Diablo III- Skills Article L: The Demon Hunter, Device Skills- Fan of Knives

Fan of Knives (20 Hatred, Cooldown 10 Seconds): Throw knives in all directions, dealing 320% weapon damage and inflicting a 60% movement slow for 2 seconds on all enemies within 10 yards.

On the one hand, this skill is amazing when you’re surrounded.  A good deal of range firing in all directions, very high damage for a Demon Hunter skill, and the slow effect all combine to make this a fairly impressive close-combat skill.  On the other hand, you’re a Demon Hunter and you really don’t want to be in close combat to begin with.  Not to say that it won’t happen- but it should happen rarely enough that you’re not going to be disadvantaged by the 10 second cooldown anyways.  In the end, this skill is actually quite useful and very nice for getting out of the occasional sticky situation.

Crippling Razors (20 Hatred, Cooldown 10 Seconds): Throw knives in all directions, dealing 320% weapon damage and inflicting an 80% movement slow for 2 seconds on all enemies within 10 yards.

Given the kind of situations you’re likely to use Fan of Knives in, improving the slow effect is not only very desirable, but expected.  This rune is perfect for enhancing the skill’s ability to let you out of a dangerous fight.  Really, what else is there to say?

Fan of Knives (20 Hatred, Cooldown 10 Seconds): Surround yourself in a whirling barrier of knives that lasts 10 seconds.  If you are struck during that time, they fly in all directions, dealing 464% weapon damage to all enemies within 10 yards.

This form of Fan of Knives, on the other hand, drops the slow and turns it into a retributive measure- something you use if you’re worried you’re going to get dogpiled, so you can be certain that enemies closing to melee with you will be punished for trying to leave your optimum range.  The lack of slow could be dangerous if you didn’t have so many other evasive skills at your disposal, but with those in your hands this just becomes an excellent source of damage to anything that’s surviving the hail of bolts and arrows you launch at it while it heads towards you.

Hail of Knives (20 Hatred, Cooldown 10 Seconds): Throw knives in all directions, dealing 320% weapon damage and inflicting a 60% movement slow for 2 seconds on all enemies within 20 yards.

Doubling the reach of this skill makes it much more offensively viable- now you can hit things with it that are at the sort of range you want to keep enemies when you’re fighting them.  This gets really useful if you Vault into the middle of a large enemy formation, trigger it, and then leap out- since the Slow will keep them from striking you much before you can get back out of the danger zone.  There’s very little reason not to take this rune, since it increases the number of situations where Fan of Knives is useful by a large margin.

Fan of Daggers (20 Hatred, Cooldown 10 Seconds): Throw knives in all directions, dealing 320% weapon damage and inflicting a 60% movement slow for 2 seconds with a 65% chance of a 2-second Stun on all enemies within 10 yards.

It’s hard to make a choice between Crippling Razors and Fan of Daggers when selecting a rune for using Fan of Knives defensively.  The 80% slow is unquestionably strong, but the stun chance on Fan of Daggers is huge, and at that point it mostly comes down to which one proves better for you personally.  Either way it’s an excellent defense skill.

Assassin’s Knives (20 Hatred, Cooldown 10 Seconds): Throw knives in all directions, dealing 320% weapon damage and inflicting a 60% movement slow for 2 seconds on all enemies within 10 yards.  Five more knives are thrown at random targets on the screen, each dealing 70% weapon damage to whatever it hits.

This rune is difficult to classify.  Like some of the other final runes for Demon Hunter, it looks fairly disappointing and doesn’t really do as much as one would hope.  Mostly it’s for those who are satisfied with the base form of Fan of Knives- rather than making it a better defensive or offensive skill, it adds a little extra on the side that doesn’t so much help you use Fan of Knives as tack on a somewhat random other utility.