Marauder Cluster Arrow Demon Hunter Rockets-based Progression Variation

The far range Cluster Arrow playstyle relies on the power of rockets, and is one of the oldest and safest Demon Hunter builds: demolishing the enemy through a long range barrage of death.

Active Skills
Evasive Fire Focus Cluster Arrow Shooting Stars 1 Vengeance Seethe 2 Vault Tumble 3 Companion No rune chosen 4 Sentry Polar Station
Passive Skills
Ambush Custom Engineering Cull the Weak Ballistics

Your overall strategy will not change from the Fire-based build, only the range at which you fight; you will still be focusing on dropping your entire Sentry reserve in key points around the battlefield, creating chokepoints for monsters to be decimated by the Cluster Arrow barrage. Carefully timed Vengeance plus regular generator shots remains your method of Hatred upkeep, and regular usage of Companion nets you the positives of all the runes at your side. Use Vault in between fights to find the next best engagement.

A large part of your active skill selection remains the same as the Fire-based build: Vengeance remains an all-too-valuable self-buff, and you will time its use to important engagements; Companion and Sentry Polar Station are an integral parts of Marauder builds; and Vault Tumble is still an irreplaceable movement tool.

If you prefer fighting at a longer range, adjust Cluster Arrow to the rockets-based, physical Shooting Stars. This rune is better at bursting down single targets, but you can also use the cold Maelstrom for its healing side effect.

In your passives, staples like Custom Engineering, Ambush and Cull the Weak are natural choices for any Sentry-based build. As you focus on a rocket-based variation with Shooting Stars however, it is only natural to swap Steady Aim from the Fire-based base build for the synergy with the Ballistics passive. Doubling the effectiveness of the rockets splitting off Cluster Arrow, and even giving you a free homing rocket every few attacks, this passive is a sizable multiplicative boost.

You will maintain the entirety of your gear selection from the Fire-based main build. You take advantage of the full 6-piece Marauder bonus, incorporating five of the six available set items and mixing in the craftable Captain Crimson's Trimmings set — Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and one more of your choosing, according to your weaker Marauder set piece (either Captain Crimson's Thrust or Captain Crimson's Waders). This set provides CDR as well as RCR bonuses, and then scales your damage dealt and damage reduced according to both stats, respectively — bringing a massive boon to the build. You complete both set bonuses with a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube.

The cubed Ring of Royal Grandeur leaves space for the valuable damage multiplication of the Bastions of Will set, Focus and Restraint. The preferred amulet for this build is Squirt's Necklace; rewarding high-range and evasive builds that demolish their enemies from afar, this legendary piece greatly amplifies both damage dealt and damage taken.

Cornerstone Marauder pieces like Zoey's Secret and Wraps of Clarity are still taken in the build to provide the majority of your damage reduction. Naturally, the dedicated Cluster Arrow legendaries — Manticore and Bombardier's Rucksack — are still part of the build.

While it is Multishot-centric by default, Yang's Recurve also brings a massive (up to 50%) innate Resource Cost Reduction roll, making it desirable for Cluster Arrow builds as well. Its other desired stats are high damage range, high Dexterity, Attack Speed and Area Damage.

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 Cluster Arrow Sanctification, which adds the following power to your build:

• Cluster Arrow Sanctification: Firing Cluster Arrow no longer drops explosive ordinance. Instead, it concentrates its explosive force into piercing rays of light.

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 Yang's Recurve, 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.

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. Since this is a Marauder setup, remember to spend Paragon points on Movement Speed only until the 15% boost, as the remaining 10% for the 25% cap are already passively provided by Companion Ferret Companion.

After you take care of Movement Speed, dump as much as you comfortably can into Dexterity, but feel free to invest into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness. Investing into Max Hatred should not be necessary.

In the Offense section, max out Crit Damage, Crit Chance, Cooldown Reduction 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 Resource Cost Reduction first, then finish off with Life per Hit and Globe Radius.

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 Polar Station chills and Spider Companion slows, as well as your AI companion, usually armed with Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker.

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 1v1 combat. Cluster Arrow builds fare better than most in that regard, so you can gamble on the overall bonus of Bane of the Powerful not only during speedfarm, but as far into the high tiers as you are willing.

Your final legendary gem slot is more flexible; you can either try to maximize your damage with smart positioning and the range-based damage multiplication of Zei's Stone of Vengeance, or use the defensive bulwark of Esoteric Alteration due to the relatively short fighting range of the build.

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. The build benefits from at least some cooldown reduction, so 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.

One of the signature vanilla Demon Hunter crossbows, Manticore, received a facelift in Patch 2.4 to complement Marauder Cluster Arrow builds for pushing high GRs. Besides rolling up to 300% additional Cluster Arrow damage, it offers the unique property of reducing the skill's resource cost in half — an indispensable bonus with the gluttonous base 40 Hatred per shot. As previously discussed, you can alter the build to drop Yang's Recurve and wield the Manticore, which lets you cube Dawn; its power reduces Vengeance's cooldown by 65%, enabling permanent uptime at the 37% Cooldown Reduction breakpoint.

Zoey's Secret belt is tailored to the Marauder set bonuses, and offers a unique source of protection: up to 9% damage reduction for every active Companion, cutting incoming damage by 63% in the base version of the build.

In order to mix in the Marauder set with the craftable Captain Crimson set, you will need a Ring of Royal Grandeur: a cache legendary ring from Act I bounties, to tie the two set bonuses together.

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.

For Greater Rift progression with this build, we recommend the Templar for his essential heal and cheat death abilities. The Templar is a preferable choice due to the lacking sustain in this build, as well as the general squishiness of Demon Hunters in high Greater Rift progression.

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 potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of Amplification (the highest pure health recovery pot, as its healing amplification procs itself for 75% health restoration), or Bottomless Potion of Rejuvenation (for the extra resource recovery proc when used below half HP — useful in a resource-intensive build such as this one). Pick whichever you feel helps you out the most.