Havoc Demon Hunter Leveling Guide from 8 to 80 — The War Within (11.1.5)

Welcome to our Leveling Guide for The War Within. This will help you in your journey to max level as a Havoc Demon Hunter, covering talents and abilities you should know about.

Havoc Demon Hunter is very deals massive frontloaded AoE burst while leveling, and is suited to pulling a large amount of enemies to kill them quickly. It also has excellent self-sustain, so does not usually need to worry too much about how much you pull. It is also well suited to dungeons because of this AoE toolkit, but you may find your queues go faster if you do so as Vengeance instead to tank.

When leveling up, you should always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. You will often be replacing these gear pieces very quickly, so just equip whatever comes to you without worrying about secondary stats.

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Unlike many classes, you start at Level 8 and enter into the Demon Hunter intro campaign on Mardum. Some abilities are unlocked as you progress through this story segment, granting access to your core Havoc abilities when you select your specialization at Level 10.

To help with understanding what changes as you level up and progress through the talent tree, use the slider below to select your current level. Each time you level up, move it along and the rotation will adjust for you!

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

After reaching level 71 and unlocking Hero Talents, we recommend playing with Fel-Scarred to empower your Metamorphosis with Demonsurge.

1. Cast The Hunt as frequently as possible (especially against tough enemies).
2. Cast Fel Rush to engage targets.
3. Cast Felblade to engage targets
4. Cast Sigil of Doom / Consuming Fire / Abyssal Gaze while in Metamorphosis.
5. Use Metamorphosis as frequently as possible (especially against tough enemies).
6. Cast Immolation Aura when at 2 charges.
7. Cast Felblade following each Vengeful Retreat / The Hunt cast to trigger Inertia.
8. Cast Eye Beam on cooldown.
9. Cast Blade Dance on cooldown.
10. Cast Immolation Aura on cooldown.
11. Use Metamorphosis as frequently as possible when Eye Beam and Blade Dance are on cooldown (especially against tough enemies).
12. Cast Blade Dance on cooldown against multiple enemies.
13. Cast Chaos Strike whenever you have enough Fury.
14. Cast Sigil of Flame in AoE situations, or to generate Fury.
15. Cast Demon's Bite to generate Fury.
16. Cast Felblade to generate Fury.
17. Cast Throw Glaive when you need to pull enemies from a distance.

A large number of your abilities will be unlocked through story beats in Mardum, so by the time you leave, most of your kit will be complete.

• You begin at Level 8 with access to several abilities due to how high your starting level is.
  • Demon's Bite is unlocked, your main Fury builder.
  • Chaos Strike is unlocked, your single-target Fury spender.
  • Fel Rush is unlocked, Havoc's instant mobility tool.
  • Spectral Sight is unlocked, allowing you to see enemies and treasures highlighted through walls.
• At level 10, Vengeful Retreat is unlocked as an extra mobility tool.
• At level 10, Sigil of Flame is unlocked as an AoE damage ability that generates Fury.
• At Level 11, Eye Beam is unlocked, a burst AoE cooldown that costs Fury.
• At Level 12, Blade Dance is unlocked, your AoE Fury Spender.
• At Level 16, Throw Glaive is unlocked, a ranged cast to pull mobs.
• At Level 18, Blur is unlocked, your defensive tool.
• At level 20, Metamorphosis is unlocked and it is your main cooldown.
• At level 20, Disrupt is unlocked; this is your kick to interrupt target casts.
• At level 23, Fel Eruption is unlocked; this is a single-target stun tool.

Alongside the ability unlocks, there are also passive effects that improve your abilities unlocked along the way, which begin to unlock after you select the Havoc specialization at Level 10:

• At Level 10, Mastery: Demonic Presence is unlocked, your Mastery, which increases Chaos damage.
• At Level 13, Demonic Wards is unlocked, passively reducing Magic damage taken.
• At Level 18, Immolation Aura Rank 2 is unlocked causing it to instantly deal Fire damage on the cast.
• At Level 19, Demonic Appetite is unlocked, granting Chaos Strike a chance to spawn Soul Fragments, and their consumption to generate Fury.
• At Level 22, Blade Dance Rank 2 is unlocked, reducing its cooldown by 5 seconds.
• At Level 27, Immolation Aura Rank 3 is unlocked, increasing its duration by 4 seconds.
• At Level 49, Chaos Brand is unlocked, debuffing enemies you damage, causing them to take 5% increased magic damage from all sources.

In this section, we will rank the PvP talents for leveling and doing solo or small-group PvE content. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Havoc Demon Hunter-specific PvE talents.

1. Chaotic Imprint will always buff Chaos damage dealt, such as Chaos Strike and Eye Beam. Also great to pair with talents such as Soulrend due to the conversion to magic damage, causing Throw Glaive to deal significantly more damage.
2. Unending Hatred is just free additional Fury generation as you will frequently be taking damage in the open world.
3. Sigil Mastery reduces the cooldown of sigils, such as Sigil of Flame and Sigil of Spite, which can be a small DPS gain.

Reverse Magic, Detainment, Cover of Darkness, Cleansed by Flame and Glimpse all have very limited uses in PvE, due to it being very focused on crowd control tools or pressuring enemy players into spending more resources than they would otherwise want to.