Unhallowed Essence Multishot Demon Hunter Speed Farming Variation

The Unhallowed Essence Multishot 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
Evasive Fire Focus Multishot Wind Chill 1 Preparation Invigoration 2 Vengeance Seethe 3 Vault Tumble 4 Companion Wolf Companion
Passive Skills
Ambush Blood Vengeance Cull the Weak Tactical Advantage

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 major dynamic of the build remains unchanged; build up Hatred through Evasive Fire shots and Vengeance Seethe regeneration, and dump it onto the enemies through a devastating cannonade of Multishot. You will be allowed much greater freedom of movement due to the interaction between Vault and Tactical Advantage, and you will fuel your mobility via your Avarice Band-augmented pickup radius and its interaction with Blood Vengeance. Use Wolf Companion liberally to bolster your 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.

• Note that in speed farming, you can optimize Multishot by switching into Wind Chill. This cold rune applies a chilling effect prior to dealing damage, proccing Bane of the Trapped and Cull the Weak without the need of spending a passive slot on Thrill of the Hunt. In turn, this allows you better speedrun passives, discussed in the passives section. Wind Chill's party-wide Crit Chance increase only sweetens the deal.
• Vault is still a necessary addition, perhaps even more so during speed farming. Your best rune option to cross great distances is the cheap Tumble.
• Vengeance Seethe is an omnipresent self-buff in all versions of the build.
• In the regular difficulties, the utility of Thrill of the Hunt is trumped by the chilling effect of Multishot Wind Chill, freeing up the slot for Blood Vengeance. Blood Vengeance will not only expand your Hatred pool, but also enables a Reaper's Wraps-like effect that replenishes both Hatred and Discipline when picking up health globes. This passive will benefit immensely from the cubed Avarice Band and result in stable resources despite the heavy spending in speedruns.
• Finally, Ballistics is useless when farming with the rocket-less Wind Chill rune, so switch this slot into the Tactical Advantage movement speed buff, which cuts down time spent searching for fights.

You will still be taking advantage of the full 6-piece set bonuses of Unhallowed Essence, incorporating the same split as you would in progression — but instead of the Cpt. Crimson set,you will be including the Sage's Journey set for Death's Breath farming. Take Sage's Ribbon and Sage's Passage, and then complete both the UE and Sage set bonuses with a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube.

In speed farm, it is advisable to abandon the damage reduction from the Wraps of Clarity in favor of Warzechian Armguards, for the environment destruction speed buffs that are easily provided by the AoE of this build. The former favorites, the elite spawning Nemesis Bracers, are still very valuable, but they can now be equipped on the follower while still getting their bonus via the Emanate mechanics. You should still equip them in groups, where you cannot have a follower with you. The Nemesis Bracers value comes from the additional loot — not to mention progression — coming from the extra elite spawns. They let you finish standard rifts that much faster, and acquire the coveted GR keys in greater amounts.

As noted above, your jewelry during farming can be the Bastions of Will set ( Focus and Restraint); however, once you perfect your character and no longer want for burst, you should use utility-focused jewelry instead. A combination of Avarice Band and a Cold damage Stone of Jordan is a nice alteration. The union of Avarice Band with Boon of the Hoarder will greatly improve your speed, as well as feed into your gold reserve for the costly GR empowerments. The Cold SoJ will simply be a consistent, care-free damage increase as you farm.

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 substituting Companion from the regular build for Strafe Drifting Shadow 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 alter your playstyle to one resembling the GoD Demon Hunter setup — interweaving Hatred-generating shots in between your Strafe channeling. Since you will replace the Visage of Gunes from your basic Cube setup for the Season-specific synergy with Mantle of Channeling, you will need to regain the lost damage reduction by using Dark Heart as the Vengeance rune on your skill bar.

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, Yang's Recurve, 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 and Zei's Stone of Vengeance both still bring excellent damage multiplication value to the build in speed farming.

In normal rifts, the third gem slot should be taken by Boon of the Hoarder. This high utility gem feeds you practically infinite gold and gives you a massive short-term speed boost while picking it up, automated by a worn Avarice Band. It will also render you practically invulnerable through a worn Goldwrap.

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

An alternative of Dawn (although not a necessary swap by any means) in the weapon slot in the Cube during speed farming is the cooldown-resetting In-geom.

Our default recommendation for the armor Cube slot is Goldwrap, since its synergy with Boon of the Hoarder and Avarice Band will render you practically invincible during regular Rifts.

Lastly, in order to maintain the valuable 6-piece bonus of Unhallowed Essence and 3-piece bonus of the Sage set, you will need to cube a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry slot.

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 standard rift farming for keys is the Enchantress due to her numerous utility bonuses, allowing you to smooth out your speed runs even further.

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.