Shadow Impale Demon Hunter Speed Farming Variation

The Shadow Impale Demon Hunter deals with regular Rift farming decently all the way through the highest Torments, making it a viable build for the task. We have solo speed GR rankings and solo speed T16 rankings if you want to know more about which builds are best for speed farming.

Within the limited scope of regular difficulties, the necessary damage and toughness to triumph over the enemy is significantly smaller. Thus, your best course of action is to improve utility and speed.

Active Skills
Impale Ricochet Companion Wolf Companion 1 Vengeance Dark Heart 2 Smoke Screen Vanishing Powder 3 Vault Tumble 4 Shadow Power Gloom
Passive Skills
Ambush Tactical Advantage Blood Vengeance Awareness

When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.

During standard rift runs, you will be able to cover much greater distances due to the interaction between Vault and Tactical Advantage, with the former being free to cast due to the powers of the Chain of Shadows belt. You will still be triggering Shadow Power at the start of a run and re-applying Vengeance on cooldown for its protective properties, but the remainder of your rotation will be dedicated to utility, with Smoke Screen Vanishing Powder (also triggering Tactical Advantage) and Wolf Companion for the extra damage.

Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, but others will have to change according to the task at hand. Ability to cross over great distances faster and more efficiently take precedence.

• You can run any Impale rune you like, but for standard rifts we recommend the utility of the auto-aimed bounces of Ricochet.
• Shadow Power is still an inseparable part of Shadow set builds, and the value from its permanence and application of all runes is too good to pass up (note the movement speed increase of Shadow Glide, for example).
• Vault is still a necessary addition, perhaps even more so during speed farming. Though you are free to run the crowd control of Rattling Roll, but our recommendation is to run cheaper alternative Tumble.
• Vengeance Dark Heart is an omnipresent self-buff in all versions of the build.
• During normal rift speed farm, you have considerable freedom when choosing the replacement of Fan of Knives Bladed Armor — ranging from a generator like Bolas Thunder Ball if you run Focus and Restraint, to utility skills like Smoke Screen Vanishing Powder and Preparation Focused Mind.
• Once you comfortably outscale the content, you can swap Cull the Weak out during normal Rifts for a speedfarm-appropriate passive like Blood Vengeance, for extra resource stability and synergy with Avarice Band.
• Use your fourth passive slot for the massive runspeed boost from Tactical Advantage while farming low tier content.
• Ambush still brings excellent value to speed farming, as the increase of upfront burst almost guarantees oneshots in the standard difficulties.

It is worth noting that to optimize your farming convenience in regular rifts, you should swap away from the progression-oriented Aughild's Authority set, but still keep Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube — and incorporate some farming-appropriate legendary powers instead. The default recommendation is Gloves of Worship, but there are other decent options like Leoric's Crown and Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan.

When speed farming, the timing of Convention of Elements will be misplaced, so you can either swap to the consistent protection of an Elusive Ring, or a generic damage increase from a Lightning-rolled Stone of Jordan. It is also recommended to swap away from the Endless Walk set, as it promotes a static fighting style unfit for normal rifts; use the more offensive combo of Avarice Band and a Squirt's Necklace. Avarice Band's pickup radius bonus is an incredible boon during speed farming, as it benefits not only your movement speed through a socketed Boon of the Hoarder, but also negates downtime picking up progression orbs and gold. While any well-rolled amulet can fill the slot for Torments, Squirt's Necklace will bring the most burst damage, and you can all but ignore its "increase of damage taken" with the way you overpower content in regular rifts.

During low tier GRs or normal rift speedruns in solo play, an optimized character can avoid the overkill of toughness in the bracer slot by swapping to Warzechian Armguards for the additional environment destruction-based speed boost. The usual recommendation, Nemesis Bracers, can be worn by the follower starting from Patch 2.7, but should still be taken by the character themselves in group play.

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.

Bane of the Trapped remains a universally desired damage amplification gem.

During speed farming, Pain Enhancer will be a progression-oriented overkill and should be replaced by Boon of the Hoarder. The latter is a high utility gem that feeds you practically infinite gold, gives you a massive short-term speed boost while picking it up, and synergizes excellently with the worn Avarice Band for a sizable speed boost, and the Goldwrap for near-invulnerability.

If you trust your ability to focus down and chain elites in regular rifts, you can safely swap Gogok of Swiftness out for Bane of the Powerful for the consistent, easily sustained damage increase. If you overpower content so much that even Bane of the Powerful is unnecessary, you can consider using Wreath of Lightning for the extra speed.

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

In a highly optimized normal rifting setup, you can consider swapping the weapon Cube slot out from Dawn to the farming powerhouse In-geom.

The damage intake-based damage reduction from Stone Gauntlets will be redundant in regular rifts, where you can get all the protection you will ever need via Goldwrap.

If you opt to include an additional legendary power in place of one of the Shadow set pieces during speedfarm, you will need to cube Ring of Royal Grandeur to maintain the 6-piece Shadow bonus.

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.