Diablo III- Skills Article LV: The Demon Hunter, Archery Skills- Rain of Vengeance

Rain of Vengeance (30 second Cooldown): Launch arrows into the sky, which rain down around you for the next 5 seconds, dealing 75% weapon damage each to any enemies hit.

Initially, this seems like an amazing skill- no cost, just a cooldown, and a prolonged fall of arrows that can deal damage over and over to any enemy that dares share a screen with you.  However, you have to keep in mind that these arrows are randomly placed and not targeted- so while they are quite nice against large hordes of enemies or very horizontally large single enemies (Hi, Azmodan!), smaller numbers of enemies may be able to ignore the skill entirely by chance.  It’s very impressive, though, and doesn’t impact your Hatred or Discipline at all.

Dark Cloud (30 second Cooldown): Launch arrows into the sky, which rain down on enemies around you for the next 12 seconds, dealing 34% weapon damage each to any enemies hit.

Dark Cloud, as suggested by other first Demon Hunter runes, is pretty much Rain of Vengeance but better.  While sharing it’s screen-blanketing and random arrow frequency, the arrows dropped by Dark Cloud are targetted, so they’re much less likely to hit nothing at all- and what’s more, the effect lasts more than twice as long.  This makes it much more useful as long as the screen isn’t being blanketed with enemies anyway- if it is, you may find yourself missing the higher damage.  This rune is more of a tradeoff than some runes, but in the end it pretty much makes Rain of Vengeance just better.

Beastly Bombs (30 second Cooldown): Summon flying shadow beasts that drop bombs around you for the next 5 seconds, dealing 125% weapon damage each to any enemies hit.

Beastly Bombs takes a more direct route to improving Rain of Vengeance- aside from that it looks really cool, the only thing this actually changes is improving the damage.  Whether or not it’s worth it is really a matter of whether you want to improve Rain of Vengeance’s damage or its overall utility- it’s this or Dark Cloud for a good long while.

Stampede (30 second Cooldown): Summon a wave of 10 Shadow Beasts from the edge of the screen that charge into and across the ground in a selected direction, dealing 75% damage each and knocking back enemies that are hit.

Stampede turns Rain of Vengeance into a completely different skill- and makes it much more useful for pushing back approaching enemies or shoving foes around than for dealing out damage.  While there are some situations in which this will be important, Demon Hunter is full of mobility and battlefield manipulation skills that don’t require a half-minute wait between uses.  So make sure you really want the occasional wave of knockback that badly before you start using this rune.

Anathema (30 second Cooldown): Summon a flying Shadow Beast that wanders around overhead at random for ten seconds, dropping a trail of grenades that explode for 115% weapon damage.

If you thought Rain of Vengeance was random and un-aimable, Anathema’s really going to frustrate you.  While the damage is nice, particularly with how often the critter drops grenades, the thing is completely random and could easily wind up spending the whole ten seconds bombing an empty side of the screen.  If you don’t mind the randomness, this skill is fairly nice- just don’t expect it to always do much.  At least it’s free, natch?

Flying Strike (30 second Cooldown): Summon a cluster of 8 flying Shadow Beasts that smash into the ground in a targetted area, each dealing 60% weapon damage and stunning enemies they hit for 2 seconds.

This is probably the most valuable alternative to raw damage provided by the Rain of Vengeance skill- and actually looks like a rain of vengeance, particularly with its effects.  The ability to take a sizeable chunk of the screen and stun everything in it- not have a chance of stunning, but flat-out stun- is invaluable, and while the cooldown makes it a bit unhappy, it makes sense with how strong the rune is.  Flying Strike is an excellent reason to use Rain of Vengeance and if you like the way it works, can easily beat out the other Archery Skills.  Funny, considering this version doesn’t involve any archery at all.