Hey guys, Librarian Husky here. So you boosted your first demon hunter, or you tried to make one back in Legion but didn’t want to be like the other sheeple main swapping to the hottest new class. By the way, who’s making an Evoker later this year?
This guide will be a quick start on everything you’ll need to know for Patch 9.2.5 and probably even Season Four. So you can hop right into playing havoc and hopefully have some fun. We’ll go over covenants, talents, gearing, legendaries, and basic gameplay, so you’ll have all the info you’ll need to start playing in Raid or Mythic Plus. Each section will be timestamped, and I’ll link to some of my other guides that go deeper into specific topics for more advanced knowledge. Let’s dive into it. All right.
Covenant
The first thing we’ll tackle is covenants. There’s only one competitive choice for havoc at the moment. And that’s Venthyr. Ventnor has become the top pick as of Patch 9.2 due to its covenant ability, and its interaction with your second legendary sinful brand is 8-second damage over time ability, which, when combined with your second legendary, can be extended by your Eye Beam beyond that baseline 8 seconds and ideally kept rolling 100% of the time.
This is what makes Venthyr so powerful. I’ll put a card at the top if you want to learn more about optimizing your sinful brand usage. Right, and that will link to another guide. In most cases, you’ll choose Nadjia as your soul bound with growing inferno, relentless onslaught, and dancing with fate. If you play with three potency conduits, you can take Dauntless Duelist for single-target priority damage.
Talents
Next, we’ll take a look at talents. There’s only one build you’ll be playing. Depending on your preference, you’ll want to take blind fury, insatiable hunger, unbound chaos, soul-rending, or Netherwalk.
- The cycle of Hatred. Master of the Glaive for raids, Fel Eruption for Mythic Plus, and finally, demonic.
- This basic setup synergizes best with your covenant ability and legendaries and will fit best in Raid and Mythic.
Plus, you’ll want to get a handle on this before you try branching out into other builds, but if you feel like you’re ready again, a link will be up in the top right corner.
Gearing & Legendaries
Your gearing process is pretty simple. Your best stats are haste and verse, with crit coming close and mastery last. That said, you always want to use the highest ilvl gear possible as you’re gathering gear from mythic plus. More agility and stamina are always the way to go, and once you’re at the upper end of your limits with your ilvl, you can start optimizing your stats.
- You’ll want two of these unless you can get higher-level weapons from raiding.
- You’ll also want to get a Phial of Putrefaction, which is also from plague fall. So learn to love that place.
- You’re going to be there a lot if you’re raiding. You want to try to get the cache of acquired treasures from artificer Xy’mox.
Rings and necks are a little different as they don’t have a primary stat, so make sure you use ones with the appropriate secondary stats. Some high-priority items to keep your eyes on are our pox storms and the weapons from plague fall. I’ve made a guide on it. A link will be up at the top. Your legendaries will be essential; you won’t need to craft many.
All-rounder goods
A good all-rounder and one that’s pretty much required for our build is collective anguish. You’ll want to craft this on your wrist slot since you’ll get a free socket on that piece. Once you’ve progressed through the story campaign a bit, you’ll unlock the ability to use two legendaries. You’ll be given a unity belt, which will give you your covenant-specific legendary effect. In this case, it’s the ability to extend your sinful brands with Eye Beam. As I mentioned earlier, collective anguish works incredibly well with this because it essentially doubles dips and gives you an even longer extension.
- Getting your two-piece bonus is essential, so don’t hesitate to craft those pieces at the creation catalyst early on with whatever mythic plus pieces you get.
- Our four-piece, however, is a little lackluster. It’s still okay, and you’ll still want to craft it, but it won’t make a massive difference.
- You’ll want your tier pieces on your head slot, shoulders, chest, and legs.
With each Eye Beam progressing through the campaign even further will allow you to create your unity legendary on a different slot when you can do this. I would recommend crafting it on your ring as a safe bet since it won’t interfere with any of your tier slots and will also give you a free socket in terms of tier pieces. I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but our tier kind of sucks.
Basic Gameplay
Avoid the gloves if you can because they have mastery. Okay, so you’re ready to start killing things. What buttons should you press? The spec is incredibly simple and shouldn’t take much practice to get your mind around it. First, you’ll want to keep the immolation aura rolling at all times, and there should be something. You press on cooldown as much as possible and always want to have it up.
- Pressing it will give you a charge of unbound chaos if you choose that talent, making you feel rushed and do a ton of damage, so try to hit as many targets as possible.
- Secondly, Eye Beam is on cooldown. This keeps your gameplay flowing by keeping you in demon form and giving you a ton of haste.
You never want to hold Eye Beam for long, and you want to use this as often as possible and follow it up with an Eye Beam. Because don’t forget Eye Beam extends the duration of the sinful brand. So you should always be pressing Eye Beam immediately after the brand.
Final notes
And one final note. If you are playing with this cycle of hatred and talent, which you should be following this guide, you don’t want to press blade dance, and it’s just not worth pressing.
- You’re better off spending the fury on chaos strikes, which with this talent, can reduce the cooldown on your Eye Beam, meaning more brand extensions.
And that’s it. It really can’t get any easier. Of course, there’s some nuance to it all, but if you’re just getting started, that’s everything you’ll need to know. Thank you for checking my short but informative guide. Please don’t hesitate to visit our WoW Retail Guides page. My name is Librarian Husky. Cya is on the next page.