Opening Thoughts
Havoc Demon Hunter is receiving significant changes in Patch 10.2 Guardians of the Dream. Most of these changes come in the form of reformatting of both the Havoc specialization and the Demon Hunter class talent trees, however, some new and exciting talent additions are coming bundled with the changes.
In general, the changes open up the ability to take more talents and provide some important Quality of Life improvements as well as better access to general defensive options. Mobility is also improved significantly when accounting for talents such as the ability to choose
Inertia over
Momentum, or
Dash of Chaos for players less used to the movement based rotation.
Havoc Tree Changes
Havoc Tree Change Thoughts
The changes are a significant buff for Havoc Demon Hunter through a mix of survivability, utility, mobility, and currently damage pending tuning. The changes to the first gate with the points in the area being freed up are great, allowing you to talent survivability such as
Netherwalk and
Deflecting Dance while old options we couldn't justify taking such as
Fel Eruption went baseline. These changes feel better when choosing your talents while not feeling pushed into losing significant niche defensive options for damage.
The tree has some minor issues with pathing such as
A Fire Inside being on the opposite sides of the immolation aura talents, but being in proximity with
Inertia and
Unbound Chaos makes sense.
Inner Demon and
Fel Barrage also have frustrating counter-synergy which makes it difficult to utilize both together while sustaining your fury.
Critical Chaos is also an incredibly weak talent blocking off the new
Dash of Chaos which is a great accessibility tool with a lot of cost to take as is.
What's Changed?
A significant amount of changes hit the tree, mostly opening up options with very few removals of talents. Two talents were outright removed in
Felfire Heart and
Fodder to the Flame, while
Growing Inferno was changed in functionality to work on the cast of
Immolation Aura to soften the lost. A couple of talents were shifted to be baseline in
Demonic Appetite which was reduced to 20 fury and
Fel Eruption to open up options in the first gate. These changes coupled with movement of nodes made it required to take
Netherwalk and a new talent in
Deflecting Dance (or the other choice on both nodes) for pathing to get through the tree, forcing us to take survivability or utility in all situations to cause it to not be a choice of DPS or not. Many of our 2 point nodes such as
Critical Chaos and
Serrated Glaive have been changes from 2 point nodes to 1 pointers giving us the ability to take more options.
In the second set of changes, talent locations changes significantly and many nodes were combined to be choice nodes in the bottom half of the tree. Soulrend was renamed to
Soulscar and made into a choice node with
Relentless Onslaught,
Glaive Tempest and
Chaos Theory were merged into a choice node, and lastly
Restless Hunter and
Inner Demon were put into a choice node. This shifted around how many points you needed in the bottom gate by pushing
Serrated Glaive up into the second talent gate.
Initiative was nerfed from 12% to 10%. Lastly,
Fel Barrage was reworked to drain 32 fury per second up to a max of 8 seconds requiring some effort to sustain it for its full duration and max damage.
What's New?
Plenty of new talents have popped up, which will be listed below going from the top of the tree and working down it.
- Dash of Chaos: This talent allows you to Fel Rush back to your starting position shortly after the cast, using the global and dealing damage.
- Demon Hide: Simply a 5% increase to magic damage dealt and a 5% decrease to Physical damage taken. This is an incredibly powerful node that puts a lot of work in against the complaints of Havoc Demon Hunters weakness to Physical damage intake, while being tied to DPS to not be a survivability versus damage choice.
- Deflecting Dance: A form of Blade Dance dodge making a return, this is a short duration 15% max hp shield that works against direct damage. This talent is great that it allows you to save blade dance for a defensive option in expected and needed situations that Havoc previously lacked flexible survivability tools.
- Scars of Suffering: Another simple node, 4% versatility is enough power to almost always warrant a point on its own. The 8% threat reduction however is exceptionally welcome for Mythic+ where Havoc Demon Hunter is notorious for threat ripping issues.
- Inertia: Choice node directly competing against Momentum, focused in a stronger short-term buff for burst windows while also allowing significantly less movement in Havoc's rotation compared to the previous seasons of the expansion.
- : A significant damage increase to any ability dealing Chaos damage, it essentially has 7 rolls of a 7.77% chance per damage event and each roll separately will deal 21% damage if it hits.
- A Fire Inside: This talent turns Immolation Aura into a 2 charge system, allowing you to overlap multiple Immolation Aura casts. This has good synergy with talents such as Unbound Chaos and Inertia while also introducing some fun RNG to the rotation.
While many of the choices such as
Demon Hide and
Scars of Suffering are generic, they go towards fixing the issues Havoc has had in harder content such as Cutting Edge raiding or high end Mythic+ making them feel like great additions.
Deflecting Dance similarly brings back one of the most loved mechanics removed from Havoc, allowing for skillful expression of
Blade Dance as a defensive tool.
Dash of Chaos is a good talent option making
Momentum significantly easier to play, as both the original
Fel Rush cast and the Dash of Chaos will proc momentum however due to it costing a talent point and triggering another gcd it seems it will not be optimal to run.
Inertia is a personal favourite of mine, breaking up the
Fel Rush on cooldown playstyle that current
Momentum forces, allowing for a rotation with significantly less movement and powerful buff windows.
A Fire Inside has exceptional synergy with Inertia, causing you to be able to double cast
Unbound Chaos during cooldown windows by banking your charges and giving you about 40% more casts of Immolation Aura/Unbound Chaos by the RNG resets. Lastly, is a surprising new choice. The large RNG swings of the talent are mostly covered by the extremely high amount of damage events on Havoc which means it mostly ends up just being a large aura buff and requiring you to talent into
Any Means Necessary if you have committed the points to Chaotic Disposition.
Slight Talent Reworks
There have been some minor changes and reworks to talents worth noting.
- Critical Chaos, Growing Inferno, Unbound Chaos, Serrated Glaive, and Soulscar were all changed to be 1 point talents with a large part of their power dropped to account for the free talent point.
- Glaive Tempest had its values pushed around, going from a 20s to 25s cooldown, increasing its damage by 15%, and changing it from a 5 target soft cap to 8 target soft cap.
- Fel Barrage was changed in a similar sense to Frost Death Knight's Breath of Sindragosa - now draining 32 fury per second to continuously stream damage out to nearby enemies as a passive buff, capped to 8 seconds. This causes a large shift in playstyle during the window to be certain to maintain the buff until it times out.
- Serrated Glaive received great changes, it now is both applied by and buffs Throw Glaive and Chaos Strike. This is a significant improvement over the previous iteration of being applied exclusively through Throw Glaive and buffing Eye Beam.
- Shattered Destiny was nerfed, now taking 10 fury per 0.1s extension up from the previous 8 fury.
- is now triggered by Throw Glaive when talented into Furious Throws.
Demon Hunter Class Tree Changes
Class Tree Changes Thoughts
The Demon Hunter Class Tree received a significant amount of changes to pathing and talent placements. We gained multiple extra points from various sources,
Unrestrained Fury being shifted to a one pointer,
Sigil of Flame becoming baseline, while both
Illidari Knowledge and
Will of the Illidari were turned from 2 pointers to 1 and buffed to 5%. In general many talents were removed or changed which I have listed below. The biggest change is
Elysian Decree being moved to the class tree as a keystone in competition with
The Hunt and
Collective Anguish.
Overall the changes are extremely positive, it feels less punishing to take wanted talents or utility and there is wiggle room for a minor DPS loss if you for example need
Pitch Black by dropping stacks of .
What's Changed?
The changes to the class tree were not as significant to Havoc, and for the most part new talents were avoided except for a couple.
What's New?
Very few new things were added, however
Live by the Glaive was added in the position of
Misery in Defeat, mostly a tank or pvp focused talent that Havoc is unlikely to run in PvE content. was added which massively increases the damage of
Sigil of Flame making it an important rotational button.
Champion of the Glaive was added on a choice node with
Master of the Glaive, giving increased range instead of a movespeed snare which seems to also be for Vengeance instead of Havoc.
Gameplay & Problems
With the rework of the talent trees Havoc Demon Hunter has had a pretty large shift in its fury economy.
Isolated Prey no longer giving fury on fel rush,
Demonic Appetite being nerfed from 30 to 20 fury while becoming baseline, and
Critical Chaos becoming a 1 point node from talent changes significantly nerf the fury coming in. Additionally, with the loss of our season 2 tier set another minor fury source is lost. With these changes,
Felblade was changed to be a shortened 0.5s global to have significantly more impact by easily fitting in the rotation and
Sigil of Flame was made baseline with supporting talents increasing its damage output. After all the changes typically Havoc still always has fury to spend and use globals, however moments of running dry on fury can happen much easier than before and the playstyle feels less frantic and spammy compared to the Season 2 iteration.
The fury changes coupled with the nerf of
Demonic from 6s to 5s and the nerf of
Shattered Destiny from 8 fury per 0.1s extension to 10 fury allowed for
Metamorphosis to be shifted to a 2 minute cooldown. This feels smoother due to our cooldown cadence of 40 seconds from
Essence Break and
Eye Beam causing everything to line up properly, while resulting in Havoc having reduced uptime on Metamorphosis which was a major complaint due to the feast or famine nature requiring uptime.
Problems
There are still some issues that remain despite the rework being largely positive that I would like to highlight however.
- Inner Demon while being a significantly powerful AoE talent feels awful in many situations. Due to Inner Demon being fired on Chaos Strike you typically only have the choice to stop spending fury to hold it casting it. Inner Demon takes too long to land and explode at the target location, causing it able to miss the target it was fired at if they are moving while you cast. The hitbox is also quite small which causes it to have issues hitting all mobs in large AoE scenarios.
- The Hunt is still hard target capped at 5 and requires stepping through mobs to apply the DoT debuff when used in melee. Ideally having it apply in an AoE around the target or some similar workaround could feel significantly better to play with.
Closing Thoughts
With the changes Havoc Demon Hunter appears to be in a great spot moving into Patch 10.2 Guardians of the Dream. The options to reduce movement requirements in the rotation are incredibly welcome, new talents are exciting, and bugs/issues are not rampant. Unexpected changes like 2 minute
Metamorphosis are largely enjoyed while talents like
Scars of Suffering and
Demon Hide help to cover our pain points high end Mythic+ content. The buffs to the tier set round out everything to put Havoc in a powerful and exciting position heading into the next tier.
