Your selection of passive skills is going to depend really heavily on what you do as a Demon Hunter. Regardless of whether you wield one bow, one crossbow, or two crossbows, there are three main things that a Demon Hunter can easily focus in- all of them effective.
The first is battlefield control. Demon Hunters have a lot of effects that slow enemies, create areas enemies don’t want to enter, stun foes, or punish them for being clustered up. Things like Thrill of the Hunt, Cull the Weak, and Numbing Traps will greatly empower these Demon Hunters, and they’ll likely want to look for opportunities to increase their firing speed and regenerate or effectively use Hatred, since their most powerful control tools either build or eat Hatred.
The second is evasion. Evasive Demon Hunters will want to focus on skills that let them evade enemies and benefit when they do- Tactical Advantage, Steady Aim, Hot Pursuit- all of these are excellent for fighting evasively. Other passives may come in handy if you combine your evasion with a particular method of offense.
Finally, there’s the out-and-out damage dealers. These are likely to be crit-fishers with dual hand crossbows, but can still be one-bow Demon Hunters with raw damage skills. Vengeance, Night Stalker, Archery, Sharpshooter- these passives focus on your ability to flat-out inflict pain on the demons you fight.
Generally speaking, you’re going to want similarly aligned passive skills- but it’s possible to also build a more ‘balanced’ Demon Hunter with a variety of capabilities- you may lose out a bit in focus, but you’ll be able to handle yourself in nearly any situation- where a control Demon Hunter doesn’t handle teleporters well, an evasion Demon Hunter has trouble with Imprisoning enemies or enemies that lay out control, and a damage dealer lacks in defenses, a ‘balanced’ Demon Hunter can work around nearly anything to some degree, having less easily targeted weak points.
Tactical Advantage: Whenever you use Vault or Smokescreen, or Evasive Fire causes you to backflip, you gain a 60% movement speed boost for 2 seconds.
Tactical Advantage is a very evasion-focused skill, and is of most use to Evasion Demon Hunters- though many more balanced Demon Hunters will want it for the raw utility of being able to relocate more easily without damaging their offense too badly. Battlefield control Demon Hunters aren’t likely to care about this, crit-fishers have better investments to make, and people who like rockets will likely skip this as well. It’s worth noting that if you need to travel quickly, you can swap into this and abuse Vault or Smokescreen to eke out some extra speed.
Thrill of the Hunt: Every 10 seconds, your next bow attack will Immobilize the target for 3 seconds.
Naturally, this is a battlefield control skill, though some evasive Demon Hunters will find they want it. Especially useful with area attacks. The real problem it suffers is that every 10 seconds is quite a long time on the battlefield, and few people will be able to properly monitor it. If you tend to have ten-second or longer gaps between bouts of fighting though, you can at least rely on opening with it.
