Demon Hunter, starting Act 2 Nightmare, and looking for gear & skill suggestions

[mstieler]

Hi there. As the title states, my Demon Hunter is starting Act 2 in Nightmare, and I'm pretty sure I need to start gearing up a bit more. Currently level 41 (due to backfarming for achieves), with:

650 Dex
647 Vit
1009 Armor
695.35 Damage
23% Dodge
32.98% Damage reduction
20 Phys/Cold/Fire resist, 31 Lightning resist, 42 Poison resist, 39 Arc/Holy Resist
2% Melee damage reduction
11396 Life

Also, I'm currently rocking a pair of Hand Crossbows. I'm not certain whether I should stick with this, go with 1 Hand Crossbow & Quiver, or a 2H Bow or Crossbow.

Skill-wise, I'm using:
Bola Shot + Thunder Ball
Elemental Arrow + Frost Arrow
Shadow Power + Blood Moon
Vault + Rattling Roll
Fan of Knives + Hail of Knives
Cluster Arrow + Maelstrom
Vengeance, Thrill of the Hunt & Archery

Any suggestions for changes here? I've been doing pretty decently with it, but I feel I could be doing better.

Thanks in advance for suggestions.

[Chouzan]

I'm not an expert, but I thought that Bows were the "optimal" weapon because of the flat +15% damage boost with the Archery passive? The problem with Hand Xbows is you are going to need to always upgrade them in pairs or they will lag behind a 2H/Quiver combination. Just see if you have any of those annoying lingering low Dex items still on you and replace them for cheapies on the AH.

You really shouldn't need to stop and "gear up" for NM beyond maybe dropping a couple thousand for a new weapon at worst case. I run a really sloppy build that has little use other than Multishot spam and speed-running on my lowbie DH and didn't have any problems in NM aside from maybe needing to switch it out for Impale against bosses or Screaming Skull / Lightning depending on what I needed it to do. http://d3db.com/calculator/i/demon-hunter/2178 is what I use.

[Trotheus]

2h crossbows are preferred, but if you find a good 2h bow or get a cheap one on the ah that'll suffice.

Skills are setup specifically not to pigeonhole you into using a certain setup, so do what you find fun and/or what you feel is most successful. The only thing I'll throw out there is that spike trap with the scatter rune is very high damage and very efficient.

Don't be afraid to look on the AH. You can frequently find nice upgrades for just a few k gold.