Marauder Cluster Arrow Demon Hunter BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

Table of Contents

• +Introduction
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Video Guide
  • 3. Quick Reference
    • 3.1. Skill Setup
  • 4. Builds
    • 4.1. Gear Setup
    • 4.2. Legendary Gems
    • 4.3. Kanai's Cube
  • 5. Role in the Current Meta
  • 6. Reading Further
  • 7. ChangeLog
• +Skills and Runes
  • 1. Rotation
  • 2. Skills, Runes and Passives
• ×Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points
  • 1. Best in Slot Gear and Alternatives
  • 2. Paragon Points
  • 3. Gems
  • 4. Kanai's Cube
  • 5. Follower
• +Rockets-based Progression Build Variation
  • 1. Cluster Arrow Rockets Progression Build
  • 2. Adapting Skills
  • 3. Adapting Gear
  • 4. Adapting Gemming
  • 5. Adapting Kanai's Cube
• +Speed Farming Variation
  • 1. SpeedFarming
  • 2. Adapting Skills
  • 3. Adapting Gear
  • 4. Adapting Gemming
  • 5. Adapting Kanai's Cube

General Information

Below, we detail the items and gems that you should use for your Marauder Cluster Arrow Demon Hunter in Diablo 3 and why. We also list your paragon points and Kanai's Cube items. Updated for patch 2.6.1 and Season 15.

The other pages of our Marauder Cluster Arrow Demon Hunter guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

1. Best in Slot Gear and Alternatives

The build incorporates the complete Embodiment of the Marauder set, taking all six available pieces and opening up the jewelry for strong offensive sets. You will be trying to reach a 37% CDR breakpoint for permanent uptime of Vengeance, attainable from Paragon points, Flawless Royal Diamond in the helm and 3 other items with max CDR rolls, distributed as you see fit (i.e. on shoulders, quiver and one ring).

Stat-wise, the Marauder set can roll Cluster Arrow bonuses on the helm and boots, which you should strive to obtain. Sentry skill % can be obtained on the chest and shoulders, but is more desirable for the rocket-based variations ( Shooting Stars, Maelstrom and Multishot Arsenal); the grenades produced by Sentries in the Cluster Bombs variation do not benefit from Hellcat Waistguard, making their contribution minor compared to your own shots. As a consequence, the chest and shoulders primary rolls are better spent on Life % and Area Damage respectively.

Not skipping on any of the pieces required to obtain the Marauder 6-piece bonus leaves space for a potent combo in the jewelry: the Bastions of Will set, Focus and Restraint. This ring set adds an impressive 2.25 independent damage multiplier as long as you alternate between a primary and spender attacks; thus, learn to weave frequent Evasive Fire shots in your spender spam. Completing the jewelry, you have a number of options for the neck slot. While any well-rolled piece can do the job, your best option would be a Hellfire Amulet of Dexterity with a helpful fifth passive like Ambush or Awareness.

Introduced in Patch 2.4, Zoey's Secret belt is tailored to the Marauder set bonuses, and offers a unique source of protection: up to 9% damage reduction for every active Companion, cutting incoming damage by more than a half as a result. Note that this belt is interchangeable with the Hellcat Waistguard in a Cluster Bombs build (you will wear one and cube the other). Hellcat Waistguard has an unlisted 50% chance to proc, irrespective of the skill used or unique affix rolled. The belt increases the number of times grenades "bounce" and deal damage, counting the initial impact as the first bounce (and thus increasing your burst from the get-go). Notably, the final burst is 800% of the base damage, which somewhat lessens the impact of worse belts with lesser bounces, and can even make them preferable for speedfarming to lessen the time between a shot and the final burst. This is especially important considering that grenades are very likely to bounce outside of a fight, or even outright disappear upon collision with a wall or a similar object. Nevertheless, for endgame pushing you will be looking for ideal circumstances — open area rifts, where the perfect 5-bounce Hellcat Waistguard will shine.

The general recommendation for the wrist slot are the Wraps of Clarity; these bracers further reduce damage taken by up to 50% for 5 seconds after using a Hatred Generator. In a rocket build, its duration will be similar to that of Bastions of Will set, creating a rhythm to the buffs that makes them easy to maintain.

Extending the utility you get out of the Marauder set bonuses, the Bombardier's Rucksack lets you have two additional Sentries. Unlike the Custom Engineering passive, these additional charges are not immediately available — but you will have enough time to drop them in any significant fight, and the potential increase of your own damage makes this quiver mandatory for the build. As previously mentioned, in a Cluster Bombs variation grenades from Sentries do not benefit from Hellcat Waistguard, making it (counter-intuitively) sensible to reroll the natural Sentry bonus to another offense stat like Area Damage.

One of the signature vanilla Demon Hunter crossbows, Manticore, received a facelift in Patch 2.4 to complement Marauder Cluster Arrow builds for pushing high GRs. Besides rolling up to 300% additional Cluster Arrow damage, it offers the unique property of reducing the skill's resource cost in half — an indispensable bonus with the gluttonous base 40 Hatred per shot.

Slot	Pieces	Stat Priority
Head	Marauder's Visage	Dexterity Critical Hit Chance Socket Cluster Arrow % Vitality
Shoulders	Marauder's Spines	Dexterity Cooldown Reduction Resource Cost Reduction Area Damage Vitality
Torso	Marauder's Carapace	Dexterity 3 Sockets Vitality Life % Reduced damage from Elites All Resistance
Wrists	Wraps of Clarity (Best in Slot) Nemesis Bracers (Best in Slot Speed runs) Warzechian Armguards (Best in Slot Speed runs)	Dexterity Critical Hit Chance Fire Damage % Vitality
Hands	Marauder's Gloves	Dexterity Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Area Damage Cooldown Reduction
Waist	Zoey's Secret (Best in Slot) Hellcat Waistguard (Alternative)	Dexterity Vitality All Resistance Life %
Legs	Marauder's Encasement	Dexterity 2 Sockets Vitality All Resistance Slow % (Secondary Stat) Armor
Feet	Marauder's Treads	Dexterity Cluster Arrow % Vitality All Resistance
Amulet	Hellfire Amulet of Dexterity	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Fire Damage % Dexterity
Ring #1	Focus	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Area Damage Cooldown Reduction
Ring #2	Restraint	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Area Damage Cooldown Reduction
Weapon	Manticore (Best in Slot) Yang's Recurve (Best in Slot Speed runs)	Socket (preferably from Ramaladni's Gift) Weapon Damage Dexterity % Weapon Damage Vitality Resource Cost Reduction
Off-hand	Bombardier's Rucksack	Dexterity Critical Hit Chance Cooldown Reduction Area Damage Vitality

2. Paragon Points

Slot	Paragon Points
Core	Movement Speed up to 25% cap* Dexterity Maximum Hatred (up to personal preference) Vitality
Offense	Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Cooldown Reduction Attack Speed
Defense	All Resistance Life Armor Life Regeneration
Utility	Resource Cost Reduction Area Damage Life on Hit Gold Find

*Spend Paragon points only until the 15% boost from Paragon Points, as the remaining 10% for the 25% cap are already passively provided by Companion Ferret Companion.

3. Gems

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. The gem will be procced by Polar Station chills and Spider Companion slows, as well as your AI companion, usually armed with Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies a firm spot in your jewelry sockets during highest end progression. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in 1v1 combat. Cluster Arrow builds fare better than most in that regard, so you can gamble on the overall bonus of Bane of the Powerful not only during speedfarm, but as far into the high tiers as you are willing.

Due to its low-to-mid fighting range, the Cluster Bombs variant of this build uses the defensive bulwark of Esoteric Alteration for its final gem slot.

Slot	Gems
Jewelry	Bane of the Trapped Bane of the Stricken (Progression) Bane of the Powerful (Low to Moderate GRs) Esoteric Alteration
Helm	Flawless Royal Diamond
Torso and Pants	Flawless Royal Emerald (damage) Flawless Royal Diamond (toughness)
Weapon	Flawless Royal Emerald

4. Kanai's Cube

Dawn reduces Vengeance's cooldown by 65%, enabling permanent uptime with a modest investment into Cooldown Reduction — an offer that is hard to ignore with Vengeance's damage, resource and protection bonuses.

The armor slot of the Cube of this grenade-centric build, will either have Hellcat Waistguard or Zoey's Secret in this slot, depending on your worse rolled item.

In GRs, the jewelry slot will be best taken by the pure damage boost of Convention of Elements, whose rotation of elemental bonuses you will have to keep under close scrutiny. Once the sequence reaches the relevant element for your spec, you will enjoy a significant increase to your damage — so try to adopt a strategy of drawing monster attention during the off cycles, and major Hatred spending during your main elemental cycle.

5. Follower

For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our Follower Guide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear of your follower.

About the Author

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.