How To Improve As Havoc Demon Hunter — Dragonflight 10.0.7
On this page, you will find out how you can improve at playing Havoc Demon Hunter in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.0.7. We list the common mistakes that you should try to avoid and the small details that can greatly improve your performance.
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. 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. 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.
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 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
too much to block 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.
Please refer to the Fury management section of our rotation page for more information.
Eye Beam
This has two separate situations depending on the number of targets:
Single Target
In single-target situations, 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.
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, 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, so do not
throw away that extra damage by rushing to cast it on cooldown in AoE
situations.
Please refer to our rotation page for more information.
Cooldown & Burst Window Management
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 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.
Please refer to the Metamorphosis section of our rotation page for more information.
Momentum
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 casts though, this talent will play itself to a reasonable it you
play around effects such as
Initiative,
Unbound Chaos
and
The Hunt correctly.
Essence Break Windows
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 Eyebeam first leading into Essence Break followed by a
Death Sweep.
If you have
Metamorphosis for this window, it is often paired
to cast Sweep, Meta, then Sweep with the
Chaotic Transformation reset.
Regularly beyond this, you will always just want to have a full
Death Sweep fit into the 4-second amp window and
Annihilation
casts otherwise.
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, it 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.
Changelog
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Pre-Patch.
More Demon Hunter Guides
Guides from Other Classes
With our usual writer, Wordup, being unavailable for an indefinite period of time, this guide has been updated for Dragonflight by Shadarek, who currently raids in top 50 US guild Resonate-Bleeding Hollow.
- Dragonflight Patch 10.0.7 Hotfixes: March 22nd
- Class Set Updates and Clarifications in Patch 10.1: March 22nd
- Dragonflight Patch 10.1 PTR Dev Notes: March 22nd
- Aberrus the Shadowed Crucible Raid Testing: March 24th
- Ebyssian and Emberthal Epilogue Cutscene in Patch 10.0.7
- How to Unlock Ancient Zul'Gurub Crafting in Patch 10.0.7
- To-Do List for Dragonflight Patch 10.0.7 Week #1
- A List of Undocumented Changes in Dragonflight Patch 10.0.7