The Demon Hunter is probably the most complicated class to play in Diablo III. Two resource pools to track and twin specializations in battlefield manipulation and evasion mean a lot of work adjusting to the skills available and figuring out what’s going to work with your personal playstyle. While the class can be built to run along pure-damage lines, it’s not as well equipped in terms of skills for that as say, a Wizard or Barbarian, so there’s not going to be as much variety in ways you can amplify your raw damage output. This isn’t helped by bows and crossbows being relatively low in per-hit damage, which is what the skills rely upon for determining the per-use damage. Never expect your individual hits to matter nearly as much as the sheer number of projectiles you can launch at once- or the ability you have to control where things can go and how quickly.
There are some very oddball skills available to the Demon Hunter too- they got a narrow selection of side skills, but that narrow selection is pretty random in terms of the possible side effects. There are some obvious pitfalls there, but because of the complexity of the class and manipulating the battlefield as a whole, what’s good and what’s not is going to depend on how you react to the situations in the game as a player- even moreso than the other classes in the game. Keep your eyes on the enemy and what they’re doing, and make sure you always have one of your tricks ready to get you or someone else out of trouble, or an enemy into trouble.
Try to coordinate with your allies- not so much in the heat of battle, as in planning. If you stand in your caltrops to benefit from Bait the Trap, let your allies know that it’s okay not to defend you too vigorously. If you set up a safe area and function from there, let your party members know they should stand near you if they fight at a range, and stay back if they’re melee unless you’re really being dogpiled. Mention to party members that your Contagion means they should slay the Mark of Death target immediately, or that your Valley of Death means you need the enemies kept close together.
If you can find someone to play with on a regular basis, make sure you’re taking complimentary effects- your Barbarian friend shouldn’t be knocking your enemies out of your traps and away from your bombs, and you and your Wizard ally shouldn’t both be stunning the same enemies at the same time- it’s redundant. As a tactical class, the Demon Hunter requires a lot of working with anyone who parties with you- and when it’s alone, it requires a lot of thought and experimentation.
And if a skill isn’t working well for you, drop it, no matter who says what about how good or bad it is, and try something else until you have the thing in that slot that works (or better, works best) for you.
