Devourer Demon Hunter DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — 12.0.5

Over the course of Season 1 in Midnight, Devourer has settled quite firmly on one playstyle, cemented by some of the recent patch changes. While there are a lot of potential options available on the tree, our current recommendations are as follows:

• Single Target - Following 12.0.5 changes, Annihilator is significantly ahead of Void-Scarred in all Season 1 encounters. While Void-Scarred can be played if you enjoy the playstyle, it's firmly behind.
• AoE - Following 12.0.5 changes, Annihilator is now better at all keystone levels. While Void-Scarred can be competitive at lower keystone levels, we recommend playing Annihilator in all scenarios.

In pure single target scenarios, Annihilator pulls ahead of Void-Scarred, while dealing much more cleave damage. Due to this, we recommend playing it on all boss fights this tier. In AoE encounters, Annihilator remains ahead due to its stronger Collapsing Star casts. Annihilator and Void-Scarred maintain their gap in AOE, but Void-Scarred can be viable at lower key levels if you prefer that playstyle, due to its faster, more frequent damage.

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The builds listed above are popular recommendations, covering various different loadouts suited to each style of endgame content. Each Talent Build will have it's own rotation, and can also be manipulated further for specific types of content and to better benefit your group.

Combat Information

Rotations and Mythic+

Want to dive deeper? These guides will teach you how to utilize our Talent Builds in endgame content!

RotationMythic+

New in Midnight is the Apex Talent system, a sequential group of talents which unlock as you acquire each specialization tree talent point on the journey from 80 to 90. These are grouped together in 4, with different effects at each level. Unlike other talents, they are all in one node, with each point invested enhancing the effect. The Devourer Demon Hunter Apex is Midnight, providing significant benefits to Collapsing Star:

1. Midnight — Your Collapsing Star will now always Critically Strike.
2. Midnight — Has two points, increasing all Cosmic damage dealt by 3%, and increases the Critical Strike damage of Collapsing Star by 50% of your Critical Strike chance per point. This bonus is additive with Calamitous.
3. Midnight — Upon entering Void Metamorphosis, instantly spawn 5 Soul Fragments and immediately gain access to one cast of Collapsing Star.

While not every build takes the Apex Talents, for those that do, it significantly increases the power of Collapsing Star, turning it into one of our strongest damage sources. The final point in particular also increases the access to up-front casts, making each Void Metamorphosis cast more impactful.

Beyond being a brand new specialization already, Devourer also brings with it a new Hero tree, Annihilator. This is shared with Vengeance, while Void-Scarred is functionally equivalent to Havoc's Fel-Scarred. In the two tabs below we've covered the major talents and key effects that influence your build depending on your selection.

Annihilator focuses on its keystone effect, Voidfall. A variety of Devourer abilities (most importantly Consume and Void Ray) grant a stack, and upon reaching three, your next Reap cast will consume them. Each stack consumed calls down a powerful Void Meteor, dealing heavy Cosmic damage to targets and generating 2 Soul Fragments. The playstyle is relatively simple, only requiring you to slot in additional Reap casts to consume stacks as they cap out.

For the offensive choice node, Harness the Cosmos provides a more general throughput increase to Voidfall, while Doomsayer is tailored to Mythic+ and situations where you can consistently leave combat to refresh the effect.

For defense and mobility, Phase Shift grants 2% damage reduction per stack of Voidfall present, with Final Hour allowing it to persist after you consume them. Path to Oblivion adds 3% movement speed on top of that, though adding a third charge to Shift with State of Matter is generally preferable.

Void-Scarred provides a variety of benefits during your Void Metamorphosis effect. Most importantly, Voidblade, Hungering Slash, and The Hunt are upgraded into more powerful versions while active. Additionally, the first cast of each of these trigger a Voidsurge for extra AoE Cosmic damage. This slots in over the regular Devourer playstyle, but heavily encourages using a hybrid melee approach, leaping in and out of range to activate these effects.

For the three choice nodes on the tree, there are the following options:

• Wave of Debilitation vs. Pursuit of Angriness - both are niche effects, with Pursuit of Angriness generally being better for the small amount of extra mobility vs. the extra CC utility of Wave of Debilitation.
• Set Fire to the Pain vs. Improved Soul Rending - this is a choice between passive damage reduction or self sustain. Generally speaking, staggering some damage with Set Fire to the Pain so you can leech it back up is the preferred choice, but it's quite minor.
• Student of Suffering vs. Flamebound - due to the current tuning state of melee abilities, the benefits of Flamebound focusing on Hungering Slash is pretty weak. Student of Suffering on the other hand significantly improves Fury generation while also buffing extra Mastery, making it the preferred choice.

"War Mode" is an optional feature that enables open-world PvP encounters that confer some benefits when active:

• Grants access to PvP talents in the open world.
• 10% increase in World Quest rewards at max level.
• 10% more experience gained while leveling.
• Earn Conquest Points which can reward gear every week.

With the benefits of War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is an optional way to maximize your leveling speed and reward potential. However, you will open yourself up to open-world PvP, so be aware of hostile enemy players who could interfere with you; this is a risk you will have to decide on your own if you want to take.

Here, we'll only be looking at PvP talents that have use cases for aiding with leveling or open-world PvE scenarios, as their PvP benefits are discussed on our PvP page. Generally, the selections are made to optimize your ability to kill enemies faster, increasing your pace when moving through content.

1. Armor of Souls provides additional Soul generation when you're being attacked, ramping up the speed at which you can enter Void Metamorphosis.
2. Inevitable End increases the damage of Collapsing Star and, more importantly, prevents it from being interrupted by any effect.
3. Beckon allows you to follow up each Reap cast with an instant Consume, providing faster setup on targets.

Surrender to the Void however has a big impact on slowing down the rate at which you can enter Void Metamorphosis. While it does make these windows more explosive, the hit to frequency means it's not worth using.

Detainment, Cover of Darkness, Cleansed by Flame and Glimpse all have minimal uses in PvE, due to being more focused on crowd control tools, or pressuring enemy players, so aren't worth considering.

Wordup and Voodoo

Guide Authors

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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.