8.3 Builds that you can use for 90% of your games

Hi. I made a super long indepth math guide before but it was not super well reviewed. I am just going to give quick overviews of each build here and some of the flexibilities/weakness/advantages.

TL;DR If you are new or don't wanna read. Use the Boring but Strong build or the 1v1s are my specialty build

Patch 8.2 bonus gave a decent buff to Spectral Armor. What this means that if you commit to a full 100% crit build, you can be easily countered. This leaves you with a few options:

1. Hyrbid: running Rage and Wind Demon suffice enough critical to kill the enemy squishies super fast (Except maybe Hou Yi). This means you need pen or Qin's Sai to deal with tanks if they do have Spectral Armor or are Geb
   
2. No crit: By not forcing yourself to take up crit items you can obtain really high power, attack speed, and penetration items. You make kill squishes a little slower but they are called squishies for a reason
   
3. ALL CRIT: Ignore the meta and haters. With death bringer your crits go from 140% damage to 152%. Enough to scare but more important anyone that isn't a tank will melt like chocolate in a microwave

Artemis

Vengeful Assault

Silverbranch Bow

Ornate Arrow

Hunter's Cowl

Any numbers in () are referring to an item that will improve the stat.
* refers to ornate arrow gold need.

Boring but Strong

It is the most expensive out of all the builds (excluding those using Ornate Arrow) but very effective. You will spend a good amount of time farming. Your end result is fantastic with huge healing sustain, damage sustain, decent penetration, and healthy amount of attack speed to not overcap. Dominance may be switched in order depending on matchup. If you need something up, depending on the item you will want to switch Wind Demon or Dominance. Easy way to thin of it is "Is the item I want to switch out for the situation going to provide attack speed?" then switch out Wind Demon. There may be some exceptions like your enemy has obscene amounts of protection and Spectral Armor in which case Rage should be kicked out.

Overall mostly pros and not many cons.

7th item to sell boots for for majority of situations will be Deathbringer

Silverbranch is not a meme

My personal favorite and probably one of the only efficient ways to use Hunter's Cowl. Note with 8.4 and it's buff to Leader's Cowl there may be more play room.

I have a super long (outdated) but relevant analysis Here/url]

It has a healthy amount of life steal, penetration, power, and max attack speed. The fun part is the burst capabilities. You also provide team dps with Hunter's Cowl. Vengeful Assault provides an additional 80 power. Belt of Frenzy grants you an additional 15 power. Your lifesteal at below 30% hp is 65%. Huge movement speed when running away after a team wipe or getting back into the fight.

Most importantly is the ease factor, being always at 2.5 attack speed allows more room for player error. (Being able to deal with negative attack speed debuffs are nice too).

Can trade Hunter's Cowl for Ornate Arrow for less power but more crits.

7th item to sell boots can be any item that fits the situation that increases attack speed. So Shadowsteal Shuriken for anti heal, The Executioner for protection shred, Qin's Sai for Tank shred, Odysseus' Bow for team fight AoE, etc.

Pros:

• huge power scaling
• always max attack speed
• No stacking besides Rage needed

Cons:

• Not the greatest Pen with crit meta being weaker
• Expensive
• Hunter's Cowl early game mana is HUNGRY
• Very inflexible build until 7th item

PandaCat Classic

Pro ADC player that I am not associated with. He's on youtube and probably can provide better explanations than me.

This build is very cost efficient and very relevant in the meta right now. I had to do a slight change from warrior tabi to ninja tabi to no overcap on atack speed too much. Sadly, he doesn't play Artemis often so perhaps this build shouldn't be used at all but it will almost always work with any other Hunter.

Odysseus's Bow should normally be the 6th item but I like to pick it up 4th to get some fast gold farm. This build completely doesn't care about crits and will often win in a team fight. A good swap would be Dominance instead of The Executioner. Devourer's Gauntlet can also be switched out if you find yourself not needing the healing, again I would recommend Dominance. But besides that you get the classic benefit of Death's Embrace and Devourer's Gauntlet healing which is absurd in every way.

7th item suggestions: Rage despite needing stacks is good because crit and no attack speed bonus. Dominance for even more penetration shred. Shifter's Shield if you just need more power but want some defense. Magi's Cloak or Mantle of Discord can be used without losing too much dps.


Pros:

• Doesn't care about anti-crit
• Qin's Sais + The Executioner basically doesn't care if the target is squishy or a tank
• Cheapest build possible
• very applicable in team fights

Cons:

• No crit at all
• Warrior Tabi can make early game HARD
• Your opponent won't always be meta, which can make this build less efficient
• Vengeful Assault will always overcap you.

Spectral Armor doesn't exist

In an idea world of no protection, no Spectral Armor, no Hou Yi, no Geb (well you get the idea). This is the strongest build. In return for huge critical damage and proper attack speed for Vengeful Assault, you've traded away: power, lifesteal (still a reasonable amount), and penetration.

Now don't let the gold distract you, even Gilded Arrow can provide you with plenty of gold assuming your support kill steal you.

Obvious weakness is you are running a full crit build in which case refer to my earlier chapter on how you may want to deal with it.

Items to switch out if need: Deathbringer with any of the following by the situation: Shadowsteel Shuriken, Poisoned Star, Dominance, Void Shield, Qin's Sai.

7th item: as long as it isn't a crit item you can pick any from the list.

Biggest benefit that is not really seen on numbers is the economy. Being able to have so much gold throughout the game allows overlooked benefits such as faster relic upgrades, more sentry wards, Potion of Power uptimes, getting the elixir.

Overall the one thing to keep in mind in 8.3 is you need 1200 gold to maintain 100% crit. But the difference between 90% and 100% crit may not be worth the argument. in 8.4 you start off with 5% more crit so you would only need 600 gold.

Pros:

• Healthy attack speed to only slightly overcap
• Potential to streamroll with gold
• Goodbye squishies
• really need good aim
• decently flexible
• Big risk Big reward

Cons:

• Not the greatest Pen with crit meta being weaker
• Spectral Armor
• Expensive
• NOT BEGINNER FRIENDLY (relies on good support, no lifesteal until 3rd item, and you rely on finishes for mana sustain)
• sub 200 low attack power which can make early game mob clearing hard.
• sub 200 low attack power makes skills do less damage

1v1s are my specialty

I feel like this is redundant since I already spoke about the change from PandaCat's classic ADC build but here it is.

Power, Pen, healthy attack speed, OP self heal, Qin's Sais + The Executioner combo. It's beautiful. All it lacks is critical. This build is meant to indiscriminately box or 1v1 or focus during team fights. You remove the fancy AoE of Odysseus' Bow and all the meta nerf of crit. You will fight a single target and regardless of their protections, and max hp pool, they will die at the same rate as any other target (huge exaggeration of course). The only nominal way to stop this build is obvious dying first, getting cc-d, Witchblade, or ...heals. I fee like the heals in 8.3 got so much better and putting any anti-heal on hunter sucks.

If you want to replace an item, then maybe Devourer's Gauntlet for Odysseus's Bow for AoE or Toxic Blade for antiheal.

7th item: Rage or Wind Demon or Odysseus' Bow or Runic Hammer or Frostbound Hammer. You can tell I am very lazy about this because for the purpose of this build to fight someone 1v1. It will do so without discrimination. Maybe pick up a defensive item or just pick up an elixir

Pros:

• Healthy attack speed to only slightly overcap
• 1v1 god
• Goodbye squishies and tankies
• doesn't really need to change
• 280 power

Cons:

• if the enemy didn't plan to run anti-crit then this build isn't as efficient
• Relies on consistent AA for The Executioner to deal with high protection tanks
• Huge reliance on positioning since you won't have AoE or movement speed buffs of any kind