Havoc Demon Hunter DPS Guide — Season 4

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.

Strengths

• A variety of different damage profiles are covered across builds.
• Strong burst both in Single Target and AoE.
• Potent AoE damage available within the kit.
• Strong passive and active defense, making it very durable.
• Solid self-sustain to pair with the above.
• Access to a number of CC options.
• Flexible, instant mobility allowing for great positioning control.
• Good group utility and provides Chaos Brand.

Weaknesses

• AoE is tied to cooldowns, requiring planning around key windows.
• Some RNG is built into the resource system.
• Best performance is very fast paced and requires heavy movement talents.
• Some builds require pre-planned buff overlaps that can be hard to execute.
• Movement related talent options can be dangerous in some encounters.

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 auto-attack procs from Demon Blades and active abilities such as Immolation Aura / Felblade, then 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 whenever available, 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. Some of the stronger builds make use of these, converting them into damage tools, which means it has a very active playstyle, though these are not strictly mandatory to play the class at its basic level.

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 we always recommend simming yourself for ideal results, we do provide a dedicated Havoc gearing page that lists the Best in Slot items to look out for in the current season of Dragonflight.

Once you have started to gear, you should ideally have the appropriate consumables, gems, enchants, and more to go alongside your new items. We have a dedicated page for exactly this, as shown below, and the stats page, where you can find more information on our stat priority and any necessary changes you may need to make with consumables.

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.

In virtually every type of content in Season 3, Havoc is one of the strongest melee options available. Due to its extremely powerful AoE tools and variety of burst abilities, it is uniquely positioned to deal with some raid encounters. This translates very well to Mythic+, allowing it to deal huge frontloaded damage to even the most dangerous pulls. Pairing this with strong active defense, self sustain and mobility makes for a spec with very few - if any - downsides. On top of all that, it brings Darkness and Chaos Brand, alongside a varied control toolkit. It is really hard to go wrong picking Havoc currently, and this seems likely to continue to the end of the Season.