My own spellcaster is a spirit and earth type.She was/is quite strong in normal, just got her to Epic, mostly by a series of respecs later in the fourth act, by pulling points away from my liche king (who started to get taken out very quickly), and into eruption. I managed to get right into Hades before she died first time around. Admittedly, it was a little easier going through because I was able to bring in items from my Hunter wandering around in the latter difficulties. She finished off the final boss with the full Vestments of the Battlemage that I had put together. Still, most of the damage that I did against the boss was due to eruption, summoning the Outsider and using a scroll to summon a Cyclops. Mobs, given their pack mentality, are easy to knock out with eruption.
The grand plan at some point is to have a Liche and a Core Dweller wandering around. With the amount of health regen she has, plus the Life Drain skill, she is a bit of a tank. A little unintuitive too really. But that’s the way the game goes. Also, if things get rough, then Vision of Death is very nice to use, causes all enemies in an area to scatter.
Next, what level is your haruspex?
I think you can get around the wall you are at as a bowuser by simply respeccing your character, provided you have the gold. Act IV is tough without a doubt, and it becomes apparent when moving into epic difficulty where Act I is incredibly easy in comparison.
If you were to respec, then apply all points you have into study prey and flush out. My current Haruspex, when using study prey is negating something in the order of 60% of the pierce resistance of the enemies (I also have +2 to all skills). Flush out is also applied to any enemy which has been hit with the study prey skill, and so, on top of getting the reduced pierce resistance, they will suffer a drop to their defensive rating, which means greater chance of being hit. If the weapon has elemental damage, that will increase it.
The other thing is to max the marksmanship line, including puncture shot and scatter shot, and have that set as your default attack. It is an expensive line skillwise, but does significant damage to large groups of enemies. Those two skill lines alone will greatly increase the amount of damage done.
Act IV you should find plenty of Toxo’s. They are the most powerful bow in Act IV, but you have to had made it to Hades to find them. The merchant in Rhodes I think will sell them too. Any bow with the Artemis’ Bowstring is going to be powerful. Use you judgement as to what sort of bow you would want.
As far as other skills go in the hunting class, I wouldn’t worry too much about decoy. It just never really got the aggro of the enemy too well. It worked, but not as effectively as it should have. I only have one point invested in it, and that is for the Secret Passage, and for one reason only which I won’t spoil here.
There is some benefit to ensnare, but that is best when being chased by the lancers and some breathing room is required. Call of the Hunt is my own little Get out of Jail free card, hitting that before a boss battle, or an area crawling with baddies is when it comes in on its own, a bit like hitting the battle marker shrine. Shame the cooldown on it is very long. Art of the Hunt is a very good passive ability (it will reserve some mana when active) mostly for the chance to avoid projectiles, and increased movement.
Dream tree I don’t have too much experience with. My own Haruspex is using Trance of Convalescent, and Lucid Dream/Premonition/Temporal Flux only. Still haven’t maxed any of those yet.
