GoD Hungering Arrow Speed Farming Demon Hunter Build (Patch 2.7.8 / Season 34)

The GoD Hungering Arrow Demon Hunter deals with regular Rift farming quite well all the way through the highest Torments and is very adept at farming low tier Greater Rifts for Paragon levels and legendary gem upgrades, making it a viable build for any speed farming 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
Hungering Arrow Devouring Arrow Strafe Drifting Shadow 1 Companion Ferret Companion 2 Smoke Screen Displacement 3 Preparation Focused Mind 4 Vengeance Dark Heart
Passive Skills
Awareness Tactical Advantage Blood Vengeance Ambush

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

The major dynamic of the build remains largely the same, as you will Strafe from fight to fight and spread your deadly Hungering Arrow shots through the set mechanic. You will be focusing a lot more on movement and utility, of course, and alongside the usual on-cooldown activations of Vengeance, you will also be using Smoke Screen Displacement quite liberally, counterbalanced with Preparation Focused Mind to offset the cost. You will be allowed much greater freedom of movement due to the interaction between Smoke Screen and Tactical Advantage, and you will fuel your mobility via your Avarice Band-augmented pickup radius and its interaction with Blood Vengeance.

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.

• The main interaction of the build — the one between Hungering Arrow Devouring Arrow and Strafe Drifting Shadow — remains unchanged, and both skills and their rune selection will be staples in your speed farming runs.
• Vengeance Dark Heart is an omnipresent self-buff in all versions of the build.
• You can keep Companion in the build, but opt for the flavorful and speed farming-appropriate rune Ferret Companion, which bolsters your movement speed.
• Both Fan of Knives and Shadow Power from the progression build are far too tanky for the requirements of speed runs, so it is advisable to swap these skills out for Smoke Screen and Preparation, respectively. Smoke Screen will provide you with another burst of speed through the rune Displacement, while Preparation will offset the cost of the former with the abundant Discipline regeneration of the Focused Mind rune.
• As far as passive selection goes, you will keep Ambush from the base build for its massive upfront burst potential. It is also advisable to use Awareness to prevent any mishaps; overconfidence is an easy pitfall when you start to comfortably trample the content, but the DH remains a rather glassy and burst-prone class. The remainder of your passives will ease your farming considerably. Tactical Advantage offers a nice speed boost whenever you pop Smoke Screen. Blood Vengeance will not only expand your Hatred pool, but also enables a Reaper's Wraps-like effect that replenishes both Hatred and Discipline when picking up health globes. This passive will benefit immensely from the cubed Avarice Band and result in stable resources despite the heavy spending in speedruns.

You will still be taking advantage of the full 6-piece set bonuses of Gears of Dreadlands, incorporating five of the six pieces that you would in progression, but equipping Depth Diggers instead of Cold Cathode Trousers. Wearing Depth Diggers allows you to run another speed run-synergistic power in the armor slot of the Cube, as discussed below. Of course, that necessitates that you complete the GoD powers by cubing a Ring of Royal Grandeur.

In speed farm, it is advisable to abandon the damage reduction from the Wraps of Clarity in favor of Warzechian Armguards, for the environment destruction speed buffs that are easily provided by the AoE of this build. The former favorites, the elite spawning Nemesis Bracers, are still very valuable, but they can now be equipped on the follower while still getting their bonus via the Emanate mechanics. You should still equip them in groups, where you cannot have a follower with you. The Nemesis Bracers value comes from the additional loot — not to mention progression — coming from the extra elite spawns. They let you finish standard rifts that much faster, and acquire the coveted GR keys in greater amounts.

It should be noted that your jewelry during farming can still be the Bastions of Will set ( Focus and Restraint); however, once you perfect your character and no longer want for burst, you should use utility-focused jewelry instead. A combination of Avarice Band and a Cold damage Stone of Jordan is a nice alteration. The union of Avarice Band with Boon of the Hoarder will greatly improve your speed, as well as feed into your gold reserve for the costly GR empowerments. The Cold SoJ will simply be a consistent, care-free damage increase as you farm.

To help with your Hatred management, it is recommended that you swap your weaponry setup into a worn Yang's Recurve and The Ninth Cirri Satchel combo. While it might seem counterintuitive at first due to its Multishot-oriented bonuses, Yang's Recurve brings a massive innate Resource Cost Reduction roll, which greatly assits your Hatred management during farming.

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.

This Season comes with the theme of Angelic Crucibles — consumable items that empower Legendary items with perfected Ancient-level stats, as well as infuse them with one of three unique, powerful, class-specific abilities at random. For this build, we recommend aiming for the Vengeance Sanctification, which adds the following power to your build:

• Vengeance Sanctification: Casting Vengeance unleashes a barrage of rockets that deal damage equal to a percentage of the maximum life enemies possess. The number of rockets fired increases over 30 seconds. Elites and Bosses receive less damage per rocket.

Use Angelic Crucibles on an item that crosses over most (if not all) variants of a build, and is also an item that is relatively harder to perfect than other slots (since sanctifying an item maximizes its stats). In the case of this build, a good candidate for Sanctification is Dawn, which is present across all variants of this build.

You can read more on Angelic Crucibles and the sanctification process in our dedicated Angelic Crucible Mechanics guide.

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.

Taeguk and Simplicity's Strength both still bring excellent damage multiplication and protective utility to the build in speed farming.

In normal rifts, the third gem slot should be taken by Boon of the Hoarder. This high utility gem feeds you practically infinite gold and gives you a massive short-term speed boost while picking it up, automated by a worn Avarice Band. If you are doing GR speed farming in lower tiers for XP and gem ups, you should slot Bane of the Trapped here.

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

Assuming you follow our weaponry alteration advice, it will be necessary to move Dawn to the weapon Cube slot to still enjoy the massive Vengeance cooldown reduction bonus.

To take advantage of the gold gain bonuses from Boon of the Hoarder, you can transform them into a carefree source of toughness via the Goldwrap belt in the Cube.

Lastly, in order to maintain the valuable 6-piece bonus of Gears of Dreadlands set, you will need to cube a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry slot.

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 standard rift farming for keys is the Enchantress due to her numerous utility bonuses, allowing you to smooth out your speed runs even further.

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.