No, SH is not needed. In fact, it's been off my spec for so long that I had to go through the list of skills to remember which spell it was. This frees you up to run 1 attack and 5 CC/burst abilities, or 2 attacks and 4 CC/burst. I've been running variants of this build solo, or duo kite w/ DH. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...jRk!VWX!aaabaZ (MC gets swapped for Horrify sometimes, and blood ritual is occasionally jungle fortitude.)

Also, after reading this thread, I'm going to try swapping my hex rune out for jinx.

Disclaimer: I zombear sometimes, especially solo. It's just the fastest way of disposing of elite packs without the DH around.