There are several attacks available to a Demon Hunter that don't require a ranged weapon to be equipped. If you build around these abilities, such as Grenades, Caltrops, Impale, Chakram, Fan of Knives, and many others (indeed, most others), you substantially expand your available weapon options and thus, the variety of stats available to you. The downside of course is that you are locked out of some skills, such as Hungering Arrow, and - especially at low levels - you might not have all the tools you need to make this work.
Most Demon Hunters won't want to use a melee weapon, but if your skill load out supports it, or you have a really awesome 1H Sword that you want to tailor your build around, the option is there.
For future reference, the following offensive abilities can be used with a melee weapon equipped:
- Grenades
- Chakram
- Impale
- Vault + Action Shot Rune
- Fan of Knives
- Spike Trap
- Companion
- Marked for Death
- Sentry
- Rapid Fire + Bombardment Rune
- Strafe + Stinging Steel Rune
- Strafe + Demolition Rune
There may be a few others, but I don't have any confirmation on them - as a rule of thumb, anything that involves replacing arrows with knives or grenades will probably work. I'm curious about the Nether Tentacles rune for Elemental Arrow personally.
Grenades are a ton of fun, so building around them isn't some crazy niche build or anything either - using a melee weapon limits your skill options in such a build somewhat, but it opens up your equipment options considerably, which is a fair tradeoff.
I use some "tricks" to gear my enchantress/templar with my DH however I admit none of them is really convenient. Since Loot 2.0 will screw the roll most of the time, if you don't want to play another character just for looting gear for your follower you can:
- Use another character to simply reroll the dex into intelligence/strength.
- Use another character to craft an item with the blacksmith.
- Use another character to spend BloodShard at Kadala (and get Strength items with a Barbarian/Templar and Intelligence items with a Wizard/Witch Doctor). However this require to level up the betting character up to 70 since Kadala hands item of the level of the character you're currently playing with.
- Ask a friend who plays Wizard/Witch Doctor/Barbarian/Crusader to keep some rings/amulet with good roll of strength/intel and reroll one of the primary attribute into something you'd like (vitality/crit hit damage etc.)
That's the only ways I've found so far in order to gear my follower correctly. Then if you are "lucky" you can still loot legendaries that are not for DH (like 1H swords/axes or staffs) that almost never roll dex but instead roll the main attribute of the class the item was designed for (I regularly loot swords with strength or staffs with intelligence).
Best Answer
Once the season is over, yes.
While the season is active, think of it like having 2 separate Diablo 3 accounts: one for Seasons, and one for non-Seasons. They are completely separate. (Your hardcore and non-hardcore characters are also separate.)
When the season is over, all of your seasonal characters are converted into non-seasonal characters. The first time you log in after a season is over, all of the gear that was in your seasonal stash will be mailed to you. At that point the items are no different from an item you found on a non-seasonal character.
Blizzard always announces the end of a season at least 2 weeks in advance. When they do, they write a new blog post explaining exactly what happens when the season ends. For example, here is the blog post from the end of last season: Season 10 Ending Soon.