Demon Hunter Guide for Midnight - Patch 12.0.1

Demon Hunter Guide for Midnight Quick Summary:

• Overlook of specialization changes for Havoc and Vengeance Demon Hunter.
• A new spec is added: Devourer Demon Hunter, who is a ranged DPS with Int as a primary stat.
• Each specialization rotations are explained
• The best Demon Hunter races are Void Elf, Night Elf, and Blood Elf, in this order.
• Stat Priority for each Demon Hunter. They greatly benefit from maxing Agility or Intellect as primary, Crit, Haste, and Mastery as their secondary stats.
• A list of three of the best Demon Hunter raid builds for each of the specs with their gameplay loops.
• The best Demon Hunter professions are: Alchemy, Leatherworking, and Enchanting.
• Consumables that work really well with Demon Hunter are Flask of Alchemical Chaos, Tempered Potion, Algari Mana Oil, and the Sushi Special.

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Demon Hunter Changes in WoW Midnight

Lots of classes have been reworked in Midnight, some more so and some less. Demon Hunter lands somewhere in the middle, with the addition of a new spec and major changes to their kit. Below are all the Demon Hunter changes.

Havoc

• Netherwalk: Now part of the Blur. You can now attack in Blur state.
• Glaive Tempest: Now part of Blade Dance, and hitting enough targets with Blade Dance causes it to proc.
• Fel Barage, Fel Eruption, Looks Can Kill, Improved Fel Rush, Insatiable Hunger, Restless Hunter: Removed from the spec.
• Collective Anguish, Demonic, The Hunt: Moved to Havoc Tree.
• Bladecraft, Demonic Resilience, Burn It Out/Soul Cleanse: New Abilities.

Vengeance

• Fracture: Baseline spell instead of a talent.
• Soulbomb: Moved up in the talent tree, has a 25-second cooldown, which can be reduced by Haste
• Demon Spikes: Provide flat dmg reduction and are now easier to keep up for a period of time.
• Fel Devastation: Massively increased healing.
• Soul Cleave: Damages all enemies in front of you instead of five.
• Spirit Bomb: Base damage increased.
• Fiery Brand: Now brands both you and your target. Reduce the damage you take by 40% and deal instant and DoT Fire damage to the target.
• Quickened Sigils, Sigil of Spite, Soul Sigils: Moved to the Vengeance tree.
• Bulk Extraction, Extended Spike, Illuminated Sigils, Shear Fury, Soul Furnace: Removed from Vengeance.

As you can see, Vengeance has seen the most changes out of all classes in an attempt to make this class a bit more straightforward, but in my experience, this doesn’t really make this spec much easier. 

Demon Hunter Midnight Overview

Demon Hunter is extremely mobile, and this is his #1 asset in gameplay. He can engage and disengage quickly, but this is a double-edged sword. He also has two resources to manage, being a builder-spender class, with Fury and Soul Fragments, which are needed for damage and self-sustain. Your main offensive and defensive ability is Metamorphosis, which transforms you into a big demon, empowering your other abilities. Let’s take a look at all Demon Hunter specs in Midnight:

• Havoc: Melee DPS, somewhat challenging to learn, best for Solo content. Does huge burst damage and has outstanding mobility. Has good sustainability.
• Vengeance: Tank spec with amazing self-sustain. You will parry the attacks made by enemies and heal through damage you take by utilizing Soul Fragments. You’re one of the best mobile tanks in WoW Midnight. Does high damage for a tank. The hardest spec to master.
• Devourer: Ranged DPS. The newest spec added to Midnight. The developers probably took into account complaints that DH is hard to learn and made this specialization much simpler than other DH specs. The biggest thing it has going for it is that you’re able to cast while moving, which most casters cannot brag about.

Demon Hunters are welcome guests in Raids, due to their amazing utilities in the form of Chaos Brand and Darkness. Most Raids try to use at least one of them. Now, let’s talk about the changes Demon Hunter has received from the previous expansion.

Demon Hunter Pros & Cons

The strengths and weaknesses of Demon Hunter stay consistent across all classes, changing in their robustness depending on the specialization you have chosen as your main one. The pros & cons of Demon Hunter are:

Pros	Cons
Best mobility in the game	Most specs are hard to learn
Great damage in every spec	Havoc is a Melee DPS and can accidentally steal aggro from tanks and die.
High self-sustain and survivability	Vengeance is healed less than other tanks, as most assume it will support itself, which raises the difficulty and responsibility for you.
Visually pleasing	Devourer’s DPS leaves a lot to be desired.

Each spec has its own prominent downside, and they’re the main ones you have to pay attention to when choosing what spec to pursue. I’m not exaggerating when I say that Vengeance DH is one of the most demanding classes in performance, but when it comes to Havoc, it’s on another level. It’s not as difficult, no. It just feels like you’re in an extremely fast car during moderate traffic. There are times when you can speed up, but the moments when you need to stop feel so annoying. If you are able to master Havoc spec, this constant tease should turn into an exhilarating flow state gameplay, but I just couldn’t handle it.

 

 

How To Play Demon Hunter in Midnight

I’ll go over each spec separately, as their gameplay is quite different. The good thing is that the general mechanics you need to master on DH transition from one spec to another. There are a couple of things you always need to keep in mind when playing Demon Hunter:

• Always Utilize Your Mobility: This is the biggest difference this class offers. Your sustainability is this good because you can get out of sticky situations fast and return to the fight easily.
• Don’t Spam Your Cooldowns: Especially if you’re a Havoc player. You have good survivability, but aggroing a raid boss won’t feel nice.
• Be Aware of Your Surroundings: Accidentally dashing in the wrong direction can cost you your life and eventually lead to a raid wipe.

The best way you can learn to play Demon Hunter is by staying calm and observing all the mistakes you make. Demon Hunter is very punishing, so you’ll be sure to remember your mistakes fast. Now let’s go over each of the specs and how to play them.

How to Play Havoc Demon Hunter

Havoc is a classic builder-spender with Fury as a resource you need to track all the time. As with most modern specializations, your cooldowns should be utilized, adapting to the situations, rather than being a glorified synthesizer, hitting keys to play the same melody over and over again. There’s a priority list, but that’s exactly what it is and shouldn’t be used as a strict guideline. There are two deceptively simple rules to follow:

• Don’t Waste Your Fury: You have three main sources of damage, Chaos Strike, Blade Dance, and Eye Beam. As a rule of thumb, you should preserve some fury before Eye Beam to proc Metamorphosis.
• Use Abilities on Cooldown: Does it sound contradictory to what I just wrote? Yeah, that’s the point. You should use abilities like Blade Dance, Eye Beam, Essence Break, and Vengeful Retreat on cd to keep the damage high. While Vengeful Retreat and Essence Break don’t require Fury, other abilities take it, so make sure your Fury generation is good, and the ability speed is fast, but not too fast. That’s what I meant when I brought up the fast car in the traffic analogy.

Your main gameplay is generating Fury with Demon Blades' auto attacks and then using it according to the situation. The key to mastering this specialization is understanding these contradictory rules. If you can keep the balance between them, it will feel smooth like butter.

How to Play Vengeance Demon Hunter

With Vengeance, timing is everything. Even more so than with Havoc. Vengeance has two resources: Fury and Soul Fragments. Keeping track of them and juggling their respective cooldowns is the key to performing well with Vengeance DH.

• Timing Is Key: You generally want to use your abilities on cooldowns, so something like Spirit Bomb should be set off as soon as it comes off a cd. Ideally, you get 6 souls and use the spell. Don’t let your Soul generators pile up the Soul Fragments stacks, as it’s basically wasting DPS.
• Spam Fracture: It’s a very important ability, which is the main source of our Soul Fragments. It has 2 charges, and you don’t want them to cap. The best way do that is by spamming it, but never spam it when you have enough Soul Fragments to spend them somewhere else. This is a continuation of a previous rule. It’s that important.
• Souls Are More Important: While Fury is also good on you, your first priority is soul damage. After you’ve found a way to utilize your souls, you can dump your Fury.

Vengeance has a more understandable, though not any easier, gameplay than Havoc. Understanding the theory behind it is easy, but during gameplay, it becomes much harder when just learning the ropes. The problem is you can’t just focus on one thing at a time to smoothly learn the mechanics, and this usually leads to mistiming your cooldowns. Then again, after playing such a mechanically rich class, you probably won’t return to simpler ones.

How to Play Devourer Demon Hunter

This specialization is like the best of both worlds, but not really. It is clear that the devs are still balancing it and don’t want to overtune it accidentally. It has two resources, like Vengeance DH, but is a DPS, like its melee counterpart. The main damage spike comes from the Void Metamorphosis window, so your goal is to generally build towards it by acquiring Fury and Soul Fragments.

• Don’t Waste Your Resources: Before your transformation into Void Demon, gain as much Fury as possible. The duration is based on how much Fury you have in store at the time of transformation. This means you have to always time both of your resources so that they reach maximum together.
• Movement Is Key: Perhaps even more than with other classes, your movement on Devourer is paramount. Unlike other casters, Devourer is much more mobile during its spellcasts. Utilize it well.

Devourer has a simpler kit compared to other specs, because it is much more straightforward. Your loop is building towards the Void Metamorphosis and then spending your cooldowns. It’s a great way to transition into other specs, but there’s nothing wrong with staying on it, as it does decent damage.

 

Best Demon Hunter Races in WoW Midnight

Any Elf race, whether Blood Elves, Night Elves, or Void Elves, is good on Demon Hunter. I’ll break down shortly why each of these race variations is good for DH.

Race	Why it Works
Void Elf	Highest damage output because of the Entropic Embrace, which lets you deal +5% as Shadowfrost over 12 seconds after applying your damage or healing effects.
Night Elf	Good utility for Mythic+ and PvP with Shadowmeld. Is used to remove aggro or cancel spells.
Blood Elf	Arcane Torrent is probably the weakest of them all due to Demon Hunters having a Consume Magic spell, but it’s still somewhat useful.

Unless you’re dead set on playing as Horde, I recommend picking either a Void Elf or Night Elf, as Blood Elves bring the least use to this class, but it’s still something, I guess.

Demon Hunter Stat Priority WoW

Though most stats for Demon Hunters overlap, they follow a different order of importance, as specs differ drastically from each other. Devourer has the most different set of stats than the other specs, as Havoc and Vengeance have nigh-identical stat priorities. They can vary depending on Hero talents, though. Let’s take a look at the best Demon Hunter stat priority in WoW Midnight

Havoc: Fel-Scarred

1. Agility: Increases Attack Power and damage done with abilities.
2. Crit: Havoc does a lot of rapid hits, so he benefits greatly from the crit strike increase
3. Mastery: Is there to increase your Chaos damage.
4. Haste: Hardest to balance as you need just the right amount to keep the right pace of your cooldowns and resource spending. Speeds up autos and reduces the GCD.
5. Versatility: Eh, it’s nice to take. Though it increases the damage done and reduces damage taken, it doesn’t scale that well.

Fun fact: Fel-Scarred is much stronger than Aldrachi Reaver now. So much in fact, that nobody even uses the Aldrachi Reaver talent tree. The Metamorphosis is too good not to play. Perhaps in the future it will change, but you can respec then.

Vengeance: Aldrachi Reaver & Annihilator

1. Agility: Same reason as with Havoc. Primary stat that scales well with iLvl.
2. Haste: Its main use is to decrease cooldowns and provide a faster recharge rate. Something like Fracture, which is the backbone of this spec, recharges much faster, allowing you to get souls for the Spirit Bomb cast in no time.
3. Crit: For Vengeance, crit chance increases your Parry proc. Better Parry = less damage taken.
4. Versatility: General-purpose stat that works well for doing and receiving damage.
5. Mastery: A stat important for Demon Spikes. Increases your AP and the amount of Agility, which converts to armor during the Demon Spikes. Overall, it’s not that significant to raise it high, but not as insignificant to remove it from the list completely.

The stat priority is the same for both hero talent trees, as you are fundamentally doing the same stuff during gameplay. The main difference is that Aldrachi Reaver is mostly an active tree that focuses on keeping the uptime on buffs and focusing on the priority target. The Annihilator tree is like 90% passive, but has some incredibly useful talents, like the one that resets the Spirit Bomb’s cd on Metamorphosis cast.

Devourer: Annihilator & Void-Scarred

1. Intellect: Unlike with Havoc and Vengeance, your primary stat is this one. Increases the Spell Power and damage done with abilities.
2. Haste/Mastery: Both are equally important, for Annihilator Haste>Mastery, for Void-Scarred it’s vice versa. Haste increases your cast speed, making you more durable indirectly. It also reduces GCDs and cd of Void Ray during Metamorphosis. Mastery increases the Cosmic damage. It doubles during the Void Metamorphosis.
3. Crit: Here, we’re using it exactly for what it does.
4. Versatility: As mentioned multiple times, deal more damage and take less.

Of the two options, Void-Scarred is better than Annihilator. Much better. It beats the second option in every regard. Kind of funny that a melee-focused hero talent tree for a ranged DPS beats out its competitor. Void-Scarred is all about triggering Voidsurge to make Void Metamorphosis stronger with its melee abilities like Voidblade, The Hunt, and Hungering Slash. The Annihilator tree is focused on casting down void meteors.

Best Demon Hunter Builds for Midnight

This guide focuses mainly on Raid content, and thus it’s only logical that I’ll provide the best Demon Hunter builds in Midnight for raids specifically. The builds are pretty easy to follow, and I’ll shortly explain the gameplay loop of each of them. Let’s start with Havoc Fel-Scarred DH.

Best Havoc Fel-Scarred Demon Hunter Build

The proper rotation for Havoc Demon Hunter is as follows. Engage with Immolation Aura for Fury generation, follow up with Eye Beam asap to trigger Demonic, and then get into your empowered window. At this point, you cycle Chaos Strike and Blade Dance while trying to maintain Fury reserves and lining up cooldown. Use Eye Beam immediately when it’s off cooldown, switch to Metamorphosis, and continue using Eye Beam for heavy bursts of damage. The downtime should be filled with Throw Glaive or Fury generators if it drops. You’re basically looping short burst windows instead of building your Fury slowly.

Best Vengeance Annihilator Demon Hunter Build

The Annihilator build plays much more aggressively than old defensive Vengeance builds. The talents here lean into Soul Fragments generation. The core idea is super simple, at least for me it was. Generate Souls quickly, spend Pain, transferring every damage window into self-healing with Soul Fragments and Fel Devastation. Jump into a mob crowd, press Sigil of Flame for passive damage and Pain, use Immolation Aura. Now just spam Fracture to build Pain and spawn Souls. Follow it up with Soul Cleave to heal up and keep the damage rolling. When the enemies are stacked together, use Fel Devastation. This rotation for Vengeance Demon Hunter is more of a priority list, not a strict ruleset, so if you feel like any of the mentioned abilities don’t fit into the current situation, use what makes sense.

Best Devourer Void-Scarred Demon Hunter Build

The Devourer playstyle is very different. This talent tree focuses heavily on Eye Beam cycles, Chaos damage that you can maintain, and steady Fury generation, which you don’t blow into burst damage. It makes it drastically different from Fel-Scarred DH, so switching into Fel-Scarred in the future will feel like learning a new class. Here’s the Devourer Demon Hunter rotation loop:

1. Start with Immolation Aura and cast Eye Beam
2. Use Blade Dance on cooldown
3. Spend Fury with Chaos Strike to avoid overcapping
4. Use Eye Beam when you feel that it’s time for Void Metamorphosis.
5. Fill cooldown gaps with Throw Glaive or generators.

Compared to other rotations, the Void-Scarred one is much smoother and understandable. It’s more straightforward and doesn’t make you utilise erratic build-up and spending mechanics to the degree of other builds.

Demon Hunter Best in Slot Gear in WoW Midnight

This section is under construction. As soon as we find out the BiS gear for Demon Hunter, we’ll update this article. For now, please continue.

Best Demon Hunter Professions

Midnight reworked the professions, so now they aren’t as important to the overall performance of the specialization. Generally, anything goes with Demon Hunters, but I’d recommend going for Alchemy to craft your own consumables, or Leatherworking, as many of the gear elements crafted there can be a good BiS gear substitution. Alternatively, you can go for Enchanting to improve the existing gear.

Best Consumables for Demon Hunter

There are four best consumables for Demon Hunter in Midnight. They provide significant healing and stat boosts, pushing you over the limit or getting your lower stats towards the needed number. Let’s take a look at them:

• Flask of Alchemical Chaos: Increases a random secondary stat at the lower cost of the other two secondary stats. Randomizes the stat distribution every 30 seconds. Lasts for 1 hour, so pop one before any long content. The stat decrease is negligible compared to the boost it grants and changes accordingly with Flask’s level.
• Tempered Potion: Drink the Tempered Flasks with the right secondary stat boosts and then pop this one during the damage window. Some popular Tempered Flasks are Swiftness, Aggression, Mastery, and, to a lesser degree, Versatility.
• Algari Mana Oil: Increases the Crit and Haste for 2 hours. The stat boost depends on the item’s level.
• The Sushi Special: Eat before the encounter and fuhgeddaboudit. Though it restores plenty of health and mana, you use it for a secondary stat boost that lasts for 1 hour.

You basically use your consumables as buffs, but they can be really costly in the Auction House, which is why I recommended going with Alchemy as your profession. Ultimately, the choice is yours, but these consumables are really nice to have.

Read our other Midnight guides:

• Gold Farming Guide
• Best DPS Tier List
• Best Addons

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