Havoc Demon Hunter DPS Guide - Midnight

By Shadarek Updated: 2026/03/15

Havoc Demon Hunter OverviewHavoc Demon Hunter Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

Weaknesses

Havoc Demon Hunter Cheat Sheet Havoc Demon Hunter Changes in MidnightRemoved Abilities

Fel Eruption

Sigil of Flame

Sigil of Spite

Fel Barrage

Netherwalk

Demon's Bite

New Abilities

Bladecraft

Demonic Resilience

Burn It Out/Soul Cleanse

Havoc Demon Hunter Hero Talents: Aldrachi Reaver and Fel-ScarredReaver's GlaiveThrow GlaiveShattered SoulsBlade DanceChaos StrikeReaver's MarkFury of the AldrachiMetamorphosisViolent TransformationImmolation AuraMetamorphosisFel-ScarredAldrachi Reaver

Throughput & Damage Profiles: Fel-Scarred wins out in raw throughput due to positive changes making Demonsurge scale with our mastery again, while Aldrachi Reaver nerfs and changes does less damage it is still incredibly powerful funnel through Wounded Quarry despite Fury of the Aldrachi being soft capped.

Defensives: Both our Hero trees have a strong defensive option available. Fel-Scarred has Set Fire to the Pain or Improved Soul Rending, which provide a small amount of damage stagger to help against one-shots or more leech. Aldrachi Reaver has Army Unto Oneself for active damage reduction, or Incorruptible Spirit for a decent increase in self-sustain.

Playing a Havoc Demon Hunter in

Avoid Fury Waste: Fury is our main resource. It is typically spent on Chaos Strike for single target, while also trying to maintain enough to cast Blade Dance on cooldown. The exception to this can be pooling some Fury before Eye Beam comes off cooldown in order to have a large amount for your burst window.

Keep abilities on cooldown: A large portion of Havoc's damage comes from keeping abilities such as Blade Dance, Vengeful Retreat, Eye Beam, and Essence Break on near-constant cooldown (i.e., using them frequently), while spending Fury during downtime once your cooldowns have been used.

Gearing a Havoc Demon Hunter in Fel-ScarredAldrachi ReaverCritical Strike > Mastery >> Haste > VersatilityAgilityRaidbots What Professions are Best for Havoc Demon Hunter?LeatherworkingBest in Slot gear What Race is Best for Havoc Demon Hunter?Arcane TorrentConsume MagicShadowmeldSpatial RiftView ChangelogNavigation BarFeedbackDiscord server

Tags: PvE

Comments

Comment by 1503388

Thank you for this :)

Comment by toddiuszho

"What's Changed?" hasn't mentioned Vengeful Retreat being off GCD

Comment by Aeladori

Good guide, but it makes me angry that neither Astri Lohne or me is credited for the beautiful piece used as the header. I payed a lot of money to commission that.

Comment by BeastmodeNz

can we get this updated please

Comment by guatafu

the specialization has no glaring weaknesses

Good in raids, good in Arena, god in M+. Meanwhile Feral, Enhancement, Frost (DK), etc. are trash at everything.

Blizzard's balancing at it's finest.

Comment by Ordwin

Glaring weakness #1:
Can't attack single target EXCLUSIVELY. 2 out of 3 main abilities are AoE, and with corruptions even autoattack cleaves. (see railroad boss fight in Iron Docks and passively healing bubbled boss unless you just DO NOTHING for the whole bubble duration).

Glaring weakness #2:
No CC protection other than your PvP medallion. Nearly every other class has something that drops CC or make them temporarily immune to them. Not DH. You can stunlock/kite one nearly indefinitely (until some diminishing returns make them immune to the effect - usually once or twice is enough. DH can't really self-heal unless he sits on top of the target, so the HP goes down alarmingly fast if there's no one to hit constantly).

Glaring weakness #3:
No utility. All DH can offer is acceptable AoE damage and a tiny debuff that increases enemy magic damage taken. No raid buff, no raid cooldown, no raid utility. I personally don't feel that every single class should bring something essential to the table, so to speak, but all these people seem to think DH is a be-all end-all class with no downsides whatsover.

Glaring weakness #4:
ONE BUILD ONLY. Go meta or go home. Blizzard should really make 3rd spec. Maybe a 2h wielding one like Allari the Souleater.

Glaring weakness #5:
No transmog choices. Starting in Legion means that Demon Hunters get access to 14 sets less than Monks, 38 sets less than Death Knight and 63 sets less than vanilla classes. I don't even know why the heck they keep the class requirement on sets anyway - none of those set bonuses work anymore anyway. They're all set inactive as "legacy" sets.

Glaring weakness #6:
Everyone hates you, no matter what class they play. People who main useless classes (feral, frost dk, warlocks, etc) are especially salty about it because their class sucks for ages already and will probably not get better in Shadowlands either, but they stubbornly continue their depressed existences, only getting more toxic every patch. I get it, envy is a %^&*! and the grass is always greener at your neighbor's.

Comment by jabbarulez

There is a little typo:

"Vengeance Demon Hunter Weaknesses" - that should be Havoc :)

Comment by YodaSuperstar

Weaknesses :
- Melee

xD hit me right in the feels

Comment by korndebouc

Hello and thank you for this guide.
I was looking at ranked DH on Sylvanas, and I can see that they cast Blade Dance / Death Sweep every 5 seconds.
You can clearly see it on this log example :
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/FA94hfryXKYNpanB#fight=10&type=casts&source=13

Is there an explanation about it ? Mine is every 7,5 s with 650 haste. The player in the example has 500 haste and casts it every 5 seconds the whole fight. Even if I gear up to 1000 haste, I'm at 6,9s...I'm a little bit surprised. I can see he benefits from Power Infusion, but not sure it's granting him enough haste to reduce the interval to 5s.

Comment by Kjeldor33

There's some leftover copy/paste from the Vengeance guide.

"Vengeance Demon Hunter is a spec that is good for players who enjoy high mobility tanks with self-sustain."

"Havoc Demon Hunter is a dual-wielding, leather wearing tank specialization with a mix of damage reduction, self-healing, and high mobility and enemy control. While we are not fully based around preventing damage like Protection Warriors, our toolkit does allow us to reduce significant amounts of damage. In addition, we are one of the two specs that can heal based on damage taken, the other being Blood Death Knights."

Comment by Akira1023

I think having the soulrend build listed under the M+ cheat sheet is misleading. Anyone using the "cheat sheet" to get a build is not going to be the type of player who cares about a build that does 1-5% more dps on paper but is infinitely more complicated to play, and in a few situations worse as well as very unsafe to play with the current dungeons. I think you should change the cheat sheet to show the eye beam build or at least add both in.

Comment by wolf391

after 10.2. your talent build makes the DEMON BLADES a passive effect. How the hell do you then generate fury ? Zen meditating before the mob ?

Comment by grizlee

How often do tooltips update on wowhead?
Based off my logs with Spiked Counterweight, I think the trinket might be viable in raid settings for Havoc.
Has been doing almost 10 percent of my dmg consistently in boss fights.

Comment by jeffinkns

I can't access the discord link, does anyone have the link?

Comment by Brianno

Imagine stating that being a melee is a weakness.

Comment by Primalcrux

" Metamorphosis does not work as a proper AoE cooldown." ?

Comment by Moonpetal

What about Entropic Embrace? Entropic Embrace is the reason I remade a void elf DH, despite having a nelf DH since the original Legion! You get 5% damage bonus for 12 seconds per minute. According to my calculations, that's a 1% damage bonus on average. How does that not make them ideal for havoc or devourer DH?

Havoc Demon Hunter DPS Guide - Midnight

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