Spike Traps Demon Hunter Nephalem Rift Speed Farming Variation

The Spike Traps Demon Hunter can deal reasonably well with Nephalem Rift Speed Farming, mostly thanks to overwhelming damage potential offered by Spike Traps that allow you to include Danetta's Hatred set in the build, and the freedom to spread various utility legendaries for mobility. 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
Preparation Focused Mind Spike Trap Echoing Blast 1 Shadow Power Shadow Glide 2 Smoke Screen Displacement 3 Vault Action Shot 4 Vengeance Seethe
Passive Skills
Blood Vengeance Tactical Advantage Custom Engineering Hot Pursuit

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

The T16 key farming build differs a great deal from the careful and deliberate main Trapper build, meant for Greater Rift solo progression. The major shift in gameplay comes from the inclusion of Vault, turned into a viable detonator of Spike Traps from the use of the rune Action Shot (which makes it into an attack), and the 2-piece Danetta's Hatred crossbows ( Danetta's Revenge and Danetta's Spite), which swap Vault from spending Discipline into spending Hatred. Instead of placing Caltrops manually, you will spawn them automatically from Vaulting by wearing Omryn's Chain. In essence, find valuable packs (density and/or Elites), drop Spike Traps underneath them, and detonate them with Vault. Keep up valuable buffs like Vengeance, Shadow Power, and Smoke Screen going as often as you can afford. To ease the strain on your massive Discipline spending, pop Preparation Focused Mind on cooldown.

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.

• Your main damage dealer remains Spike Trap, which shreds through low difficulty content thanks to its monstrous damage multipliers. You will maintain the rune Echoing Blast for its superior damage.
• The Hatred spender that will pop traps will double as a mobility tool — a pretty cool, if not the most efficient, trick for T16 key runs. Strafe will be replaced by Vault in key runs, and the combination of Danetta's set and the rune Action Shot will turn it into a viable detonator for Spike Trap. For added utility, Vault will also auto-place Caltrops as you wear Omryn's Chain in this setup.
• The trio of Vengeance, Shadow Power and Smoke Screen will stay from Greater Rift solo progression, but their focus will shift from survivability to mobility. Instead of Dark Heart, use Seethe for the massive Hatred regeneration; instead of Gloom, use Shadow Glide for extra movement speed. Keep Displacement as-is, and pop it as often as your Discipline would allow.
• Natalya's 2-piece set bonus will not restore enough Discipline to maintain the constant churn of this resource in the lightning-fast T16 runs. To remedy the situation, include Preparation Focused Mind and pop it on a regular basis.
• From the GR progression build, only Custom Engineering — a passive tailored to Trapper builds — has a place to stay in T16 runs. The remainder of your passive selection should be dedicated to movespeed augmentation from the likes of Hot Pursuit and Tactical Advantage, as well as the excellent speedrun-reliant resource tool of Blood Vengeance.

The overall gearing philosophy will remain intact from the GR progression setup. This is still a Natalya set build — and you will run the usual 5-piece split, along with the craftable Aughild's set for some extra bonuses. Utility legendaries will force the Cpt. Crimson set out however, and you will have to move Aughild pieces around to accomodate some speedrun-oriented inclusions. Take Omryn's Chain, for example — this legendary belt automates Caltrops as you Vault around. Warzechian Armguards also make a strong case for the bracer slot, as you cause massive environmental destruction constantly as you move, proccing the legendary effect with near-permanent uptime. Another crucial piece of the gearing puzzle is the inclusion of Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac over GR-oriented choices like Convention of Elements; ORotZ will provide the cooldown resets for Vengeance that you will sorely lack once you take Danetta's crossbows and lose Dawn.

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. 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 Natalya's Touch, 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.

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.

Most of your legendary gem selection from GR progression will be DPS overkill in T16 Nephalem Rift speed farming. Zei's Stone of Vengeance is one you can keep around, since its a non-conditional and immediate damage boost — it can still be useful in early character progression. Once you grow comfortable with the damage you deal, you can completely transfer over to a utility setup with Wreath of Lightning (movement speed boost, plus extra Warzechian Armguards procs) and Gogok of Swiftness (helpful extra CDR). Last but not least, Boon of the Hoarder is indisputably the best T16 legendary gem. Paired with a worn or cubed Goldwrap, and an Avarice Band worn by your follower in solo play (or yourself in groups), this legendary gem increases your movement speed and provides near-infinite Toughness through its interaction with the aforementioned items.

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

Due to their foundational bonuses for the basic functionality of the build, your Kanai's Cube legendary power selection has to stay the same as the solo GR progression setup. Both Chanon Bolter and Trag'Oul Coils provide too significant multipliers to ignore, and the Ring of Royal Grandeur allows you to mix the Natalya and Aughild sets, plus a slew of synergistic legendaries.

The recommended follower for this build during T16 speed farming is the Enchantress, due to her cooldown reduction bonus (cutting down Vengeance downtime) and elemental damage increase. Note that this requires that you run Hand of the Prophet and optimize her survivability, as per our guide.

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.

You have two valuable legendary potions in the build; either slot Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid to break up Waller affixes, which potentially ruin both your damage output and escape options, or a Bottomless Potion of the Leech for the extra life sustain through the temporary Life per Hit bonus.