LoD FoK Demon Hunter BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

Since the build is based on the Legacy of Dreams power, you have some flexibility in the items you choose to slot across your gear, provided they are ideally of Ancient quality, have the appropriate stats, and do not form any other set bonuses (meaning you can temporarily run individual set pieces, if necessary).

The Legacy of Dreams power allows you to run any legendary item combination while not losing out on the damage amplification and reduction associated with the traditional 6-piece sets. You can obtain this power in two ways; the older way is equipping the two rings — The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted — as your only active set bonus. The newer (and more powerful, since it also opens your ring slots for legendary jewelry) method is the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem.

In a setup with Legacy of Dreams, you will be wearing your two best rolled rings and cubing the third between Convention of Elements, Unity, and Elusive Ring. Both Unity and Elusive Ring provide damage reduction through different conditions. Unity will cut incoming damage in half when paired with another on the follower, along with an immortality relic for them (i.e. Enchanting Favor). Elusive Ring is another massive damage reduction source, as long as you remember to use Smoke Screen at least once every 8 seconds (see this build's skills page for more information). Convention of Elements simply provides a massive damage increase during the Lightning cycle of its rotation.

You have two viable options for the amulet slot; either using Squirt's Necklace for an additional damage multiplier, or a Hellfire Amulet of Dexterity for a synergistic fifth passive like Perfectionist. 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.

Accounting for a significant part of your DPS and survival, two channeling-focused items will support your Fan of Knives burst. The aptly named Mantle of Channeling will increase your damage during Strafe channeling with 25%, while simultaneously reducing damage taken by the same amount. For the shoulder stats, seek out Area Damage and Fan of Knives skill damage alongside Dexterity and Vitality. Increasing both your damage and resource generation by a quarter when moving, Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan will add nicely to this agile spec. While wearing Death's Bargain in the slot is considered viable (and makes the build easier to play by nullifying the impact of life regeneration), this variation also requires wearing Visage of Gunes and slotting Seethe on your bar for resource management, making the build weaker overall.

You will be better off wearing Leoric's Crown or Andariel's Visage instead. Leoric's Crown makes the build slightly easier to play, since resetting vital cooldowns like Vengeance and Wolf Companion is priority in Greater Rifts, and no other helm will empower your socket bonuses and ease your CDR breakpoints quite like this one. Essentially doubling the effect of the gem slotted in your helm, Leoric's Crown will bump your CDR by 25% with a Flawless Royal Diamond. With optimized gear, Andariel's Visage emerges as a high-end alternative, as its unique ability to roll elemental damage gives you the highest burst possible out of any options in the slot.

Shi Mizu's Haori is a cornerstone legendary item of the build, as its unique affix incentivizes you to drop to low health — and actually stay there without dying. Shaping the entire playstyle and gearing requirements of the build around it, Shi Mizu's Haori also demands that you drop any life regeneration, life per hit or life per kill on gear, actively avoid health globes, and unlearn reflexively using a health pot when endangered. For all this, it offers a powerful bonus to compensate — as long as you fulfill the requirement of around quarter life maintenance, you will enjoy guaranteed critical hits. Note that Shi Mizu's Haori can be replaced by Aquila Cuirass depending on your better rolled item; you should cube the other.

An exotic recommendation for the belt slot is the underused Thundergod's Vigor. Guaranteed to roll with synergistic elemental damage bonuses and sacrificing a minimal amount of Toughness, this belt is the meeting point between the glass cannon The Witching Hour and the tanky String of Ears. With a melee oriented legendary affix and the unique ability to roll All Resistance on top of a guaranteed Lightning Resistance Secondary roll, Thundergod's Vigor makes a tight fit for the LoN FoK Demon Hunter.

Created as a direct answer to the excessive frailty of the Demon Hunter class, the Wraps of Clarity bracer reduces damage taken by up to 35% for 5 seconds after using a Hatred Generator. Along with the Aquila Cuirass resource demands, this item fortifies the position of Evasive Fire in the build, and serves as a constant reminder to alternate your primary and secondary skills.

The weapon setup is dedicated to utility legendaries. Fortress Ballista is a key legendary weapon for the build: supplying you with up to 3% max Life absorption shield per attack against an enemy, it forms the basis of your survivability. Note that the percentage of absorption will directly reflect your overall Toughness significantly, so try not to drop below a baseline of 2.6% on the legendary affix if you intend to push high GR tiers. The preferred companion to Fortress Ballista is the one-handed crossbow Dawn — with Vengeance reworked into a universally desired buff, reducing its cooldown up to 65% and achieving permanent uptime through gear is an opportunity you cannot pass lightly. It is important to equip your highest damage crossbow as your mainhand, as Fan of Knives only takes the mainhand into account for their 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, Area Damage, or elite damage %.

Arguably the two least important legendary items in the build are St. Archew's Gage and Irontoe Mudsputters, and while it is helpful to attain the shielding affix of the former and the Movement Speed proc of the latter, their absence will not break the spec (these are also the slots where you can temporarily use any well-rolled set or legendary ancient without significantly affecting the build).

For Offense stats, try to obtain Fan of Knives % bonus on both the chest and shoulders (maximum of 30%) and Lightning elemental damage on both the amulet and wrists (maximum of 40%). As a general stat goal, you will be trying to reach a 37% CDR breakpoint for permanent uptime of Vengeance, attainable from a well-rolled Dawn (63%+), Paragon points, Flawless Royal Diamond in a 90%+ Leoric's Crown, and a weapon with a max CDR roll (preferably the offhand). Finally, you will be dropping all Crit Chance and all sources of life sustain on gear (life regeneration, life per hit, life per kill), as they will slowly but surely get you out of the range of Shi Mizu's Haori's legendary effect.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool between 500-600k; dropping as much as you can for offense and utility stats as you grow accustomed to the build.

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.

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 Crit Damage, Cooldown Reduction, Attack Speed and Crit Chance in that order. In Defense, prioritize All Resistance, then Life %, then Armor, and skip Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Area Damage and Resource Cost Reduction first. Globe Radius and Life on Hit should be skipped.

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. The gem will be procced by itself with its level 25 property, making it an inseparable part of this melee-range burst setup.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies a firm spot in your jewelry sockets. 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 1v1 combat. With its undeniable AoE focus from Fan of Knives, LoD Demon Hunters take good advantage of this gem.

Your final slot is best occupied by the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem, which provides a scaling bonus for each legendary item equipped, as long as you have no set bonuses equipped. This bonus is multiplied for Ancient or Primal quality items, and when the gem is maxed out, it matches the Legacy of Nightmares ( The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted rings) set bonus. This potent bonus allows you to play around with all your gear slots for synergistic legendary powers at the cost of a gem slot; in the older LoN setup, this socket would be occupied by Taeguk.

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 weapon, use a Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

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

Introduced in Patch 2.4, Lord Greenstone's Fan adds a stacking damage mechanic to Fan of Knives, encouraging you to build up damage and release it in controlled bursts during your Lightning Convention of Elements cycle. The two items sync at one Lightning proc at 15 stacks, and a next one at 30 — so judge the health of your adversaries and the amount of burst you will need.

Aquila Cuirass will halve incoming damage as long as Hatred does not dip below 90% of its reserve, which is an uncompromising teaching tool on punctuating Strafe with regular generator shots.

The jewelry slot is taken by the pure damage boost of Convention of Elements, whose rotation of elemental bonuses you will have to keep under close scrutiny. Once the sequence reaches the Lightning element, your damage will surge dramatically, so dump a stacked Fan of Knives during that brief window of opportunity.

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.

Note that due to Shi Mizu's Haori, you will be trying not to use your potion if it is at all possible to keep your life without it. As such, the type of potion you carry will not matter.