Demon Hunter Natalya Fire Build with Rain of Vengeance (Patch 2.4)

This bursty, control oriented playstyle is unlocked through the following pieces:

• Weapon: Natalya's Slayer
• Helm: Natalya's Sight
• Chest: Natalya's Embrace
• Gloves: Natalya's Touch
• Pants: Natalya's Leggings
• Boots: Natalya's Bloody Footprints
• Ring: Natalya's Reflection (not recommended)

This build is no longer viable and has been removed from our menus. We are leaving it on the website for documentation purposes.

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.

The following video guide was created to accompany the present written guide and demonstrate how to play the build in-game.

Active Skills
Rain of Vengeance Stampede Strafe Rocket Storm 1 Evasive Fire Focus 2 Companion Wolf Companion 3 Smoke Screen Displacement 4 Preparation Focused Mind
Passive Skills
Leech Steady Aim Cull the Weak Ambush

Rain of Vengeance is the primary damage dealer of the build; the Natalya set 2-piece bonus lowers the significant cooldown of the skill by 2 seconds when you hit an enemy with a Hatred-generating or Hatred-spending attack, allowing you to chain cast Rain of Vengeance in the thick of battle. Using it will also trigger the damage effect of the Crashing Rain belt, producing the signature burst of the build. The rune of choice for soloing is Stampede, whose knockback property procs your Strongarm Bracers and allows you to keep enemies at bay, molding fights to your advantage.

To reset the centerpiece of the build, we will be using Strafe; a skill that long struggled for viability, it fits snugly into the Natalya mechanics by allowing you mobility and fast resets, coming from the constant damage ticks inherent to its channeled nature. The rune of choice is the elementally synergistic Rocket Storm, whose additional rockets assist the cooldown resets.

While you will reduce its price through gear, Strafe will steadily deplete your Hatred; to stabilize your resources, use Evasive Fire with the strongest rune for Hatred restoration, Focus. Doing away with the annoying backflip of other Evasive Fire runes, it does not disrupt the flow of Strafe movement. While it may take some time getting used to, alternating a few seconds of channeling with a cast of Evasive Fire is the best way to keep Hatred up and maintain the Focus and Restraint set bonus.

The swiss knife Companion skill takes on a role of a damage buff by taking the Wolf Companion rune, providing you with a high uptime 30% damage increase. Pop this cooldown liberally, as the cooldown reduction stacked on gear and the generous, 10 second duration of the buff itself will guarantee Wolf Companion is up for every significant fight.

The very embodiment of glass cannon, the Demon Hunter usually adopts at least one protective mobility skill. The Natalya build is no exception, incorporating the disappearance mechanic of Smoke Screen to synergize with Strafe — as it does not interrupt the channeling. To double up as a movement tool, take the Displacement rune — it will allow you to move fast between fights, outrange enemy affixes, or even skip unfavorable packs (i.e. Reflect Damage).

The higher the Greater Rift you attempt, the more Smoke Screen will be spammed in an effort to keep you alive. To help pay for the significant Discipline spending, we will be using Preparation. While CDR will be abundant on gear, the base 45 second cooldown of Preparation cannot be ignored — so to gain the most resources per cast, take the restoration over time rune Focused Mind.

This concludes the overview of the Active Skills, now let us look through the Passives.

Ambush complements the burst oriented nature of the build, frontloading your damage potential against newly encountered enemies. The multiplicative nature of the passive sweetens the 40% damage increase offered, and leads to the unrivaled performance of Natalya against trash packs.

Steady Aim is one of the better pure damage passives at the disposal of Demon Hunters; offering a 20% additive damage bonus as long as you maintain the small radius requirement of 10 yards, Steady Aim makes for a more consistent companion to conditional modifiers like Ambush and Cull the Weak.

Cull the Weak completes the offensive trio of passives, amplifying your damage against Slowed or Chilled enemies by 20%. This potent multiplicative passive gets triggered by the Intimidate slows from your Templar companion, along with the secondary stats on your gear.

Finally, Awareness will be used as a last line of defense in the paper thin protection the Demon Hunter has. It is a cheat death on a decent 60 second cooldown, coupled with a brief window of safety and life regeneration when triggered, and you will find yourself thankful you picked it up the higher you try to climb in Greater Rifts.

One more passive worth mentioning is Single Out; a helpful addition in prolonged single target fights — of which you will encounter plenty, at the end of every Greater Rift; This is your recommended fifth passive if you manage to obtain a well-rolled Hellfire Amulet of Dexterity, as the unique property of these amulets is rolling a passive for the respective class (essentially allowing you a free, fifth passive).

The build takes advantage of the full Natalya set bonuses, taking six of the available seven pieces and opening up the jewelry slots for the damage multiplication of the Bastions of Will set. Rolls-wise, this cooldown-based playstyle makes good use of CDR across gear. Sought after on the Natalya's Touch, CDR is taken as the fourth primary stat alongside Dexterity, Crit Chance and Crit Damage. Rain of Vengeance % bonus is taken on the Natalya's Embrace, ideally accompanied by Hatred regeneration. The Natalya's Leggings are dedicated purely to Toughness, and the ideal roll would include Slow % in the Secondary stats. The Natalya's Sight and Natalya's Bloody Footprints can roll Strafe % bonus, and while this skill is primarily used as a reset tool for Rain of Vengeance, the damage will add up; as such, rolling for Strafe % is up to personal preference. As a final note, the desired stats on the Natalya's Slayer are high damage range, Dexterity, Damage % and Cooldown Reduction, along with as high of a natural Rain of Vengeance % you can find.

There are two viable companions to the Natalya's Slayer; the one handed crossbows Balefire Caster and Calamity. The former offers synergistic elemental damage bonuses and is prioritized as stronger for this build, while the latter can be used for more Natalya build variations (i.e. cold or physical). Regardless of which you obtain, Cooldown Reduction is once again a highly desired primary stat.

It is important to equip your highest damage crossbow as your mainhand, as Rain of Vengeance only takes the mainhand into account for its damage calculation. As such, the offhand will be a pure stat stick, where you can even roll the damage range away in favor of other helpful primary stats: CDR, RCR, or elite damage %.

Crashing Rain is the mandatory choice for the belt slot, as its unique power (tied to Rain of Vengeance activation) produces a significant portion of your burst. With the property ranging from 3000 to 4000%, it is important to try to obtain as high of a percentage as you can. In the ideal case, a Freeze % roll will also be present in the Secondary stats.

Not skipping on any of the pieces required to obtain the 6 set bonus — of course, without the Natalya's Reflection — allows you to use a powerful offensive combo in the jewelry: the Bastions of Will set, Focus and Restraint. These rings offer a whopping 2.25 independent damage multiplier as long as you alternate between a primary and spender attacks — which, incidentally, mirrors the exact tactic of this build. Aim for CDR, Crit Chance, Crit Damage, and an open Socket.

To complete the jewelry, you have a number of options for the amulet slot. The two that come with the highest recommendation are a Hellfire Amulet of Dexterity with one of the aforementioned passives, or The Ess of Johan, whose monster grouping utility synergizes with the Rain of Vengeance AoE. Double Crit stats, an open Socket, and either Fire % or Dexterity are the desired rolls for the slot.

Fitting the knockback nature of the build, the Strongarm Bracers will be procced constantly by Stampede and add nicely to your damage. The ideal rolls are Dexterity, Crit Chance, Fire elemental damage and as close to the 30% knockback damage maximum as you can get.

The shoulder slot lacks a necessary legendary or set piece, and is free for experimentation as you see fit. You can add a bonus damage source on top by including the freshly buffed Death Watch Mantle; alternatively, take another cheat death (however unreliable with its low proc rate) from the Pauldrons of the Skeleton King, found in Act I bounty caches. Whatever your choice is, aim to roll Cooldown Reduction, Resource Cost Reduction and Rain of Vengeance %.

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.

Your three jewelry sockets will be taken up by the legendary gems Bane of the Trapped, Zei's Stone of Vengeance and Gogok of Swiftness. The first two are extremely powerful as they are their own multipliers in your total damage calculation.

Gogok of Swiftness is a synergistic third choice for your last jewelry slot, indirectly providing you with more damage. While this guide will not delve into the specifics of breakpoint chasing, it is important to remember that Natalya build resets cooldowns through Strafe, and its damage ticks will affect the speed at which you reset Rain of Vengeance. Reaching 1.90 attack speed and 53.5% CDR in your sheet (before Gogok of Swiftness stacks) will result in the optimal 2 Evasive Fires to 1 Rain of Vengeance ratio. This gem is an easy source of another 15% Attack Speed and Cooldown Reduction, with your constant Strafe channeling easily keeping the stacks capped to reach the 2.14 sheet Attack Speed breakpoint.

• Weapon: Calamity
• Armor: Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan
• Jewelry: Convention of Elements

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.