We break down all the reasons you should consider playing Havoc Demon Hunter in Patch 10.1 and even throw in a few reasons of why you might not. From all the changes since launch to the new tier set bonuses coming in 10.1, join us as we explore Dragonflight Season 2 Havoc Demon Hunter!
Why You Should Play a Spec in Dragonflight Season 2 Series
Blood DK
Feral Druid
Preservation Evoker
Beast Mastery Hunter
Arcane Mage
Mistweaver Monk
Shadow Priest
Assassination Rogue
Elemental Shaman
Protection Warrior
Dragonflight Season 2 Demon Hunter Tier Set
Why You Should Play Havoc Demon Hunter in Dragonflight Season 2 (and Why You Shouldn’t)
Havoc Demon Hunter has had a unique and polarizing play-style upon entering Dragonflight, based around Momentum and similar movement based talents. Havoc is extremely unique in the way it must leverage its positioning and movement to consistently deal optimal DPS especially around its burst cooldown windows Eye Beam and Essence Break while utilizing Initiative. Constant damage with heavy burst on a 40 second cooldown timer has made it a desirable PvE choice in the expansion with on demand burst being a powerful Mythic+ tool and it is keeping the theme entering Season 2 of Dragonflight. The current Havoc design has had a widely different reception when compared to previous expansions, with a large difference in players that love and hate the movement based playstyle which is not for everyone. Here is a table summarizing why you should (and shouldn’t) play Havoc Demon Hunter in Dragonflight Season 2:
| Why You Should | Why You Shouldn’t |
Why You Should Play Havoc Demon Hunter in Dragonflight Season 2
Havoc Utility in Mythic+ and Raid
Havoc has a good amount of utility it can provide, most are generally stronger in Mythic+ scenarios instead of Raid, however Chaos Brand makes Demon Hunter as a class almost required to bring one due to how powerful of a raid buff it is. A full list of the utility Havoc Demon Hunter brings can be found below:
- Chaos Brand: One of the most powerful raid buffs in the game, near required in raid content and a great selling point for Havoc Demon Hunter in Mythic+.
- Imprison: Can be used as a true out-of-combat CC to skip past mobs or stop patrols, or used as a stop on casts.
- Consume Magic: Short cooldown purge of enemy magic effects.
- Chaos Nova: AoE Stun, can either be used to help your tank kite or to cancel important casts.
- Sigil of Misery: AoE disorient, can be used as a cast stop but is less useful due to the 2 second trigger time.
- Darkness: Group/Raid defensive, can be nice for some rot mechanics however the RNG aspect makes darkness fairly undesirable in most situations.
- Fel Eruption: If required can be talented for a short cooldown Single Target stun for cast stops, however it’s traded for DPS.
- Mortal Dance: Unique AoE Mortal Strike, a powerful tool against Sanguine in Mythic+ and could potentially see niche usage outside of sanguine.
Havoc Damage Profile Strengths
Havoc has a few different positives to how it deals damage. In single target and AoE scenarios, the rotation does not change, this causes Havoc to deal great priority damage while doing all the AoE damage it will always deal which is very desirable in all scenarios to be able to choose where a large portion of your damage is going. Havoc also has a powerful amount of burst damage around Eye Beam and Essence Break on a 40-second cooldown, with a larger burst and sustained single target provided by Metamorphosis which is always preferable over a flat damage profile.
Havoc Survivability in Raid
The sustain of Havoc via talents such as Soul Rending, Collective Anguish, Demonic Appetite, and Charred Warblades is exceptionally high causing your health bar to consistently pop back quickly after dangerous mechanics. The passive DR of Demonic Wards and Illidari Knowledge makes Havoc not exceptionally susceptible to magic damage which makes up the bulk of raid mechanics. Blur is also up for dangerous raid mechanics consistently on a short 1-minute cooldown, all together in raids this makes Havoc one of the most powerful defensive options for the damage profiles raid bosses typically output.
Talent Buffs
Late into the cycle Havoc Demon Hunter received some buffs to a couple of talents. The previously unused talent Serrated Glaive was changed causing it additionally to now buff the damage of Chaos Strike and Annihilation as well as the previous Eye Beam. Accelerated Blade received an excellent rework instead of dealing additional damage per bounce of Throw Glaive, it now deals significantly more damage on the initial target and the damage falls off per bounce. This rework caused a good increase in Havoc’s priority damage and Single Target damage of the AoE-focused builds, while being a very minor nerf in 3+ targets it is a welcome change.
Why You Shouldn’t Play Havoc Demon Hunter in Dragonflight Season 2
Remaining Bugs
With Season 2 well on the way there is a long list of bugs for Havoc that have gone untouched so far which I will list below:
While this is not a comprehensive list of all Havoc bugs, it is a list of the most recent and problematic bugs. Original issues such as Fel Rush clipping the ground and shooting you significantly further than intended still exist.
Bad Talent Tree Changes
In patch 10.0.7 Havoc received a couple of minor node changes in their spec tree to make talents such as Netherwalk and Fel Eruption more accessible and easier to take. However, these changes had the reverse of the intended effect, locking the raid builds out of Fel Eruption without committing an extra point to a very low-value talent. For the Mythic+ build, Netherwalk was also locked behind an additional talent in Improved Chaos Strike; requiring a massive loss in DPS to drop 2 talent points to take Netherwalk.
Tier Set Downgrade
- (2) Set Bonus – Demon Hunter Havoc 10.1 Class Set 2pc: Every 175 Fury you spend, gain Seething Fury, increasing your Agility by 8% for 6 sec.
- (4) Set Bonus – Choosing Rosy: Each time you gain Seething Fury, gain 15 Fury and the damage of your next Eye Beam is increased by 15%, stacking 5 times.
The Havoc Demon Hunter tier set for Season 2 is not by design bad, but it is however tuned weaker than our previous tier set from Season 1 and the majority of the sets of other specs in Season 2. While it did receive a buff, it stayed unfortunately low value and instead of receiving another buff the old Season 1 4-Set bonus Demon Hunter Havoc Class Set 4pc was nerfed from 8% to 5% damage instead to force us to swap off of it sooner. Outside of tuning concerns, the tier set does nothing to change how the spec plays existing as an almost entirely passive set except for the minor fury gains making some builds feel less fury starved.
Lack of Class Changes
In general, Havoc is mostly the exact same class it was on Dragonflight launch, with no changes to the rotational playstyle. While there has been a couple of changes slated for Season 2, they were targeting previously unused or AoE build talents. Havoc struggles at doing pure single target and doesn’t have the option to talent into powerful single target talents in general, leaving many players frustrated that nothing had been changed. It is also worth noting that there has been an exceptional amount of players unhappy with Momentum and the movement-based play style being significantly stronger which has thus far seen no signs of changing for Season 2 of Dragonflight.
Single Target Tuning
Havoc struggles to do good damage in pure single-target scenarios. This does not mean it always does bad single-target in all cases, when it comes to Mythic+ or to priority damage in AoE fights havoc excels at pumping extreme amounts of AoE for free while dealing the full single-target damage it can do. However, there are little to no options to swap around talents to allow Havoc to deal better with single-target DPS in scenarios that have little to no cleave or AoE. This is unlike the majority of other specs in the game, leaving it with an extremely large weakness coming into Season 2 of Dragonflight with the fights in Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible looking largely single target focused.
Defensive Capabilities (in High Keys)
While Havoc has an exceptionally powerful defensive toolkit for the majority of raid scenarios and low to mid-level Mythic+, this is typically not the case for high-end Mythic+. At the highest of push keys Havoc struggles with having very few tools to deal with large hits, specifically physical damage is a massive issue but the 20% damage reduction of Blur can be too little to cover a mechanic, while blur is typically also the only took havoc has beyond a niche talent in Demon Muzzle. While Netherwalk is an option that can be taken, it is a significant enough DPS loss that it is typically avoided and havoc has to rely on other class’s external defensive options to live many mechanics, especially anything on a timer than is shorter than 1 minute.
About The Author:
I’m Shadarek, a semi-hardcore player currently raiding as an officer of Resonate on Bleeding Hollow US. My stream can be found Here; typically I will be streaming keys or mythic raid progression and reclears. I can also commonly be found in The Fel Hammer Demon Hunter discord helping when I can.
For more information on playing Havoc Demon Hunter, please see our class guide updated for Dragonflight:
Havoc Demon Hunter Guide
