Natalya Rain of Vengeance Demon Hunter BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build takes advantage of the full Natalya set bonuses, taking six of the seven available pieces and opening up the jewelry slots for the damage multiplication of the Bastions of Will set. The preferred companion to Natalya's Slayer 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 (see this build's skills page for more information).

Since a consistent part of your damage will come from Rain of Vengeance Anathema, a grenade-based skill, it is only natural to equip Hellcat Waistguard as your belt. Hellcat Waistguard has an unlisted 50% chance to proc, irrespective of the skill used or unique affix rolled. The belt increases the number of times grenades "bounce" and deal damage, counting the initial impact as the first bounce (and thus increasing your burst from the get-go). Notably, the final burst is 800% of the base damage, which somewhat lessens the impact of worse (less bounces) belts, and can even make them preferable in certain cases. A Natalya build is a good example, since Anathema's grenades tend to bounce more and further than other grenade skills. The results are highly dependent on circumstance, but as a rule of thumb do not be discouraged to equip a "fewer bounces" belt.

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.

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 Awareness, Archery or Single Out. 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.

While more durable than the average Demon Hunter build in Greater Rifts, the Natalya spec still adopts the Wraps of Clarity bracer to reduce damage taken by up to 35% for 5 seconds after using a Hatred Generator. Along with the Bastions of Will set, this item fortifies the position of a primary skill in the build, and makes it hard for you to forget punctuating the Strafe channeling with regular generator shots.

Patch 2.4 also introduced a legendary shoulder specifically targeting channeling builds — the aptly named Mantle of Channeling. Natalya Demon Hunters fall right into that category with their perma- Strafe, and enjoy the 25% increase in damage dealt and 25% decrease in damage taken. Stat-wise, aim to roll Cooldown Reduction, Fan of Knives % and Area Damage.

With the Patch 2.4 Natalya set revisions, the importance of cooldown reduction and attack speed stacking has been greatly reduced, but it is still recommended to reach a comfortable 40% CDR to achieve permanent Vengeance and 2:1 ratio of generator to Rain of Vengeance uses. Weapons-wise, it is important to equip your highest damage crossbow as your mainhand, as Rain of Vengeance 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 %. Outside of that, get Get Lightning 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 100%+.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool between 500-600k; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustain through Life per Hit on gear, with at least one high roll in your setup (i.e. bracer).

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.

Season 27 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.

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, 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.

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 Entangling Shot, secondary stats on your gear and your AI companion, usually armed with Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker.

Taeguk is taken as a rare hybrid of defense and offense among the legendary gem options, with continued Strafe channeling keeping the stacks capped. Learning to balance your Hatred through generators so you can perma-Strafe takes time, but is well worth it for the Taeguk DPS and toughness build up.

Bane of the Powerful's duration scales very well with levels, and having a low uptime on a decently leveled gem is a telling sign that the rift is unfavorable anyway (winding layout, lacking density, insufficient elites). The gem's default 20% damage increase has been reworked into multiplicative, and the level 25 bonus now increases AND reduces elite damage by 15%, making it a well-rounded choice for many builds. For extremely high end pushing, swap this gem out for Bane of the Stricken to assist you in taking down the Rift Guardian.

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.

In Greater Rifts, 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. Get as many Rain of Vengeance casts as you can during the elemental cycle appropriate to your rune, and dump a stacked Fan of Knives during the Lightning cycle for some massive bursts of damage.

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 the Leech due to its Life per Hit bonuses, which synergize perfectly for the high attack speed and sustain-through-attacks playstyle of the build.