Melee Demon Hunter thread

[Snowbird]

I looked back and found one of these threads a page or two back, but it was pretty outdated, so lets get another up. I've always been a fan of taking the path less traveled by, and blizzard has always given me the opportunity. Whether it was Diablo II, Warcraft III, or WoW, there was always something to do that was still viable yet deviated from the norm. The melee demon hunter might fill this for me in Diablo III when I am tired of playing normally.

So lets talk about it. A melee demon hunter, or more accurately, a demon hunter that wields a melee weapon, has a smaller window of skills and abilities that he/she can use. The removal of the passive "fundamentals" almost requires you to be using grenades more. For those who don't know, fundamentals was a passive that increased the damage of your basic attack by 100% and granted 4 hatred. But now that that's gone, the melee demon hunter will need to be tossing grenades and using a few other discipline spenders to keep his hatred up, which is just fine. Many abilities cannot be used, such as multishot, hungering arrow, cluster arrow. Infact, I'm not sure we know which abilities can or cannot be used, for example strafe. Strafe shoots arrows at enemies, but one rune makes you throw knives instead of arrows. I think it would be absurd if blizzard required you to wield a bow or crossbow in order to throw knives. Also rain of vengeance, some runes shoot arrows and other have shadow beasts. But in the end, there is still a good amount of skills that a melee demon hunter will be able to use.

What are the pros and cons?
Pros:
-Solid damage with a 1 handed weapon
-High defense, granting you access to both survivability and some high damage skills requiring close range -You'll be doing something a bit different than everyone around you
-Most abilities % weapon damage abilities like fan of knives will do more damage than if you were wielding a bow or handcrossbow.
-You get to use a shield (more on this in a sec)
Cons:
-lose your ranged power
-more restricted in the abilities you choose
-have to throw grenades
-might lose some dps, but we don't really know about this one yet. You might deal more

I was looking through the items on the official site, and it looks to me that the best setup might be a one handed mace + shield. Why a mace? Because not only does it have higher dps than any other weapon wield-able by the demon hunter besides the 2 handed crossbow, it has a very high max damage. With high max damage comes hard hits by many abilities, especially the ones requiring melee range.

Now the cool part. The Shield. The shield is an interesting thing because there is no real "shield wielding class". Any class CAN use a shield, but none have to. In Diablo II, almost every class used one, in Diablo III, the norm might be to NOT use a shield. A shield has HUGE armor, around double or triple the amount of any other piece of armor that you wear, and as a bonus you get a chance to block damage. It boosts you're ability to survive by a solid margin, and will allow a class like a demon hunter to get in peoples(or monsters) faces. Since not many are using it, and it is pretty awesome, the demon hunter might as well pick one up. Grab one while its hot.

I don't know if the melee demon hunter will actually need to be hitting things with his mace, but what it DOES do is give him good damage for his abilities and allows him to hold a shield.

[Snowbird]

There's probably more than a few ways to play a melee demon hunter, but I came up with a build that might work. I can think of a few others, but here is this one. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...SXk!bVf!acZabc
Grenades w/ tinkering: to get more hatred while tossing those inaccurate little things.
Shuriken Cloud: to give DPS while standing near things. Plus you only need to cast it once and it lasts for 2 minutes.
Retaliate: for two reasons. 1. You can cast it before you get into a fight, allowing you start the CD sooner, and 2. You are already going to get hit, so you might as well choose the (much)higher damage version of Fan of Knives. 464% weapon damage is no joke. If you use it 9 seconds before you get hit than use it again right after, that is a 928% weapon damage in a couple seconds to all nearby enemies.
Spike traps: They will be the spammed as much as our hatred will allow. Because of the passive "numbing traps", we will take less damage from enemies, thus we are granted the luxury of not having to bait enemies all over the place, but can plant one, or 6, right at our feet. I chose bandolier because I don't much like any of the other rune effects. These also do pretty good damage. Hopefully we will get our old animation back.
Smoke screen w/ breathe deep: This in order to get us out of tight spots and to regenerate our hatred. If using abilities while "smoke screened" doesn't break the invisibility, all the better. I think it should be used whenever there is the discipline.
Sentry w/ Guardian turret: It's not really there to do damage, but to give you the aura of taking less damage. 15% is a lot, and coupled with numbing traps, we will be taking a lot less damage.

And for the passives I chose Vengeance, Numbing traps, and perfectionist. So thats an idea of a build that I had. There are probably many other things that a melee demon hunter can use. And just because you wield a mace, doesn't mean you have to stick with melee abilities. Infact, I think it would also be great for a rocket style build.

I'm sure that with all the gear possibilities, one could customize and make a melee demon hunter pretty viable For a mercenary, I personally would choose the templar with healing abilities. Maybe a ranged demon hunter can only take 10-20 hits in inferno before dieing. This guy might be able to take 20-30. Most of all its going to be fun

What are your guys thoughts on a melee demon hunter, and what are some builds or ideas that you might have?

[Fuzion]

It's an interesting concept, but I think forgoing your gigantic strength with ranged weapons is a little far. Looking over the build you're using pseudo-ranged attacks and melee attacks you don't have control over, as well as equipment just to forgo ranged weaponry. I just don't see the Demon Hunter having enough actual melee capabilities to do a build like this, that's why close range combat is supplemented with invisibility and escape mechanisms rather than melee damage abilities.