Last Updated:October 7, 2024|Change Log
Introduction
View all variants
The Unhallowed Essence Set is a staple of the Demon Hunter class and has been one of the best speedfarming setups in the game for years. It's simple, fast and embodies the core of what DH gameplay is about: incredibly mobile, long-range, heavy damage burst, stutter-stepping and a high mechanical skill ceiling.
This build is very easy to get running and has perks that make it accessible to less experienced players. As one of the top dogs in T16 Rifts, and one of the Bounty builds of all time due to its versatility, damage and high speed, it will always find a place somewhere in the META. It's not the best for pushing the highest tiers, but it can hold up decently against other higher end builds, especially after the most recent buff of +9 GR tiers in Patch 2.7.5 / Season 28.
Multishot is the main skill in the setup. It hits everything on your screen at once and you can fire it multiple times per second. In Nephalem Rifts up to Torment 16 you can even oneshot everything, instantly clearing entire screens as well as a couple of unlucky mobs outside of it.
Many enjoy the build for being easy to play and an effective farmer. For Bounties, there are only very few builds that hold up against it. If you are playing anything except Monk it will cost you approximately 30 minutes and 2,000 Death's Breaths to create it from scratch and you will be able to run Bounties faster than almost anything else.
Beginner-friendly ✔
Top farming build ✔
Huge AoE potential ✔
Very high skill ceiling ✔
❌ Pushing is difficult
❌ Low synergy in groups
❌ Weaker than other push builds
❌ Requires resource management
Core Setup
Items
- Unhallowed Essence provides roughly x2339 Multishot damage increase, 60% damage reduction and also allows you to restore your Discipline with your Primary skills.
- Yang's Recurve is one of two key legendary items, on top of the 200% damage bonus and 50% Attack Speed, it also adds up to 50% Resource Cost Reduction as a free fifth primary roll.
- Dead Man's Legacy is another huge damage buff of 200% and the double-hit effect, which translates to approximately 43% increased DPS.
- Dawn will be your cubed weapon slot for permanent Vengeance uptime.
- Squirt's Necklace can give you up to 100% damage bonus when you don't take damage.
- Captain Crimon's Trimmings set is used to fit the Cooldown requirements for Vengeance and for great defensive synergy with Yang's Recurve
- Ring of Royal Grandeur is necessary to get full benefits from both sets. It's placed in the cube in every variant, because of bad guaranteed primary rolls.
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, most setups gain Convention of Elements or Echoing Fury for additional speed and damage.
Global Stat Priorities
Especially important for almost any DH build is reaching permanent Vengeance uptime. This is achievable through the 65% Cooldown Reduction effect provided by Dawn (Cubed) and having 37% Cooldown Reduction on your character, which is easy to achieve thanks to Captain Crimson's Trimmings (2) Bonus.
Aside from that, Maximum Discipline is the best stat you can have, which is a secondary roll on Bows, Quivers and Cloaks. Make sure you get as much as possible, but don't worry too much about one or two missing points (1 Discipline is worth roughly 1.2% DPS when you are near the maximum, more if not). For Attack Speed you want either 0 or 1 roll, going for more is not worth it. Other than that, you want to stack damage stats wherever possible, especially Crit stats, Fire Damage, Multishot Damage, and lastly Area Damage (only for pushing). The rest goes to defense - especially All Resistance on Pants, Boots, Shoulders is important - mixed in with some Vitality rolls and perhaps Elite Damage Reduction on your chest piece. In addition to its regular benefits, Resource Cost Reduction is also a decent defensive option due to the set synergy.
Assembling the Build
Item Stat Priorities
Gems
Skills
Passives
Paragon Points
Altar of Rites
Follower
Gameplay
Hardcore
Variants
Concept
The idea here is to keep enough damage to pretty much oneshot anything you can encounter with a single Multishot while adding everything we can to make it faster. Your follower will be decked out with Avarice Band, Nemesis Bracers, The Flavor of Time, Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny. Meanwhile you will be running with Boon of the Hoarder and Goldwrap, Stone of Jordan and Tactical Advantage. Pride's Fall is a great tool to keep your Discipline up and allows you to vault near-infinitely.
Gameplay
Hunt elites and kill the big trash packs on the way. Just make sure you don't starve yourself of Discipline, which happens quite easily when you throw keep using Vault too many times without paying attention to it, especially when you drop your Pride's Fall buff. In general you should stop using Shadow Power and Smoke Screen when you go below 70% Discipline, and stop Vaulting as well if you go below 40%.
Setups
If you want extra speed, you can drop Companion for Shadow Power Shadow Glide.
If you are just starting out and your gear is bad and Paragon is low, you can go for a higher DPS version by using Focus & Restraint rings.
Concept
The main objective is to reach your Bounty target quickly while still having enough damage to finish it within a few seconds maximum. We add Wreath of Lightning for 25% Movement Speed, Warzechian Armguards for another 50% Movement Speed as well as the two passives Hot Pursuit and Tactical Advantage for a combined bonus of 80%. Shadow Power Shadow Glide has another 30% when active, which overall adds up to over 300% Movement Speed. Pride's Fall cubed helps with Resource Cost Reduction and makes your life easier.
Gameplay
Keep up your speed buffs, rush to the objectives and clear them as fast as possible with Multishot spam. Make sure you don't run out of Discipline while spamming or else you can't deal any damage. of the gameplay revolves around swapping to and from Danetta's Hatred set. To do it without repositioning any items in your inventory you need to
Setups
At high Paragon (3000+) you can swap Bastions of Will to Rechel's Ring of Larceny and either Stone of Jordan or Pandemonium Loop (depending on how high your Paragon is). Best case you roll Chance to Fear on Hit on your helmet, too!
Select Build Version
Concept
This version goes for maximum speed, adding Echoing Fury and Pride's Fall in the cube and extra speed from Shadow Power Shadow Glide, Smoke Screen Displacement, Hot Pursuit and Tactical Advantage. The target time is 50-90sec per run on a low tier to maximize loot.
Gameplay
Activate Vengeance at the start of the run and whenever it's ready again. Keep up Shadow Power Shadow Glide once every 5 seconds.
Spam Smoke Screen while rushing forward and stutter stepping with Multishot whenever there are enemies nearby. Due to the high resource costs of your skills, make sure to collect all Health Globes to refill them with Blood Vengeance. If your Discipline drops below 70%, use Preparation and spend less Discipline until it's ready again.
Setups
With enough extra Resource Cost Reduction on your gear you shouldn't have any resource issues and can replace Blood Vengeance with Ambush for extra burst damage.
If you are struggling a lot with keeping your Squirt's Necklace buff up, you can run Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard in place of Bane of the Powerful to protect it.
If you want to include Awareness, drop Hot Pursuit for it.
Concept
This version goes for maximum damage and consistency including Dawn and full damage passives. The target time is 2-3min per run on a noticeably higher tier than the fast version to increase XP and key efficiency.
Gameplay
The gameplay here is very straightforward. Stay at range and use Smoke Screen to keep your Squirt's Necklace buff. In general, you want to kill almost all the mobs in the room before actually entering it. When you click a Pylon, always activate Smoke Screen immediately after, otherwise you risk getting (sometimes fatally) smacked.
Setups
If you are struggling a lot with keeping your Squirt's Necklace buff up, you can run Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard in place of Bane of the Powerful to protect it.
If you want to include Awareness, drop Ambush for it.
Concept
The solo push version goes for maximum damage, using the Bastions of Will set, Wolf Companion, Bane of the Trapped and Cull the Weak plus Thrill of the Hunt to activate the latter two. It's highly recommended to get at least 1 Life per Hit roll for recovery.
We use Multishot Full Broadside, because in solo push you usually gather huge packs of mobs where increased AoE damage is worth more than the rockets.
Gameplay
This build is fairly squishy and has little recovery, but it is a ranged build with decently fast attack speed, and it has access to the sacred art of stutter-stepping.
This is where the fun begins!
This technique lets you move and attack at the same time, albeit at reduced speed. Normally Multishot takes 20 frames to complete, but you can interrupt the animation and start walking after just 13 frames (although you won't be able to attack in the next 7 frames, so it's impossible to attack faster this way). Luckily, you don't have to do any frame-perfect inputs. It's enough to issue a move command immediately after using Multishot, then your character will start moving as early as possible (exactly after 13 frames). And the other way around if you Multishot before 20 frames have passed, that command will also get buffered and the Multishot will activate on itself later. To make your life easier, you can try binding your Force Move to mouse wheel and then you can hold down Multishot button and scroll at the same time, while rhythmically moving your mouse between where you want to shoot and where you want to go. But ultimately, the best way to do stutter stepping is the hard way: you need to issue a separate move command after every attack.
Stutter-stepping is necessary to stay alive in high Greater Rifts and the difference between doing and not doing it can be as large as 5 tiers. Good luck! (:
Setups
For even more damage, you can drop Stone Gauntlets and run with Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan. Since you are already trying to avoid any incoming damage altogether because of Squirt's Necklace, you should ultimately go for this setup if you're aiming high.
A more forgiving version uses Endless Walk + Echoing Fury cubed while reducing the need to dodge every enemy attack. Playing around the ring optimally and trying to stand still as much as possible are the key here.
Another option is going with Multishot Arsenal and switching Numbing Traps to Ballistics. This version is more consistent, can finish off elites much easier and has a significantly shorter bossfight. However, with enough fishing, Physical will beat Fire by about 1.5 tiers.
Concept
For Echoing Nightmares we are changing a few things from a regular Speed GR build. Because of Channeling Pylon we can replace Dawn with Echoing Fury for more damage. We also don't need Visage of Gunes and run Hexing Pants of Mr. Yang instead. For more information check out our full Echoing Nightmare Guide and take a look at our Echoing Nightmare Build Tier List and META post for the best builds and strategies!
Gameplay
Click Speed Pylon as soon as the challenge starts and all the other Pylons at around wave 90. At wave 122 you can stop attacking and run to the corner to let the timer run out.
Stay at range and use Smoke Screen to keep your Squirt's Necklace buff. Mow down everything with Multishot while stutter-stepping around to survive.
Video Guide
Mechanics
Unhallowed Essence
Dead Man's Legacy
Thrill of the Hunt
Summary
- Reach the necessary Cooldown Reduction for permanent Vengeance (37%) and use it every 20 seconds.
- Keep up buffs (Wraps of Clarity, Bastions of Will) at all times.
- Position yourself to hit most enemies with your cone-shaped Multishot AoE.
- Keep your Discipline high as it directly scales your damage output.
We hope you enjoyed this guide! Unhallowed Essence is an ideal build for both beginners and veterans alike and will bring joy to anyone seeking to mow down enemies with a barrage of arrows.
Credits
Written by Northwar & wudijo
Updates by wudijo