Havoc Demon Hunter DPS Guide — Shadowlands 9.2.5

Havoc gameplay mostly revolves around a build and spend cycle with some short cooldowns mixed in. Survival is good, and mobility is extremely flexible. The spec is mostly GCD-locked in almost all situations, making it quite a fast paced melee to play. Havoc also comes with a number of AoE burst tools for high-target scenarios, but has no real tools to AoE outside of these.

Strengths

• Powerful cooldown options for high damage requirement moments, especially in AoE.
• Quite easy to pick up and play and grasp the basics.
• Some strong survival tools.
• Flexible mobility, allowing for great positioning control in encounters.
• Can switch targets without any downsides, and can pool resources for instant burst.
• Strong group utility, especially via Chaos Brand.

Weaknesses

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

We are maintaining a list of changes for Demon Hunters, so you can see what changes with every patch of Shadowlands. Be sure to also check out Havoc's specific changes from the previous patch, 9.2, to hear our thoughts on the tier set bonuses that arrived at that time.

From Patch 9.1.5 onward, both Legion Timewalking and the Mage Tower have returned. As such we have created a separate guide detailing what you can expect from the Mage Tower challenge available to Havoc Demon Hunters.

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 be hard to transition quickly to making use of the full suite of tools and abilities without having the help of some addons. We recommend getting used to some of these as you begin your journey rather than all at the end, making the process smoother and letting you get comfortable with your UI. You can check out our Addons page for some recommendations:

Havoc has one of the smaller ability packages when it comes to DPS classes and, because of that, has a fairly easy pick up and play aspect. Your core involves generating Fury via Demon's Bite and pressing Immolation Aura on cooldown, and then using it on various spender abilities, such as Chaos Strike, Eye Beam, and Blade Dance.

You will mostly be using each of these abilities on cooldown in the situations they excel at - Eye Beam is used on cooldown in all situations, Blade Dance in AoE, and Chaos Strike in single-target. You also have access to the long cooldown Metamorphosis transformation, which grants a long window of empowered ability use and 25% Haste.

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 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, due to the number of systems at play in World of Warcraft, 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 will need to make sure 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 open world and leveling into the realm of end-game and progression. Therefore, we maintain a Mythic+, Torghast, 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 that many players have. We keep pages that cover the most frequently asked questions, and also mistakes players tend to run into.

Thanks to Patch 9.1.5 having opened up free Covenant swapping and the Patch 9.2 systems adding in double Legendaries, it is expected that Havoc is going to perform very well in single-target situations while still being able to flex into AoE. It will likely need you to have multiple Covenants available, but the burst AoE on hand from Night Fae and the strong sustained single-target of Venthyr makes for a good pairing. The ever-present value of Chaos Brand is not going anywhere either, so expect to see one in most raids.