Welcome back to the starter guide for World of Warcraft. Today, we will continue our series on covering every class in the game with a focus on Demon Hunter. This class, added in the Legion expansion, has both a DPS specialization and a tank specialization, making it one of only two classes in the game with only two specializations. However, the developers did an excellent job in capturing the Demon Hunter feel. We will discuss how to build each specialization, provide tips for leveling, give an overview of the class mechanics, and highlight some of the abilities and talents available to the Demon Hunter. We'll also provide you with a build for each specialization that you can import into the game, and then send you on your way for leveling. If you have any questions or comments for me, feel free to drop by my live stream. I'm live every day on Twitch at twitch.tv/drybear.
So let's go over the class overview. Demon Hunter is a melee leather-wearing class and they are one of two classes in the game now with evoker that only have two specializations. It's kind of crazy that Druids get four and everyone else gets three, but Demon Hunter gets two. But I guess they just felt like they captured the core of the class with just two. So you have your damage-dealing spec, Havoc, and your tanking spec, Vengeance. As a melee class, they have a lot of mobility and ways to move around, like the double jump and hover. They also have some really cool movement abilities and transformations. They're super fun classes to play and specifically even in dungeons because they're good at doing crazy damage. I-beam in general is just so good at clearing trash. Vengeance DK are not the tankiest but not the squishiest. They have decent AOE damage, and what's cool about Vengeance is they're relatively mobile and have some tools in their toolkit like sigils that they place on the ground that have. Different effects, silences, CCs, all that kind of thing. So they have some really cool things built into their character that they can use. And being able to play both damage and tank is always fun. Now, when it comes to leveling, you can play either one of these specs. Havoc will clear faster, but Vengeance can pull basically everything in sight. I always recommend people play tank for leveling just because it's so casual, you can be invincible, and you can do whatever you want, pull whatever you want, pull it all in, and do a bunch of AOE to clear it out. But Havoc definitely has a faster clear time with higher damage uptime. Now, in terms of gameplay, there isn't really all that much to talk about. At its core, Demon Hunter is a very simple class, very easy to pick up, very savage and brutal, but they have a one resource system which is going to be your Fury. You can spend this to generate Fury. There are two ways to do this, actually. The first is Emulation Aura, which you want to be using on cooldown when you activate it, it burns and it'll give you Fury. You can see your Fury filling up here. Then you also have Fel Blade, which is a nice way to build up Fury. And the other way is with either Demon Blades or Demon's Bite, depending on what you have talented. Either your auto attacks will give you Fury or you'll have an ability which is like your normal basic rotation that builds up Fury for you. Now you have Fury, you have this bar filled up, and you can spend it on abilities that require Fury, things like Chaos Blade which are really cool. You can also do I-beam as you put things in line up like that, crazy AOE damage, really nice. And there's just some really cool things that you can do like Blade Dance, and all that. So that's the core of the class, you're just building up Fury and spending it. And most of it comes down to just managing your resources and otherwise just having some pretty cool effects that go along with that. But you'll find that of all the classes in the game, Demon Hunter is one of the easiest to pick up. It doesn't mean. It's not overly simple or doesn't have things that you can master about the class, but it is pretty easy to pick up both specs. Specifically, the only challenge with leveling is Havoc. You may struggle with dying sometimes, things like Demonic Appetite help by keeping you alive and keeping you healthy. Even charred warblades will give you some healing as well, which is nice, which is why I recommend people leveling with Vengeance because you'll be a little bit tankier. But otherwise, in terms of core gameplay, it's a single resource. You have Builders, you have Spenders, and you have cooldowns and that's it. What is fun is you have tons of mobility. So obviously, you have the ability to jump and glide, do not underestimate how fast this is for a Voker and for Demon Hunter. Even just doing this over and over and over can be really useful in getting you to your destination faster, especially while leveling because you'll be able to do this in between small distances. You don't have to mount up. You also have things like Vengeful Retreat, which is a nice little disengage you can use and then you also have your Fel Rush which is a very easy way to zoom, zoom, zoom. When you're playing Avengers, you'll have a jump instead of a dash, but otherwise, it's super easy to get around and zoom from place to place. Now let's talk about each spec individually. We will go over the class tree. If you didn't know, in Dragonflight, there are two different talent trees, and you'll see here. Yeah, and this is quite different than what you've experienced in past expansions. The left talent tree is your class talent tree. This tree is more or less the same for every spec across a single class, and then your right talent tree is for your specialization. So between the two specs, the left talent tree, the class tree is more or less the same. There's some subtle differences with most classes based on what abilities are available, but on the right side, this will differ. So let's go through this left class tree, just some things to be aware of on this as well. And then if you're looking for builds, you can actually just have them down in the description. You can just import, copy and give it a name And you've got yourself a full build. It's really that easy. A super nice feature that they added. You're definitely going to want Vengeful Retreat. This is kind of the top, usually the top ones are more core to your character. The brand Florida tree is super nice, like I said, it's like a hunter disengage. It's on a really short cooldown as well, and you can have some modifications to it, slow enemies, things like that. You do want an extra charge for Havoc on your Fel Rush. Allows you to do lots of really cool movement and dashing. And like I mentioned before, for self-sustain, you will want charred War blades. Any fire damage you do heals you, and this will add up over time. CC wise, in prison can be useful depending on what you're up against. It only works on demons, beasts and humanoids, but it's an easy way to incapacitate. It's kind of like the pin prick that the monks have to incapacitate. And then Casanova is also nice. You can stun all enemies in an area, so if you really get into trouble, you can do a nice little Nova there, get a stun, keep them off your back and get some distance if you need to. Defensive wise, darkness is probably one of the best defensive abilities in the game. This is a ground Target you place it down on top of you and anyone standing inside of it, including you, have a 20% chance to inflict no damage, so it's basically a 20% Dodge for all attacks. Super useful in raids, can be useful in dungeons, and very useful in PvP as well, especially in arenas when you need to kill someone and they pop Darkness. It is rough, but it's super nice while you're leveling. You can throw that down when you get stuck. It is a five-minute cooldown, but if you make a big pull, especially when you're running Vengeance, you can easily pop this up to survive. Now here in the middle, I would recommend getting Fel blade. You have an option to get crit chance on your Immolation Aura. You don't really need more damage while you're leveling. Bell blade is nice because it is a 30 second cooldown, it does damage and gives you Fury, but demon blades, if you do run demon blades or demon bite, have a chance to reset it, so you have this way of doing this extra little bit here and then you're doing demon blades and as your auto attack, you have a chance to reset it. It's just a way it makes the leveling smoother. You have another button you can press to If you have another Builder, get your Fury generation going, and you'll be able to do more and more with that as you build up, which is super nice. Damage wise, demonic I like a lot. Allows you to get a little bit more demon form damage right after using I-beam, which you're going to be using a lot and kind of rolling those between poles, which is super cool. And what's cool is we kept the Night Fae ability from Shadowlands, the hunt. This one still, it still gives me nightmares at the start of Shadowlands. This used to one-shot in PvP and it was terrifying. You started an arena and someone would just start the hunt and then you'd zoom and do a bunch of damage. Not only does it do upfront damage, but it has a DOT portion as well. And I would recommend modifying that DOT portion with Unnatural Malice to increase the DOT because it's helpful for killing Elites and big mobs while you're leveling. So it's a nice little cooldown you can use it for Mobility as well if it's up, Dash the target, do a bunch of damage. It's great for initiation and just moving from pack to pack. And then as you level, I would come down here to Collective Anguish for Havoc and then slightly different for Vengeance, but you'll reduce your movement ability cooldown and then you also get an extra summon which can always be useful. And that's kind of the core of it, there's some little niche things that will that we could go into in a future video for the class tree, but that is the class tree. This will be included in the build that we have. Now let's talk about class or spec Talent trees. We'll start with Havoc and we'll go over Vengeance. Again, if you want these, you can just copy them from the description, import them into the game and give them a name. But let's go through the core of the Havoc tree, which is going to be different between each spec, and some things you might want to know about. And you can use this for the build, and we'll go over what choices that we've made.
Starting with the only guaranteed choice, the no choice you have to take I-beam, and why would you ever not want to? This is one of the coolest abilities in the game, It does ridiculous damage, so it is a spender. You'll spend Fury, you do damage in a line, and then you'll have some modifications like if you're running Demonic, you can get some extra bonus on that I-beam, super useful. There's a choice here, you can go Insatiable Hunger or get nothing on this spot. I think Demon Blades is simpler because it takes a button away, and you're just generating Fury by being near a Target and attacking. However, you can probably get some more min-maxing by keeping Demons Bite, so if this spellhound leaves me alone, I get out of combat. We can pull this off and you'll just have this. You can see how I still have this on my bar here. You'll have an extra little bit where you can actually just use the ability, but this makes it super simple if you just are getting into the class and want to enjoy it. The next thing you're going to want to know about is Demonic Appetite. This is super useful while leveling. Chaos Strike, which is your spender that we talked about earlier, has a chance to spawn a lesser Soul fragment, and consuming it grants Fury. But you also have something that allows you to heal yourself when you consume it as well, so as you use your spender, you'll go in and you'll start using your spender, getting some extra little business in there, and then you'll be able to heal from it, and it gives you more Fury. So as you kill and spend and spend, you'll get more Fury, you'll heal more, and it just makes the leveling experience significantly better. So I can't see a leveling build that doesn't take Demonic Appetite here in the talent tree. You'll definitely want Fel Lava Eruption in here. It's an easy way, it's kind of like a hammer of justice, pretty decent as well. Fel Eruption does damage and then stuns the target. So if you have the extra energy on top of it, you can just do this, dunk it down, useful for single Target to make sure that things don't get out of hand or if you get overrun by mobs, you can clear that out. And there's a couple things that you want to know about. I mean the basic of it, if you just want a simple synopsis, is just to use your abilities whenever they're in cooldown. There's not really a whole lot of finesse to it, but there are some things in here that are nice to know about. One of them is Tactical Retreat, is a powerful ability that reduces the cooldown of your other abilities, but it also generates Fury. Keep in mind that you can use this ability to get rid of all your Fury and then slowly generate new Fury for you. Additionally, activating Emulation Aura on cooldown will give you a nice bonus to your Fel Rush, which is a pretty cool ability. Using Blade Dance and Chaos Strike will give you a quick chance to refund Fury on the Chaos Strike, which is nice. And using Blade Dance, Chaos Strike, and Glaive Tempest will reduce the cooldown of your I-beam by one second. So, start your combat by using I-beam, and then use the rest of your kit to supplement it. As you level up, I recommend getting Essence Break, which is a great way to do AOE damage in front of you and increases your damage of your other abilities. And also, get Shatter Destiny which allows you to extend your demon form when you spend Fury. So, that's the core of it, it's not too complicated, and it's fun to play with. A lot of things build off of this, especially if you're running with Demonic, it means that you get this extra demon form which is super nice and you get some extra modified chaos blade off of that. Once I-beam is on cooldown, you're going to want to put Blade Dance on cooldown as well. From there, then you want to use any optional abilities, so if you have Essence Break put that on cooldown, anything that's in the range of 10 to 40 seconds put it on cooldown so it starts regenerating. And then when you have Fury, just start spending it with Chaos Blade. A lot of this is going to come back, you're going to see your Blade Dance is going to come back, you're going to have all those start going, but just be aware of your resource management as you spend. And then the next thing is to get Immolation Aura on cooldown as well. You want to have this up but sometimes your opener can be so loaded with Fury that you don't really have a way to get it, so just make sure you have your Fury down and then pop your Emulation Aura and keep that on cooldown as well. And once you have I-beam cooled down, you have your Blade Dance on cooldown, you've spent up some Fury and you've used Immolation Aura, and you start moving down the priority list. Remember, if you are running with Unbound Chaos, it means Immolation Aura makes your Fel Rush do more damage. You can pop Immolation Aura and then your dash here will do some decent damage. Otherwise, if you're not running that Talent, then you can just skip that and just keep moving down the list. And lastly, once you've got through all that, you do have a nice AOE with Sigil Flame, it's a 30-second cooldown, you put this down for AOE pulls, things like that, it'll pop and give you some nice damage off of that. It does less damage per GCD than your other abilities, so you do want to de-prioritize it but it's nice to know that it's there to get a little extra damage out of that. So just kind of go through that, make sure your I-beam's on cooldown and keep rotating. Super simple cooldown wise, you do have the hunt, like I said, great for single target gives you a nice burst of damage, super cool, super easy. And then again, you have your big boom which is going to be your Metamorphosis. Metamorphosis is your big cooldown. I've found while leveling with Demon Hunter, you really just want to save Metamorphosis for when you need to kill something. You don't want to hold on to it for long periods of time, as it's only three minutes and you're leveling for a few hours. You want to be using it regularly, but keep in mind that you'll be able to get some value out of that. When you activate it, you'll have a ground target unless you have a ground cursor. Then you'll activate and you'll get all these nice bonuses which are super cool and it just beefs you up overall. You want to use that to kill mostly single target but you can use it to kill AOE just as an AOE bonus as well. And then remember it does modify your Chaos so you'll be able to get some nice bonus out of that. For tanking, the spec is called Vengeance, and there's a couple of differences to be aware of. Like I said, the tree is mostly the same. However, you no longer have Fel Rush, the replacement for Vengeance is Infernal Strike. Instead, this is kind of like a heroic leap, you jump forward and land down but the same modifiers are there, so you can add an additional charge to Infernal Strike if you want. And then instead of I-beam, we have Fel Devastation which does allow you to modify it with Collective Anguish, giving you that extra summon if you want to use it. It's a little bit longer cooldown, a little bit more Fury cost, but for the most part it allows you to get a nice little extra boom boom boom, breath fire is useful for tanking getting aggro. And then of course you get your cool little transformation here or Vengeance. This is the build I recommend running for Vengeance. I don't think there's too much variation in here for the most part. You're obviously have to take Fel Devastation, fiery brand is super useful and then for leveling I would say Soul Carver is the no-brainer choice. It's super good great for single target which generally you need help with as a tank. While leveling, you just pull everything, but you still need help with single target. And then we'll have Fracture here as well, but overall that's kind of the ability set. So come down here, pick up Soul Carver, and you'll have these setups for you. That's basically it. I would just take the right side, the left side of the tree, pick up Beast here. There's not really a whole lot of choices that specifically affect leveling as Vengeance. And you're just gonna be using Shear or Fracture. If you're running Fracture, I like running Fracture to build up Souls and get Fury. You can use Fel Blade if you're running that to get Fury as well. Keep your Emulation Aura on cooldown, and then use your Soul Carver if you have it. If you have it talented and then basically to spend, you're just going to be doing Soul Cleave, which is a big AOE in front of you, using your Fel Devastation, which is a big cleave in front of you. So the gameplay is just going to be taunting, pulling everything in, throwing glaves, getting as many mobs as you can. If you want to, you can go ahead and transform, get extra little business going on there. And then you're just going to be maintaining your Emulation Aura, keeping that up, spending with your Soul Cleave here, and then just using your Fracture or your Shear to start separating out these the soul fragments so that you can just keep spending and going and spending and going. Fiery brand will help you with single target, you'll be able to mark a target, get electrical damage on top of it. You do still have Sigil Flame, which is nice, a little bit of healing from this as well, if you're running the the talent for it, but it's just more AOE. And then your other AOE's, obviously you can use The Hunt which does cleave. So if I hit this target and I go through and then there's some that are in immediate proximity, I can do some AOE, put up your Emulation Aura and you're just cleaving. While leveling, you're not going to have much trouble surviving. You'll take most of the attacks, create the soul fragments using Fracture, spend using your cleave, and everything is just going to die around you. The only thing you'll struggle with if you're leveling with Vengeance is single target, like killing bosses and Elite mobs. We might be a little bit slower, but you're not really going to be in major danger and that's basically it. That is the entirety of Demon Hunter. Like I said, at a surface level, very simple, very satisfying, they're very guttural, intense and they can do some really cool things. But the DPS spec is fast and visceral, your Vengeance spec is flexible, has a lot of mobility and some cool tools. They generally just look and feel cool, and that's what you're looking for. So if you're looking for this build for either one of these, they're going to be down below in the description. You just copy them, put them in, give them a name, and you can get right into leveling. If you enjoyed this guide, let me know in the comments. If there's another guide you'd like to see from me on World of Warcraft or any game, let me know as well. Maybe you'd like to see some M plus raid or PVP guides for dragonflight which I'm having a blast with. If you have any questions or comments for me, anything you want to ask, pop by my live stream. I'm live every day on
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