How To Improve As Devourer Demon Hunter — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

Welcome to our How to Improve page! Here we go through some of the most common pitfalls new Devourer players make, and provide some actionable tips on how to avoid falling into the same trap yourself.

The most common mistake many new Devourer players make is mismanaging their resources, and having empty global cooldowns. As a DPS, it is essential that you are always casting something. For Devourer, your filler is Consume, which both deals excellent damage and generates both Fury and Souls Fragments. Since this can be cast while on the move, there's rarely a reason you can't at least be using this during combat. Some additional tips for managing your Resources are as follows:

• Watch Your Fury Bar - Fury is the main resource that limits the speed at which Devourers rotation flows, due to it enabling your Void Ray casts. Ensure you're casting this on cooldown, and try not to go above 100 Fury too often. This gives you a buffer to avoid overcapping if Soul Immolation procs.
• Managing Soul Fragments - Soul Fragments are your main resource for accessing your cooldown, Void Metamorphosis. Ensure you cast this as soon as you meet the threshold, as any Soul Fragments collected above your cap be wasted. Additionally, try to have some Soul Fragments left on the ground as your transformation expires to speed up the cycle to your next!

Alongside that, each Hero Tree has an impact on your Fury management. These are things to be aware of depending on your choice:

• Annihilator generates more Soul Fragments through World Killer, and more Fury through Celestial Echoes. Keep this in mind as you are playing, and ensure you don't overcap your resources!
• Void-Scarred has less of an active role in your resource management, but due to Undying Embers, any time Soul Immolation procs it has a chance to reignite. Bear this in mind, as the additional RNG resources can force you above the cap without you noticing. Thankfully, Void-Scarred has a larger Fury pool in general to help with this, giving you more of a buffer.

Both of these trees adjust the rate and cadence to which you generate resources, so it's important to get comfortable with both, and ensure you're optimizing your resource generation!

Regardless of the situation, Void Ray is a core ability that's used on cooldown as often as possible. Due to the sheer amount of secondary effects attached to it (and the high damage it deals), making sure you understand its applications is important:

• Single-Target - you should cast it immediately whenever you reach 100 Fury, or whenever it's available during Void Metamorphosis. This ability is one of your main Soul Fragment generators, and speeds up your cooldown cycle dramatically. If additional targets will be present shortly after it's available, hold it briefly to hit extra targets. Just avoid overcapping your Fury when doing so.
• AoE - in AoE, you need to remember that using Void Ray on a single foe right before (meaning, it won't be available for) a wave of adds is a significant loss. Always look for opportunities to hit multiple foes, as the extra Soul generation provided by Waste Not is very valuable.

We go into more detail on the priorities involving your Void Ray casts on our Rotation Page.

Devourer has access to a few cooldowns to optimize, Void Metamorphosis and its suite of melee talents. Ensuring you understand their usage and how they interact with your kit is important, especially when playing as Void-Scarred. Some tips are below:

Void Metamorphosis is Devourer's primary cooldown, and it's usage changes slightly depending on your talent and Hero Talent choice. Regardless, all builds are looking to use this cooldown as fast as possible, and to maximize their time inside of it. Some tips for utilizing it are as follows:

• While active, your Fury drains at an increasingly rapid pace. This is constant, so it's especially important to avoid overcapping resources through Cull casts, wasting Souls.
• For Annihilator, your aim is to extend this form as long as possible, casting as many Collapsing Stars as you can. Make sure to spend your Voidfall stacks before transforming, and try to have some Soul Fragments prepared on the ground to start cycling quickly.
• For Void-Scarred, you do not cast Collapsing Star in single-target currently, though it is used in AoE. In these situations, your goal instead is to cycle through Void Metamorphosis as fast as possible, using your Void-Scarred pulses and the resets conferred to melee talents to deal high burst damage.

Due to there being a lot of individual differences between both Hero Trees and a significant number of talents that influence this, we recommend referring to our Rotation Page for more. Void Metamorphosis is the most complex aspect of Devourer, and there's a lot of moving parts to understand. There, we go through the nuance in how to manage your resources, and maximize the effect.

The suite of melee talents, Voidblade, Hungering Slash, and The Hunt, serve as a core gameplay loop for the hybrid builds of Devourer, and are essential for Void-Scarred. These form a tight combo loop, with a set order of abilities always executed the same way. It is as follows:

• The Hunt.
• Hungering Slash.
• Vengeful Retreat.
• Voidblade.
• Hungering Slash.
• Vengeful Retreat.

This combo deals high damage, and is important for builds that take these talents as Hungering Slash generates both fury and Soul Fragments. When you're playing as Void-Scarred, this is a key combo to execute, and making sure you use them correctly is vital. Multiple talents within the build key off these, with additional benefits you need to utilize being:

• While inside Void Metamorphosis, your melee talents are upgraded. The upgraded forms are as follows:
  • Voidblade is upgraded into Pierce the Veil.
  • Hungering Slash is upgraded into Reaper's Toll.
  • The Hunt is upgraded into Predator's Wake.
• The first first use of each melee ability triggers a powerful Voidsurge.
• The cooldown of Voidblade and The Hunt are reset when you enter Void Metamorphosis.

The melee talents are therefore a crucial part of the Void-Scarred rotation, interacting with most of the core components of its toolkit. As such, learning where these abilities will move your character when used so you can use them safely is worth learning.

Due to the large number of variables and how important the melee talent usage is currently, we strongly recommend referencing our Rotation Page if you want to fully understand their use cases.

With how varied modern World of Warcraft has become, it can be a daunting task to accurately assess whether an item or setup is worth it or not. The first place to start is Raidbots, which allows you to sim your own character to know a baseline. This will give you a number to strive for as you learn and improve, while also giving you extensive help when identifying upgrades, knowing what to farm for and much more.

By now, simming has become very easy to get started thanks to modern tools. There's no need to understand code or complex SimulationCraft APLs, nor does it require its own installation. All you will need is the in-game SimulationCraft AddOn, and this will give you the output to add to the Raidbots website.