Havoc Demon Hunter DPS Mythic+ Tips — Shadowlands 9.0.5

Mythic+ dungeons scale up with key level, and especially when you reach higher levels you will find this to be as challenging as some of the Mythic raiding present in WoW.

Therefore, when playing Havoc your responsibility to contribute to the groups success will be higher than in most raiding groups due to the lower group size, therefore skill and execution of strategy is crucial. The importance of being versatile and able to adapt to any situation is a key factor here, and one of the main reasons that some talent choices are taken that differentiate from ideal raid selections.

Alongside damage, utility such as interrupts, dispels and control are vital to handling many of the challenges you will find. The more you can bring to the table, the more aggressively you can pull and move through the dungeon comfortably.

In this guide, we will be discussing the finer points of Havoc Demon Hunter and how to get the most out of it, how to gear and set up your character, and some tips to push yourself further.

If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our Shadowlands Mythic+ Season 1 page below.

If you want more information about all of the talent options and whether some could be useful in certain situations, you should use our dedicated Talent page.

Recommended talent choices for Havoc Demon Hunter in Mythic+ are as follows:

Level	Choices
15	✓ Blind Fury	✓ Demonic Appetite	✗ Felblade
25	✓ Insatiable Hunger	? Burning Hatred	✗ Demon Blades
30	✗ Trail of Ruin	✓ Unbound Chaos	✓ Glaive Tempest
35	✓ Soul Rending	✗ Desperate Instincts	? Netherwalk
40	✓ Cycle of Hatred	✓ First Blood	✗ Essence Break
45	✓ Unleashed Power	✓ Master of the Glaive	✓ Fel Eruption
50	✓ Demonic	✗ Momentum	✗ Fel Barrage

Havoc tends to have two set builds that can be played, focusing around either an Eye Beam-centric setup using Cycle of Hatred, or a Blade Dance-centric setup with First Blood. Many options here are flexible, but these two choices tend to define what else you use throughout the tree.

Blind Fury pairs excellently with Cycle of Hatred and Collective Anguish if used, upping the frequency of your Eye Beam casts significantly. Alternatively, Demonic Appetite will be less frontloaded damage but the additional survival it provides and free Fury gained between pulls after a pack dies adds extra hidden value. Lastly, Felblade is more single-target oriented and relies on using Demon Blades, making it less flexible.

Insatiable Hunger works best with Cycle of Hatred to generate more Fury consistently to trigger the resets with Chaos Strike, but given the downtime of dungeons Burning Hatred is extremely close here. Demon Blades has some issues with uptime to make use of the Fury generation and it locks your first talent tier, making it the least flexible pick.

Glaive Tempest provides an extra burst AoE tool that, despite being capped, deals a lot of damage frequently enough to warrant a pick regardless of what other talents you take. Unbound Chaos has no target cap, provides good AoE and single-target, and can even be primed between packs, so it is a great pick as well. Trail of Ruin simply falls behind too much with the nature of Mythic+, so it should be avoided.

Your choice here will come down to how high the key you are doing is, and how lethal the damage you are encountering is. The more dangerous a key, the more beneficial Soul Rending becomes, due to the sustain. However, if there is one shot potential that you can predict, Netherwalk will be invaluable.

Your pick here entirely depends on what build you want to play. First Blood is more consistent and opens up other options in the tree. Cycle of Hatred is much more explosive and has additional synergies with certain talents and Legendaries, focusing more on burst windows rather than sustained damage. These two playstyles are extremely similar so both will shine depending on the dungeon.

Unleashed Power grants the most consistent access to additional crowd control in Mythic+ settings, making it easier to fire and forget Chaos Nova. Fel Eruption, on the other hand, grants an extra tool to lock down a target if need be, so both of these are good choices.

Demonic works well especially with Cycle of Hatred giving extra uptime. The extra survival when paired with Soul Rending is also really useful, so makes for the most rounded package. Momentum is strong, but has a much higher gameplay requirement to make use of. The potential is there, and assuming you can make use of it will generate the highest damage. The requirements of play however mean it always needs a note next to it rather than a universal recommendation. Fel Barrage is a nice burst AoE tool but relative to the other two options that have synergy, this has none which causes it to fall behind.

Havoc has two options available, but one has a very significant warning behind it because it is currently untested how well the recent fixes will work.

Collective Anguish is the safe pick, boosting the damage of each of your Eye Beam casts alongside some free healing. This also scales up really well with Cycle of Hatred builds, focusing your burst windows even further.

Darkglare Boon, following its Patch 9.0.5 buff, has the highest potential but is very RNG-limited; if you run dry on procs at the wrong time it can be extremely difficult to recover from. It is, however, a strong consideration due to its explosive potential.

Burning Wound is a bit more awkward to fully make use of as you need to maintain the DoT on multiple enemies, but can lead to very high sustained AoE damage following its 9.0.5 buffs. It also provides the best single-target contribution. Using this is dependent on affixes and your own comfort with the extra gameplay requirements.

For more information about different Havoc Demon Hunter Legendaries, you can look at our dedicated Legendary page.

Currently all 4 Covenants have their benefits and drawbacks, meaning that what you pick is going to shape how you play around a dungeon:

• Kyrian provides a fire-and-forget burst AoE tool to add to the rest of the toolkit's arsenal, which only serves to improve what the spec is already good at.
• Necrolord is more volatile due to being a proc, but the value of each proc can be very high depending on where each spawn lands. This Covenant was significantly improved in Patch 9.0.5.
• Night Fae provides a solid single-to-mid target burst cooldown and very strong Soulbind options, allowing you to tailor your damage profile better.
• Venthyr provides a massive uncapped AoE cooldown via your Sinful Brand applications with Metamorphosis, but the long cooldown means it needs to be played around.

All of these tools have their uses and it depends on your playstyle as to which you prefer, and for most the deciding factor comes down to what the Soulbinds provide:

• For Kyrian, you should choose Forgelite Prime Mikanikos to make use of Hammer of Genesis. Here is an example tree.
• When playing Necrolord you should generally be using Bonesmith Heirmir due to the consistent Agility boost and the high value of Heirmir's Arsenal: Marrowed Gemstone procs, but Emeni is an okay alternative due to Gnashing Chompers. Here are two sample builds: Bonesmith Heirmir, Emeni.
• For Night Fae, you can use either Niya or Korayn. Your choice depends on whether you want more single-target from Niya's Tools: Burrs, or additional opening burst via First Strike and Wild Hunt Tactics. Here are two sample builds: Niya, Korayn.
• For Venthyr, you should be using Nadjia the Mistblade. This is due to the frequent cycling of Thrill Seeker caused by enemy deaths. Here is an example tree.

For Conduit choices, the first Potency pick should always be Growing Inferno for both the AoE and single-target gains. After that, you have a lot of options depending on the dungeon. Relentless Onslaught is heavily single-target oriented, while your Covenant-specific Conduits ( Unnatural Malice, Increased Scrutiny, and Repeat Decree) enhance the strength of your taken ability. None of the options firmly outdo some of the stronger Soulbind unique picks that replace a Potency slot, so usually you will only be taking Growing Inferno.

With that said however, Covenant and Soulbind selections have a lot of different factors, so we recommend looking at our page discussing them for more information.

This season's new affix active at key levels 10 and above is Prideful. Every 20% of the enemy forces counter, a large enemy will spawn that when defeated will give you a damage boost for one minute. Ideally if you can save Metamorphosis for the upcoming boost then you can leverage this for a huge burst of damage, but sometimes this is necessary to use to make it through the pulsing AoE before your party dies. Try to make sure you at least have some tools available as it dies as most groups will rush ahead to make use of the buff before it expires.

Havoc in Mythic+ deviates very little from the rotations covered in the Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities page we have listed, however there are some small nuances that are necessary to consider when it comes to cooldowns:

• You should plan out your uses of Eye Beam, while also considering the cooldown reduction granted via Cycle of Hatred if taken, to make sure you have a strong opening salvo for AoE packs.
• Try not to burn up short burst AoE cooldown tools like Eye Beam and Glaive Tempest when packs are low health, they are better served to use on a fresh pack with more targets.
• Due to the long cooldown Metamorphosis has, and the flexibility of the cooldown reset on Eye Beam it gives, you should also know when this is going to be most valuable. This will depend on affixes and your group composition, varying between whether burst AoE for big pulls or boss damage is more desirable.
• You can use Immolation Aura to maintain Fury between packs, but remember this will waste the damage of the cast which is very relevant if it is not available when you pull next.

Just remember though that with all of these benefits that burst AoE grants for Havoc, it makes them very vulnerable to pulling aggro. There is often very little Havoc can do outside of an emergency Chaos Nova cast to give tanks a chance to catch up, but if you unload quickly, do not be surprised if some enemies turn to hit you.

For the details relating to the specific rotation rules Havoc operates by, use our dedicated rotation page.

Havoc Demon Hunter comes with a variety of tools that are useful in specific situations, alongside some universally powerful options. This covers AoE crowd control and offensive dispels, alongside group buff utility.

• Consume Magic is an offensive dispel tool on a 10-second cooldown, that also generates Fury when it successfully removes an effect. This has become increasingly useful, due to how many enemies have effects that demand dispels (see our Consume Magic macro on the Havoc Demon Hunter macro page).
• Disrupt is the Havoc interrupt tool on a 15-second cooldown that also generates Fury when used. This should be used as frequently as possible both to prevent dangerous casts, and also capitalize upon the additional off global cooldown Fury generation (see our Disrupt macro on the Havoc Demon Hunter macro page).
• Chaos Nova is an AoE stun tool available to Havoc, that stuns all nearby targets for 2 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown with a 30 Fury cost. This is great for disrupting large groups of enemies, and can also be made free with a reduced cooldown when using the Unleashed Power talent.
• Imprison can be used as a crowd control option if a target is too dangerous to engage in a group, or interrupt a high priority cast that is immune to interrupt effects. Enemies affected by this will also not aggro to your group, allowing you to use it to skip enemy packs if your route requires it.
• Darkness is a group defense tool that can have some fringe uses to reduce the risk of high damage AoE effects to your group. This does, however, have a random component which hurts its consistency, so should not be relied upon.
• Chaos Brand increases Magic damage taken by targets you deal damaged to, improving group damage in many compositions.

There are no significant alterations to the gear choices you should be making compared to normal single-target and AoE situations, however we heavily recommend simming your own character to make sure. Having Patchwerk, and then Dungeon Slice profiles to see what can be optimized are the ideal profiles to use. Dungeon Slice also allows for you to get a more accurate estimate of talents such as Demonic Appetite, simulating enemy deaths for Shattered Souls pickups.

Trinkets tend to lean toward on use or proc effects that are powerful in all situations rather than specific ones, so your mileage may vary compared to those that are picked in raids. If you want to know more about gear to aim for, you can look at our gear page.