Havoc Demon Hunter DPS Guide — Dragonflight 10.0.7

Havoc gameplay in Dragonflight revolves around a mixture of a build and spend resource management system paired with some short cooldowns that need to be used efficiently within the rotation. This loop causes an ebb and flow of high damage windows and key presses in between filling global cooldowns efficiently, creating a fast-paced melee with an engaging damage loop that is mostly GCD-locked regardless of build. It has excellent mobility, relatively strong survival and a variety of damage profiles available, whether it be burst, cleave or AoE, making it a great all-rounder.

Havoc received some small quality of life changes in the patch, but is mostly unchanged:

• Fodder to the Flame demons now have a 20% reduced spawn range, and the Demon Soul spawned by it will now land in front of it rather than a random direction.
• Blind Fury now increases damage and duration by 20% (changed from just duration by 50%), keeping the damage increase roughly the same but reducing the time required to stand still and channel.

Compared to Shadowlands and before, Havoc has seen a healthy improvement in the number of active abilities and tools available. Choices provided allow for a wider variety of abilities, filling out the rotation and giving more control over how you build your damage type. The most significant changes to the core gameplay include:

• Two core talents have been added in Know Your Enemy and Any Means Necessary that significantly improve the secondary stat scaling depending on your selection, fixing a long-term issue for Havoc.
• Blade Dance has become a core rotational button largely due to the location of First Blood on the tree and the variety of supporting talents throughout. This provides free cleave and a strong rotational hook in the main gameplay loop.
• A large number of Throw Glaive talents have been added allowing the option for a low target cleave build to shine when using Furious Throws, Soulrend and Accelerating Blade.
• Essence Break has seen large improvements, giving Havoc access to a high potency short burst window that works both in single-target and AoE to align with the returning Demonic windows.
• Immolation Aura retains a lot of the Shadowlands effects and the newly added Ragefire, giving it a constant AoE damage tool and some small funnel potential.
• Momentum has been given more support tools making it much more appealing and can now be taken without sacrificing strong effects elsewhere. In particular Initiative and Tactical Retreat pair to encourage its use and further improve damage windows.

A lot of these changes come in packages that can be slotted interchangeably with each other giving a lot of room to tailor your damage profile to the situation while still maintaining a similar overall gameplay style. Click the button below to see a full list of changes for Havoc Demon Hunter:

We are maintaining a list of changes for Demon Hunters, so you can see what changes with every patch of Dragonflight.

If you plan on playing a Havoc Demon Hunter but have not leveled one yet, you can take a look at our leveling guide for tips:

When you make it to max level, it can sometimes take effort to transition quickly to making use of the full suite of tools and abilities without having the help of some add-ons. We recommend getting used to some of these as you begin your journey rather than all at the end, making the process smoother and making you comfortable with your UI. You can check out our Add-ons page for some recommendations:

Havoc comes with a tight core ability package that gives it an easy pick-up-and-play aspect. Still, the core is expanded dramatically through talents that add great depth. The primary loop involves generating Fury via active abilities such as Demon's Bite / Felblade and Immolation Aura, and spending these on various spender tools in Eye Beam, Blade Dance, and Chaos Strike. This is further expanded with certain talent selections, rewarding good GCD and cooldown management while staying active.

Strong spender tools are generally used on cooldown unless you save them for specific windows in an encounter. Eye Beam and Blade Dance are used regardless of target count on cooldown, and in between this, Chaos Strike is used to burn off excess Fury. It also comes with a long-duration cooldown in Metamorphosis, granting 20% Haste and empowering your two rotational spenders by converting them into Death Sweep and Annihilation respectively.

Havoc also comes with extremely potent mobility tools in Fel Rush and Vengeful Retreat, allowing you to reposition yourself around the battlefield extremely quickly to stick to your target or avoid dangerous mechanics.

For more context on the details of each ability, if you are new to the spec, we recommend looking through the Spell Summary first, as well as the Easy Mode page linked below.

While it is hard to give a specific guarantee on what gear is best at this point, you can find some information and recommendations on the best direction to take your character on our dedicated gearing page. This also includes a basic Best in Slot list for this tier.

Once you have started to gear, you must ensure that you have the appropriate consumables, gems, enchants, and more. We have a dedicated page for exactly this, linked below. We also have a stats page, which provides more information on what each secondary stat does, and a general recommendation for what you should aim for.

Like all specs, Havoc looks very different when you move from the open world and leveling into the realm of end-game and progression. Therefore, we maintain a Mythic+, Raiding, and PvP guide for each respective content focus.

If you are looking for an answer to a specific question, often these are common queries many players have. We keep pages that cover the most frequently asked questions and also mistakes players tend to run into.

Patch 10.0.7 brings little in the way of concrete changes and is more oriented toward quality of life improvements. Regardless, Havoc has proven already to be a strong contender throughout Dragonflight in any content, and slots comfortably into any composition or encounter type. Its flexibility and desirable damage profiles, alongside being highly mobile and durable makes it a go to raid staple while also bringing the required Chaos Brand debuff. In Mythic+ on the other hand it brings a well suited package alongside good control and utility tools, fitting into any setup without needing a specific group to play off of. There is no reason for this to change in the last patch of Season 1, so expect to see them in most groups and be desirable regardless of what you are doing.