Diablo 3: Unhallowed Essence vs Marauders


With Season 7 coming around the corner, it’s time to choose a class. I already stated why I’m not going to start with a Demon Hunter this season in a previous blog. But the idea of knowing which set to start with in a season is critical and goes into the essence of the difference between Unhallowed Essence and a set like Marauders. I want to expand into that debate here and point out what I like about one set vs the other.

Right now, Unhallowed Essence has become my favorite Demon Hunter set. The play style is extremely simple yet engaging and allows you to progress quite high. However, I feel that the set isn’t a great starter set because of how the set bonuses really only come together once you gain all 6 pieces and have a Yang’s Recurve. Of course, you can make any set work but some are a little more difficult than others and Unhallowed Essence is really about the synergy of the gear.

Compare that to Marauders which has a pretty cool 2 set ability in providing all Companions. Having all pets at your disposal is pretty powerful at low levels just because of how much passive damage you gain as well as a natural burst of defense/offense and resource regeneration all at once. Since the 4 piece set unlocks by killing an act boss for the seasonal gift reward, you really want to have some burst damage available. This is something that Unhallowed Essence’s 2 piece does not provide, although you do gain some hatred and discipline, which really doesn’t come into play early on.

The four piece bonus from Marauders continues to allow you pump out damage through your Sentries. This makes the GR20 challenge pretty trivial and ought to propel you into T6 or higher almost immediately. If you add Zoey’s Secret with The Cloak of the Garwulf, you’ll have quite a bit of natural defense, making you feel tanky. Add in Sentry: Polar Station, you’ll be able to slow enemies while your Cluster Arrows nuke enemies down.

That said, Marauders suffers in being too dependent upon Sentries for damage output. When you switch between levels of a rift or you die, you lose your Sentries. If you recently placed your Sentries down, you’ll have to wait before you’re back up to full power. In a high Greater Rift situation, that could easily mean success or failure since you’ll lose all that time trying to rebuild your Sentry arsenal.

Also, Marauders can be far more resource intensive compared to Unhallowed Essence. Marauders is a very heavy build and you’ll be Discipline starved quite often. So if you’re in a group with speed runners, you’ll probably be behind most of the time unless you use some trick. And Cluster Arrow is extremely expensive, even with a good Manticore. The only way to mitigate some resource regeneration issues is by taking the Blood Vengeance passive, but that further weakens you in losing out on a potential useful passive as well as making you dependent upon health globes.

In contrast, Unhallowed Essence really shines once you get all your gear. The only cooldown you need to worry about is Vengeance. However, it’s not difficult to get near 100% uptime on Vengeance because you just need to get CDR on 3 pieces of gear (shoulders, gloves and quiver). Your only real concern is maximizing bonus Discipline on your gear for your chest, weapon and quiver.

Since you’ll have lots of Discipline, you shouldn’t have to worry about Vault and movement. In combat, your goal is to fire from afar to really boost your damage. Multishot won’t have the burst damage of Cluster Arrow, but you can hit far more enemies because of the wide area. For bosses, you’ll employ Bane of the Stricken and you’ll be able to spam Multishot compared to Cluster Arrow.

But the biggest aspect to this build compared to Marauders is that death recovery isn’t as bad. Vengeance comes off of cooldown quite quickly and it gives you some recovery since you’ll probably go with the Visage of Gunes in your cube. Because of the movement and recovery aspects, it’s easier to progress in greater rifts than Marauders.

Overall, Marauders works great as a starter set and for farming. Once you get enough gear though, for progress you’re far better off with Unhallowed Essence. Both are fun but Unhallowed Essence wins for me by being an overall smoother build.

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