In Season 21, the Gears of Dreadlands Set was added to the game. At the same time many Generator-related items were buffed or reworked in order to make the new set playable.
However, Demon Hunter already had a Generator set — Unhallowed Essence. So for every successful GoD build there's another UE build lurking in the shadows. This is one of them, the long lost brother of GoD Hungering Arrow DH.
The build focuses on Hungering Arrow to deal damage, however, since there's no Strafe, it plays nothing like the GoD HA build. It's best to describe this build as a cross between GoD HA and UE Multishot. From the former we take all the items (minus the set), and from the latter—skills and playstyle.
The UE HA build isn't the best at anything but it has strong damage output to push high on the solo leaderboards. In particular, it has a shot at beating Multishot on the Unhallowed Essence leaderboard, where the two builds are head-to-head rivals. In Patch 2.7.5 (Season 28), the set also got a tremendous buff of around +9 GR tiers, making it a lot better than before.
Great mobility ✔ Strong season starter ✔ Rewards good gameplay ✔ Great single target damage ✔
❌ Very squishy ❌ Difficult to play ❌ Sensitive to fishing ❌ Terrible at speedfarming
Core Setup
Core Item Build
Items
Unhallowed Essenceset provides huge damage bonuses: x1.6 through the (4) Bonus, and up to x1462 through the (6) Bonus, for a total of x2339 damage with your Hungering Arrow. The set gives you 60% damage reduction and plenty of Discipline, which lets you spam Vault.
Bastions of Will provide 125% increased damage.
The Ninth Cirri Satchel is the key item of the build, adding 100% pierce chance to Hungering Arrow as well as an up to 600% multiplicative damage increase.
With the 4th Cube slot, we add Ring of Royal Grandeur and combine the setup with either Guardian's Jeopardy or Aughild's Authority.
Hunter's Wrath is another high-value DPS item, providing a 30% Attack Speed bonus to your Primaries as well as another 200% multiplicative damage bonus.
Dawn helps you reach permanent Vengeance uptime.
Depth Diggers provide another 100% damage increase to Hungering Arrow.
Convention of Elements provides up to 200% increased damage during the Cold cycle. Another option in this slot is Elusive Ring, use it if you cannot survive otherwise.
Echoing Fury in the cube provides up to 75% increased Attack Speed. Alternatively you can cube Fortress Ballista for more defense.
Season 33 Shades of the Nephalem
For the duration of Season 33, you gain one extra slot in Kanai’s Cube that allows to choose any Legendary Powers for a total of 4 slots. While normally a player can equip one power each from the Weapon, Armor, and Jewelry categories, now you can add a second of one of these categories! Some builds enjoy major damage buffs while others are able to run completely different setups, for example through otherwise impossible combinations of weapon effects.
In addition, whenever you press a shrine or pylon, you spawn a Shadow Nephalem of your class to assist you for 1 minute. These use various abilities and provide helpful extra damage in the early game and for lower tier Greater Rifts. Learn more in our Season 22 overview.
In this build, we add Ring of Royal Grandeur and either Guardian's Jeopardy (before P2500) or Aughild's Authority to increase our damage.
Global Stat Priorities
The most important for almost any DH build is reaching permanent Vengeance uptime. This is achievable through the 65% Cooldown Reduction effect provided by Dawn and having 37% Cooldown Reduction on your characte. If your Dawn has less than 64-63% on the legendary affix, you should consider adding a 4th Cooldown item to make up for it, as any lower will leave you with a significant gap.
Maximum Discipline is the best damage stat you can have, which is a secondary roll on Hand Crossbows, Quivers and Cloaks. Make sure you get as much as possible, but don't worry too much about one or two missing points.
Other than that, you want to stack damage stats wherever possible, especially Critical Hit Chance & Damage, Damage Range, Cold Damage, Hungering Arrow Damage, and lastly Area Damage (typically in this priority). For your defensive stats you just need to focus on increasing the raw toughness value. Since your Recovery is mostly based on percentage of your maximum life due to Simplicity's Strength, there's no reason to prioritize mitigation over health. You should always use Flawless Royal Diamond in your Chest and Pants sockets.
Assembling the Build
1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cubeLegendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!
2. Gather the full Unhallowed Essence set. Each piece can be gambled from Kadala for Bloodshards. Do not salvage any duplicate pieces you find! Instead convert them to another part of the set with Recipe 4 in Kanai's Cube. If you have extra materials you can use Recipe 3 to craft the remaining pieces, but this is expensive and not recommended for new players.
Create a level 1 Witch Doctor and upgrade Maces to get Echoing Fury
Amulets to get Squirt's Necklace
Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired.
5. Do Bounties to acquire several important items for this build:
Act 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Cain's Destiny, Guardian's Jeopardy and Aughild's Authority
6. Use Primordial Ashes in Kanai's Cube with the new Curiosity of Lorath Nahr recipe to obtain a free Crafted Primal Ancient. Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to focus matters! Great candidates are Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend getting one of the following items:
Dawn
The Ninth Cirri Satchel
Hunter's Wrath
Item Stat Priorities
SLOT
ITEM
STAT PRIORITY
Main-Hand
Dawn Echoing Fury (Cubed) Fortress Ballista (Cubed)
1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 3. Maximum Discipline (Secondary) 4. Damage % 5. Attack Speed 6. Area Damage 7. Cooldown Reduction 8. Dexterity
Off-Hand
The Ninth Cirri Satchel
1. Critical Hit Chance 2. Maximum Discipline (Secondary) 3. Hungering Arrow Damage 4. Area Damage 5. Cooldown Reduction 6. Dexterity
Maximum Discipline as Secondary is needed on Weapon and Off-Hand for Unhallowed Essence(6) Bonus.
1. Hungering Arrow damage 2. Dexterity 3. Vitality 4. Life % 5. All Resistance
Potion
Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid
For breaking walls to pull enemies and increase DPS
Gems
Simplicity's Strength is the strongest DPS gem for Primary-based builds. It provides 100% multiplicative damage buff and also a ton of recovery.
Bane of the Trapped is the most commonly used DPS gem, providing 60% multiplicative damage increase that can be easily activated with Multishot Wind Chill.
Zei's Stone of Vengeance provides up to 80% damage against far away targets. Esoteric Alteration can be used instead if you want more toughness.
Skills
Hungering Arrow Devouring Arrow is your main damage skill. All other runes deal an order of magnitude less damage vs multiple enemies, so Cold is the only way to go.
Multishot Wind Chill is used to activate Bastions of Will damage bonus and to apply slow for Cull the Weak, Bane of the Trapped and Numbing Traps. And it also gives 8% Critical Hit Chance for free!
Preparation Invigoration is a must have for +20 Maximum Discipline, which translates to 25% DPS increase, thanks to Unhallowed Essence(6) Bonus.
Vengeance Dark Heart provides 40% extra damage and 50% damage reduction.
Smoke Screen Special Recipe helps with survivability. We can use this skill a lot, thanks to Unhallowed Essence(2) Bonus.
Shadow Power Gloom fills the last skill slot. For a more offensive variant you can also run Wolf Companion.
Passives
Cull the Weak is the strongest DPS Demon Hunter passive, providing a 20% multiplicative damage boost.
Numbing Traps is a very strong defensive passive that can be used in almost any variation of this build, as Hungering Arrow Devouring Arrow as well as Multishot Wind Chill proc it by default.
Awareness, helps you out in tough times and saves you a death.
Ambush is used in most variations of the build for a bit of extra damage.
You can trade some defensive passives for offensive ones, if you feel comfortable with your toughness. Good choices here are Steady Aim, Single Out and Archery.
Paragon Points
CORE
OFFENSIVE
DEFENSIVE
UTILITY
1. Movement Speed
1. Critical Hit Damage
1. All Resistance
1. Area Damage
2. Dexterity
2. Critical Hit Chance
2. Life %
2. Resource Cost Reduction
3. Vitality1
3. Cooldown Reduction
3. Armor
3. Life per Hit
4. Maximum Hatred
4. Attack Speed
4. Life Regeneration
4. Pickup Radius
1 Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 800,000 Life is recommended).
Altar of Rites
The Altar of Rites is a tree that grants tremendous powers to your entire account in exchange for sacrifices. It requires you to farm Bounties, kill the Ubers, craft the Staff of Herding, and more. Completing all 26 of these tasks, along with sacrificing 6 Primal Ancients grants you extra Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops and 3 Potion Super Powers. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!
Note: The suggested path assumes you are playing Solo and used the Challenge Rift Cache to help you level up.
Optimal Path
Node 2: Choose Anointed to gain a full set of 70 yellows from level 18-70!
Node 6: Rush to gain double Bounties to help unlock other Nodes in the Altar.
Nodes 7-14: These are the last Nodes you can gain until the Challenge Rift resets. Take at least 1 Node at the bottom of each path to unlock all 3 Potion Super Powers. Pick up the Mirror Node at the top for a colossal 41% extra XP all season. Remember to unlock Father once you clear GR70 solo and have your first Primal!
Nodes 15-26: Pick up the final Quality of Life, Damage, and Defense Nodes (in that order) to finish the Altar.
Potion Super Powers: Take Father first, then Mother, and finally Mortal.
Disclaimer: The Mortal and Mother Potions require you to salvage 2 and 3 Primals respectively. Unlock them as soon as you have those materials as they don't cost a point!
Recommended Altar Path Use the Scroll Bar to see Altar Progression
Notable Build Changes
Compared to the nonseason version of the build, you can run with Smoke Screen instead of Vault after you unlock Revelation.
Follower
Patch 2.7.0 revamped the follower system giving all 3 hirelings new powers and the emanate system. The first thing you should do is read our complete follower guide and remember the key takeaways:
The emanation system allows followers to share certain legendary and set powers with you. The most important ones are: The Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, Avarice Band, Sage’s Journey and Cain’s Destiny. Click the guide above for the full list.
Follower’s powers are based on their main stat (maxed at 25,000, but they have a 2.5x multiplier so you only need 10,000). This means we stack Intelligence on the Enchantress, Dexterity on the Scoundrel and Strength on the Templar.
Guardian's Jeopardy(3) Bonus works for followers by improving their inherent stat multiplier from x2.5 to x3.5, making it slightly easier to hit the 25,000 main stat threshold if needed.
Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
Enforcer can be equipped on the player to keep followers alive even without an immortality relic. The 90% damage reduction counts for them, too.
Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.
With these in mind, let’s get into our recommendations for this build.
GR Pushing Enchantress
GR Pushing Enchantress
For Greater Rift Pushing we recommend this Enchantress setup for the Slow from Temporal Pulse, Cold Damage from Amplification, Damage Reduction and Armor from Powered Shield, and the Attack Speed from Focused Mind.
Stat Priorities:Since we have the immortality relic, we do not need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence> Attack Speed. Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Gloves of Worship: For 10 Minute Shrine Buffs.
Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Unity: For 50% damage reduction if you're also wearing one.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Mempo of Twilight and Cain's Destiny: For more Attack Speed.
Gameplay
The build is overall fairly easy to play.
Spam Hungering Arrow all the time, kill everything.
Make sure to keep your Discipline high, as your set's damage bonus scales with current Discipline, not with Maximum Discipline.
Keep up Vengeance at all times (use once every 20 sec) and activate Preparation to refill your Discipline when you run low.
Make sure to use Multishot at least once every 3 seconds to keep up the Bastions of Will buff and the Chill for Bane of the Trapped and Cull the Weak.
When fighting enemies, try to stay at a distance to avoid getting hit and to keep up Unhallowed Essence(4) Bonus and maximize the damage buff from Zei's Stone of Vengeance.
Use your high mobility to reposition yourself frequently and fire your Hungering Arrows into the density.
Try to keep up your Squirt's Necklace as much as possible. Alternatively, when this is too difficult, Ess of Johan is a suitable replacement.
Looks easy on paper but the problem with that build is that it's very squishy. So you need to do all of the above while dodging most of the enemies' attacks.
Hardcore
The build is super squishy and not at all suited for Hardcore. Its one saving grace is that you have permanent immunity to Crowd Control effects and high mobility to get out of dangerous situations. Replace Convention of Elements with Elusive Ring and always run Awareness!
Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
The Ninth Cirri Satchel nerf in Season 23 made this build completely horrible when it comes to farming or group play, so there are no other variants. The only use this build has is pushing Unhallowed Essence Leaderboards, where it can compete with UE Multishot DH.
If you don't like playing with Squirt's Necklace, you can also replace this amulet with The Ess of Johan.
Depending on your Paragon level, use either Guardian's Jeopardy (before P2500) or Aughild's Authority (after P2500).
Video Guide
Mechanics
Hungering Arrow Devouring Arrow
Due to The Ninth Cirri Satchel this skill will pierce up to 4 times, but is not guaranteed to do so when no enemies are in its path.
The maximum travel distance is 120 yards total or 90 yards distance from the starting point.
The arrow will periodically turn around and seek out a new nearby target.
The Devouring Arrow rune adds a 70% damage increase stacking additively with itself that is multiplicative to the base damage (First hit = 100%, second hit = 170%, third hit = 240%, fourth hit = 310%, fifth hit = 380%).
Devouring Arrow momentarily Chills the enemy hit with no duration, applying the Numbing Traps debuff. This Chill happens after the damage and does not activate Cull the Weak or Bane of the Trapped.
Unhallowed Essence
Unhallowed Essence(6) Bonus means your damage is increased by 1700% per point of Discipline you currently have.
This bonus adds up as one separate damage multiplier — you won't get a multiplicative bonus for every point.
At 86 Discipline, missing 1 point means a DPS loss of ~1.2% (increasing slightly the less you have).
Unhallowed Essence(4) Bonus is a separate 1.6 damage multiplier and stacks multiplicatively with the (6) Bonus.
Summary
Reach the necessary Cooldown Reduction for permanent Vengeance (37% with a perfect Dawn).
Keep up buffs (Multishot Wind Chill, Bastions of Will) at all times.
Keep your Discipline high as it directly scales your damage output.
Avoid wasting your time on single enemies or elites that don't die — your strength is AoE dps.
Unhallowed Essence Demon Hunter is always lurking in the shadows, watching...
Credits
Written by Northwar Contributions & updates by wudijo
