Havoc Demon Hunter DPS Guide — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.2.5

Havoc in Battle for Azeroth has gone through somewhat of a maturing process, trying to focus more on the talent tree and allowing for more diverse options in gameplay approaches, alongside tightening up some of the more loose aspects of the original implementation. It still remains a predominantly builder spender style rotation and is largely Global Cooldown locked. The core hook is making the most of your Fury pool and reacting to unpredictable gains, ensuring you use high burst cooldowns and windows to push yourself even further. On top of that, it comes with a variety of mobility and defense tools, creating a versatile toolkit with some unique abilities that can be used in a variety of ways.

Havoc remains almost the same as in Patch 8.1, with a single minor change.

• Chaos Strike and Trail of Ruin have been nerfed slightly, compensated by a small increase to Mastery: Demonic Presence scaling.

Along with this change, Havoc Demon Hunters also gained access to the following:

• 11 essences, from the new essence system for the Heart of Azeroth;
• 5 new Azerite traits from Nazjatar, Eternal Palace, and Operation: Mechagon for your Heart of Azeroth;
• new gems, enchants, and consumables;
• new gear from Nazjatar and the Eternal Palace raid.

• Powerful burst single target damage
• Extremely powerful cooldowns for high damage requirement moments
• Flexible mobility allowing for great positioning control in encounters
• Can switch targets without any downsides, and can pool resources for instant burst
• Powerful, versatile cooldowns for different situations
• Strong group utility, especially via Chaos Brand

• AoE is tied to cooldowns, which hurts sustained damage
• Some RNG is built into the resource system, which can on rare occasions lead to starvation at bad moments
• Outside of cooldown windows, damage can be lackluster
• Some talents have problems with certain encounter types, which can hinder options.

Following the Crucible of Storms, it is clear that even in situations where Havoc is not ideal, Chaos Brand is enough to make it a top tier pick. Many of the Essences have solid synergy with the specialization, and its versatile cooldowns appear to suit a number of the Eternal Palace encounters nicely. There is nothing to indicate that the trend of Havoc being desirable will change with the onset of Patch 8.2.