How To Improve As Havoc Demon Hunter — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1.5

1. Optimizing your Global Cooldowns

The first and foremost mistake that many Havoc players make is not adjusting their rotation to minimize empty Global Cooldowns as much as possible. The rotation is built at its core to always allow for you to be pressing something actively, and as such, any time wasted is a loss of both damage and Fury. You also have a wealth of movement tools to stick to a target, as well as a small number of additional tools that extend past melee range, which can be used to fill downtime that should be used to cover those gaps.

2. Correctly Managing Fury

The core of your Havoc gameplay will rely on your ability to dynamically react to different Fury situations due to the variance in income caused by the Chaos Strike refunds. You should always be aware of your Fury with the assumption that you will get a refund so you do not accidentally cast Demon's Bite in a period you could spend. You should also at all times make sure that you do not spend too much to block you from casting Eye Beam on cooldown if needed. This also extends to when using First Blood, as you should make absolutely sure that you have enough Fury ready to keep this on cooldown as much as possible, and also plan your Global Cooldowns around it appropriately.

3. Eye Beam

This note comes with two different situational caveats.

3.1. Single Target

In single target, making sure that you are ready to cast Eye Beam as it comes off cooldown is crucial due to it being the highest damage cast available in your arsenal. Making sure that you will be in range for the entire channel, especially when using Blind Fury, is very important, as is making sure you do not begin the channel in an area that could be dangerous before you complete the cast.

3.2. Multiple Target

When it comes to AoE, however, it is very important to note that it is a big DPS loss to use Eye Beam against a single target if, while it is on cooldown, a large number of adds will appear.

Always remember: despite Battle for Azeroth opening up Eye Beam to being a strong single target tool consistently, it still ultimately gains a great deal in AoE situations, so do not waste that ability to capitalize on multiple target scaling.

4. Cooldown & Burst Window Management

4.1. Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis forms a large portion of the Havoc damage toolkit due to just how much damage can be poured in during the cooldown, with multiple aspects of scaling. Due to this, you need to make absolutely sure that when you use this, you have as many opportunities to capitalize upon the effect. The easiest way to do so is ensuring you have a large pool of Fury available to instantly begin spending, and also attempt to dump all Fury available just before the effect ends. Making sure you use this in a window as well where you can effectively stick to a target, and aggressively attempting to do so is crucial.

4.2. Nemesis

When taking Nemesis, you really need to be aware of your timings on Metamorphosis to make sure that you can line them both up. This is going to be your highest damage period, and one Nemesis cast will cover an entire Metamorphosis cast. Making sure you do not cast it on enemies that are soon to die that do not share creature type is also crucial, as the backup buff effect will then be useless against different enemies.

4.3. Momentum Windows

When using Momentum, not having enough Fury available to be aggressively spending as much as possible following a Fel Rush cast is a major mistake. Trying to minimize your Demon's Bite generation casts during the buff will drastically improve your output, so having a large pool available when you trigger it is ideal. This also extends to using passive generation buffs such as Vengeful Retreat with Momentum, or Immolation Aura before activating to give you a background source to fuel your Chaos Strike uses.

5. Knowing How to Sim Yourself

It is extremely difficult to accurately optimize your character without first using Raidbots to sim your own character to identify a static start point. This will allow you to quickly identify the ideal gear choices you have available to equip, and due to the variables of different gear interacting with each other (and the War/Titanforging system causing unpredictability) should be the go-to tool to decide what you use.

On top of this, simming is now very easy with no need to understand SimulationCraft APLs or installation yourself. All you will need is the in-game SimulationCraft AddOn, and the Raidbots website. Below you can find a video on how to sim your own character using the website.

6. Changelog