How To Improve As Havoc Demon Hunter — The War Within (11.1.5)

The first and foremost mistake that many Havoc players make is not adjusting their rotation to minimize empty Global Cooldowns as much as possible. Regardless of build, the rotation is constructed 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. Even with Demon Blades taken, the amount of filler and generation tools between Felblade, Sigil of Flame, Throw Glaive and even Fel Rush means you are rarely truly out of things to press. 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.

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 and Demon Blades generation. You should always be aware of your Fury with the assumption that you will get a refund so you do not accidentally cast Felblade in a period you could spend. You should also, at all times, make sure that you do not spend so aggressively that it blocks you from casting Eye Beam or Blade Dance on cooldown if needed. This also extends to planning your Global Cooldowns around these ability cooldowns appropriately.

This also has additional things to keep in mind for Blind Fury, as each Eye Beam cast will fully cap your Fury bar if completed. This means any Fury above 30 (or 70 if only one point is taken) will effectively be wasted, so planning your resources so you have just enough as this becomes available is ideal.

Lastly, both hero talents have a heavy impact on your general Fury management:

• Aldrachi Reaver will be generating a lot of Soul Fragments, meaning you will occasionally have bursts of extra generation tied to these effects. Make sure to react to these and spend accordingly.
• Fel-Scarred generates significantly more Fury while in Metamorphosis to go along with its increased cap. You need to be spending very aggressively during this period to try and stack up Burning Blades as high as you can.

Depending on if you are in single-target or AoE situations, this has two different rulesets:

In single-target situations, making sure that you are ready to cast Eye Beam, as it comes off cooldown, is crucial due to it having a number of effects tied to it, alongside its strong damage output. Plan so you will be in range for the entire channel, especially when using Blind Fury, and avoid beginning the channel in an area that could be dangerous before you complete the cast.

In AoE situations, it is very important to note that it is a big DPS loss to use Eye Beam against a single target if, during its cooldown, there will be a high number of add spawns. Always remember: despite Eye Beam being a strong single-target tool, it still ultimately gains a great deal in AoE situations just due to hitting extra targets. Do not throw away that extra damage by rushing to cast it on cooldown when you know there are going to be multiple enemies soon.

Please refer to our rotation page for more information.

Metamorphosis forms a large portion of the Havoc damage toolkit due to just how much damage can be poured in during the cooldown, as it amplifies your main rotational toolkit alongside providing bulk Haste. Due to this, you need to make sure that when you use this, you have as many opportunities to capitalize upon the effect. The easiest way to do so is to ensure 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.

When using Chaotic Transformation, you need to make sure as well that both Eye Beam and Blade Dance have been used and are on cooldown before activating it. If you do not do this, you will waste the cooldown refresh it provides and leave damage on the table. Additionally, when playing Fel-Scarred, you also need to make sure to cast Sigil of Flame and Immolation Aura before this, as these are also reset by the Hero tree. Make sure any time you enter Metamorphosis, you spend all of your Demonsurge activations before it expires.

Please refer to the Metamorphosis section of our rotation page for more information.

While it is an increase to keep this up all the time, it is not always necessary to do so. The most important benefit of this is during high cooldown events (such as Eye Beam and Blade Dance casts), so aiming to keep it up when these are being used is a good idea. Ideally, avoid using Vengeful Retreat to do this for Eye Beam if using Looks Can Kill, and instead use it for the follow-up Essence Break. In many cases, though, this talent will play itself to a reasonable degree if you play around effects such as Initiative, Unbound Chaos and The Hunt correctly.

Inertia requires you to be planning around periods that you deal the most damage to consume the Unbound Chaos effect and activate the window. Playing this effectively is much more comfortable when paired with A Fire Inside, especially in AoE situations, thanks to the additional charge granted, but it is not a mandatory pairing.

Generally, you want to make sure you never leave a charge on the table and waste an activation when using the two together. After that, overlap your key burst cooldowns based on your talent picks, such as Eye Beam, Essence Break and Fel Barrage with at least one application (if not 2, depending on your cooldown state).

Fel Barrage is a Fury drain window, which means you need to be aware of your current resource state when you activate it. When using this, you really want to get the full use out of it, which means you need 256 total Fury to complete it (as it drains 32 Fury per second). The best way to accomplish this is to have a full Fury bar pooled while still having Fury-positive abilities ready to go in Felblade and Sigil of Flame if you fall behind, with Blind Fury being very powerful as a "reset" point if taken. When playing this, you need to watch your resource when spending to make sure you do not push yourself too low and cause it to end early, ideally having a buffer of 40-50 Fury to stop it falling off within a GCD.

When using Essence Break, you need to keep in mind how it fits into the rest of your kit and what must be done to optimize it. In AoE builds, it will naturally always line up with the same cooldown as Eye Beam; you will always cast Eye Beam first, leading into Essence Break, followed by a Death Sweep. If you have Metamorphosis for this window, you instead cast Sweep, Meta, then Sweep with the Chaotic Transformation reset. Beyond this, you always want to have a full Death Sweep fit into the 4-second amp window and Annihilation casts for the remaining GCDs.

Fel-Scarred slightly alters this pattern, aiming instead to enter into Metamorphosis and spend all of its Demonsurge triggers before casting Essence Break. This is due to Burning Blades and other Annihilation amplifiers that make wasting any time within the debuff window too costly.

When paired with Initiative, you should use your Vengeful Retreat to trigger this immediately following your Eye Beam channel, aiming to pass over the boss hitbox and cast Essence Break so you hit your target mid-air and follow up with a Death Sweep. There is an art to aiming this to avoid downtime and get the combo off comfortably, but mastering this is a key aspect of Havoc when playing these talents.

It is challenging to optimize your character without first accurately using Raidbots to sim your own character to identify a fixed starting 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 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 is a video on how to sim your character using the website.