Havoc Demon Hunter DPS Spell Summary (Legion 7.2.5)

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. Spell Summary

With Havoc being an entirely new specialization, this page is here to cover tools available, how they work and their applications. This will cover synergies, cooldowns, and core concepts of the spec to get it working in Legion. If you alraedy have experience and are very comfortable with Havoc from the beta it is recommended to skip past this, otherwise this is a great point to get a base understanding before moving onto later sections of the guide that covers nuances of gameplay.

2. Main Resource

The primary resource for Havoc is Fury, which fuels your strongest baseline abilities. It is generated predominantly through the active ability Demon's Bite Icon Demon's Bite, or alternatively Demon Blades Icon Demon Blades if taken, and as such you are limited by your use of generation tools rather than having any passive source. You will then be spending the majority of your Fury on Chaos Strike Icon Chaos Strike and in AoE situations, Blade Dance Icon Blade Dance and Eye Beam Icon Eye Beam for DPS. Managing your Fury to maintain the flow of your rotation is very important, to maintain the build/spend gameplay.

3. Basic Abilities

These are the core skills that you will gain access to during the levelling experience on Mardum, and create the backbone of the gameplay for Havoc.

Demon's Bite Icon Demon's Bite is your primary generation tool, having no cooldown, dealing low Physical damage and generating between 20 and 30 Fury. This serves as your main method of actively generating your resource, and is cast very frequently in any empty global cooldowns to power your rotation.

Chaos Strike Icon Chaos Strike serves as the core spender for Havoc, dealing high Chaos damage at the cost of 40 Fury, and critical strikes refund 20 Fury. This is the main method of translating Fury into damage, and has the added advantage of being very Fury efficient with a suitable amount of Critical Strike rating. Managing your Fury to minimise waste from those refunds is vital.

Your rotational AoE skill comes in the form of Blade Dance Icon Blade Dance, dealing 3 quick strikes for moderate Physical damage, at the cost of 35 Fury. This has a 10-second cooldown which is reduced by Haste, and also grants 100% Dodge for 1 second after casting. This only really comes into play in large scale AoE, but is very strong in those situations as a burst tool with a low cooldown.

Eye Beam Icon Eye Beam is a large frontal AoE cooldown, dealing high Chaos damage to all targets in front of you that is guaranteed to critically strike and channelled over 2 seconds, at the cost of 50 Fury. Due to it taking more than a full Global Cooldown to channel and its high cost, it does not keep up with Chaos Strike Icon Chaos Strike on single target, but as soon as a second target is introduced it is very powerful, scaling up further with each additional target.

Throw Glaive Icon Throw Glaive deals moderate Physical damage to your primary target that also bounces to two additional targets. In the pre-patch, its strength is lacking due to no talents augmenting it being available, but for the purpose of pulling enemies, or damage on targets out of range, it can have some solid uses.

4. Movement Tools

The first of the core movement tools is Fel Rush Icon Fel Rush, charging you forward 15 yards, dealing moderate Chaos damage to targets in your path, with 2 charges and a 10-second recharge. This serves as a flexible instant tool to reposition yourself in encounters depending on mechanics, and gives you a great deal of flexibility with battlefield control. Due to the talent system being so focused on movement however, this will eventually be leveraged for increased damage, so becoming comfortable with both the distance travelled and the cooldown timer is an important skill to learn.

Vengeful Retreat Icon Vengeful Retreat serves as an alternative movement tool that deals a small amount of Physical damage, slows targets by 70% for 3 seconds, and vaults you back 15 yards on a 25-second cooldown. This is a great instant tool to disengage from dangerous situations and, when coupled with Fel Rush Icon Fel Rush, can create a large amount of distance between you and the target whilst still granting the ability to re-engage when needed.

Glide Icon Glide alongside Double Jump Icon Double Jump are more situational tools that can be used to generate momentum when moving forward toward a target, or in situations where fall damage or height management is a factor. Bear in mind that Vengeful Retreat Icon Vengeful Retreat blocks Glide from being activated for 1 second after a cast so you cannot link them together on even ground.

4.1. Movement Limitations

One point to note with both Fel Rush Icon Fel Rush and Vengeful Retreat Icon Vengeful Retreat is that both spells cause an internal movement cooldown of 1 second (which also includes Glide Icon Glide). This is to prevent interactions that cancel out the animation, which means that you need to precisely time your key presses if you are intending to link them together. With Vengeful Retreat Icon Vengeful Retreat this generally means as you land, your Fel Rush Icon Fel Rush will be active. Knowing this and playing around it is important when taking movement oriented choices such as Fel Mastery Icon Fel Mastery or Prepared Icon Prepared.

5. Important Procs and Passives

The Havoc Mastery, Mastery: Demonic Presence Icon Mastery: Demonic Presence grants a flat increase to all Chaos damage dealt by 11%, scaling with rating, and an additional passive movement speed equivalent to that value. This has a dual bonus of both increasing your output and also grating more mobility.

Shattered Souls Icon Shattered Souls has two different uses, due to its free healing when you land a killing blow on a target and the additional 20% damage dealt when you absorb a soul from a Demon. This provides an additional damage multiplier against targets when you are able to land killing blows on Demons (bear in mind this does not include lesser souls generated via the Demonic Appetite Icon Demonic Appetite talent). Note the souls will be generated if you have hit the target within the last second before death, providing some leniancy in the middle of combat.

6. Offensive Cooldowns

Metamorphosis Icon Metamorphosis is the main offensive cooldown for Havoc, lasting for 30 seconds on a 5-minute cooldown, and providing a slew of benefits whilst active. First is a flat 25% Haste increase alongside 30% Leech, and second is the augmenting of your two rotational Fury spenders:

Chaos Strike is changed to Annihilation, dealing significantly higher Chaos damage, following the same rules. This is a flat damage increase to your main spender, and encourages you to spend as much Fury as possible, ideally ending your Metamorphosis window with as little as you can to maximise your Annihilation casts.
Blade Dance is changed to Death Sweep dealing higher Physical damage and having a reduced 8-second cooldown. Against a high number of targets this should be used when available.

At the base, they deal more damage than their equivalents, but more importantly, they frontload the damage so you want to be far more focused on spenders than a balance to maintain your Fury whilst it is active, ideally ending Metamorphosis Icon Metamorphosis at the lowest Fury you can manage and then transition back into your regular rotation.

7. Additional Utility

Havoc's damage reduction tool comes with Blur Icon Blur, granting 35% damage reduction and 50% dodge for 10 seconds, on a 1-minute cooldown. Due to its low cooldown, this is a powerful defensive tool that should be used frequently and aggressively on raid mechanics to reduce the incoming damage, given that Havoc has very few other tools for active healing and survivability.

Chaos Nova Icon Chaos Nova is a 5-second stun at the cost of 30 Fury on a 1-minute cooldown, dealing low Chaos damage. This is a simple AoE point blank crowd control on targets around you.

Consume Magic Icon Consume Magic is the Havoc interrupt, which unlike most other melee, has a 20-yard range, on a 15-second cooldown with a 3-second lockout. On top of this, successful interrupts grant 50 Fury.

Darkness Icon Darkness is a unique Demon Hunter utility tool on a 3-minute cooldown. It allows all allies within 8 yards of the cast to have a 20% chance to avoid any damage from attacks, lasting for 8 seconds. This has fantastic raid applications despite its relatively low chance to occur when used on pulsing raid damage.