Demon Hunter Leveling Guide from 8 to 80

Welcome to our Demonhunter leveling guide. Here you will find all you need to know to level up your Demonhunter efficiently. In addition, you may wish to check out our general Leveling guide, complete with detailed information on XP, mounts, addons, consumables, tips, and more. We encourage to read it to increase your leveling speed even more.

Demon Hunter is a melee specialization with two different specs. Havoc is the melee damage-dealing spec, that excels at pulling large groups of enemies and bursting them down with Eye Beam and Blade Dance. Vengeance is the tank build for Demon Hunter, that excels in mobility and self sustain through spawning Soul Fragments.

Both specs excel at leveling and have limited downtime between pulls and quests. Either option is a great choice and whether you play Havoc or Vengeance will come down to personal preference.

Havoc Demon Hunter excels at pulling large groups of enemies on 40-second intervals to take full advantage of having Eye Beam available for huge bursts of damage. Sustain is a little harder early in the leveling process, but enemies will have a chance to drop souls on death, due to Shattered Souls. These extra souls will make healing between pulls easy and rarely require you to stop and heal. At Level 30, Soul Rending will help with passive Leech healing and Demonic at Level 32 will give increased access to Metamorphosis following Eye Beam for additional healing. For a full breakdown of abilities alongside a leveling build, please visit the Havoc leveling guide below.

Vengeance Demon Hunter excels at pulling large group of enemies and being able to sustain through Soul Fragment healing, immediately unlocking this at level 10 with Shear. The speed in which Vengeance is able to clear a group of enemies is slower than our Havoc counterpart, but there is much less of a risk of dying. Vengeance is the optimal choice when trying to solo elite content or monsters. Vengeance also makes dungeon queue times short, due to tanks being an often sought-after role. For a full breakdown of Vengeance abilities alongside a leveling build, please visit the link below.

Below are ability unlocks shared across the class. For respective unlocks for each specialization, please go to the respective pages for more details.

• At Level 8, Spectral Sight is available as a utility ability that allows you to see enemies or chests through walls, as well as stealthed enemies.
• At Level 8, Shattered Souls is available. For both specs, souls will have a chance to spawn on enemy death and souls sourced from a Demon enemy will give a 20% damage increase for 15 seconds. For Vengeance, lesser soul fragments will heal you for 6% of the total damage taken in the last 5 seconds. This provides excellent sustain while leveling.
• At Level 9, Torment will taunt a target, giving you the highest threat and forcing the enemy to focus you.
• At Level 10, Sigil of Flame is available as an AoE damage-dealing ability that also generates Fury when cast.
• At Level 14, Immolation Aura covers you in fire, causing you to deal ticking Fire damage over 6 seconds.
• At Level 16, Throw Glaive is used to pull far away enemies. Vengeance will also generate additional threat.
• At Level 18, Immolation Aura rank 2 is gained, causing it to also deal initial damage when cast.
• At Level 20, Metamorphosis is unlocked via a quest in the Demon Hunter starting area. Havoc will stun nearby enemies and empower themselves for 20 seconds, while Vengeance will gain additional Health and Armor for 15 seconds.
• At Level 20, Disrupt will interrupt and lock out a caster for 3 seconds on a 15-second cooldown.
• At Level 49, Chaos Brand will debuff every target that receives damage that increases the amount of magic damage received by 5%. This is a unique debuff to Demon Hunter which makes the class mandatory in all raids that are trying to maximize damage.

Once you've reached Level 80 and your leveling journey has found its end, you definitely want to check out the in-depth information on how to excel in all types of PvE content by checking out our Demon Hunter Specialization Guides!