Sniper build

[Spekter]

The central idea of the sniper build is to utilize Impale with Grievous Wounds (alabaster) to do massive damage, often killing mobs in one hit. Part of the beauty of the D3 skill system is that there's a lot of flexibility in what else goes into your personal mix, but a few things remain essential to the Sniper build.

Skills
-Passive: Archery
-Active: Impale (Grievous Wounds)
-Active: Marked for Death
Gear
-Crossbow. Low frequency and high damage attacks, along with Archery's passive +100% critical damage defines the build.
-Emeralds. At >+100% critical damage, Precision > Attack.*
-"Brutality" enchantment. To further the theme, add +critical damage to xbow. The more you have, the more value you get out of every point of precision.

The rest is incredibly modular. Mix and match your defensive spells, add some AoE or party with people who can handle big groups while you take on the high Defense and high Vitality mobs.

Your playstyle and party can change a lot - if you consistently work with a Wizard who likes to slow enemies with Ray of Frost or Temporal Flux, try out Passive: Culling the Weak.

Here's my theorycrafted build:
Impale (Grievous Wounds)
Hungering Arrow (Devouring Arrow)
Caltrops (Hooked Spines)
Spike Trap (Bandolier)
Vault (Acrobatics)
Marked for Death (Mortal Enemy)
Passive: Steady Aim
Passive: Archery
Passive: Perfectionist

I chose the golden rune for Marked for Death for the explicit reason of fighting monsters that are big even for the sniper; there's a chance to get a big refund on Impale, which allows you to chain more Impales on the target.

*I made this claim when I had done some sketchy math while tired. I'm pretty sure it doesn't hold up.

[mender]

I have been working on this build for a good portion of today. Goal dish out massive dmg to a single monster

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#UQYakT!UYW!Zbbacb

Avoid monsters and build hatred with evasive fire. With Surge I can avoid all day.

When full hatred I can double shot impale with duel wield xbows, killing key monsters. Those two shots together could potentially do over 2000% dmg. I feel like I could fill my orb back up in 3 seconds, or less.

With preparation(Focused mind) and shadow power I will have 50% increased attack speed for 1 minute every other minute.

All the while averaging about 8 per second passive hate regen.

Also I will average about 20 hate regain per attack on marked players with mortal enemy. So my impale will only cost 20 hate, so in theory that along with the other regens I could spam maybe 6 impales on marked bosses. With each impale having the potential to do 1000% damage. I could do 6000% dmg in a matter of 3 seconds.... every 3 seconds.

My theory is that there will be key bad guys to kill through out the game. Most people default to trying to do the most aoe damage, so I think it would help balance things out on a multiplayer level if there was one guy that focused on nuking the big baddies.

[demasked]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#idabQk!UYW!YYacaa

This would be my sniper build based on single shots.

Impale would be the big sniper headshot that, depending if you crit or not, will deal tons of damage.

Hungering Arrow with the increase in damage for each successful pierce will be nice for the damage and hate regen.

Smokes screen and vault are just for getaway uses as a sniper is a distance fighter (plus helps with steady aim).

Marked for death will just add more damage to the one unit while giving the sniper more health regen as bosses might pose to be a problem. Impale plus 7% health regen is really handy.

Preparation with Backup plan is needed due to the three discipline skills that are being used. Backup plan because you want to refresh your discipline as often as you can. The 40% health regen shouldn't be needed as snipers should be more evasive and far away from close quarters.

Sharpshooter, Archery, and Steady Aim:
Are all about critical hits. Probably go with the crossbow since there aren't any dual snipers out there. The 100% critical damage will be extremely nice. If Impale crits you'll deal 775% damage which is amazing imo just with that hit... not including Marked for Death or Steady Aim... With both it would be 805% damage...

Not a great AOE build, but definitely a sniper build.