Diablo III- Skills Article LIV: The Demon Hunter, Archery Skills- Cluster Arrow

Cluster Arrow (50 Hatred): Fire an explosive arrow that explodes for 200% weapon damage as Fire damage, and drops a spread of grenades that each explode for 100% weapon damage as Fire damage.

Cluster Arrow, thanks to the fact that the secondary damage doesn’t exclude the original target, joins Strafe as the other Archery skill that is still highly useful against bosses.  Over 200% weapon damage to one target is very nice for a Demon Hunter skill, for which you pay with an extremely high Hatred cost- but one that can easily be worth it.  What’s more, the decent size of the area makes this an excellent skill for wiping out clustered demons all over the game.  You will have to figure a way to generate Hatred more quickly (unless you save it for special occasions and lean on your Primary Skill most of the time, not the most banal option for a Demon Hunter by any means) if you want to make common use of the skill, but this can be a very useful investment.  The only real problem with Cluster Arrow besides its high cost is that the damage is all Fire, which is frequently resisted.

Dazzling Arrow (50 Hatred): Fire an explosive arrow that explodes for 200% weapon damage, and drops a spread of grenades that each explode for 100% weapon damage and have a 65% chance to stun each enemy they hit for 2 seconds.

Dazzling Arrow does two great things for Cluster Arrow- first of all, it removes the Fire typing from the damage, making it less frequently resisted.  Second of all, it turns the skill into an extremely nice area stun, giving you lots of chances to use it tactically, pinning down groups of enemies that you can then pump more arrows or bolts into.  The damage remains very good for a Demon Hunter skill, so this is a prime pick for the Archery skill slot.

Shooting Stars (50 Hatred): Fire an explosive arrow that explodes for 200% weapon damage as Fire damage, and launches three homing rockets at nearby enemies that deal 175% weapon damage each.

Shooting Stars turns the Cluster Arrow skill into the most raw-power oriented homing rocket skill available.  While this is very nice and provides a large swipe out of a few things, rocketeers will probably prefer things that launch rockets at a higher rate.  It’s hard to argue with 175% weapon damage, though, so this should not be discounted as a rocket option.  It’s also good for taking out smaller groups than the standard Cluster Arrow, since it deals even more damage, but lacks the area-of-effect of its root form.

Maelstrom (50 Hatred): Fire an explosive arrow that explodes for 200% weapon damage as Fire damage, and bursts with energy that deals 175% weapon damage to nearby enemies, healing you by 4% of the damage the wave deals.

Maelstrom is a fairly nice chunk of life regain- combining it with Shadow Power can have some fun effects.  Sadly, lacking both homing rockets and the cluster-grenades, its area of effect is much smaller.  At this Hatred cost, you should be expecting to regain more life than 4%, or at least dealing out some extra damage in the reduced area, but no dice.  Not to say that it’s a bad alteration, it’s just not as strong as the other rune options you have here.

Cluster Bombs (50 Hatred): Launch a cluster of grenades in a line that drop one by one, each exploding for 230% weapon damage as Fire damage.

Cluster Bombs is essentially a more powerful but more expensive alternative to Elemental Arrow- while the area and damage are larger, there are really going to be better things you can do with the Hatred.  Then again, perhaps you prefer a different Secondary skill than Elemental Arrow, in which case you may want this for the line damage- it’s more controllable than Chakram, after all.

Loaded for Bear (50 Hatred): Fire an explosive arrow that explodes for 290% weapon damage as Fire damage, and drops a spread of grenades that each explode for 100% weapon damage as Fire damage.

Ordinarily, the most damaging single hit available to the Demon Hunter is Impale.  Loaded for Bear changes this, racking up an additional 90% weapon damage onto the primary strike of Cluster Arrow.  As long as you’re not suffering too much from fire-resistant enemies, this is amazing- and with fire-resistant enemies you may find that this essentially makes up for said resistance (and possibly more on top of that).  It’s a bit of a pity that this only affects the initial explosion and not the secondary bombs, but you’re only going to get so much out of a rune, and this is quite a bit.  If your only real interest in runing Cluster Arrow is making sure that it kills what it hits, go ahead and take this.