Havoc Demon Hunter DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — The War Within (11.0.5)

Currently, Aldrachi Reaver is slightly ahead in pure single-target, though the burden of execution is higher. It does however come with the advantage of better priority target damage.

Currently, Fel-Scarred performs the best in single-target situations while also being easier to execute. Due to this alongside its excellent flexibility in different raid encounters, it is the recommended build in single-target.

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Aldrachi Reaver in single-target picks up most of the Throw Glaive talents due to their interaction with Reaver's Glaive, but avoids Furious Throws so does not need to actively press Throw Glaive rotationally. Alongside that, it picks up a handful of movement-related abilities (but not the entire suite) due to the strength of Tactical Retreat. Some additional notes are:

The Fel-Scarred focuses heavily on maximizing its burst windows with each Eye Beam cast, therefore it picks up movement talents to make use of Inertia. Each 40-second window overlaps Eye Beam and Essence Break with Sigil of Flame for an explosive burst window, made even stronger when paired with Metamorphosis. Outside of this, it simply focuses on cycling Fury as much as possible to maximize the damage benefit provided by Burning Blades. Some notes are:

• It picks up Cycle of Hatred through to Shattered Destiny to maintain higher Metamorphosis uptime, leaning more into sustained damage to get to Eye Beam as often as possible.
• Aldrachi Reaver still picks up talents related to both Chaos Strike and Blade Dance to amplify them further, as these both provide the largest amount of its throughput.
• On the class tree it needs to drop Collective Anguish in favor of picking up Sigil of Spite, used as a burst soul generation tool to trigger additional Reaver's Glaive. It also needs to keep The Hunt for the same reason.
• While the build does want to trigger Demonic frequently, the desync caused by Cycle of Hatred and the need to leave demon form to reset Demonsurge means it is avoided.
• Instead, the movement package is picked up to further amplify your Eye Beam cast windows alongside Essence Break while under the effects of Inertia.
• The remaining talents are taken to empower Chaos Strike / Annihilation as much as possible to leverage Burning Blades powerful damage amplifier.

Due to Aldrachi Reaver investing all of its talents into as much single-target as possible, for cleave scenarios in raids it also has an alternative build recommended.

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For situations where additional targets are present, having access to the "Ignition" talent package to activate Inertia is helpful while not fully investing into Immolation Aura. This largely just trades out the Cycle of Hatred Fury generation focus in favor of heightened fixed burst windows, opening up room to plan damage around add spawns.

Currently, Aldrachi Reaver is a niche alternative in Mythic+ due to its ability to deal heavy priority target damage while still AoEing surrounding targets. It, however, falls behind in both burst and uncapped AoE potential and is punished by frequent target swaps.

Currently, Fel-Scarred provides the highest burst and AoE potential. It also has talent options to add in additional priority target damage, so is our recommended AoE build

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Aldrachi Reaver in AoE situations picks up all of the movement talents with the "Ignition" playstyle to have access to Inertia, frontloading some of its burst potential. Due to that, it makes sure to grab A Fire Inside and all of the Immolation Aura related talents to amplify it further. It still picks up Throw Glaive talents, but avoids Furious Throws purely to amplify Reaver's Glaive.

Fel-Scarred deals extremely frontloaded 2-minute bursts around Metamorphosis, making it well suited for dangerous Mythic+ pulls. It also has a lot of additional baked in single-target to cover the gaps against bosses thanks to Burning Blades, while also being quite easy to pilot compared to the alternative. It picks up the "Ignition" set of talents to activate Inertia and amplify Immolation Aura as much as possible, but since there is no Throw Glaive does need to tab-target to apply Burning Wound to multiple targets.

• Due to the Aldrachi Reaver AoE playstyle being very busy, it struggles to find room to fit Essence Break into its build, instead favoring pure damage options like Glaive Tempest
• It needs to pick up Sigil of Spite for the additional burst soul generation between pulls where The Hunt is not available.
• On the Hero Tree Fel-Scarred always picks up Student of Suffering as an additional AoE cooldown, syncing the Mastery buff with each Eye Beam cast.
• Due to the desyncs that can happen; while slightly unintuitive, it avoids Cycle of Hatred in favor of picking up more damaging talents to play into a fixed cooldown cycle with Essence Break.
• In the middle of the tree, you can switch out Dancing with Fate which is better for single-target and priority damage, to focus more on pure burst AoE with Blind Fury if needed.

Aldrachi Reaver is well suited to Delves due to the high volume of Soul Fragment generation for additional sustain. While some aspects of its kit are quite awkward due to being target-locked by Reaver's Mark, it still justifies itself as an option by having strong frontloaded burst and a varied damage profile to handle both large groups of enemies and end bosses.

For Delves, Fel-Scarred leans heavily into explosive bursts of damage for large groups of enemies, so for speed clearing them is suited perfectly. Due to the stronger leaning toward your Metamorphosis window as well, the additional sustain provided by that makes dangerous pulls almost trivial — so long as you have your cooldowns set up correctly.

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