Demon Hunter Embodiment of the Marauder Fresh 70 Starter Build (Patch 2.7.6 / Season 29)

TheEmbodiment of the Marauder starter build will naturally grow from the leveling and fresh 70 build. You will keep the dynamic between a generator and a spender, as well as Sentry and Companion — both of which will play growing roles in your overall rotation. In general, the Embodiment of the Marauder set enforces a unique, summoning-oriented playstyle that takes some getting used to, but offers a lot of power in return.

The following build assumes you will assemble the build in 2-piece increments, similarly to how Haedrig's Gift would dole the set out. Haderig's Gift is a seasonal participation reward that gives you a full class-specific set as you complete Chapters II, III and IV of the Seasonal Journey (accessible via the leaf-shaped icon in the top right corner). The cadence of early natural character progression is also not too far off the listed strategy, so even if the set is not part of Haedrig's Gift, you can put the advice below to good use.

Active Skills
Evasive Fire Focus Chakram Twin Chakrams 1 Preparation Punishment 2 Vault Tumble 3 Companion No rune chosen 4 Sentry Spitfire Turret
Passive Skills
Tactical Advantage Blood Vengeance Steady Aim Custom Engineering

As early as the 2-piece Embodiment of the Marauder set bonus, you gain considerable utility from all the runes of Companion. This well-rounded skill nets you a damage boost ( Wolf Companion), resource restoration ( Bat Companion), a movement speed buff ( Ferret Companion) and emergency safety ( Boar Companion and Spider Companion). As you activate them all at once with the active use of the skill, you it runs on a very reasonable 30-second cooldown, you can consider it your get-out-of-jail free card for any tight situation.

Rotation-wise, keep close to the leveling and fresh 70 build; Evasive Fire Focus will provide all the Hatred you need to spam Chakram Twin Chakrams with reckless abandon. And whenever Hatred does run low, you can pop Companion (remember — Bat Companion is in there) or Preparation Punishment. At this stage, Sentry will be nothing more than supplementary DPS, but it is good to get used to plopping the turrets down as you go — this is a cornerstone of the Marauder playstyle.

Early game crafts will not influence a beginner Marauder playstyle much, but if you got any of the usual DH leveling legendaries like Lord Greenstone's Fan or Karlei's Point, you can (and should) keep their corresponding skills around as convenient nukes.

Active Skills
Evasive Fire Focus Multishot Arsenal 1 Preparation Punishment 2 Vault Tumble 3 Companion No rune chosen 4 Sentry Spitfire Turret
Passive Skills
Tactical Advantage Blood Vengeance Awareness Custom Engineering

At the 4-piece Embodiment of the Marauder set bonus, you gain some of the build-defining changes to a Marauder playstyle: Sentries now cast the spender skills on your bar, and duplicate your own shots of them. This produces a huge bump in damage that should confidently carry you through most early game content, and easily finish you the Haedrig's Gift part of the journey.

As far as skills and how they are used are concerned — you should get very familiar with putting Sentry turrets down and keeping them at their cap, if you haven't already. Since they will cast Hatred spenders for free, you should alter to harder-hitting skills like Multishot Arsenal or Cluster Arrow Maelstrom. Other than that, keep Hatred up with Evasive Fire, Preparation Punishment and Companion, as well as Blood Vengeance in your Passives. Reposition smartly around the battlefield with Vault (empowered by Tactical Advantage). If you feel yourself pushing against your survivability limits, take Awareness as suggested above; otherwise, you can stick to a damage-oriented passive like Ballistics.

It is not unreasonable to assume that at the 4-piece bonus, you have attained at least one additional key item for Marauder Demon Hunters. If you follow the advice in our "Get the build started" section below, this item will likely be either Bombardier's Rucksack or Dead Man's Legacy (or both!). Heres how they factor into your beginner Marauder build:

• Bombardier's Rucksack is a cornerstone Marauder set item, as it extends the cap of active Sentry turrets by 2. It also augments your Cluster Arrow damage; if this is your solitary Hatred spender-boosting legendary at this point, you should definitely alter your main damage skill to Cluster Arrow Maelstrom, even if temporarily.
• Dead Man's Legacy greatly empowers Multishot, enabling the powerful Marauder Multishot build alongside Yang's Recurve — one of your high priority crafts.

Active Skills
Evasive Fire Focus Multishot Arsenal 1 Preparation Punishment 2 Vault Tumble 3 Companion No rune chosen 4 Sentry Polar Station
Passive Skills
Tactical Advantage Blood Vengeance Ballistics Custom Engineering

At the 6-piece Embodiment of the Marauder set bonus, your primary skills, Hatred spenders, and Sentry turrets gain a massive damage increase for every active Sentry on the battlefield. At this point, the set bonus plus any additional synergistic items will be able to carry you to the highest farming difficulties without any problems.

When it comes to skills, you should have the hang of Sentry turret placement by now, and hopefully have at least a Bombardier's Rucksack at your disposal. This will contribute immensely to your damage, allowing you to get away with using almost any skill and still demolishing the standard Torment tiers. Still, we recommend staples like Multishot Arsenal and Cluster Arrow Maelstrom, since they will give you the best ratio between Hatred spent, damage dealt and enemies affected. At this stage, farming becomes more about resource management, but never hesitate to swap Awareness into the build if you feel that Toughness is also an issue.

It is not unreasonable to assume that at the 6-piece bonus, you have attained at least two more crucial pieces for Marauder Demon Hunters. If you follow the advice in our "Get the build started" section below, these items should be Yang's Recurve and Zoey's Secret. Here is how they factor into your beginner Marauder build:

• Yang's Recurve greatly empowers Multishot, enabling the powerful Marauder Multishot build alongside Dead Man's Legacy — one of your high priority gambles.
• Zoey's Secret is a protective piece tailored for Marauder setups, cutting incoming damage by 63% with all the Companions active.

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 Marauder 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 Marauder Multishot 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.
• Gamble Quivers for Bombardier's Rucksack and Dead Man's Legacy. Bombardier's Rucksack is essential for Marauder playstyles, as it extends the Sentry cap by 2 turrets — and your overall damage dealt scales with their number. Dead Man's Legacy bolsters your damage and enables a lot of upfront burst, which is useful for the lower health enemies in regular difficulties farming.
• Upgrade rare (Hope of Cain recipe in Kanai's Cube) Bows to get Yang's Recurve. This is a build-defining weapon that greatly assists in your resource management, as well as your damage.
• Gamble Belts for Zoey's Secret, which is a tailored damage reduction tool for Marauder Demon Hunters — providing 63% DR with all the Companions at your side. 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.
• Gamble Bracers for Wraps of Clarity. If you followed our Beginner Seasonal advice, you might have gambled them at level 1 — as they are the solitary legendary bracer that DHs can gamble for from the get-go. Gambling on Bracers will also net you other staple farming legendaries like Warzechian Armguards (for yourself) and Nemesis Bracers (for your Follower).
• 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 (Cpt. Crimson) as described in the Marauder Multishot Demon Hunter 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; the Bastions of Will set ( Focus and Restraint), Elusive Ring and Convention of Elements will all 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.