Diablo III- Skills Article XLI: The Demon Hunter, Secondary Skills- Elemental Arrow

Elemental Arrow (10 Hatred): Fire an arrow that passes through all targets, dealing 155% weapon damage as Fire damage to each of them.

For those situations where you want a line of damage like Chakram but need it more narrowly focused (and slightly stronger), the Demon Hunter has access to Elemental Arrow.  This can take a certain amount of rune-swapping, as many enemies are particularly resistant to one or another elemental damage type, but the rewards in terms of raw damage output can be well worth it.  For the most part, this skill packs only damage, although a few of its runes have some interesting control side-effects.  Elemental Arrow is best used when you can line up a lot of enemies together- since it’s a single projectile that pierces all targets, rather than a broader blade like the Chakram skill, it can be harder to tag a lot of enemies with it.

Ball Lightning (10 Hatred): Fire a slow-flying electrical orb that passes through all targets, dealing 155% weapon damage as Electric damage to each of them.

Ball Lightning is a permutation of Elemental Arrow that makes it much easier to damage multiple targets, thanks to its slower travel speed, but makes it harder to hit a specific target, thanks to its slower travel speed.  The right application of control effects can push things into its path after you launch it, and the fact that it’s a small area instead of a single weapon means that it also affects more targets even if all enemies are just standing still for its whole flight.  This makes it much easier to take advantage of the skill’s penetrative properties.  What's more, an enemy traveling in the same direction as it will take a load more damage- the ball actually continuously pumps damage out to everything in a small area around it.  Use in corridor for maximum hilarity.

Frost Arrow (10 Hatred): Fire an arrow that passes through all targets, dealing 170% weapon damage as Cold damage to each of them and slowing their movement by 60% for 1 second.  On hitting the first enemy, this arrow splits into multiple versions of itself, though those arrows cannot then split themselves.

Frost Arrow is Elemental Arrow tuned for controlling small clusters of enemies, or alternately in a very cluttered battlefield for impeding all manner of enemy movement.  Since the extra shots split off from where the arrow first hits a target, controlling how far away the shot is when it hits its first target has a huge impact on what the skill can do to mess up your enemies’ attempts to reach you.  All in all, this is a very handy little addition to the Demon Hunter’s arsenal, and should never be discounted as an option.

Screaming Skull (10 Hatred): Fire an arrow that passes through all targets, dealing 155% weapon damage as Fire damage to each of them.  40% of the time, this arrow will take the form of a skull and afflict affected enemies with Fear for 1.5 seconds.

If you need to scare off some of the enemies chasing you, or just generally reduce the incoming aggression, and nobody accompanying you is bothered by having to deal with fleeing foes, then Screaming Skull can be a very useful little trick.  It’s a touch unreliable, but close to every other shot will have the secondary effect.  With the kind of firing rate a Demon Hunter can keep up, that’s not too much of a drawback.

Lightning Bolts (10 Hatred): Fire a bolt of lightning that deals 155% weapon damage as Electric damage to all enemies it passes through and Stuns for 1.5 seconds when it inflicts a critical hit.

If you ever wanted to pretend you were a Diablo II Sorceress and zarch everything with lightning, then Lightning Bolts is your best shot at that outside of playing a Wizard.  It retains the line-of-damage effect of Elemental Shot, while tacking on a control effect that makes many Demon Hunters quite happy- enemies who are Stunned, after all, neither attack nor move, leaving them open to being shot even more.  Sadly, the effect relies on critical hits, so only Demon Hunters who are heavily invested in critical hit chances are going to get their money’s worth out of this rune.  If you aren’t specialized in critical hits, then you probably would rather have Frost Arrow.

Nether Tentacles (10 Hatred): Launch a mass of shadowy tentacles that passes through all targets, dealing 155% weapon damage to each of them and healing you by 6% of the damage dealt.

Perhaps the most amusing form of Elemental Arrow, Nether Tentacles causes your crossbow to launch a mass of squiddy darkness in a line, and makes for a very amusing way to recoup some lost life.  If it weren’t for the high firing rate Demon Hunters can achieve, this wouldn’t be worthwhile- the life drain is small and the damage, as with most Demon Hunter skills, isn’t terribly high.  At 10 Hatred, though, it’s not all that expensive and you can certainly launch volleys of it fast enough.