Natalya Rapid Fire Demon Hunter Skills and Runes

Active Skills
Rapid Fire Bombardment Smoke Screen Vanishing Powder 1 Companion Boar Companion 2 Vault Tumble 3 Rain of Vengeance Flying Strike 4 Vengeance Dark Heart
Passive Skills
Cull the Weak Grenadier Ambush Awareness

The Natalya Rapid Fire build has a fairly simple rotation — it begins runs by activating Vengeance, which has permanent uptime with a combination of Dawn and CDR on gear, and reapplies it on cooldown. Your main damage multiplier comes from casting Rain of Vengeance on your enemies; it will simply serve as a buff, so do not expect to deal damage with it and simply cast it as soon as it comes off cooldown to attain the crucial 6-piece bonus of the Natalya set. In order to actually deal damage, as the build name implies, you will be channeling Rapid Fire — so once you pick a fight, simply plant yourself in place and channel away. This also triggers the Natalya 2-piece bonus, resetting the Rain of Vengeance cooldown and enabling the upkeep of the important 6-piece set buff. The remainder of your skill selection is made up of defensive cooldowns, each appropriate for a different situation — Smoke Screen to evade emergency bursts of damage, Boar Companion for a steady increase of your toughness, and Vault — to simply reposition when necessary.

Rapid Fire is the primary damage dealing skill of the build — a channeled, low-to-mid range cone AoE with a rather expensive Hatred cost, a large chunk of which you will eliminate entirely through the worn Sin Seekers, which remove the channeled spending. The rune of choice is Rapid Fire Bombardment, as it offers the highest damage potential through the Grenade-based synergy with Hellcat Waistguard (see this build's gear page for more information).

Using Rain of Vengeance is a major mechanic of the build; the Natalya set 2-piece bonus lowers the hefty cooldown of the skill by 4 seconds when you hit an enemy with a Hatred-generating or Hatred-spending attack, allowing you to chain cast Rain of Vengeance in the thick of battle through simple Rapid Fire channeling. You have some freedom when it comes to rune selection; you can go with the autoaim of Dark Cloud, the shortened cooldown of Shade, or the freezing utility of Flying Strike.

The staple steroid skill of Demon Hunters, Vengeance, is included not only for its baseline 40% multiplicative damage increase, but also the 50% damage reduction of the Dark Heart rune. Its crowd control immunity properties also serve to make you immune to the debuff of the cubed Stone Gauntlets, allowing you to take carefree advantage of the massive toughness from its legendary power.

Natalya-based builds make good use of Smoke Screen as an emergency protective pop, since the skill does not interrupt channeling. You have some freedom when it comes to your rune of choice, but our general recommendation is Vanishing Powder, as it removes the Discipline cost (freeing up more of that precious resource for Vault movement), and forces you to use the disappearance mechanic more strategically. On the topic of Vault — this skill is a Demon Hunter staple, and you will include it for long range movement along with the most cost-efficient rune, Tumble. Last but not least among your protective arsenal, you will be taking Companion for the bulwark of the Boar Companion rune, and make judicious use of its active component when surrounded.

Ambush complements the burst-oriented nature of the build, front-loading your damage potential against newly encountered enemies. The multiplicative nature of the passive further sweetens the offered 40% damage increase.

Grenadier is understandably a signature passive for grenade-based builds, bringing a 10% multiplicative damage increase to the related skills and increasing their explosion radius by 20% — a bonus that is hard to quantify, but undeniable in effectiveness. For softcore players, it also brings an amusing on-death detonation that fully benefits from the grenade-related bonuses in the build.

Cull the Weak is a Demon Hunter mainstay, bringing a multiplicative damage increase against Slowed or Chilled enemies. You will easily reap the benefits of this passive with the help of the Bane of the Trapped in the near-melee fighting style of this build.

You have some wiggle room in your final passive slot; our general recommendation is to stick to the safety of the Demon Hunter cheat death, Awareness. Other viable options include Leech for the extra life sustain (notably scaling with the Life per Kill secondary stat on gear), as well as the added maneuverability of Tactical Advantage.