Havoc Demon Hunter DPS Gear and Best in Slot — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.3

At this stage in the game, there are so many variables and so many layers of optimization that you can apply to your character, that there is no way for a guide or anything else to tell you exactly what gear you should wear. This is why we always recommend simulating your own character using Raidbots. The website can help you choose set bonuses, Azerite traits, trinkets and combinations thereof in a way that is tailored completely to your specific character. Learning to use this tool is essential to maximizing your potential, as there is simply no other way to take all the variables into account.

When identifying what gear you should be aiming after, we recommend using RaidBots' Droptimizer feature. It requires the SimulationCraft Addon. Once you have the addon installed, write "/simc" into the chat in-game, and copy-pasting the contents into the RaidBots Droptimizer.

Simply select the raid and difficulty you are interested in, and RaidBots will take a while to figure out where you should spend your bonus rolls, and more.

You should be completing at least one keystone at a high item level each week to make use of the Mythic+ weekly chest. Each week you will receive one piece of loot, and a fixed amount of Titan Residuum. The highest keystone you complete (up to a maximum of 15) will determine the final reward.

Mythic+ Level	Loot iLvl - End of Dungeon	Loot iLvl - Weekly Chest	# of Loot - End of Dungeon	Titan Residuum in Weekly Chest
Mythic+10	455	465	3	1700
Mythic+11	455	465	3	1790
Mythic+12	460	470	3	1880
Mythic+13	460	470	3	1970
Mythic+14	460	470	3	2060
Mythic+15	465	475	3	2150

There are a number of Rings that can be paired together to create a unique proc effect as long as you have one of each equipped. The "Logic Loop" rings will drop from the fourth boss, the HK-8 Aerial Oppression Unit found within the Junkyard in Mythic+. The "Bit Band" rings will drop from the seventh boss, the Machinist's Garden within the Workshop. Ideally, the combinations of rings you want to pair for Havoc are:

• Logic Loop of Division;
• Shorting Bit Band or Overclocking Bit Band.

There is also the Pocket-Sized Computation Device trinket provided from Mechagon island content, which can be filled with 3 different punchcards. Yellow provides secondary stat combinations, Red provides unique damage procs or active abilities, and Blue provides separate utility effects. You will only be concerned with Red and Yellow for performance purposes.

The overall item level of the trinket is dictated by the combined item level of the Red and Yellow punchcards placed in the slots of the trinket. Red and Yellow punchcards come from a number of sources, including the Operation: Mechagon dungeon, some rares on the island, Reputation rewards, and the Pascal-K1N6 Junkyard Tinkering.

Ideally, you want to aim for a Yellow punchcard that provides high Versatility and either low Haste or Critical Strike (more information on our stats page). For Red punchcards, currently the strongest option is Cyclotronic Blast, which gives an on-use single-target damage effect, but is interrupted by other ability casts. This is easy to access, as it is purchased for Gold when you reach revered with the Rustbolt Resistance. This provides a strong burst on-use effect with the cast, even despite the downsides of pausing your rotation. This is especially good for Havoc with a Demon Blades that can sometimes find gaps in its rotation. Alternatively you can acquire higher item level versions of Subroutine: Overclock or Subroutine: Recalibration.

Corruption is a new Patch 8.3 feature (see our guide on Corrupted Items). It replaces Warforging and Titanforging for all gear in the patch. It gives items a type of affix, as well as an amount of Corruption. Corruption is a stat that negatively impacts your character the more of it that you have, but the more Corruption you have, the more powerful the affixes will be. Some Affixes are a lot more powerful than others, and you can see a guideline ranking for them below.

We have provided simulations below for all the different Corruptions, but we still feel the need to explain why some Corruptions are good and so on, as simulations rarely tell the full story.

All of these are heavily dependant on what secondaries are present on your gear, meaning that simuluations and the Top Gear tool on Raidbots are very useful. All 4 of the secondary options will scale variably based on what you have equipped, and due to Havoc's even ratings anything but Masterful will likely be very similar.

Strikethrough provides an amplification to all Critical Strikes you deal. While this does add a respectable amount (getting better with the more Critical Strike you have), its DPS per Corruption value can also compete with some secondaries, making it one to look out for.

• Infinite Stars is very heavily weighted toward single target situations due to the star debuff requiring high uptime, and time to stack. This falls off quickly in AoE, meaning that you should be aware of its limitations despite its performance.
• Echoing Void provides the best DPS-per-Corruption bar none, in both single-target and AoE situations. This is currently expected to be the go to Corruption if you have it available, but has strong competition from some of the passive options.
• Twilight Devastation is currently simming slightly worse than in practice, and provides high AoE burst. Unfortunately it is particularly poor in single-target, meaning that you need to know the situation when this is appropriate to use due to its high Corruption cost.
• Gushing Wound is a single-target randomly procced DoT, but is very efficient per point of Corruption and scales well with Haste as well.
• Racing Pulse and Surging Vitality both provide the best options for secondary stat procs. The former has a very short duration so can be wasted, and the latter requires you to be taking damage to trigger it. This means you need to be aware if you are using these two options of the drawbacks as they are quite average DPS-per-Corruption.

Unguent Caress is the Ny'alotha Corruption Weapon for Havoc Demon Hunters. It comes with the Lash of the Void Corruption Affix, which has a 5 (+ Haste) RPPM chance to deal Shadow damage ands low your target. This is an extremely Corruption efficient item costing only 25, and also has a slight meteor effect allowing it to scale into AoE, though not very efficiently. Highly recommended if you have access to it for boss encounters.

The top chart is more generally useful. Corruption is a resource that we want to minimize wherever we can, and the top chart provides you an idea of which Corruption affixes provide the most DPS for the Corruption they add to your gear. The bottom chart is more of a showcase of the DPS potential of the Corruptions.

We do not recommend making choices based off of this chart. We recommend using the "DPS per Corruption Point" chart instead.

• While Havoc has no way of removing the Grasping Tendrils slow, both Fel Rush and Vengeful Retreat provide ways of immediately getting out of danger and ignoring the effects, making this trivial to deal with.
• In the same vein, both of these tools are also useful for escaping the Eye of Corruption zone if it spawns in an awkward place.
• Chaos Nova and Fel Eruption stuns will cause the Thing From Beyond spawned by Grand Delusions to despawn, but if these are not available you should use movement tools to keep it at a safe distance.
• Inevitable Doom indicates you have invested too much corruption on your gear, and should probably consider removing some pieces as the damage taken increase and healing taken reduction will likely be overwhelming.

Trinkets and weapons are the two largest DPS increases available to any class in the game outside of Azerite pieces. Getting good pieces to fill these slots early allows you to perform incredibly well.

There are a number of strong weapons for Havoc Demon Hunters, and note that they can all be used in either hand. Ideally, you should be looking for weapons with a healthy mix of Versatility and Critical Strike, trying to avoid Mastery:

• Diver's Folly — Blackwater Behemoth (AoE)
• Bile-Stained Crawg Tusks — The Underrot (single target)

These are both weapons with unique effects that have different strengths in different content if you used at a serviceable item level. However, in most cases you will be picking weapons based on item level.

Thanks to Bloodmallet.com, a comprehensive list of available trinkets for Havoc are listed against each other below.

You can check through the Havoc Azerite page to look through the values of different traits and target different items. There are ideal pieces available within Ny'alotha however that provide a great set of traits, granting you gear that provides a full set of Furious Gaze traits with other good one point options:

Slot	Item	Traits
Helm	Stygian Guise	Furious Gaze Revolving Blades Heed My Call
Shoulder	Pauldrons of the Great Convergence	Eyes of Rage Furious Gaze Elemental Whirl
Chest	Tortured Fleshbeast Cuirass	Chaotic Transformation Furious Gaze Gutripper

This list only includes gear obtained within Ny'alotha, but the extra notes beneath have some extra points to consider. Due to this being the final tier, there are a lot of legacy gearing choices that are still relevant, so they are especially useful to consider as options. As always, using the Top Gear feature in Raidbots is recommended, to make sure you are making the right choice. All these selections are also not taking into account any Corruption you may have acquired on the pieces. Trinkets are not listed, as they are covered in the section above.

Slot	Item	Source
Helm	Stygian Guise	Ra-den the Despoiled in Ny'alotha
Shoulder	Pauldrons of the Great Convergence	N'Zoth the Corruptor in Ny'alotha
Cloak	Ashjra'kamas, Shroud of Resolve	Legendary Cloak quest line
Chest	Tortured Fleshbeast Cuirass	Carapace of N'Zoth in Ny'alotha
Wrists	Bracers of Dark Prophecy	The Prophet Skitra in Ny'alotha
Gloves	Chitinspine Gloves	The Hivemind in Ny'alotha
Belt	Belt of Braided Vessels	Il'gynoth, Corruption Reborn in Ny'alotha
Legs	Macabre Ritual Pants	The Prophet Skitra in Ny'alotha
Boots	Corpuscular Leather Greaves	Carapace of N'Zoth in Ny'alotha
Ring #1	Ring of Cosmic Potential	N'Zoth the Corruptor in Ny'alotha
Ring #2	Ring of Collective Consciousness	The Hivemind in Ny'alotha
Weapons	Unguent Caress	Ra-den the Despoiled in Ny'alotha
Alternative	Mish'un, Blade of Tyrants	Wrathion, the Black Emperor in Ny'alotha

Please refer to our Ny'alotha page for Havoc Demon Hunter for more tips on how to defeat the bosses.

You should ideally be spending your Seal of Wartorn Fate on a combination of Ra-den the Despoiled, Carapace of N'Zoth and N'Zoth the Corruptor. This is to get hold of the very powerful Corrupted weapon available, and gain access to the higher item level Azerite from the final bosses with ideal trait options.

While the above list focuses solely on the raid, there are also some very powerful alternatives that you may find uses for:

• Diver's Folly from The Eternal Palace is still likely to remain relevant as an AoE option in the off-hand. Having access to this in fights where it can be used is something to watch out for.
• Bile-Stained Crawg Tusks remains extremely strong for Havoc on any fight more oriented toward single target, meaning getting a higher item level version of this is very desirable.
• Both Logic Loop of Division and Overclocking Bit Band, when paired together, are the ideal rings to make use of if you can acquire them from Mythic+. These will outdo raid options if at relatively similar item level, so also watch out for these if you can get hold of the set.
• While trinkets are not listed, bear in mind that both Ashvane's Razor Coral and Dribbling Inkpod are likely to remain relevant currently within Ny'alotha, due to how strong these individual items are.