What are your impressions?

[Lissa]

There are a few Skills I still cannot find the slightest value in. I was wondering if anyone else had any more success, perhaps under a different context (or higher-level Rune) than I have used.

Shadow Power: even with Blood Moon, I could not seem to generate a meaningful degree of Life Leach. Trouble is, at least as far as I have played, most battles are easy enough that I have no use for it; the rest are so hard that a little life leach is not going to help.

You aren't high enough yet to really see the value. You need to be level 51 to get Gloom rune (incoming damage reduced by 65%).

Evasive Fire: I still cannot understand this one either. It seems to combine an attack that is worse than any of the Primary Skills with a weak version of Vault. Is there any reason you would ever pick this? Tried to work it in a few times, but it always gets nudged out in favour of something actually useful.

With the Covering Fire rune, this becomes quite useful (combine with Steady Aim passive and damage goes up a bit more). I tend to switch between it and Hungering Arrow depending on the sitauation.

Fan of Knives: I have found this largely useless, though I have to admit that Fan of Daggers sounds as though it could make a fantastic panic button. Has anyone had any success in using this?

I haven't used this as yet either, but I can see a couple of runes that might be useful, specifically Hail of Knives (increase range to 20 yards) and Fan of Daggers (65% chance to stun). Again, you're not up to a level high enough to get these yet.

Strafe: I really, really want to like this Skill, but I can never seem to justify it. It is cheap, but the damage is pretty pathetic. I could have produced better DPS for even less hatred using Chakram or Elemental Arrow, which is exactly what I usually end up doing.

Can't say I've found a use for this either, even looking at the runes. Maybe Rocket Storm combined with Ballistics, but even then...

Cluster Arrow: I have tried this out a few times, but I cannot justify it. Enormous cost for OK damage. Every time I have used it, the additional bombs failed to hit any targets, making it seem even less useful.

I haven't played with this, but here, I think the rune of choice would probably be Maelstrom due to the 4% returned life. The other possible choice would be Dazzling Arrow because of the stun effect. In upper Nightmare and especially Hell onward, stun is a big use item for DHs (and most other classes).

Hot Pursuit: if you have full Hatred, you are probably playing wrong Seriously, though, a minor speed boost that only applies when you are not using your powerful attacks, which suggests it only really applies when you are not facing tough opponents. Seems kind of useless.

When you're low in level, it's useful, when you get up in level, not so much.

Right now, at 54, I'm running this build. I'm mostly playing with Bolty's Barbarian and Quark's Wizard with this setup. I need to look at a couple things to try and set things up a little better (like switching the rune for sentry over to Aid Station and running up and dropping it by Bolty so he can tank things and I can back out do some more damage). Been using Archery/Sharpshooter because I got lucky and got a nice crossbow that dropped in nightmare act 4 while doing a little farming for gold and such.