Havoc Demon Hunter DPS Artifact Talents/Traits and Relics (Legion 7.2.5)

This page shows you how to level up the Artifact and how to choose the right Relics for your Havoc Demon Hunters. It is updated for World of Warcraft Legion 7.2.5.

The other pages of our Havoc Demon Hunter guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

About Our Author

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Kib, a lead theorycrafter for Havoc Demon Hunters, alongside playing in Strawberry Puppy Kisses in the world top 40. You can watch his stream on Twitch or follow him on Twitter.

1. Artifact Progression

There are a multitude of ways to build your Twinblades of the Deceiver, as the paths move out in two separate directions from your first trait. Whilst this flexibility is there, only one real path is available to optimise output, as a large amount of survivability perks are mandatory on the way.

1.1. Early Progression

This path will focus on the path to the biggest gains with each trait, increasing your Single Target moderately whilst granting massive AoE damage gains.

The optimal path is quite disjointed and is not linear, instead opting to go straight for specific traits then taking advantage of the varying paths to avoid some of the low impact or mechanically niche tools. This build does assume you're running the recommended group talent build.

This covers the most important aspects of the Artifact as early as possible, hitting Icon Balanced Blades right at the start alongside Icon Sharpened Glaives to further empower Bloodlet Icon Bloodlet's strength. Following that the first gold trait is taken, being Icon Rage of the Illidari due to its huge power spike in dungeons early on. This path also avoidstaking any particularly weak traits such as Icon Deceiver's Fury and Icon Overwhelming Power until you have to get them.

1.2. Patch 7.2 Post 35 Trait Path

Following Patch 7.2 additional traits have been added upon reaching 35 traits in your current Artifact. This includes 4 additional new traits, a 4th rank in each of the previous Relic traits, and finally a new Paragon trait in Concordance of the Legionfall which all additional Artifact Power will be spent on.

The Havoc path is entirely focused on rushing to the new golden trait Chaotic Onslaught Icon Chaotic Onslaught, as it provides a significant increase to your Chaos Strike Icon Chaos Strike damage via both increased damage and increased Fury generation. There are no other Relic traits within the tree that are comparable in terms of raw increase to make it worthwhile investing in early.

Illidari Ferocity
Four points in Wide Eyes
Bladedancer's Grace
Chaotic Onslaught
Fourth rank of Critical Chaos
Fourth rank of Demon Rage
Fourth rank of Chaos Vision
Fourth rank of Sharpened Glaives
Fourth rank of Contained Fury
Fourth rank of Unleashed Demons
Personal choice filling out Illidari Knowledge, Overwhelming Power and Deceiver's Fury
Concordance of the Legionfall

2. Artifact Ability

The Twinblades begin with the active ability, Icon Fury of the Illidari, dealing high Chaos damage over 3 targets to all targets within the area on a 1 minute cooldown, at no cost. This is a fantastic tool in AoE, dealing enormous burst damage in the area you place it, and even in Single Target is very much worth the Global, especially coupled with Momentum Icon Momentum windows. This is only enhanced further by the golden trait Icon Rage of the Illidari.

3. Relic Choice

As with many classes when deciding on Relics, Item Level is generally the most important in your decision as Weapon Damage is hugely important for Havoc. The only exception to this is Icon Critical Chaos. This is worth up to 5 weapon item levels, and as such should be targetted if you can find it. Other than this, the following relics can also be useful:

Icon Unleashed Demons is mentioned here solely because if you can capitalise upon extra CDR, it is extremely powerful. In many situations however, it will not provide a significant increase, so be very aware of this.