Diablo – As a Demon Hunter, what bonuses should I focus on when spending Paragon Points

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As of the 2.0 patch, the Paragon point system has had a major overhaul. Now, there are four categories and each one has different things to Paragon place points in to. As a Demon Hunter, I see a bunch of helpful things that I could be spending points on, but I feel like I'm kind of all over the place and maybe a little too spread out to see a significant overall change. There are categories such as dexterity, attack speed, reduce resource cost, crit chance, crit damage, area damage and others that all seem like viable options.

Is there an effective way to spend these points as a Demon Hunter? I realize that this may vary by build but it would be nice to have at least a general idea of which categories are more helpful than others overall for a DH. Though if you'd like to elaborate based on a certain build, feel free to do that also.

Best Answer

I have played only (95% of the time) Demon Hunter since the Diablo 3 release and I have gathered some experience on the new 2.0 patch so here is what I think about paragon points:

  • The first use of Paragon point is to compensate the stats your DH is lacking. You have enough DPS but can't facetank enough ? Spend your point in Core:Vitality and Defense:All Resist. Do you use a 2 hand Xbow, have a lot of Crit Damage but you can't generate hatred fast enough ? More point in Attack Speed and there you go ! On the contrary you use a Calamity and have ~3 Attacks Per Second but you lack some crit damage ? Offense:Critical Damage is here for you.
  • They have to fit your build; do you run a build with a heavy hatred-consuming skill (like Cluster Arrow)? Looks like you could use some resource cost reduction and Maximum hatred.
  • Some of them are quite useless if your main focus is survivability and DPS: gold find, or life on Hit (Demon Hunters don't benefit much from LoH)
  • They bring flexibility; you just looted a new piece of equipement that raises your DPS by 20% but you are afraid to lose 100 to all resistance ? You can compensate.

The main stats you should focus on are :

  • Core: If you feel comfortable in damage and survivability, go for movespeed first, it will free an affixe on your boots (that can be replaced with something like +15% damage to a skill). Then Dexterity/Vitality (depending on the need) until you feel it's enough, finally Maximum Hatred.

  • Offense: Where you lack the most. Remember that a good ratio (in total) is 1% Crit Chance for 10% Crit Damage (20/200, 35/350 etc. 10/400 or 45/150 would be innefficient). Also, your APS should be above 2,2. If you want to run a built based on sentries (with the Bonus 6 of the Maraudeur's Set) or using Vengeance you can concider cooldown reduction as a main focus (since it will help you place sentries faster).

  • Defense: All resistance first is a must. A good T10 survivability requires at least 15 000+ Armor, ~600 000 HP (do not stack too much %life an neglect armor) and 800+ all resistance for an overall ~12M+ toughness. Once you reach that and if you read the previous link, you can get life regen since it will increase your sustainability by a lot.

  • Utility: I would focus on Resource Cost Reduction first since it's a good way to have a better ressource management (especially when using heavy-consuming hatred skills like Cluster Arrow). Then focus on Area of Damage since it can really increase your AOE killing potential. Finally Life on Hit > goldfind (if you really (like really) need gold then you can try goldfind as a main focus but I'd advice against it).

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