It’s time to sit down and take a look at the various skills and runes available to help us farm in the live version. You can literally sit for hours looking at the Battle.net Skill Calculator, tinkering with Skill Runes and different active and passive skill combinations. What’s the best Demon Hunter farming build? I have no idea, but I’ll take a stab at one. Let me know if you have another idea just post it in the comments or send me an e-mail. If you’d like to share your builds here I would be happy to share them with my audience too.

I quickly realized I’d need a definite goal when going through the skill calculator. That way I wasn’t distracted by things that caught my attention as ‘fancy’ or ‘neat.’ I decided that speed, AoE and resource regen would be the goals for this demon hunter build.

Here is what I came up with: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#bcVdfQ!abf!ccYcaZ

Mouse and Action Bar Skills

The build focuses on being able to move fast through dungeons. To do this we’ve got Vault with Tumble (allows you to use Vault again within 6 seconds for half the Discipline as normal). This should let you use Vault at least 7 times instead of 4.

I kept Bola Shot as the primary no-hatred ability and buffed it with Volatile Explosion (14 yard radius instead of 7). You will be able to use this to start chipping away at a pack of mobs and break apart a lot of pottery/objects that are likely to drop gold.

Rapid Fire is the primary hatred using ability. I runed it with Bombardment which turns it into a 4 yard rapid AoE. If this is a problem for boss fights you may have to respec before going in. Otherwise this is a strong way to clear large packs of mobs, which tend to define farming.

As a secondary hatred-using ability I picked Strafe. In part because I’m so familiar with it in the beta. It is good for breaking objects and finishing off mobs with low health. I added demolition to make it more potent (makes it an grenade based AoE) and make it a possible primary dps ability as well. I will have to play with this in the live version before I know if I like it or not.

Grenades along with the Tinkerer rune skill cost 3 hatred and increase your hatred generation. They look at like a strong AoE and potential direct damage ability that costs very little hatred. For 3 hatred you can do almost 300% damage to an enemy.

The Demon Hunter Companion is an interesting choice. You could adjust this ability to help fine tune the build but I think the Bat Companion is a good start. It increases your hatred regeneration by 3 hatred per second. This combined with frequent use of Grenades should give you a lot of hatred to work with.

Passive Skills

Tactical Advantage helped in the beta, it gives you a 60% move speed buff for 2 seconds after you use Vault. Use Vault every 2-3 seconds and you’re going to fly through dungeons.

Vengeance increases your maximum hatred, which will work towards helping us keep our hatred available. It also gives us a hatred and discipline bonus when we pickup health globes.

Finally, I picked Perfectionist for the last passive skill. It reduces the Discipline cost of all skills by 20%. This should give us an extra Vault. If you don’t feel like you need all that extra Discipline for Vaulting you could swap it out for Archery (damage increase) or even Grenadier (hatred regen).

Let me know what you think!

Important: Many of the strategies and tips I share here were originally inspired by the people at the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Forum. If you're serious about making the big bucks in Diablo 3, or just being the best players, you need to signup ASAP.