Havoc Demon Hunter DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Shadowlands 9.2.5
On this page, you will learn how to optimize the rotation of your Havoc Demon Hunter in both single-target and multiple-target situations. We also have advanced sections about cooldowns, procs, etc. in order to minmax your DPS. All our content is updated for World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.2.5.
Havoc Demon Hunter Rotation
Welcome to our Rotation page for Havoc Demon Hunters. Here we go over the details of how to play the spec in PvE scenarios in detail.
Easy Mode
If the rotations below seem overwhelming to you, it might be better to start by visiting our Easy Mode page, which lays out a starter build to get to grips with everything before moving on to more advanced sections.
PvP
The content on this page is purely PvE-related. If you are looking for PvP oriented tips, please visit our PvP page below.
Single-Target Rotation for Havoc Demon Hunter
Havoc's single-target rotation hinges strongly on the combination of
generation (either through active tools such as Demon's Bite or
talents like
Demon Blades) and your main spender,
Chaos Strike. Past this, depending on talents, other
spells enter into the priority adding depth,
making it important to manage both your resource and your other spell
cooldowns.
Use the below switches to tailor the rotation around the talents or situations you expect to be using, and it will populate the rotation priority list appropriately:
Talents | Covenant Abilities |
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- Cast
Metamorphosis if available and not active, make sure
Eye Beam is on cooldown before this.
- Cast
Eye Beam.
- Cast
Immolation Aura.
- Cast
Chaos Strike /
Annihilation if at 50 Fury or above.
- Cast
Demon's Bite to generate Fury.
Bear in mind that, no matter whether you take Demonic or not,
in Shadowlands you will still be casting
Eye Beam in single-target
situations, as this will trigger the
Furious Gaze effect. It also remains
a highly efficient Fury spender, but beware of upcoming add spawns, so as
not to waste damage in AoE situations.
With regards to Fel Rush, it is a very valuable tool to generate
damage in the empty global cooldowns created by
Demon Blades, so long
as you can remain within auto attack range. Otherwise, using this is generally
considered a slight loss, as it wastes partial global cooldowns that could be
spent on generating or spending Fury.
How to Use Covenant Abilities as Havoc Demon Hunter
Havoc's Covenant abilities all focus on adding an extra cooldown tool and in most cases are simply used as the highest priority due to the base damage coupled with no resource cost. Some notes are:
Elysian Decree is used on cooldown as a high priority, but remember this is also a burst AoE effect, so saving it to hit extra enemies is preferred.
Fodder to the Flame procs can either be held for up to 25 seconds or you can kill them instantly, depending on what timing is favourable in an encounter. Note that the
Demon Soul also lingers for another 20 seconds so you do not have to immediately pick it up. Just use
Throw Glaive to instantly kill it when you want to trigger the explosion.
The Hunt should be used on cooldown on your priority target. In AoE situations try to position yourself so you will pass through other targets to apply the DoT effect. Since this scales with Haste, you ideally want to be casting it under the effects of
Metamorphosis and
Furious Gaze.
Sinful Brand is used on your primary target as the highest priority in single-target. In AoE situations, you should consider holding
Metamorphosis to apply it to multiple enemies so long as you will not lose extra uses.
AoE Rotation for Havoc Demon Hunter
In AoE, Havoc's rotation changes very little. Most of the high priority
abilities come with cooldowns, and naturally cleave on their own. This means you
will largely be playing the same way, but with an increased value on making sure
you have buttons available for when additional targets are present. The only
thing of note is that Blade Dance should generally only be introduced
into the rotation at 3+ targets, unless you are playing
First Blood
which makes it rotational at 1.
This means that you need to make sure that you do not waste a cast of
Eye Beam on one target, for example, if there is about to be a new
wave of adds spawning briefly after. This extends to other AoE abilities,
such as
Glaive Tempest,
Fel Barrage, and, to a lesser extent,
Blade Dance. Making sure to pay more attention to your cooldown
timers, so you can comfortably line these up without wasting uses, will net
a huge boost to your AoE damage.
It is important to note though, if you play Cycle of Hatred you will
rarely cast
Blade Dance /
Death Sweep as the value
of reducing the cooldown of
Eye Beam is significantly higher than
the damage gained from casting them. The only worthwhile time to use Blade Dance
or Death Sweep is if there are 3 or more targets active and a pull is about to
end so you will not get a reset on
Eye Beam in time.
Opening Rotation for Havoc Demon Hunter
- Pre-cast
Immolation Aura, if taken.
- Cast
Fel Rush (or
Felblade, if taken) to engage.
- Cast
Eye Beam to trigger
Metamorphosis via
Demonic.
- Cast
Death Sweep, if playing
First Blood.
- Cast
Metamorphosis.
- Cast
Death Sweep, if playing
First Blood.
- Cast
Eye Beam.
- Continue with Single Target Rotation.
The two casts following Metamorphosis are to make use of
the
Metamorphosis Rank 4 effect to trigger the
reset on both abilities. Any points where you need additional Fury
in this sequence can be replaced by
Demon's Bite, proceeding
down the list until these abilities are all cooling down.
Havoc Demon Hunter Cooldowns: Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis is a 30-second duration buff on a
4-minute cooldown, with a flat 25% increase to Haste allowing for more ability
uses while active. Pooling 100 Fury or above before entering
Metamorphosis is extremely beneficial to allow for a surge of
Annihilation casts, and draining excess Fury in the last 5 seconds
of the buff will lead to the most efficient conversion of resource into damage
during this period.
See our addons and macros page for a Metamorphosis macro.
Mythic+ Rotation
For information about Mythic+ as a Havoc Demon Hunter and the rotation you need to use in this game mode, please refer to our Mythic+ page.
Optional Read: Notes on Optimizing Havoc Demon Hunter
Notes on Build Synergy
Havoc has a lot of talents that link up with each other in a strong
way, usually having one pick having a powerful interaction with another
elsewhere on the tier. Examples of this are Felblade paired with
Demon Blades, and
Blind Fury paired with
Cycle of Hatred.
In many cases, it is one enabling talent and another that rides the wave
it generates, but for more information on the specifics, please refer
to our talent page.
Double Legendary Impact
While Havoc does have some good options available with the final Patch 9.2
Covenant package, there is very little in the way of meaningful rotational
changes that come when
double Legendaries are
applied. The two most powerful effects — Agony Gaze and
Blazing Slaughter effectively play themselves in the builds that are
using them without any strong deviation. The only strong thing of note is that
Venthyr is even more locked into playing a
Blind Fury /
Demonic-oriented build to make sure it can maintain high uptime on
Sinful Brand.
Tier 28 Set Bonus Impact
Unfortunately for Havoc the set bonus is really low impact and has virtually no direct gameplay implications. There is nothing you need to think about when playing around it, and as such just treat it as a flat boost happening in the background.
Tier 1 Talent Notes
Blind Fury, enhances your
Eye Beam cast damage,
alongside turning it into a generation tool that will refill your entire bar.
Making sure you are as drained as possible before this comes off cooldown is
important so as to not waste resource, so being aware of the cooldown and spend
as aggressively as possible leading up these moments.
Felblade excels at single-target situations, but mandates
a pick of
Demon Blades to pair with it. The proc rate relies
very strongly on the constant trigger chances from this, and also needs
the extra space in the rotation to be able to cast it comfortably.
Demonic Appetite provides an extra requirement to you having
to collect the souls for Fury during gameplay, which can sometimes be
cumbersome. The Fury this generates is good, but the alternatives on the
row have better synergy with better talents. It is however the only talent
on the row that provides additional self-healing.
Tier 2 Talents Notes
Insatiable Hunger has very little impact on the rotation and is simply
the quick and easy choice. The damage increase to
Demon's Bite is mostly
irrelevant, but the Fury generation this provides is the most consistent on
the row.
Demon Blades slows down your pace by removing your active
generation tool
Demon's Bite, and replacing it with a 60% chance proc
from auto attacks to deal additional Shadow damage and grant 12-20 Fury. This
adds an element of reactionary play as you will no longer be Global Cooldown
locked, instead requiring patience for Fury to passively generate from auto
attacks. This makes the playstyle more chaotic in practice compared to the
alternatives, and during high Haste periods demands some quick chains of
Chaos Strike casts to burn off Fury.
Burning Hatred simply serves as a way to enhance the power of each
of your
Immolation Aura casts. Given that this is cast on
cooldown in all situations, it provides a consistent bonus to your Fury
generation, but will lose out on average to alternatives.
Tier 3 Talents Notes
Unbound Chaos provides a strong single-target option as
well as good, uncapped burst AoE assuming the encounter allows for its use.
Due to the positional requirements, this is not always realistic, but makes
for a very powerful
Fel Rush cast following each
Immolation Aura;
so is a great pick when played correctly.
Glaive Tempest is a good all-round option providing very
high damage per cast both in single-target and especially in AoE. This
is worth the Fury cost, but you need to plan around enemy movement to
avoid them moving out of the area when cast. You want to be aware of the
cooldown to make sure you have enough Fury spare to cast this as soon
as it is ready due to the low cooldown.
Trail of Ruin is a flat bonus to each
Blade Dance /
Death Sweep
cast, applying a Chaos damage DoT to each target hit. This synergizes very
well with
First Blood to incorporate it into all aspects of the
rotation, but without that supporting talent, Trail of Ruin is fairly underwhelming.
Tier 5 Talent Notes
Cycle of Hatred excels currently both in single-target and
AoE situations. When playing this it shifts your playstyle heavily
toward spending as much Fury as possible on
Chaos Strike, which
means even in AoE you will not be casting
Blade Dance. The
goal is to
Eye Beam as often as possible, meaning Fury spent
on anything less efficient is not worth it. If paired with
Glaive Tempest,
however, you will still cast that.
First Blood reducing the cost of
Blade Dance to
turn it into a cheap spender is a good rotational improvement but has a
very single-target focus due to the damage bonus being oriented around
your current target. This is a good pick and also has good synergy with
the
Chaos Theory legendary.
Essence Break is a new pick in 9.1 for single-target situations
due to the buffs to
Chaos Strike and some synergy with
Momentum.
Generally speaking, this is just cast on cooldown, and though you can pool
some Fury to generate a burst window inside of it if needed, holding it
for too long wastes valuable uptime on the effect.
Tier 7 Talents Notes
Demonic
Demonic is, like Momentum alongside it on the tier, a damage
boost window effect. It will naturally be triggered by your
Eye Beam casts rotationally. Making sure to fill as many Global
Cooldowns during the 6 seconds as possible with Fury spenders is crucial.
Priming
Immolation Aura before you trigger the window is great
to set up some background generation, and try to minimize the number
of committal generation tools such as
Demon's Bite if possible.
In some cases though, RNG simply stops that happening.
Momentum
This talent is a very high skill cap option and, as such, if you are not comfortable with Demon Hunter and raid mechanics in general, it will be very punishing. Knowing when to use your charges, and when to bank them to use both in conjunction for the buff and to avoid mechanics or stay on targets at the same time is a skill that needs to be practiced. Below is an image to show the optimal paths to use your activation skills to stay on target and minimise possible displacement that can have a large knock-on effect.

With Momentum, there are two different effects that are triggered by your mobility abilities:
Fel Rush with two charges on a 10-second recharge grants 6 seconds of 15% increased damage;
Vengeful Retreat on a 20-second cooldown that generates 80 Fury over 10 seconds when it damages an enemy.
There are some fundamental rules when using Momentum to bear in
mind during combat. First, the spells that activate Momentum do benefit
from the buff they trigger. You should aim to never clip a Momentum window,
and instead aim for maximum uptime. You should still ideally attempt to spread
your windows out to make sure you are spending as few Global Cooldowns as
possible on generation during the 6-second period it is active. This means
you should aim to enter into a window with 80-120 Fury. You can also
trigger passive Fury generation tools, such as
Immolation Aura
and
Vengeful Retreat's Fury effect, before triggering the damage
window to sustain yourself during the 6 seconds.
Fel Barrage
Fel Barrage is a 1-minute cooldown burst-AoE tool that must be
channeled for 3 seconds. While this is channeling, you cannot cast
any other abilities during the cast or it will cancel early. This is a very
powerful burst tool for AoE situations, and should ideally be timed with as
many buffs as possible, in particular Haste boost effects, such as
Furious Gaze, as the tick rate rises. The ability to overlap
this ability with strong burst window effects, however, has been reduced
in Shadowlands with it being moved to the final row, so is less potent.
Core Concepts for Havoc Demon Hunters
Movement Abilities and Talents
One of the unique features of Havoc is that it can leverage its movement
tools in Fel Rush and
Vengeful Retreat to increase your
damage output and Fury generation with certain talents. Managing this is
important if these have been selected, and knowing whether it is safe to use
them based on encounter types is especially important.
You can maneuver with Vengeful Retreat in one of two different
ways. The first of these is a wall that you can consistently leap back into so
that the displacement effect is muted and you remain in melee range of
your target. Alternatively, the more consistent option is rotating your
character before casting 90 degrees, so that you will move across the back of the
target's hitbox, and remain in range upon landing against any reasonably sized
target. Do note that at all times, this spell will vault you backwards, so you need to
be aware of that when casting.
Fel Rush in much the same way requires a similar awareness of your
environment to capitalise upon. Instead of focusing on moving backward, however,
you need to face the direction you want to rush and then turn back to your
target when you arrive.
Both of these spells incur a 1-second movement cooldown to prevent you using them to cancel each other's displacement effect out with animation canceling, and as such you need to treat each cast individually and prepare for the movement to minimize the downsides.
Fury Management
With Havoc being so reliant on its resource, you need to be very aware
of situations that encourage spending vs. the requirement to build. The
general rule is you never want to go into the range of wasting Fury due to
going over the cap with a generator cast. This means the spend breakpoint is 90
Fury without talents, due to Demon's Bite having a potential maximum
of 30 per cast. With
Demon Blades this is more flexible, but given
how fast multiple procs can happen, it is preferable to be spending more
aggressively when not pooling for burst windows.
When playing Demonic Appetite that orbs will often spawn
outside of the immediate range of your character, meaning that you can
hold them until you are at a point where Fury starvation sets in.
This means you can have a good catch up tool, assuming that there are not
any dangerous mechanics that would prevent you from grabbing the
orbs at a later moment.
Remember to adjust your rotation based on refunds from your
Chaos Strike casts that refund 20 Fury due to the unexpected
additional resources in your pool. In the same vein, successful interrupts
through
Disrupt and dispels using
Consume Magic that
grant 30 and 20 Fury respectively can also provide extra resources that you may
need to spend aggressively to make use of. For Consume Magic and Disrupt macros,
please refer to our macro page.
Fury Management with Demon Blades
When using Demon Blades, your Fury management is altered to
account for the more sporadic nature of the generation. In single-target, more
appropriate rotational rules to adjust the original priority look like this
(keep in mind these are un-ordered notes and simply small things that can help
to improve your gameplay):
- Cast
Chaos Strike/
Annihilation as frequently as possible unless pooling for burst windows.
- Cast
Felblade as frequently as possible, as long as you are below 80 Fury, as your active generation tool.
- Wait and allow
Demon Blades to generate Fury again to continue the cycle.
- Cast
Throw Glaive and
Fel Rush if out of range of any targets, or in empty Globals.
It is optimal to always attempt to initiate a Momentum or
Demonic window wherever possible before you begin dumping your
Fury into
Chaos Strike in this way.
Changelog
- 31 May 2022: Page reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 19 Feb. 2022: Updated for Patch 9.2 with new rotation tool and notes around double Legendary.
- 01 Nov. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.5.
- 28 Jun. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Page reviewed and updated for Patch 9.0.5, with changes to account for Unbound Chaos and Fodder to the Flame rework.
- 24 Nov. 2020: Page updated for Shadowlands launch
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
More Demon Hunter Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Wordup, a frequent theorycrafter involved in a number of class communities. He is also an experienced player who has been in the world top 100 since the days of Sunwell, currently raiding in Echoes. You can also follow him on Twitter.
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