The article briefly give you several tactical tips when you play with Diablo 3 Demon Hunter, hopefully it is helpful to some beginners.
The number one thing to keep in mind with the Demon Hunter is that you never want to take a lot of damage in melee range. You should immediately get acquainted with the concept of “kiting” enemies – slowing or stunning monsters, and then moving backwards to maintain distance between you and them. Caltrops and other slowing abilities like Entangling Shot or Frost Arrow will be your main tools to achieve this.
Another important concept to get used to is holding shift while using all abilities. This will prevent your hero from moving forward while using skills, because when you kill an enemy you will sometimes left or right click after they have already died, and thus accidentally move closer to the rest of the enemies.
Stay mobile. If you move in between using your skills frequently, you will be able to dodge more attacks and keep melee enemies at bay. This is especially important in Hell and Inferno difficulties as the monsters will often not die fast enough for you to stand still and unload damage.
One important advantage that ranged characters get in Diablo 3 is that you can reduce incoming damage by shooting from as far away from the enemy as possible. It is possible to hit enemies that are JUST out of your screen, and in this way, you can often prevent a lot of ranged attackers and melee attackers from even noticing you, giving you free reign for dealing damage. This advantage is especially useful if you are soloing bosses.
If you are grouping and have a tank, focus less on control and more on damage. Having a tank will allow you to dish out more damage because you’re not moving around and using control abilities as much.
Another useful tactic to learn is the shoot-and-duck. This strategy is useful for areas where there are loads of enemies hiding behind narrow pathways. The way to use this tactic is to go into the pathway for a split second, use 1 or 2 skills, and duck back out before you take significant ranged or melee damage. This is very helpful for dungeons in particular, because there will very often be large, dangerous groups of monsters just behind the doorway.
Regardless of your preferred play style, Caltrops is always going to be your main tool for slowing enemies down, thus allowing you to keep melee-range opponents away from yourself. Make sure to use this ability in most of your builds. The ideal way to use this skill is to put it at your feet, and then move backwards when enemies step into it.
Funneling monsters into tight chokes is another powerful advanced tactic. This tactic greatly increases the effectiveness of a lot of your AOE skills like Caltrops, Rain of Vengeance (with Stampede rune), Elemental Arrow, Spike Trap, and Cluster Arrow. To use this tactic, simply lure any elite or large groups of monsters into a tight choke, like a doorway or a bridge, and then proceed to use skills like the ones describes above (skills that are AOE, but only hit in a particular small area).
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