Holy Hellacious Batarangs, Batman!

At the end of my usual grind of runs, I decided to give the wizard a rest and took the demon hunter out for a spin. As usual, I had a bunch of odd ideas percolating in my mind; I'd just dropped a Nat's chestpiece with -Hatred to Impale. Now, Impale isn't my favorite skill in the world - it's basically a single target knockoff of Elemental Arrow with 250% the cost and only 170% of the damage - but I figured, whatever, might be more fun to use with some of that awful Hatred knocked off the cost. 

Short answer - it still blows hard for farming, and I probably wasn't going to try it against Ubers. So, here I was, after barely clearing Arreat Crater 2 with a pair of death repair bills to my name, and there was no way in hell I was going to go through the rest of the run with this sad excuse for a skill. So, I putzed around in town for a minute while Genie was selling off her rares, and since I was experimenting anyway, I gave a sigh, and slotted in Chakram into my right click.

At first I thought Chakram was like this...

I'm sure that every demon hunter who's hit 60 at this point picked up Chakram at level 12 and tried it. Heck, maybe they even gave it a second chance with each new rune they picked up. And I'm equally sure that after 5 minutes, they gave up on its inaccuracy and lack of range, and put Elemental Arrow/Multishot/Spike Trap back on. You could be standing two yards away from a Fallen, and the damn shuriken would just dodge him. Chakram was just AWFUL, and a waste of Hate.

So, here I am in Keep Depths 2, half-asleep, and just spamming Chakram: Twin Chakrams until I ran out of hatred... well, hey. I wasn't running out of hatred. Well, HEY... the damn things were critting for 200k EACH. Hell, they were actually HITTING something. Hmm...

... and then I realized it was like this!

I've come to the conclusion that Chakram is one of those skills that is completely worthless when you first pick it up. The key phrase here is, 'when you first pick it up'. At that point, demon hunters just don't have the IAS, the crit chance/crit damage, the passive bonus hate regen, much less the raw dps to make Chakram worth it.

Well, how do you make Chakram worth it? Well, what turns people off from it? The whole wonky way it moves is the main issue, since it's likely to whiff (and you really don't want to spend Hatred on a move that might not even hit). So, what's the solution? Flood the frigging map with Chakrams. It's one of those skills that really shines in a farm run, since it clears white mob groups really quickly, and deals enough base damage to be practical against elite packs. As long as you have at least 1 point of passive Hatred regen from a quiver or something, it'll drain your red bar real slow. If you pack in a Bat Companion and Shadow Power: Night Bane, you can pretty much use it as your left click.

"Buy a cloak with reduced Chakram Hatred cost, n00b."

But why use Chakram to begin with? Well, let's put it up against every demon hunter's bread and butter skill, the Elemental Arrow. They both have equal Hatred costs (10), while unruned Chakram deals 15% more weapon damage than the baseline Elemental Arrow. 15% isn't enough to move people away from things like Ball Lightning, however, since that skill barely requires any aiming. However, it's the Chakram runes that really matter here, and there are two standouts that every demon hunter should look at.

Obviously, some Chakram runes are better than others

Twin Chakrams: This fires a pair of Chakram, each one doing 114% weapon damage. Their path can best be described as a double helix kinda thing - at certain points during its flight, the pair will crisscross with each other. Monsters smack in the middle will take damage from BOTH Chakram, and both will always crit at the same time (I'm not one hundred percent sure on this, but during the whole run, each time a crisscross hit got a critical, it was always both Chakrams that got it). It takes a little getting used to positioning yourself to get the double hit, but it's not hard and it's worth it, since that works out to 228% weapon damage. To give you perspective, that's 3% more than the damage of a Cluster Arrow for a FIFTH of the hatred cost.
Razor Disk: This one is my personal favorite. Unlike the rest of the Chakram variants, this one has a predictable, consistent initial flight path, meaning that it goes in a straight line until the point where you clicked, upon which it begins to spiral. If you're used to the other Hatred spenders, this is the easiest rune to transition to Chakram with. You'll just need to get used to clicking right on or slightly behind the target. The initial flight is FAST, on par with Cluster Arrow, and the spiral flight path rips apart packed groups.

This demon hunter chose... poorly

Serpentine/Boomerang Runes: While both runes have a very impressive looking 230% damage modifier, these are some of the most unwieldy, awkward skills in the entire game. Serpentine is so slow, you will probably never hit anything that moves faster (or smaller) than a Demonic Tremor. The worst part about it is that most of the Serpentine chakram follow the same flight path, meaning that if you miss one, you'll miss ALL of them. Boomerang is a little easier to work with, but is gimped by its greatly reduced range (around 1/3 of the screen). It's not the fastest rune either, meaning that you'll easily get closed into melee while casting it, which you really don't want as a demon hunter.

Shuriken Cloud: The way this rune works is very different from the others; it lasts for 2 minutes and only affects nearby enemies. I don't consider this rune a true hatred spender, and I classify it differently from the other four mentioned above. Supposedly, this rune is used in melee dh builds, which I've never tried, so I'll defer discussion of this rune for another time.

In conclusion, Chakram is a decent alternative to Elemental Arrow as a Hatred spender. Give it a shot, get used to the unusual flight paths, and you might be pleasantly surprised. Oh, and don't forget... MAKE THEM FEAR THE NIGHT! -coughs-