Dragonflight Retrospectives & War Within Wishlists
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Elemental ShamanRestoration Shaman
Affliction Warlock
Havoc Demon Hunter’s Dragonflight Experience
Havoc Demon Hunter has been at the peak of its power multiple times in Dragonflight so far. This editorial will go deeper into how Havoc has done in each of the seasons of Dragonflight, as well as what it gained leaving Shadowlands behind, and what to hope for to keep going forward into The War Within.
- Season 1 – Coming into Dragonflight, Havoc had massive changes to its base design with many actively used talents being added to the kit. With Essence Break and Momentum being able to be taken with Demonic for the first time, and Initiative being added, the skill ceiling of the spec was raised as the movement builds became the top performers in all scenarios. The number of added abilities Havoc gained access to made the class a much harder class to play right out of the gate from Season 4 of Shadowlands, where Sinful Brand extension builds dropped even Blade Dance from the rotation.
While Havoc started this season incredibly strong, multiple buffs and changes to other specs constantly during this season quickly lowered it from a top single target and AoE spec to being mediocre at single target scenarios with good AoE. Havoc at this time also had a frustrating design in single target, where Cycle of Hatred and Shattered Destiny were superior single target options forcing you to maintain uptime to keep Metamorphosis uptime near 85%, and ruining any form of a burst profile. When this season ended, Havoc was pretty average as a raid spec after starting strong, however, it stayed as a meta option in Mythic+ despite survivability issues in one of the two meta comps that were being utilized at the end of the season.
- Season 2 – Entering into Season 2, Havoc received a weaker tier set than the previous tier, which again focused on uptime while Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible came with many single-target oriented bosses and was generally a weaker tier for melee. Havoc was still good enough to be run in raids, but it was a stark drop-off from the previous season and required large 7-8% single target buffs which left it mediocre instead of outright bad. There was also a minor shuffle of talents which did nothing to alleviate issues, making Netherwalk an easier grab for no-movement builds but impossible to take without a massive DPS loss and 2 talent commitments in regular mythic+ setups.
Much like Season 1, in Mythic+ Havoc had massive survivability issues. The lack of access to Netherwalk, no form of Physical DR, and the only real defensive option it had available being a 20% DR on a 1-minute cooldown in Blur, left it in situations where it could die 1-2 key levels lower than high keys were being pushed to without external defensive support. This issue lumped into the Season 2 ‘God Comp’ fiasco, and Havoc, lacking both high damage and the utility all the meta DPS specs brought, was left in a position where it was entirely unwanted for the back half of the season.
- Season 3 – With the drop of Season 3, Havoc Demon Hunter received a Rework and many additions to its talent tree and toolkit that brought it back to, and even surpassed the strongest it had been in the expansion. While I will get into the rework in better detail below, the changes to pathing giving Netherwalk, and Deflecting Dance being added, shored up its defensive weaknesses. The changes to movement-based builds from Inertia did a significant amount to make the class feel like less work to play and Metamorphosis was finally changed to be a 2-minute cooldown which fits much better into mythic+ pull cadence and raid design. In short, the rework brought everything Havoc needed in changes and more, putting it in the strongest spot it had been defensively and offensively, and widely considered the best the playstyle has been in a long time.
Talent Trees
The new Talent Tree system in Dragonflight has been a refreshing change in access to player choice and opened up real build and playstyle differences that did not realistically exist in previous expansions. Havoc in particular has felt like a big winner; the class lacked spells and abilities for years until this system came in and forced the class to get real design work put into implementing new talents or old powers Havoc used to have access to through borrowed power systems. While not all talent trees are made equal, Havoc gained a lot and feels in a great position in both iterations it has received, with the 10.2 rework leaving it in an incredible spot.
Tier Sets
Tier sets are one of the few things I would say have not been largely positive in this expansion. Looking at all the tier sets Havoc has had, only a single one of the 6 total tier set bonuses had any change to the rotation. This only happened after a forced rework to the Season 3 Tier Set that was originally designed without the 10.2 talent tree rework in mind. Let’s take a look at each:
Season 1 Tier Set
The Season 1 Tier Set is particularly boring and passive, while it was arguably our strongest tier set prior to being nerfed leaving the tier, it did nothing to change our rotation. The 4pc carried while typically being near a 100% uptime damage amp while you were on a target due to the proc rate being far too high.
Season 2 Tier Set
The Season 2 Tier Set sucked in design and power. The 4pc effect was a stack system to try to force Cycle of Hatred to not always be best, though this was already the case and it caused you to have a 45% to 60% amp on Eye Beam which did very little damage. For the majority of the tier set, power was baked into the 2pc with a 70-80% uptime on a 10% agility amp, but any downtime would drop this further and it felt like a worse version of the Season 1 4pc.
Season 3 Tier Set
The Season 3 Tier Set was almost a tragedy on release, but quickly changed before the patch went live with the Havoc rework changing the 2pc to automatically cast Throw Glaive if you have a charge available. This savied tons of GCDs and Fury in Furious Throws setups. Throw Glaive is pretty largely disliked as a rotational GCD that costs Fury, so this tier set saved the build playstyle, making it feel smooth for season 3. The 4pc meanwhile actually makes The Hunt feel like a real cooldown, nearly doubling the damage per cast and typically reducing the cooldown from 90s to 45-50s depending on uptime and procs. There’s also simply a satisfying feeling to the number of glaives being thrown during a Blade Dance cast.
The Rework of 10.2
Havoc received a moderate in size, but massive in impact, rework for patch 10.2. Large changes to pathing and talent costs, removal of one of the most divisive talents (Fodder to the Flame), and many welcome exciting talent additions came into the tree. This section will cover the implications of the rework which had a major impact despite a moderately small number of changes to the Havoc Spec Tree.
Starting with the first gate at the top of the tree, the structure entirely changed in the rework. Previously, Netherwalk and Fel Eruption were in the second gate of the tree, which required a significant commitment to losing a better talent to take. Both of these talents were moved up a slot both going into the first gate and becoming required pathing nodes. Mortal Dance was put into a choice node with a new talent, Deflecting Dance. The previous 2 seconds increased duration on Immolation Aura was changed out and Demon Hide was brought in providing some much-needed physical damage reduction for Havoc on a node that is worth taking for the damage increase alone.
Moving on to the second gate, Scars of Suffering was added to help with Havoc’s continuous battle against threat in the slot that Netherwalk used to be in. Serrated Glaive was shifted down and changed to a 1-point node, while took the slot it had occupied. Unbound Chaos was reduced to a 1-point node and traded positions with Tactical Retreat. On the opposite side of the tree, Growing Inferno was also changed to a 1-point node to reduce talent cost to move down the tree. This section remained one of the least changed with just some minor changes to pathing.
In the final gate, we had the majority of changes with some new talents, pathing changes, and many merges of talents into choice nodes to reduce bloat. As previously noted, Fodder to the Flame was also deleted from Havoc, and Elysian Decree was moved from that slot as the choice node, to the Demon Hunter general talent tree. For talents merged into a choice node, we have Chaos Theory / Glaive Tempest, Inner Demon / Restless Hunter, and Relentless Onslaught / Soulscar. Momentum also became a choice node with the new Inertia talent. This was a LOT of changes that made it significantly easier to navigate due to the reduced number of required nodes.
As for new talents, A Fire Inside adds a good amount of RNG to the amount of throughput specifically in AoE. This has synergy with another new talent, Inertia, which only procs from Unbound Chaos empowered Fel Rush casts which A Fire Inside feeds into. was also added, doing 7 dice rolls at a 7.77% chance to increase any Chaos damage you have by 17% per successful roll.
Overall, this rework put a lot of value into Immolation Aura builds, with A Fire Inside and Inertia synergy for extra damage amps. Due to the point investment you avoid, and Shattered Destiny, which were comparatively nerfed with the change of Demonic from 6 to 5 seconds and Shattered Destiny going from 8 to 12 fury per 0.1s, have moved Havoc away from an Metamorphosis uptime spec that gave toxic game-play implications when mechanics came into the picture. To go with the previous nerfs to Metamorphosis uptime, it was also reduced to a 2-minute cooldown with a nerf from 24s to 20s duration. This allowed for better cooldown lining on fights and Mythic+ scenarios as a widely positive change to the spec. Inertia being the meta talent, in turn, has also greatly reduced the Fel Rush spamming movements of Momentum, while continuing to keep it in the rotation for a more satisfying damage amp window.
Closing Thoughts on Havoc
Havoc has had a great expansion despite a small dip in the middle of Season 2. It has, by design, gained a lot of great abilities, and seems to have a cohesive design towards damage amp windows around Eye Beam and Essence Break. While the movement-based rotation isn’t for everyone, a good portion of the Demon Hunter population is happy with how the design has settled, and, more than ever, builds without rotational movement are viable at a minor DPS loss for players that would like to opt out. The rework of 10.2 greatly fine-tuned many parts of the talent tree, and removed the majority of player complaints due to lack of access to utility and defensive options without large throughput losses, while reducing movement requirements with Inertia being added. There were also QoL changes not mentioned above such as Felblade changing to a 0.5s global, making the button worth using for movement and building without a large global lockout in your rotation disrupting you.
Overall, the class is in one of the best positions it ever has been, and should be in an easy spot to build off of going into The War Within. In design, the access to utility, defensive options, and damage profile leave Havoc Demon Hunter in an incredibly flexible spot; it has few situations where it cannot excel (pending tuning). The base spec that exists now needs little, if any, work and leaves me wondering how Hero Talents will interact with Havoc and how the spec will evolve going into The War Within.
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.
