Diablo III- Skills Article LXI: The Demon Hunter, Theorycraft One: You’re Too Slow

By picking a bunch of skills that not only boost evasion, but also let you keep on the move even as you deal out damage to your enemies, this Demon Hunter build proves that evasion is a valid tactic- you just have to be patient about when things die.

Primary Skill: Entangling Shot- Chain Gang
Secondary Skill: Chakram- Shuriken Cloud
Defensive Skill: Smoke Screen- Choking Gas
Hunting Skill: Companion- Ferret Companion
Devices Skill: Evasive Fire- Displace
Archery Skill: Strafe- Drifting Shadow
Passive Skills: Tactical Advantage, Hot Pursuit, Perfectionist

You’re going to want to mostly ignore Entangling Shot- your real main attack is going to be Evasive Fire.  Since that generates Hatred just like a Primary Attack, you can use it like one- and the Displace effect ensures that you won’t be stuck near an enemy when you get that last shot in.  Tactical Advantage lets you maintain your distance after that, and combining it with Smoke Screen, Hot Pursuit, and Perfectionist lets you vanish, dart, and leap all over the battlefield with impunity, always staying clear of your foes.  The Ferret Companion could be any other Companion but the Wolf- the idea is just to be continually dishing out damage as you run around.  Drifting Shadow and Shuriken Cloud enhance this further, Drifting Shadow allowing you to keep moving while you fire, and Shuriken Cloud permitting you to turn your speed into a weapon, sliding past things and injuring them with the aura of blades that surrounds you.

Entangling Shot was mostly chosen as a backup plan- if something is catching up to you for some reason, or you find you want to sit still somewhere (unlikely, but still), Chain Gang will let you keep a lot of stuff from getting too close all at once.  Vault with Action Shot or Tumble is a possible alternative to the Companion, but you should have all the evasion and speed boost you need with just Smoke Screen, Evasive Fire, Tactical Advantage, and Hot Pursuit.  You’re going to spend a lot of time moving very quickly, so don’t pick this build unless you’re -really- good at not steering into traps and enemies.

Another alternative would be to use Gas Grenades instead of Chain Gang, just so you have even more dangerous poison gas to drag enemies through in their relentless but futile attempt to catch up to you.

You’ll need to watch out for two major issues here- overuse of Smokescreen will likely run out your Discipline pool and leave you in a lot of trouble, so rely more on Evasive Fire.  The other is that while Strafe will nicely let you do a bunch of damage while still moving, your speed will take a sharp dip as soon as you use it, since it’ll turn off Hot Pursuit- and so will Shuriken Cloud- though you’re not going to set that off in serial, so it’s Drifting Shadow you want to worry about.  If that becomes too much of an issue, you can replace it with one of the no-cost forms of Rain of Vengeance that let you keep moving, though those are a lot less reliable and can’t be used just whenever you like.