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
冲撞惯性 over
势如破竹, or
混乱奔袭 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
虚空行走 and
舞刃折光 while old options we couldn't justify taking such as
邪能爆发 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
焰由心生 being on the opposite sides of the immolation aura talents, but being in proximity with
冲撞惯性 and
释放混沌 makes sense.
内心之魔 and
邪能弹幕 also have frustrating counter-synergy which makes it difficult to utilize both together while sustaining your fury.
致命混沌 is also an incredibly weak talent blocking off the new
混乱奔袭 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
邪火之心 and
燃焰饲魂, while
滋长炼狱 was changed in functionality to work on the cast of
献祭光环 to soften the lost. A couple of talents were shifted to be baseline in
恶魔食欲 which was reduced to 20 fury and
邪能爆发 to open up options in the first gate. These changes coupled with movement of nodes made it required to take
虚空行走 and a new talent in
舞刃折光 (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
致命混沌 and
锯齿战刃 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
碎魂创痕 and made into a choice node with
无情强攻,
战刃风暴 and
混沌理论 were merged into a choice node, and lastly
无休猎手 and
内心之魔 were put into a choice node. This shifted around how many points you needed in the bottom gate by pushing
锯齿战刃 up into the second talent gate.
先发制人 was nerfed from 12% to 10%. Lastly,
邪能弹幕 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.
- 混乱奔袭: This talent allows you to 邪能冲撞 back to your starting position shortly after the cast, using the global and dealing damage.
- 恶魔之肤: 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.
- 舞刃折光: A form of 刃舞 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.
- 苦难千疮: 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.
- 冲撞惯性: Choice node directly competing against 势如破竹, 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.
- 焰由心生: This talent turns 献祭光环 into a 2 charge system, allowing you to overlap multiple Immolation Aura casts. This has good synergy with talents such as 释放混沌 and 冲撞惯性 while also introducing some fun RNG to the rotation.
While many of the choices such as
恶魔之肤 and
苦难千疮 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.
舞刃折光 similarly brings back one of the most loved mechanics removed from Havoc, allowing for skillful expression of
刃舞 as a defensive tool.
混乱奔袭 is a good talent option making
势如破竹 significantly easier to play, as both the original
邪能冲撞 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.
冲撞惯性 is a personal favourite of mine, breaking up the
邪能冲撞 on cooldown playstyle that current
势如破竹 forces, allowing for a rotation with significantly less movement and powerful buff windows.
焰由心生 has exceptional synergy with Inertia, causing you to be able to double cast
释放混沌 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
不择手段 if you have committed the points to Chaotic Disposition.
Slight Talent Reworks
There have been some minor changes and reworks to talents worth noting.
- 致命混沌, 滋长炼狱, 释放混沌, 锯齿战刃, and 碎魂创痕 were all changed to be 1 point talents with a large part of their power dropped to account for the free talent point.
- 战刃风暴 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.
- 邪能弹幕 was changed in a similar sense to Frost Death Knight's 冰龙吐息 - 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.
- 锯齿战刃 received great changes, it now is both applied by and buffs 投掷利刃 and 混乱打击. This is a significant improvement over the previous iteration of being applied exclusively through Throw Glaive and buffing 眼棱.
- 破碎的命运 was nerfed, now taking 10 fury per 0.1s extension up from the previous 8 fury.
- is now triggered by 投掷利刃 when talented into 愤怒投掷.
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,
无拘怒意 being shifted to a one pointer,
烈焰咒符 becoming baseline, while both
伊利达雷的知识 and
伊利达雷的意志 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
怨念咒符 being moved to the class tree as a keystone in competition with
恶魔追击 and
聚凝痛楚.
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
漆黑 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.
- 败阵之痛, 伊利达雷起源, 释放力量, and all removed.
- 混乱新星 reduced from 60s to 45s cooldown and 30 to 25 fury cost.
- Choice node including 异常之仇 was removed from the tree, putting the DoT increase baseline into 恶魔追击's damage.
- was moved down into the final gate of the tree, and increased to a 2 pointer to significantly increase the cost of the talent to be in line with the power.
- 怨念咒符 moved from the spec trees to replace 快速咒符 keystone spot.
- 快速咒符 nerfed and no longer reduces sigils cooldown.
- 集结咒符 and 精准咒符 no longer increase the duration of your sigils by 2 seconds.
- nerfed and reduced from 20% to 15% at rank 2.
- 魔化 nerfed from 6s to 5s per window.
- 碎魂恢复, 无拘怒意, 伊利达雷的知识, and 伊利达雷的意志 all changed to 1 point talents.
What's New?
Very few new things were added, however
刃以为骨 was added in the position of
败阵之痛, mostly a tank or pvp focused talent that Havoc is unlikely to run in PvE content. was added which massively increases the damage of
烈焰咒符 making it an important rotational button.
飞刃勇士 was added on a choice node with
战刃大师, 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.
落单的猎物 no longer giving fury on fel rush,
恶魔食欲 being nerfed from 30 to 20 fury while becoming baseline, and
致命混沌 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,
邪能之刃 was changed to be a shortened 0.5s global to have significantly more impact by easily fitting in the rotation and
烈焰咒符 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
魔化 from 6s to 5s and the nerf of
破碎的命运 from 8 fury per 0.1s extension to 10 fury allowed for
恶魔变形 to be shifted to a 2 minute cooldown. This feels smoother due to our cooldown cadence of 40 seconds from
精华破碎 and
眼棱 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.
- 内心之魔 while being a significantly powerful AoE talent feels awful in many situations. Due to Inner Demon being fired on 混乱打击 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.
- 恶魔追击 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
恶魔变形 are largely enjoyed while talents like
苦难千疮 and
恶魔之肤 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.