Devourer Demon Hunter Leveling Guide from 8 to 90 — 12.0.5

Welcome to our Leveling Guide for Midnight. This will help you in your journey to max level as a Devourer Demon Hunter, covering talents and abilities you should know about.

Leveling Information

Beginner Leveling Guides

If this is your first character, or want to know more about the leveling process in Midnight, we've got you covered with these two guides!

Basic LevelingMidnight Leveling

Devourer Demon Hunter features periods of lower damage, before spiking into large AoE burst every time you have Void Metamorphosis available. Devourer is also incredibly mobile and has excellent self-sustain, allowing it to pull relatively large amounts of enemies. This AoE has a ramping damage component to it, which does cause some issues in the lightning fast pace of leveling dungeons. You may find it easier to level as Havoc or Vengeance if dungeons are your preferred content type for leveling.

If playing Devourer, your goal is to play around Void Metamorphosis, pulling large groups of enemies whenever your cooldown is available, and using it to defeat them all very quickly. While it is not available, smaller groups of enemies should be pulled, as your kill time will be longer.

Item level is always more important than individual stats when leveling up. Always choose the piece of gear with the highest item level. Items with Speed tertiary stats can help speed up your leveling, especially during parts of extended time spent indoors. Heirloom gear is also useful while leveling, allowing you to ignore a lot of gearing for a large part of your leveling journey.

Itemization

Leveling Heirlooms

Learn how to use Heirloom gear to level your characters as fast as possible!

Heirlooms Guide

With the release of Midnight, it means it's time for everyone to level again to 90. To help speed this up, there's a few optional consumables you can pick up to speed things up.

To be as prepared as possible, look to acquire at least some of the following items and enchants.

• Charged Phial of Alacrity — A Phial from Dragonflight which persists through death, giving bonus Speed for 30 minutes. If you're already geared, it's often about moving between pulls rather than a bit more damage.
• Exquisitely Eviscerated Muscle — A food item from The War Within, grants a large boost to Speed for 1 hour, but is lost on death.
• Elusive Blasphemite — If your gear has plenty of sockets, switch to this Algari Diamond and each of The War Within's gem colors for extra speed.
• Enchant Boots - Scout's March / Enchant Chest - Stormrider's Agility / Enchant Bracer - Chant of Armored Speed / Enchant Cloak - Chant of Burrowing Rapidity — Switch all of your armor enchants over to extra Speed effects if you were previously using Avoidance or Leech.
• Gunshoes — A tried and true pickup for leveling, these are always nice to have to get through areas where you can't mount, and even work across water. These can't be activated while in combat though, and are cancelled when taking damage.
• Shimmerscale Diving Suit / Shimmerscale Diving Helmet — These consumables from Battle for Azeroth can help with any sections that involve going underwater - though in Midnight's zones that doesn't happen very often.

Your talents can be changed anywhere in the world as long as you are out of combat. Be sure to explore various combinations of talents at will while leveling to get a feel of the gameplay flow. We have provided a sample leveling path below that introduces core Devourer concepts over the course of your journey.

In this section, we will rank the PvP talents for leveling and doing solo or small-group PvE content. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Devourer Demon Hunter-specific PvE talents.

1. Armor of Souls is a significant increase to your armor, which is strong against all the melee damage you take while leveling. Additionally, it generates a lot of free Soul Fragments, making it a great pick
2. Beckon causes your next Consume after Reap to be instant and generate an additional Soul Fragment. This is a great increase to the speed of the rotation, and will cause you to use Reap on cooldown
3. Inevitable End increases the damage of Collapsing Star by 25% and causes it to be uninterupptable. While this is niche, it is still a minor damage gain, and may occasionally prevent your Collapsing Star from being interrupted by enemy abilities.

Detainment, Cover of Darkness, Cleansed by Flame and Glimpse all have very limited uses in PvE, due to then being very focused on crowd control tools or pressuring enemy players. A special note should be made for Surrender to the Void however. This talent causes Void Metamorphosis to cost 100 Soul Fragments, but to increase your damage by an additional 20%, and increasing all Fury gains while transformed by 100%. This should never be taken under any circumstances, as it more than doubles the cost of Void Metamorphosis for leveling builds, while having very little benefit since combat is so short.

To help with understanding what changes for your spec as you level up and progress through the talent tree, use the slider below to select your current level. Each time you level up, move it along, and the section will level up with you!

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

After reaching level 71 and unlocking Hero Talents, we recommend playing with Void-Scarred to empower your Void Metamorphosis with Voidsurge.

After reaching level 81, the Apex Talents unlock. However, we chose to not put points into ours until max level, as Collapsing Star is not used much while leveling.

As you level and populate the talent tree, Devourer gains access to additional tools to navigate the world outside of just its rotation. This section will grow alongside the slider with each level.

• Remember to Recuperate! - Whenever you're low on health between pulls, you can use the Recuperate ability available to all classes to quickly recover.
• Use your Movement! - Demon Hunter has access to Fel Rush, allowing you to quickly cross distances to stay in the fight.
• Use your Movement! - Devourer has access to Shift, Vengeful Retreat, and Voidblade, giving you multiple ways to quickly move around the battlefield.
• Leverage your Healing - Devourer heals from each Shattered Souls orb consumed!.
• Leverage your Healing - Devourer heals from each Shattered Souls orb consumed!. Soul Rending also provides significant Leech (especially while in Void Metamorphosis), so pull big!
• Remember your Defense - Blur is a strong defensive, especially against enemies that auto-attack a lot. Use it frequently!

Below is a sample priority list to keep track of which abilities to press:

1. Cast Collapsing Star when available.
2. Cast The Hunt on cooldown.
3. Cast Voidblade to generate Fury.
4. Cast Hungering Slash when available.
5. Cast Vengeful Retreat when buffed by Voidstep.
6. Cast Void Ray whenever you have enough Fury.
7. Use Void Metamorphosis as frequently as possible when you have the Soul Fragments to cast it.
8. Cast Soul Immolation to generate Fury and Soul Fragments.
9. Cast Consume to generate Fury and Soul Fragments.
10. Cast Reap as needed to collect Soul Fragments you cannot reach.
11. Cast Throw Glaive when you need to pull enemies from a distance.

Devourer has a habit of pulling big and getting into dangerous situations, but luckily it comes with a variety of tools to help manage this:

• Shattered Souls have a chance to spawn when dealing damage, and will spawn through various talents and abilities. Each Soul Fragment consumed heals you for 1% of your maximum health.
• If you ever find yourself stuck or caught in a dangerous situation, Shift teleports and Vengeful Retreat can almost always get you out of it.
• Blur has a high duration and a low cooldown, so don't be afraid to use it if you ever feel unsafe.
• Void Nova gives you an emergency AoE stun if you're caught in a bad situation.

Class Guides

Demon Hunter Class Guides

Finished leveling your character? Check out our max level guides!

All Demon Hunter Guides

Wordup and Voodoo

Guide Authors

Follow Wordup,Voodoo

This guide was written by Wordup and Voodoo.

Wordup has been writing high-end WoW Class Guides for almost a decade, with extensive theorycrafting experience across multiple classes. He raids in the Top 100 guild Echoes, and you can follow him on Twitter.

Voodoo raids in the guild Sacred Lotus, and has been a well-respected figure in the DH theorycrafting community for years. You can follow him on Twitter and his YouTube.