GoD Hungering Arrow Demon Hunter BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build takes advantage of the full Gears of Dreadlands set bonuses, taking all six available pieces and opening up the jewelry for the damage multiplication bonuses of the Bastions of Will set. You will be obtaining as much tankiness on pieces like the Dystopian Goggles (along with Crit Chance), the Galvanized Vest and Antique Vintage Boots. This allows you to focus on CDR and offense stats on pieces like the Mechanical Pauldrons (with both Area Damage and CDR as desirable rolls), the Gas Powered Automail Forearm (with double Crit stats, CDR and Area Damage), and even the Cold Cathode Trousers (where Hungering Arrow skill damage is a possible roll).

Taking all six available set pieces allows you to run purely offense-based jewelry, and you will be filling the ring slots with none other than the Bastions of Will set — Focus and Restraint. This ring set multiplies your damage as long as you alternate between a resource generating and resource spending attacks, which is a requirement you fulfill by interweaving a manual Hungering Arrow shot at least once every 5 seconds as you channel Strafe. You will finish off your jewelry selection with Squirt's Necklace, which nets you an additional damage multiplier. The former favorite The Flavor of Time should now be slotted on your follower, and its power will be transferred to your character via the Emanate mechanics.

You will be wearing Hunter's Wrath as your belt; this is a natural inclusion in a primary skill damage-based build, as it not only increases the rate of your primary attacks with a baked-in attack speed bonus, but also has a varying damage increase to primary skills. Naturally, try to obtain as high of a damage bonus as you can. Stats-wise, you are looking for Dexterity, Vitality, All Resistance and Hungering Arrow % bonus — this is your other armor piece besides the pants that can boost your skill damage.

A staple of Demon Hunter builds — especially as far as progression is concerned — you will be taking Wraps of Clarity as your bracers. Their effect is simple yet potent, halving your incoming damage as long as you regularly use a hatred-generating attack. Note the bracers' synchronization with the Bastions of Will set, which solidifies the rotation into a primary skill shot at least once every 5 seconds to keep both bonuses up.

One of the ideal weapons for the build is the one-handed crossbow Dawn — with Vengeance being a universally desired buff, reducing its cooldown up to 65% and achieving permanent uptime through gear is an opportunity you cannot pass lightly. Its companion will be the dedicated Strafe one-handed crossbow Valla's Bequest. Valla's Bequest allows you to proc your 4-piece bonus more frequently by allowing the same Strafe projectile to create multiple hits. While this is not a direct skill damage buff, it does scale with monster density in rifts, and in ideal circumstances and good positioning will outshine the alternatives for this slot.

Another option you can viably alternate the second slot to a is the Fortress Ballista. A third, all-out on damage option is to wield Odyssey's End (slotting Entangling Shot over Shadow Power and applying the damage buff on freshly engaged enemies), equipping The Ninth Cirri Satchel in your offhand, and cubing the ever-useful Dawn.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Hungering Arrow % bonus on both the belt and the pants. Get Cold elemental damage on both the amulet and wrists (maximum of 40%), Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideally over 50% and 500%, respectively), and Area Damage of 150%+. This is generally a cooldown reduction-reliant build; you be striving to reach at least the 37% CDR breakpoint for permanent uptime of Vengeance, but ideally over 50% by spreading a CDR roll on most pieces you can (shoulders, gloves, both weapons, amulet, helm gem, Paragons).

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of about 500-600k; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustain through Simplicity's Strength secondary effect and Shadow Power, so dedicated sustain rolls on gear will not be necessary.

All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat, Dexterity.

Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item with stats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are main stats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and is unable to be rerolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for a stat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. Perfecting Secondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case for discarding an item, except where noted.

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.

The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised and re-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — For virtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual to advanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the path outlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of life first, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive and edge case utility nodes.

Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary Potion Powers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separate resource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Set items of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, and in the order shown below (courtesy of Caleko's Altar of Rites planner).

You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powers in our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.

In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally this is done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, but if your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that you cannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simply subtracting your roll from the 25% max. After that dump as much as you comfortably can into Dexterity, but feel free to invest into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness, or Maximum Hatred if you want to play around with a bigger resource pool.

In the Offense section, max out Cooldown Reduction (priority in order to hit the CDR breakpoint for permanent Vengeance), Crit Damage, Crit Chance, and Attack Speed in that order. In Defense, prioritize All Resistance, then Life %, then Armor, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Area Damage and Life on Hit first, then finish off with Resource Cost Reduction and Globe Radius.

Taeguk is the best hybrid of defense and offense among the legendary gem options, and continued Strafe channeling will ensure that your stacks remain capped. Note that there is a viable alteration in this slot to the pure damage multiplication of Bane of the Trapped.

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 whittling down the massive RG health pools.

Simplicity's Strength is one of the best DPS gems you can take for the build, as it was changed into a separate damage multiplication source to primary skills in Patch 2.4.1. Upgrading with a steady pace of half a percent per gem level, it quickly becomes a priority and a fixture in your gem choices. Its buffed healing secondary effect is also a great boon to the build, as it is one of its few steady sources of health sustain.

When it comes to gear gems, you will start out progression by slotting the highest available level of Emeralds in the chest and pants sockets. Ideally, these will all be Flawless Royal Emeralds as soon as possible. As you grow in Paragon (bulking up Dexterity in the Core section) and aim for higher tier and more dangerous GRs, you will transition those gems into the defensive Flawless Royal Diamond. There is no specific breakpoint where you do that; the rule of thumb is to make the change as soon as you feel the lack of toughness impede your progress. Since you are chasing a specific CDR breakpoint, slot a Flawless Royal Diamond in your helm. In your weapons, use a Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

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

The Ninth Cirri Satchel provides a cornerstone power to the build, as it turns the Hungering Arrow piercing from a chance-based effect to a guaranteed one. It also adds a healthy helping of damage multiplication to cement its place in your loadout. In case you are playing this build in a Season with Ethereal weapons active, this slot needs to be taken by either Dawn or your chosen power between Valla's Bequest and Fortress Ballista, depending on your preferred playstyle.

Depth Diggers are a natural inclusion in this generator build, since by cubing them you gain the maximized 100% damage increase to your generator (multiplicative damage source as of Patch 2.4.1).

Tucked away in the Cube, Convention of Elements will provide you with a significant damage increase during the appropriate elemental damage cycle — making it necessary that you keep a watchful eye on its rotation, and preparing fights by drawing enemy clusters closer together during the off cycles.

In your 4th Kanai's Cube slot in Season 33, place the Elusive Ring — will add massive damage reduction bonuses as you apply Shadow Power or Smoke Screen.

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.

The recommended follower for this build during solo GR progression is the Scoundrel due to his powerful crit buff, allowing you brief windows of extra damage that are well suited to the strengths of this build.

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.

The preferred potion for this build is Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid, which will allow you to break through movement-impeding Elite affixes — generally a problem for builds that move based on channeling effects.