Shadow Impale Demon Hunter Speed Farming Variation

The Shadow Impale Demon Hunter deals with regular Rift farming decently all the way through the highest Torments, making it a viable build for the task. We have solo speed GR rankings and solo speed T16 rankings if you want to know more about which builds are best for speed farming.

Within the limited scope of regular difficulties, the necessary damage and toughness to triumph over the enemy is significantly smaller. Thus, your best course of action is to improve utility and speed.

Active Skills
Impale Ricochet Companion Wolf Companion 1 Vengeance Dark Heart 2 Smoke Screen Vanishing Powder 3 Vault Tumble 4 Shadow Power Gloom
Passive Skills
Ambush Tactical Advantage Blood Vengeance Awareness

When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.

During standard rift runs, you will be able to cover much greater distances due to the interaction between Vault and Tactical Advantage, with the former being free to cast due to the powers of the Chain of Shadows belt. You will still be triggering Shadow Power at the start of a run and re-applying Vengeance on cooldown for its protective properties, but the remainder of your rotation will be dedicated to utility, with Smoke Screen Vanishing Powder (also triggering Tactical Advantage) and Wolf Companion for the extra damage.

Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, but others will have to change according to the task at hand. Ability to cross over great distances faster and more efficiently take precedence.

• You can run any Impale rune you like, but for standard rifts we recommend the utility of the auto-aimed bounces of Ricochet.
• Shadow Power is still an inseparable part of Shadow set builds, and the value from its permanence and application of all runes is too good to pass up (note the movement speed increase of Shadow Glide, for example).
• Vault is still a necessary addition, perhaps even more so during speed farming. Though you are free to run the crowd control of Rattling Roll, but our recommendation is to run cheaper alternative Tumble.
• Vengeance Dark Heart is an omnipresent self-buff in all versions of the build.
• During normal rift speed farm, you have considerable freedom when choosing the replacement of Fan of Knives Bladed Armor — ranging from a generator like Bolas Thunder Ball if you run Focus and Restraint, to utility skills like Smoke Screen Vanishing Powder and Preparation Focused Mind.
• Once you comfortably outscale the content, you can swap Cull the Weak out during normal Rifts for a speedfarm-appropriate passive like Blood Vengeance, for extra resource stability and synergy with Avarice Band.
• Use your fourth passive slot for the massive runspeed boost from Tactical Advantage while farming low tier content.
• Ambush still brings excellent value to speed farming, as the increase of upfront burst almost guarantees oneshots in the standard difficulties.

It is worth noting that to optimize your farming convenience in regular rifts, you should swap away from the progression-oriented Aughild's Authority set, but still keep Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube — and incorporate some farming-appropriate legendary powers instead. The default recommendation is Gloves of Worship, but there are other decent options like Leoric's Crown and Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan.

When speed farming, the timing of Convention of Elements will be misplaced, so you can either swap to the consistent protection of an Elusive Ring, or a generic damage increase from a Lightning-rolled Stone of Jordan. It is also recommended to swap away from the Endless Walk set, as it promotes a static fighting style unfit for normal rifts; use the more offensive combo of Avarice Band and a Squirt's Necklace. Avarice Band's pickup radius bonus is an incredible boon during speed farming, as it benefits not only your movement speed through a socketed Boon of the Hoarder, but also negates downtime picking up progression orbs and gold. While any well-rolled amulet can fill the slot for Torments, Squirt's Necklace will bring the most burst damage, and you can all but ignore its "increase of damage taken" with the way you overpower content in regular rifts.

During low tier GRs or normal rift speedruns in solo play, an optimized character can avoid the overkill of toughness in the bracer slot by swapping to Warzechian Armguards for the additional environment destruction-based speed boost. The usual recommendation, Nemesis Bracers, can be worn by the follower starting from Patch 2.7, but should still be taken by the character themselves in group play.

Slot	Pieces	Stat Priority
Head	The Shadow's Mask	Dexterity Socket Critical Hit Chance Impale % Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Shoulders	The Shadow's Burden	Dexterity Area Damage % Cooldown Reduction All Resistance or Vitality Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Torso	The Shadow's Bane	Dexterity Vitality 3 Sockets Elite Damage Reduction Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Wrists	Warzechian Armguards (solo) Nemesis Bracers (groups)	Dexterity Critical Hit Chance Lightning Damage % Life per Hit or Vitality Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat) Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Hands	Gloves of Worship	Dexterity (replaced by Area Damage at High Paragons) Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Attack Speed Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Waist	Chain of Shadows	Dexterity Vitality All Resistance Life % Life per Kill (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Legs	The Shadow's Coil	Dexterity 2 Sockets Vitality All Resistance Life per Kill (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Feet	The Shadow's Heels	Dexterity Vitality All Resistance Impale Damage % Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Ring #1	Avarice Band	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Area Damage or Attack Speed Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Ring #2	Elusive Ring (Best in Slot) Stone of Jordan (Alternative)	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Area Damage or Attack Speed Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Amulet	The Flavor of Time	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Lightning Damage % Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Weapon	Karlei's Point	Socket (preferably from Ramaladni's Gift) High Weapon Damage Dexterity Damage % Increased Attack Speed Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Off-hand	Holy Point Shot	Dexterity Crit Chance Lightning Damage % Impale Damage % Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

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.

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.

Bane of the Trapped remains a universally desired damage amplification gem.

During speed farming, Pain Enhancer will be a progression-oriented overkill and should be replaced by Boon of the Hoarder. The latter is a high utility gem that feeds you practically infinite gold, gives you a massive short-term speed boost while picking it up, and synergizes excellently with the worn Avarice Band for a sizable speed boost, and the Goldwrap for near-invulnerability.

If you trust your ability to focus down and chain elites in regular rifts, you can safely swap Gogok of Swiftness out for Bane of the Powerful for the consistent, easily sustained damage increase. If you overpower content so much that even Bane of the Powerful is unnecessary, you can consider using Wreath of Lightning for the extra speed.

Slot	Gems
Jewelry	Bane of the Trapped Boon of the Hoarder Bane of the Powerful Wreath of Lightning (alt)
Helm	Flawless Royal Diamond
Torso and Pants	Flawless Royal Emerald
Weapon	Flawless Royal Emerald

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

In a highly optimized normal rifting setup, you can consider swapping the weapon Cube slot out from Dawn to the farming powerhouse In-geom.

The damage intake-based damage reduction from Stone Gauntlets will be redundant in regular rifts, where you can get all the protection you will ever need via Goldwrap.

If you opt to include an additional legendary power in place of one of the Shadow set pieces during speedfarm, you will need to cube Ring of Royal Grandeur to maintain the 6-piece Shadow bonus.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.