Shadow Impale Demon Hunter BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build incorporates the complete Shadow's Mantle set bonuses, taking five of the six available Shadow set pieces, and then adding two pieces of the craftable Aughild's Authority set — Aughild's Search and one more of your choosing, according to your weakest Shadow set roll (either Aughild's Power, Aughild's Rule, or Aughild's Spike). You will attain the complete set bonuses of this two-set amalgamation via Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube. The BiS roll for The Shadow's Grasp includes double Crit stats alongside Dexterity and Attack Speed. Full Toughness stats are preferred on The Shadow's Bane and The Shadow's Coil. Area Damage and CDR rolls are greatly desired on The Shadow's Burden. Seek out additional Impale % bonus on both The Shadow's Mask and The Shadow's Heels.

Not skipping on any of the pieces required to obtain the 6 piece set bonus of The Shadow's Mantle opens a powerful offensive combo in the jewelry: the Endless Walk set, The Compass Rose ring and The Traveler's Pledge amulet. This 2.4 rework 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 fits the Shadow DH playstyle, as you alternate between Vault bursts of movement with periods of stationary Impale spam (see this build's skills page for more information).

Your other ring slot will be taken by Convention of Elements, whose rotation of elemental bonuses you will have to keep under close scrutiny. Once the sequence reaches the appropriate element, you will enjoy a significant increase to your damage — so try to adopt a strategy of drawing monster attention during the off cycles, and major Impale spam during your strongest cycle. A safer alternative for the slot is the Elusive Ring, a Patch 2.4 addition that reduces incoming damage by 60% after casting a mobility skill — a vital bonus you will easily keep up by Vaulting at least once every 8 seconds.

Helpfully named after the set it fits, the Chain of Shadows belt adds a powerful mobility tool for solo GR progress and speed farming: free Vaulting for 2 seconds after using Impale. This power single-handedly allows you to cross great distances, while ignoring the limitations of your Discipline pool.

Reworked into a definite best-in-slot for Impale builds in Patch 2.5, the Holy Point Shot quiver is a mandatory piece that practically triples your damage output, along with a smattering of Impale skill damage on top. An ideal roll would include your preferred elemental damage and Impale % alongside the usual high Dexterity, Attack Speed and Crit Chance.

The best-in-slot weapon for the build is the Impale-specific Karlei's Point dagger; where it lacks in flashy damage bonuses, it more than makes up with a Hatred-refunding effect that cements your resource management despite the costly (and otherwise unsustainable) main spender of the build. An ideal roll would feature Attack Speed alongside high Damage range, Damage % and Dexterity.

When you are solo speed farming Greater Rifts, you can make certain gear alterations to make your time easier and more efficient:

• The Endless Walk set will be too defensive for speedier content, so you should move the Convention of Elements to the cube and equip the all-out offense Bastions of Will set — Focus and Restraint. Notice that this set requires the use of a generator skill, and as we recommend in the Skills page, Grenade Cold Grenade will be a great candidate for your adjustable 6th slot. Finish off the jewelry with the Shrine lengthening powers of The Flavor of Time.
• Dropping the RoRG necessitates that you equip the full 6 pieces of the Shadow set and lose the Aughild's bonuses; in order to make up your defense losses and make the most of your included generator skill, simply take Wraps of Clarity as your bracer.

Rolls-wise, this Impale-centric playstyle takes good advantage of Skill and Area Damage affixes. You will be trying to reach at least a 37% CDR breakpoint for permanent uptime of Vengeance, attainable from Paragon points, Flawless Royal Diamond in the helm, a fully stacked Gogok of Swiftness gem, and 1 other item with a max CDR roll, distributed as you see fit (i.e. on shoulders). However you will do well to bump up your CDR past the 40% barrier (with one more CDR roll on gear), in order to reach permanent uptime of the 40% armor buff from Fan of Knives Bladed Armor.

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 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.

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. In the endgame, where you're testing this build to its upper limits, the limitless spam of your heaviest Hatred spenders from the Strafe Sanctification reigns superior. Thus, we recommend going for the Fire rune on Impale, Chemical Burn, and substituting Companion from the regular build for Strafe Rocket Storm to proc the following power:

• Strafe Sanctification: Strafe now casts the last non-channeled Hatred spending ability cast.

Note that in this Strafe-reliant setup, you should also use a Generator skill, and alter your playstyle to one resembling the GoD Demon Hunter setup — interweaving Hatred-generating shots in between your Strafe channeling. Drop Fan of Knives from the default setup for Grenade Cluster Grenades for that purpose. Replace the Stone Gauntlets from your basic Cube setup for the season-specific synergy with Mantle of Channeling.

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 your main-hand weapon — usually Karlei's Point (although the Shadow set can now work with melee weapons, so other viable weapons include Echoing Fury for speed farming and Sun Keeper for Rift Guardian Killing setups). You can always sanctify Holy Point Shot as well, since it's present in all versions 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.) 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, Attack Speed, Crit Damage and Crit Chance 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 procs itself with its level 25 property when in melee range, where Shadow DHs mostly fight; it can otherwise be triggered by an activation of Shadow Power Night Bane in mid range, or through a follower's Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker.

Gogok of Swiftness is one of your socketed staples, indirectly providing you with more damage and survivability by increasing Cooldown Reduction for essential breakpoints, Attack Speed for faster Impale output, as well as scaling Dodge chance.

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 for a solo Impale DH anyway (winding layout, lacking density, insufficient or overly dangerous 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 the build. For extremely high end pushing however, you will need to gamble on high density rifts where the scaling Attack Speed prowesss of Pain Enhancer triumphs over your other options with the sheer number of Impales you will output per second.

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.

A cubed Dawn reduces Vengeance's cooldown by the maximum 65%, allowing for permanent uptime with a modest investment into Cooldown Reduction — an opportunity you cannot pass up with Vengeance's damage, resource and protection bonuses.

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. Note that if you are running a more beginner-friendly version of this build, you can swap this slot out for Visage of Gunes to attain the Dark Heart rune of Vengeance for free, and use the Seethe rune on your bar to make resource management more care-free.

In the Shadow's Mantle / Aughild mixture, you will need a Ring of Royal Grandeur: a cache legendary ring from Act I bounties, to tie the three 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 buff from Prophetic Harmony, as well as the Focused Mind attack speed buff.

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.