The below post is basically the preliminary skill for the active demon hunter skills. A more in-depth guide to the classes skills are here at this Diablo 3 Demon Hunter Skills Guide.

Now again, before we touch off the passives here, the passives are, you get three of them. First at 10, second at 20, third at 30, and you can pick between any of these, mix and match, and you can swap them out. So for instance, I just switched between Thrill of the Hunt and Brooding. You can do that anytime you want. At least as of the current build.

So let’s start getting into the abilities here. The very first one that we start with is Hungering Arrow, fire a magically imbued arrow that seeks out targets for 140% weapon damage and has a 50% chance to pierce through targets. So? You saw it all throughout the play through. It’s a pretty effective ability. Hungering Arrow is recommended in Diablo 3 demon hunter guide to juice up your level at early stage. You can miss and it will still hit, because it is actually seeking out …, it will ricochet conveniently, at least that’s been my
experience with it. It’s just a common shot, a lot of damage. It has a chance to pierce through targets. It does it fairly frequently just because you are fairly frequently using it.

Now let’s see if I happen to have a different type of bow in my inventory. One-hand, one-hand, one-hand, I don’t, and that actually is not going to help me demonstrate here. Now I believe my experience was playing with the original play through that I did. But I used a two-handed cross bow. I could be mistaken. I don’t know if I was just paying enough attention to my weapons at all, but I believe I was using the two-handed cross bow.

So in using that, I also believe that I didn’t have a problems with this because I was firing roughly half as fast but when I’m using my … let’s go ahead and show it. I’m actually using two. I’m using a rare hand cross bow and a magic hand cross bow, and hand cross bow being the name of the item or the item type. I’m using two because you can dual wield these. Pretty cool. Someone pointed that out to me in the comments. It’s pretty cool, but you run out of hatred super quick with this and the damage isn’t that outstanding with it.

And it is alternating. It’s actually shooting with this one, which this one, I can see the difference like night and day. So I’m going from the 18.5. When I land a shot with the 18.5, I see a big chunk of like come out. When I land the shot with a 7.2, I don’t. And right now, I mean, those both have plus experience because I was using it to level effect. Most of my gear does.

Anyway, that’s how it is. That’s going to be true for most of these skills. Let’s go ahead and jump back into the other skills. Now in Entangling Shot, let’s switch Hungering Arrow out with Entangling Shot. What Entangling Shot does is it basically it hits one target but then it can also latch on to a second target and it’s going to slow both of those targets by 50%. I haven’t had an excuse to use it yet in the play through.

It’s a little less damage, so I’ve been wanting to use the Hungering Arrow instead because the Hungering Arrow not only is it going to hit it’s target, it’s got a good chance to hit another target as well. And I believe it can pierce multiple targets in a row, but I won’t say for 100% sure, because usually I won’t unless I actually test it and I can’t really test it here because I’ve cleared most of this dungeon.

So Entangling Shot is basically two targets can get slowed, one target takes damage. So the next one, Evasive Fire, this one was obnoxious. Five hatred to shoot and an additional four discipline if you back-flip. It’s basically shoot for 135% of weapon damage. If an enemy is at close range, you will also back-flip away 15 yards. Let’s go ahead and switch this one out with Evasive Fire.

Actually, in hindsight, you will not have energy issues with this. But what I found obnoxious with this is when I wasn’t dealing a lot of damage with it and stuff would get near me, I would back-flip and that was annoying because I don’t like my character being forcefully moved, especially when it’s like an ability …, well, I don’t know how to explain it. It wasn’t very enjoyable to me, but it’s probably going to be very, very useful, especially as you get used to it. So anyway, that’s not going to pierce. The Hungering Arrow is going to be a little bit better. However, Diablo 3 Guide said that Evasive Fire is efficiency when fighting with big boss having close-range attack but heavy attack damage.

Fan of Knives, throw knives in a spiral or knives out in a spiral around you doing four to five physical damage to all enemies within ten yards. Your knives will also slow the enemies by 35% for four seconds. Pretty basic ability.

Let’s go ahead and … there you go. I don’t like that animation, I will be honest. It’s like I’ve got an oil slick behind each of these … it’s like bullets with oil slicks behind them. I don’t know. Take it for what it is. So that’s a pretty basic concept. It’s in a lot of games, Rogues, whatever.

Bola Shot, shoot out an explosive bola that wraps itself around its target. After one second the bola explodes dealing 120% weapon damage as fire to the target and an additional 90% weapon damage as fire damage to all other targets within seven yards. I found that I enjoyed this particular shot, however, like you see, it’s like the 15 hatred one, except you run out a whole lot faster. This is an exceptional ability fid Diablo 3 Demon Hunter guide to slay horde of enemies

Let’s see, three shots before I can fire again, so I’m alternating
every third shot. That’s why I didn’t use it much, but it does have a use.
And I did use it and in large groups of enemies I was able to get quite a
bit of damage off by using it.

Grenades, let’s go ahead and switch over here. Throw out three grenades that explode for 12 to 19 fire damage. I didn’t make much use of it just because I didn’t like the mechanics. I was throwing them down the stairs, let’s see if I can throw them down here, and the delay on them is kind of useful, but it wasn’t that useful. I wasn’t hitting mobs that easily whereas with any other shot that the demon hunter does, it’s super easy. So take it for what it is.

Well, I guess, I probably should have made more use of it. It actually is pretty good, especially against groups of enemies, and especially after I started
playing the Diablo 3 Witch Doctor Leveling and Diablo 3 Wizard Leveling, where I was really starting to
enjoy the AOE. High hatred cost, very high hatred cost, 30 hatred. Okay,
that’s another reason that I might not use it, along with a limited number
of active skills that I had available during my play through.