Havoc Demon Hunter PvP Rotation and Playstyle — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0.1)

Havoc Demon Hunter has one primary role when in an Arena match: do damage. Players should focus on maximizing their damage as much as they can. With strong mobility, you should be able to stay on a target for most of the game. Use your strong, consistent damage to force cooldowns and then punish the enemy team by using your offensive abilities.

Have a plan for who you will be mainly using your crowd control on. Havoc Demon Hunters have powerful crowd control with Imprison, Sigil of Misery, and Chaos Nova.

If the enemy team has a class that can stealth, use Spectral Sight to see them in stealth and disrupt their opener.

The opener refers to your team's opening crowd control chain and damage done as soon as you get out of the gates. The main goal in the opener is to force your enemies to use their cooldowns. If the enemy healer uses their trinket in the opener, they are in trouble. In the opener, Havoc Demon Hunters should focus on sticking to an enemy and dealing large amounts of damage to the target.

Below is your typical burst sequence. Ideally, you will burst when the enemy healer is crowd controlled by yourself or your teammate. There are two burst sequences. The first sequence assumes that you have every single cooldown available.

1. Use The Hunt to proc Reaver's Glaive.
2. Use Reaver's Glaive which will empower your next Chaos Strike and Blade Dance.
3. Use Eye Beam. This will put you into Demon Form.
4. Use Annihilation to use the first stack of Reaver's Glaive.
5. Use Death Sweep to use the final stack of Reaver's Glaive. It is very important that you use Chaos Strike before Death Sweep so that Death Sweep gets the extra three slashes and 20% bonus damage.
6. Use Vengeful Retreat.
7. Use Fel Blade to jump back to your target.
8. Use Metamorphosis to enter Demon Form.
10. Use Death Sweep. This should still be within your Essence Break window.
11. Use Eye Beam. In addition to the damage it does, this will also extend the duration of Metamorphosis from the Demonic talent.
12. Use Annihilation.
13. Use Death Sweep.

The second burst sequence is a mini-burst sequence for when you don't have The Hunt or Metamorphosis that just uses Eye Beam. Before you burst make sure that you have Reaver's Glaive procced and ready to use.

1. Use Reaver's Glaive to empower Chaos Strike and Blade Dance.
2. Use Vengeful Retreat.
3. Use Fel Blade.
4. Use Eye Beam to enter Demon Form.
5. Use Annihilation.
6. Use Death Sweep.

Sustained damage is damage you do when your burst cooldowns are not available.

1. Our highest priority is always Reaver's Glaive. This will empower our next Blade Dance and Chaos Strike.
2. After that we have Blade Dance. This will apply Mortal Dance as well as Throw Glaive because of Screaming Brutality
3. If Blade Dance is on cooldown then you will use Chaos Strike if you have the Fury to do so
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4. If you need Fury then you will use Fel Blade. We want to use Fel Blade as often as possible to keep high uptime on Army Unto Oneself.
5. If you need Fury and Fel Blade is on cooldown then you should use Consume Magic. This will give us a chance to proc a demon soul because of Blood Moon but worst case scenario it gives us some fury and a soul to help proc Reaver's Glaive.
6. Immolation Aura is our lowest priority generator because we don't take any of the talents to buff it.
7. Throw Glaive is something you will almost never push but if you have low time or need to slow your target you can manually use Throw Glaive.

Blur is your main defensive cooldown. This reduces the overall damage done to you. On a 1-minute cooldown, this is very powerful and should be used when your healer is struggling to keep you alive or is in crowd control.

Darkness is a great defensive for not only yourself but also for your teammates. If the enemy team is using their offensive cooldowns on a teammate that has no defensive abilities left, using Darkness where they are could help keep them alive.

Vengeful Retreat can be used in times when you will need to run away from the enemy team. This lets you get distance, and you can still use Throw Glaive.

It is advised to use Macros to use abilities on enemies or allies without having to target them. For this reason, we have a page dedicated to them.