[PVE] Greg's 7.1.5 Demonic Demon Hunter Guide

[Xtravagant]

7.1.5 Demonic Demon Hunter Guide


Intro



Ever feel like your Demon Hunter isn't edgy enough? You like your Metamorphosis form and you wanna be in it more often? Do you like topping the damage AND healing charts in M+/raid fights with lots of adds? If that's the case, search no further, you're in the right place. I'm Greg and I present you my Demonic Build Demon Hunter guide for patch 7.1.5. This build revolves around using Eye Beam as your main damage spell and trying to get as much uptime on your Metamorphosis as possible.
DISCLAIMER: For the sake of this guide, I will mostly be discussing the DPS value of things, and disregarding the defensive/utility values (Prydaz Absorb shield, defensive talents instead of damage talents, etc.).



Talents



Talent choices are somewhat flexible, besides some baseline Talents that define the build. The highlighted ones are the ones that I run 90% of the time, and those are in my opinion the best overall options.





Talent choices


Level 99

Fel Mastery is a very lackluster talent. You will never use this.
Felblade is the go-to talent for the Single Target build, but in this setup it gets outshined by the 3rd option in this row.
Blind Fury is the talent you will be taking with this build, everything else doesn't work without this as it allows you to get those juicy Eye Beam chains on big add packs.

Level 100

Prepared is not a bad talent, but not the best in it's row for this build.
Demon Blades is a decent talent, but this build focuses around generating as many Lesser Soul Fragments as possible in order to reduce the cooldowns on our Eye Beam through the Feast on the Souls Artifact Trait.
Demonic Appetite is your talent choice in this tier, I've already explained why.

Level 102

Chaos Cleave - as the name suggests, you take this when you know that there will be a lot of cleave, basically 3-4 adds constantly up. (will rarely be taken in M+, however some Mythic Nighthold bosses (Tichondrius, Botanist) aswell as some Normal/Heroic fights(Skorpyron and Elisande) are great for this talent)
First Blood is the go-to talent for burst AOE and outshines Chaos Cleave in big add packs.
Bloodlet is non-competitive with the other 2 options.

Level 104

Netherwalk is useful in very niche situations in M+, mostly high Tyrannical keys where you can get oneshot by certain mechanics. Use this with a /cancelaura macro.
Desperate Instincts should never be taken.
Soul Rending is the talent you want to go for. It allows you to top the Healing aswell as the Damage charts! Jk, but seriously this talent is bonkers broken, it allows you to solo huge add packs with your Eye Beam, aswell as have on-demand Healing in case things get rough.

Level 106

Momentum is a skill-testing talent, mastering this will surely increase your overall DPS. I recommend taking it even if you're not experienced with it, as it shouldn't take you that long to get used to it.
Fel Eruption - Nope. This is a PVE guide.
Nemesis can be taken if you feel like your group needs more ST damage on bosses, but an experienced Momentum user will still pull out more ST DPS.

Level 108

Master of the Glaive - I can see this being used in conjunction with the Legendary Wrist, but it's not worth taking over the other options.
Unleashed Power is your go-to option in this tier, following the whole "get-as-many-soul-fragments-as-possible" philosophy due to the Overwhelming Power Artifact Trait.
Demon Reborn although this allows you to have a sick opener combo with a very high damage spike and Metamorphosis uptime, overall it gets outclassed by Unleashed Power.

Level 110

Chaos Blades - //
Fel Barrage - //
Demonic is the only viable option, it defines the build and is the build-around talent.


Stats


Mastery > Critical Chance > Haste > Versatility

Basically what you do is take your Single Target Chaos Blades build stat priority, and swap Critical Chance with Mastery on the priority list. The reason for this is that most of our damage comes from Eye Beam, and we want to make it hit as hard as possible. And what does Mastery do for us? Mastery increases our Chaos Damage, and therefore our Eye Beam damage.

Critical Chance is still a good stat for us, but it falls out of favor due to Mastery being so important here.

Haste should be at around 10-12% and Versatility is irrelevant, you will most likely get enough Haste by using the Nighthold 4-set, and you can tweak it with enchants/gems.


BiS Relics


If you want to completely focus your Demon Hunter on this build, and disregard the ST build completely, aim for 3x Chaos Vision relics.

If you want to play both builds, consider taking 1x Chaos Vision, 1x Critical Chaos and 1x Unleashed Demons.


General Playstyle tips & tricks


Due to not taking the Demon Blades talent, your most of your Fury Generation will be tied to Demon's Bite. Bind it somewhere easily reachable, you will spam it.

Always try to pair your Eye Beam, Fury of the Illidari and Blade Dance with Momentum windows in order to maximise DPS.

If you have Vengeful Retreat/Fel Rush up, and none of the above spells are off cooldown, feel free to trigger Momentum and fill the window with Chaos Strike/Demon's Bite. Try to store atleast 80 Fury before doing this.

Channeling Eye Beam's full duration on 9+ targets fully resets the cooldown (VERY IMPORTANT), which allows you to chain your Eye Beams together and keep your Metamorphosis up for long periods of time, while healing yourself massively with Soul Rending.

Don't be afraid to use Eye Beam on packs with less than 9 adds though, as you can run in after the channel and pop your Chaos Nova which will 90% of the time drop 1-2 Lesser Soul Fragments, reducing your Eye Beams cooldown for another 5-10s. 6 adds is an ok amount to use Beam on.

It is ok to use your Eye Beam even on Single Target if you know that there will be atleast 30-40s before another encounter.

Prioritise using Vengeful Retreat over Fel Rush when positioning yourself around add packs, as Fel Rush -> Eye Beam requires you to turn your character 180 degrees which shaves some time off your Momentum buff.

Pausing your Eye Beam chains to trigger Momentum should be done only if you can put yourself in a better Eye Beam angle.

Mind your Eye Beam/Metamorphosis cooldown on Single Target, and aim for maximum uptime on your Meta.

Also, a general Demon Hunter tip - aim for every Interrupt, Consume Magic generates you fury when you successfully Interrupt a spell. Use it often, it's free DPS and you'll also be a better teammate overall.

Basic AOE Burst combo is Fel Rush in -> Fury of the Illidari -> Vengeful Retreat -> Eye Beam -> Fel Rush -> Blade Dance.

Single Target Rotation is just a continous circle of using your Fury of the Illidari/Eye Beam/Blade Dance on cooldown and generating/dumping Fury.


Macros

Netherwalk Cancelaura Macro (Make sure not to panic spam it otherwise you might cancel it too early):

Code:

#showtooltip Netherwalk /cancelaura Netherwalk /cast Netherwalk

Mouseover Interrupt Macro (Interrupt the mob that you're hovering with your mouse):

Code:

#showtooltip Consume Magic /cast [@mouseover,harm,nodead][]Consume Magic

Add-ons

There are no real necessary add-ons for this build, so I'll just list a few generally useful ones.

Skada - provides detailed information about every aspect of the encounter, the group's DPS, HPS, Interrupts etc. Good alternatives are Recount and Details!

ElvUI - Best UI Add-on out there imho.

Deadly Boss Mods - If you're new to PVE, you need this. It tracks boss timers, and also warns you about important mechanics.

Weak Auras - Overall extremely useful add-on. Get used to it and you will prosper.

A really cool Weak Aura I can give you is the Enemies In Range WA. It tracks how many enemies are in a certain range (you set the exact number of yards). Useful for tracking if you have 9+ targets for your Eye Beam.


Legendaries

Raddon's Cascading Eyes is the bread and butter of the build. You can still play Demonic without it, but it's just such a huge difference. This is a very important factor in the spectre of things that allow you to chain Eye Beams together and get those 6m DPS spikes.

Anger of the Half Giants is the 2nd best Legendary for you with this build, it heavily increases your Fury generation.

Loramus Thalipedes' Sacrifice is a viable replacement for the Ring, it goes well with Momentum's playstyle.

Prydaz, Delusions of Grandeur, Mo'arg Bionic Stabilizers and Kil'jaeden's Burning Wish all fall short when compared to those 3.


Items to look for

Unstable Arcanocrystal - Drops off the Withered J'im world boss in Aszuna. As of right now, it's BiS for most classes, including Demon Hunter. The sheer amount of stats it gives you outvalues most on-use/proc trinkets.

Terrorbound Nexus - Overall a decent trinket for the build, gives a ton of Mastery and procs a decent amount.

Nighthold T19 4-set - Increases your Fury Generation and Chaos Strike critical chance. Very good set, get it.


Final Words

I know it's a lot to take in at once, try to incorporate one thing at a time into your gameplay. Eventually, you'll pick it all up and you will see just how much Demon Hunter's are capable of. This build is a nice gust of wind to relieve you from the Single Target 2-button Rotation as it actually requires some planing beforehand.
If you have any questions, contact me in-game @ Gregolas-Felsong (Horde).
Good luck!