[ARCHIVED] Demon Hunter Beginner Guide WoW – Overview & Builds for ALL Specs

[ARCHIVED]: This build has been archived, which means it is no longer being updated. However, this web-page will be left up for those who still would like to refer to it.

Guide Written By: Dottz Gaming

Table of Contents

1. Video
2. Introduction
3. Specializations
   1. Havoc
   2. Vengeance
4. Contact Info
5. Update Log

Video

Introduction

Welcome to DottzGaming.com’s beginner guide for the Demon Hunter class in World of Warcraft! This guide will give you a brief overview to what the class has to offer, its specializations and new player focused talent setups to get you going on your adventures through Azeroth! If you are brand new to WoW and are reading this guide, I also recommend checking out my WoW Complete Beginner Guide, which will teach you all non-class specific things you need to know to get yourself started in WoW.

Demon hunters, also known as the Illidari, are the disciples of Illidan Stormrage. They embrace fel and chaotic magics, believing that these dangerous magical forces are necessary to challenge the Burning Legion. Wielding demonic powers, they’ve also come to develop demonic features that resemble the demons they’ve slain.

Demon hunters made a pact to fight fire with fire, using chaos and demonic magic against those who originally wielded these forces. They also ritually blind themselves in exchange for spectral sight that enables them to better sense their prey even if they are stealthed or trying to hide behind walls, wearing their trademark blindfold to cover up these self-inflicted wounds. They wield warglaives in battle and call upon demonic magic to augment their abilities.

Demon Hunters have two specialization options: Vengeance, a tank specialization, and Havoc, a damage dealing specialization. Both of the Demon Hunter’s specs have a focus on melee damage and high mobility, and they specialize in strong area of effect burst damage. Demon Hunter’s also have the ability to double jump, with a third click of your jump button having your demon hunter spread its wings and glide to safety. A Demon Hunter’s primary resource is Fury, which they build up with certain attacks and spend on others. In addition, they wear leather armor, use Agility as their primary stat to augment their physical and chaos attacks, and can utilize a wide variety of weapons, including warglaives, fist weapons, one handed axes and swords.

Races that can play the Demon Hunter class are as follows:

• Blood Elf (Horde)
• Night Elf (Alliance)

Now that we have a brief summary of the class out of the way, let’s get into the specs and what they have to offer. The following builds are going to be tailored to new players, looking to make your rotation as easy and straightforward while adding as few additional skills to your action bars as possible. Thankfully when it comes to Demon Hunter, since the class is pretty straight forward, the difference between a “new player” and “advanced” talent selection isnt very different, as many of the Demon Hunter’s available talents are additional passive abilities. However, If you’re looking for a more advanced guide or something focused on purely dealing as much damage as possible or optimizing your tank for high end group play, I recommend checking out Icy-Veins or WoWhead for write-ups more tailored towards raids, mythic+ and rated PvP.

Specializations

Havoc

Talents

1. Demonic Appetite – Chaos Strike, one of your primary Fury spenders, has a chance to spawn purple soul fragments on the ground that not only grant more fury, but give you a heal which is extremely helpful when questing!
2. Burning Hatred – This talent gives your Immolation Aura, a skill in your arsenal that cloaks you in flame and that you’ll be using on cooldown, the added ability to generate fury over its duration.
3. Trail of Ruin – Gives your Blade Dance, a powerful AoE skill that you have, a hard-hitting DoT on its final strike!
4. Soul Rending – Grants you passive leech at all times, and additional leech when you pop your biggest offensive cooldown, Metamorphosis! This turns some of your damage into additional healing, helping you passively heal up while you remain offensive!
5. First Blood – Makes Blade Dance’s fury cost less, while increasing its power against the first target hit!
6. Fel Eruption – Strong single target stun to help you stop enemies in their tracks for 4 seconds!
7. Demonic – Your Eye Beam, which is your strongest Fury spender, also puts you into demon form – which is the form you enter when you use Metamorphosis – for 6 seconds after it finishes dealing damage!
8. Mortal Rush – A PvP talent that decreases the amount of healing targets hit by Fel Rush (your primary movement skill) receive!
9. Reverse Magic – Removes harmful magical effects from yourself and nearby allies, sending them back to the caster. This is a really strong utility skill that Demon Hunters can provide to their groups in a PvP environment!
10. Detainment – Makes your Imprison, a single target CC that Demon Hunter’s have, into a stronger version of itself by preventing targets effected by it from receiving damage or healing and making it last longer. However, this does come at a cost, with the ability’s cooldown increasing to 1 minute.

Rotation

Dealing Damage

• Build up Fury by casting Demon’s Bite, and spending it on Blade Dance and Eye Beam. When those two skills are on cooldown, instead spend it on Chaos Strike. Activate Immolation Aura on cooldown to make sure it is generating as much passive fury for you as possible!

Offense

• Pop your Metamorphosis and keep going through the rotation listed above!

Defense

• Be sure to collect soul fragments, as they not only generate fury but they also heal you!
• If you’re taking a LOT of damage, pop Blur to reduce your damage taken by 20% for 10 seconds, while also increasing your dodge chance by 50%!
• If you find yourself and/or an ally in need of defense, use Darkness to give you and your allies a 20% chance to avoid all damage for 8 seconds!
• When outnumbered, use CCs like Chaos Nova, Fel Eruption and/or Imprison to help crowd control your enemies! You can also use your strong mobility with Fel Rush and Vengeful Retreat to help avoid damage and keep your opponents at a distance.

Secondary Stat Priority

1. Versatility
2. Critical Strike
3. Haste
4. Mastery

Shadowlands Specific Information

Recommended Covenant: Venthyr

Recommended Legendary: Memory of Inner Demons. There are better legendaries for Havoc Demon hunter, such as Memory of Collective Anguish, that come from the raid. But for the purpose of this guide, I tried to pick a good legendary that doesnt require you to run the raid to acquire it!

Vengeance

Talents

1. Agonizing Flames – This causes your Immolation Aura, a skill in your arsenal that cloaks you in flame and that you’ll be using on cooldown, last 50% longer and make you move 20% faster.
2. Burning Alive – This talent makes Fiery Brand, a skill that heavily reduces how much damage an enemy deals to you, spread to additional enemies every 2 seconds.
3. Charred Flesh – Immolation Aura’s damage makes Fiery Brand last 0.5 seconds longer when it ticks on your enemies! This, combined with the first two talents, will help you have a long lasting Fiery Brand on multiple targets around you, heavily reducing the amount of damage you take!
4. Feed the Demon – Consuming a soul fragment, which are generated from Shear, reduces the cooldown on Demon Spikes (a skill that gives you additional armor and higher parry chance) by 0.5 seconds. This helps to make sure you can have Demon Spikes available when you need it!
5. Concentrated Sigils – Makes your sigils a bit easier to use by always placing them at your location, and also extending their effects by 2 seconds.
6. Demonic – Your Fel Devastation, which is your strongest Fury spender, also puts you into demon form – which is the form you enter when you use Metamorphosis – for 6 seconds after it finishes dealing damage!
7. Last Resort – Gives you an additional life every 8 minutes, preventing fatal damage and instead causing you to enter demon form!
8. Detainment – Makes your Imprison, a single target CC that Demon Hunter’s have, into a stronger version of itself by preventing targets effected by it from receiving damage or healing and making it last longer. However, this does come at a cost, with the ability’s cooldown increasing to 1 minute.
9. Tormentor – This gives your taunt some use in PvP, make it increase the damage your target takes by 3% for each person (up to 5) that attacks the taunted player! As you attack the player effected by Tormentor, this debuff that is placed on them is refreshed!
10. Cleansed by Flame- Gives you the ability to dispel all negative magical effects on yourself with Immolation Aura!

Rotation

How to Play Vengeance

If you don’t know how threat works, I recommend checking out my complete beginner guide, as understanding threat is essential for playing a tank properly. Tanks also play a bit more dynamically than damage dealers, responding to what is happening in any given instance. Here are some things to keep in mind when tanking as a Vengeance demon hunter!

1. Use Shear to generate soul fragments, and consume those soul fragments with soul cleave to heal yourself! Also, be sure to use Immolation Aura on cooldown as it deals a ton of damage, generates fury, and helps extend the duration of Fiery Brand!
2. Speaking of Fiery Brand, when against a particularly tough enemy or group of enemies, use your Fiery Brand to reduce the damage the enemy deals to you. Your immolation aura will make sure this lasts as long as possible, and it will spread to multiple enemies thanks to Burning Alive.
3. When you need to quickly generate threat against one or more enemies, hit them with your Throw Glaive. You can also use Infernal Strike to make sure you’re getting to enemies as quickly as possible to secure the threat on them and protect your team!
4. Utilize your Demon Spikes if you’re going to be taking a lot of damage to help increase your armor and chance to parry attacks, totally nullifying said attacks damage!
5. Use Fel Devastation when you need to deal massive AoE damage, as it is one of your strongest attacks! This attack will also heal you, and then put you into Demon Form after it is over!
6. Use your sigils as needed at any given time. Use Sigil of Flame to increase your damage and threat against targets, Sigil of Misery if you’re heavily outnumbered and need to CC certain enemies, and Sigil of Silence if you are against strong spellcasters and want to prevent them from using their spells!

Additional Offensive Notes

• Fel Devastation is your primary offensive skill along with Sigil of Flame. Use those when you really want to increase your damage!

Additional Defensive Notes

• Metamorphisis, Fiery Brand (which this build focuses on) and Demon Spikes are your main forms of defense. Use them in a pinch when you feel you need the defense or if you know a big attack is coming in!

Secondary Stat Priority

1. Haste
2. Versatility
3. Mastery
4. Critical Strike

Shadowlands Specific Information

Recommended Covenant: Kyrian

Recommended Legendary: Memory of Soul of Fire

Contact

If you have any questions about the build, join our discord server and ask @Dottz about the build in the #wow-general channel!

Update Log

11/19/2020 – Guide created