Havoc Demon Hunter Battleground Blitz Guide — The War Within (11.0.5)
This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about playing Havoc Demon Hunter in Battleground Blitz, including specific playstyle tips, talent builds, and much more.
Havoc Demon Hunters in Battleground Blitz
Playstyle as Havoc Demon Hunter
The main role of a Havoc Demon Hunter in battleground blitz is to use your mobility to maintain uptime on enemy healers and relentlessly pressure them. In addition to damage, your mobility is crucial on node maps when teammates need help. You will always be one of the first people to quickly dash away from the team fight and help anyone who may be getting overwhelmed at another node. To keep your team offensive, you will push in with your team to try to get Chaos Nova stuns on multiple enemies. Be careful not to use all of your mobility to reach the enemy healer. This will make it easy for teams to make swaps to you. Make sure to trade Blur and Netherwalk if this happens.
Talent Choices for Havoc Demon Hunter
Here is the talent build you will be using to maximize your damage output:
Recommended PvP Talents for Havoc Demon Hunter
- Glimpse
- Detainment
- Blood Moon
These are the best PvP talents to play in Battleground Blitz. Glimpse gives you extra survivability and survivability after you use Vengeful Retreat. Detainment makes the target immune to healing/damage while Imprisoned, allowing for this crowd control spell to not break. Finally, Blood Moon makes Consume Magic affect all enemies within 8 yards of your target.
For a more in-depth breakdown of talents, read the talents section of this guide:
Crowd Control as Havoc Demon Hunter
In Battleground Blitz, without the Arena Dampening effect, healers, when left alone, are able to sustain against many players with relative ease. The way to counter the high throughput of healers in Battleground Blitz is with the effective use of crowd control.
Demon Hunter has many tools in its kit to aid with this:
- Chaos Nova
- Imprison
- Fel Eruption
Using your crowd control correctly is crucial in Battleground Blitz. Use crowd control on healers if they do not have trinket and for cooldowns early. This will give your team many opportunities to land kills later in the team fight.
Havoc Demon Hunter Defensives
- Blur is your main defensive cooldown. This increases your dodge chance and reduces the overall damage done to you. On a 1-minute cooldown, this is very powerful and should be used when your healer is struggling to keep you alive.
- Darkness is a great defensive for not only yourself but also for your teammates. If the enemy team is using their offensive cooldowns on a teammate that has no defensive abilities left, using Darkness where they are could keep them alive.
- Netherwalk increases your movement speed by 100% and immune to all damage, but you cannot attack. This is an important defensive that you should pair with trinket to ensure that you stay alive.
- Vengeful Retreat can be used in times when you will need to run away from the enemy team. This lets you get distance, and you can still use Throw Glaive.
Havoc Demon Hunter Stat Priority and Gear
- Agility;
- Versatility;
- Mastery;
- Haste;
- Critical Strike.
The stat priority for Havoc Demon Hunter is the same in Battleground Blitz and Arena. If you want an in-depth explanation and suggestions on gear, read the gearing section of this guide:
The Role of Havoc Demon Hunters in Battlegrounds
Capture the Flag (Warsong Gulch, Twin Peaks)
Because Havoc Demon Hunters have high mobility, you will likely be playing offense on capture the flag maps. This means that when an enemy player picks up your flag, you should be trying to kill that flag carrier. Use your Fel Rush and Vengeful Retreat to quickly leave the team fight and setup kills on the enemy team's defense. Utilize tools like Chaos Nova to stun multiple enemies and Imprison on the healers. For an in-depth guide to Havoc Demon Hunter damage rotations, read here:
Resource Race (Arathi Basin, Battle for Gilneas, Deepwind Gorge)
Before a Resource Race battleground starts, you should decide with your team which base you should focus on first.
- If there is an enemy healer at the base you are assigned to, then you should crowd control them as soon as possible and use your burst cooldowns to kill their teammates
- If there is no healer but there is more than one DPS enemy, you should use your crowd control on the one who your team is less likely to attack (as they would break your crowd control)
Because Havoc Demon Hunters do not have the same crowd control toolkit as other DPS, your primary goal will be to team fight at a node and pull in as many enemies as possible while your team tries to get other nodes. Ideally, you will have a healer and 1 more DPS with you. From here, it will be a 2v2 or 3v3 against the other team. Once you have secured your node look around the map and make sure your team is winning the fight at other nodes. If they are not, quickly get their and help with that fight. Keep doing this until the battleground is over.
Hybrid (Eye of the Storm)
Similar to resource race maps, your goal is to keep your team offensive by pushing into the enemy team with other DPS and team fighting. The goal on this map, unlike normal Rated Battlegrounds, is to team fight at one node and try to cap both bases. This results in long 7v7 team fights and the winner will more than likely pull ahead quickly. Trade your defensives when you get low ( Blur, Netherwalk, etc.) and get value out of Chaos Nova by stunning multiple enemies.
Note: Capping the flag will make the inactive bases active and both teams will have to recap the nodes. Use this tactic if your team is falling behind on points or lost the team fight.
King of the Hill (Temple of Kotmogu)
Ranged DPS specializations will always be the best orb carriers on Temple of Kotmogu, so do not grab the flag unless it is a dire situation and you have to. The most important part about this map is to win the initial team fight and quickly gain momentum by grabbing 3 orbs and standing in the middle of the map. When the enemy team starts to resurrect, leave middle and kite around the center. Here are some tips for this map:
- Players take more damage the longer they hold the orb. This means eventually the Orb carriers will die. Ideally, your team will only hold 2-3 orbs at a time, so that you do not easily wipe when you have high stacks.
- Make sure you die on the correct side of the map! You and your team will resurrect depending on where you died. If you die on purple side, you will resurrect on blue side and vise versa. Ensuring you and your team resurrect together is crucial, this will allow you to regroup faster and quickly wipe the enemy team that will be weak.
Changelog
- 11 Nov. 2024: Updated PvP Talents.
- 21 Oct. 2024: Updated for Patch 11.0.5.
- Updated Recommended Talents.
- 15 Sep. 2024: Updated Recommended Talents.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Updated for The War Within Season 1.
- 28 Aug. 2024: Page added.
Other PvP Guides
This guide has been written by Mysticall, a seasoned PvP player who has repeatedly achieved 3000 rating. You can watch his stream on Twitch, and you can also check out his YouTube channel.
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