Diablo III- Skills Article CLXXIV: Elective Mode and the Demon Hunter

As the hybrid Generator/Regenerator class, the Demon Hunter might not actually care if they have a Primary skill on their mouse.  It’s certainly useful, no arguing that, but the Hatred pool refills quickly enough that a Demon Hunter who focuses on passive and retributive effects may not mind- and it can be a relaxing way to play.  That’s only one way to operate the Demon Hunter, though, and for the most part the Primary skills (with the inclusion of Evasive Fire, since it also generates Hatred) are generally just sort of useful to have all the time, so the majority of Demon Hunters are going to want to have some form of Hatred generator on their mouse.  The other mouse skill should be one of two things- a frequent-use skill that eats very little Hatred and either is area where the other attack is single-target or vice versa, or a skill that is meant for dumping a full Hatred pool into, be it all at once or in one long splurge of damage.

The hotbar skills for a Demon Hunter should be unified in theme- if the Demon Hunter focuses on battlefield control, there shouldn’t be significant damage here.  If the Demon Hunter focuses on damage, there’s no reason to drop most Defensive skill forms into place.  And neither form of Demon Hunter wants their damage utilities cluttered with high-frequency evasion down here.  The Demon Hunter has a lot of variety in their skills, but with the high number of situational skills available, it’s hard to say what specifically goes.  Focus on situations rather than the skills themselves.  If you want to block a chokepoint, which skill do you want most for that?  Don’t have another skill for blocking checkpoints.  If you want to escape battle, which skill do you want most for that?  Don’t put another skill that does that in.  If you want to mangle everything near you, what’s your favorite skill for doing that?  Don’t get another PBAoE attack.  It may seem a little counterintuitive, but you’ll be a better Demon Hunter if you don’t have redundant skills for the same purpose- sure you’ll survive that purpose better, but the dungeons and battlefields of Diablo III are too varied for you to rely that heavily on a single circumstance.  This isn’t even mentioning the ways that champion and named monsters can mess with your circumstances.  Pick one mainline type of thing you want to do, and consider everything else situational.  You might not even want or have room for situational skills at all- and that’s not a bad thing.

Demon Hunter has a good chunk of passive skills that are influenced by Elective Mode.  Tactical Advantage becomes more useful simply because it becomes more common to have two or even all three of the skills that it affects.  Numbing Traps gets stronger because Fan of Knives and Spike Trap can be used together, and Spike Trap and Sentry can now be used together for the Custom Engineering bonus.  Even Ballistics becomes more usable since you can now cherry-pick all the best rocket-launching skills with no concern for which category they fall under.  Plus, Night Stalker and Sharpshooter are both critical-focused, and the same lack of concern for skill categories on critical-hit effect skills makes both of those far more synergistic.