Natalya Rapid Fire Demon Hunter BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build takes advantage of the full Natalya set bonuses, taking five of the seven available pieces and opening up the jewelry slots for the damage multiplication of the Endless Walk set. You will also be crafting and equipping two of the three pieces of the Aughild's Authority set (more specifically, Aughild's Search and Aughild's Power, as these two do not interfere with Natalya set pieces). You will attain the complete set bonuses of this two-set amalgamation via Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube. Aughild's set bolsters both your defensive and offensive powers, especially versus elite enemies, where Natalya builds historically struggle — another substantial power spike for this build.

The ability to store the power of Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube opens a powerful offensive combo in the jewelry: the Endless Walk set, The Compass Rose ring and The Traveler's Pledge amulet. This jewelry set adds a unique mechanic that slowly increases your damage by up to a 100% if you remain stationary, and drains it away and increases your damage reduction while moving. This dynamic mimics the Rapid Fire DH playstyle, as you alternate between Vault bursts of movement in search of the next big fight with extended periods of stationary Rapid Fire channeling (see this build's skills page for more information).

For a large chunk of your progression with the build, your other ring slot can be taken by the damage reduction powerhouse Elusive Ring, whose considerable mitigation is easily triggered with either Smoke Screen or Vault at least once every 8 seconds. The alternative for high-end, very high Paragon level GR progression is Convention of Elements, whose rotation of elemental bonuses you will need to learn and time to maximize the benefits of the short-lived Fire cycle.

The ideal weapon 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 Rapid Fire quiver Sin Seekers, which has been reworked to include a massive skill damage buff on top of its longtime legendary power, the removal of the skill's channeling cost.

Since the bulk of your damage will come from Rapid Fire Bombardment, 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. This is especially important considering that grenades are very likely to bounce outside of a fight, or even outright disappear upon collision with a wall or a similar object. Nevertheless, for endgame pushing you will be looking for ideal circumstances — open area rifts, where the perfect 5-bounce Hellcat Waistguard will shine.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Rapid Fire % bonus at least on the boots; your fourth primary helm roll can be dedicated to Life per Hit simply for the sustain needs of the build. Get Fire 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%+. You will also be striving to reach a 37% CDR breakpoint for permanent uptime of Vengeance, attainable from Paragon points, Flawless Royal Diamond in the helm and 3 other items with max CDR rolls, distributed as you see fit (i.e. on shoulders, gloves, and one ring).

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), but ideally an extra one on gear, or the addition of the Leech passive.

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 (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.

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 due to its level 25 property (AoE slow in close range around you), fitting the melee playstyle of this build perfectly.

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.

As this build scales excellently with Attack Speed and can afford to fight at a near-melee range, Pain Enhancer makes an excellent fit for high tier GR progression. The level 25 property of the gem amplifies your Attack Speed for every struck ("bleeding") enemy nearby, allowing you to drop some IAS from gear and use it for CDR and Area Damage instead.

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.

Tucked away in the Cube, Wojahnni Assaulter is a cornerstone piece of Rapid Fire builds due to its scaling damage as you channel the skill.

Stone Gauntlets are one of the most effective protective pieces in the game, bumping your armor by 50% at a significant (and stacking) mobility penalty — one which you will completely negate with the crowd control immunization aspect of Vengeance.

In this Natalya's Vengeance / Aughild's Authority mixture, you will need a Ring of Royal Grandeur: a cache legendary ring from Act I bounties, to tie the two sets together. The ability to run with one full 6-piece set bonus and an additional 3-piece bonus, dodging the undesirable guaranteed stats on the Grandeur by cubing its power, is a tremendous boost to the build.

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 Enchantress, due to her cooldown reduction- and increased attack speed bonuses, both of which are helpful to the needs of an attack speed- and CDR-heavy build such as this one.

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.