The revamped Marauder’s set has brought a lot of firepower to the Demon Hunter. In addition, many Demon Hunter builds have popularized using Vengeance for Hatred regeneration as well as an offensive and defensive buff using the revamped Dawn and the new Visage of Gunes helmet. While this version is popular, an alternative build for Marauder’s uses The Cloak of the Garwulf instead of Visage of Gunes. How do these two builds compare?
Visage of Gunes provides Vengeance with the Dark Heart rune, which gives Demon Hunters a flat 50% damage reduction buff while Vengeance is on. For this to become a semi-permanent ability, you need to stack around over 30% cooldown reduction on gear to compliment Dawn’s 65% cooldown reduction to Vengeance. This number isn’t entirely impossible to achieve as you can gain cooldown through Paragon points (up to 10%), a diamond in the helmet slot (12.5%) and some additional points on shoulders and gloves (for another 16%), hitting roughly 38-40% cooldown in an optimal state. Of course, having that much cooldown does mean losing some defense on those armor pieces, namely the gloves where you could get much needed vitality (which really helps from Ancients).
With Cloak of the Garwulf, you gain 2 additional wolves for your Companion ability. Most Demon Hunters these days using the Marauders set will probably use Zoey’s Secret for the passive defense buff from Companion. Having 2 additional wolves by your side means that you gain up to a 18% defense passive on top of more damage coming from your wolves as a result of your 6 piece bonus (where having 5 sentries provides 600% bonus per sentry to your companions among other things). You can still achieve a similar cooldown build or go more defensive/offensive stats on your gloves and shoulder pieces in this scenario.
So which one really is better? I think Cloak of the Garwulf has a slight edge just because you gain a little more damage along with having a bit more defense whenever Vengeance goes down. You can always have 100% uptime on Vengeance because of your stats, but one mistake can cost you.
For myself, I tend to prefer Cloak of the Garwulf just because you get the best of both worlds. Vengeance becomes just a damage buff and a source to replenish your Hatred rather than something that you have to constantly monitor. Also, having more pets out is just a lot of fun and it gives a nice place that fits the Demon Hunter theme quite well.