
More Demon Hunter Guides
Builds from Other Classes
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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