Basic Math - The Failure of Diablo Melee

[Elric of Grans]

The DH doesn't have passive mitigation but they have plenty of snares and escapes. Most melee would absolutely love the ability to spec as offensively as a DH, while I don't see DH's clamoring to be able to sacrifice damage for defense.

I cannot comment on Inferno, but I have found the snares utterly useless in Hell difficulty, and most of the escapes are no good even in Normal. Smoke Screen is the only one that functions, and outside one particular build it is also barely useful.

Demon Hunters do not spec for defence because they literally cannot. No defensive passives, only one functional defensive active skill. In Hell difficulty, I have 20K Life (way too little, but that is another story), 50% damage reduction, 30% resistances, 17% block and 26% dodge just to survive against mobs that cannot be kited, because I completely lack meaningful defensive skills. Without defence-heavy equipment, I would be dead every two seconds to a random Spiderling.

Again, I am not trying to pretend the Demon Hunter is not one of the strongest classes in the game, but that is 100% Smoke Screen, which has been nerfed so hard that it is arguably worse than the equivalent skills for other classes (eg Mirror Image). Beyond a single skill, which every Demon Hunter has to select and spam the crap out of because of bad design, the class is awful.