First off let me preface this by saying this isn’t a post asking for dh in classic wow or classic tbc, this is just a fun topic speculating what the demon hunter class would have looked like if it had been available since the release of the game back in 2004. I think it’s a fun exercice in class design considering dh is the most « modern » class of wow, so trying to implement it in the context of vanilla sounds interesting to me. Another disclaimer before we get started, I am not a game designer so don’t expect exact numbers or percentages, I don’t work at blizzard so none of this is supposed to be a definitive answer to what is anyways a fun question, not a serious matter, and please don’t bring up class balance as in « this is op » or « this is too weak », I am talking an hypothetical class in an alternate version of the game’s history, not asking for actual changes.
So demon hunter in vanilla, what would it have been like ? Well the first thing we need to adress is faction and race balance. Blood Elves aren’t playable in vanilla, so at this point only Night Elves could be demon hunters if we follow retail repartition. Blizz could just make a vanilla horde race able to become demon hunters, orc would the most sense due to their long history with fel magic and the legion aswell as their contacts with Night Elves during the Third War. They could say some orc warlocks discovered the secrets of how to become demon hunters, and followed this path to protect their people from falling under the Legion influence again. Alternatively they could also give another unique class to the Horde to compensate, for example Death Knights which would have been Forsaken only. This is my prefered solution as it would have given the races that lost their « independance » in the transition from WC3 to WoW some unique class flavor. Though due to blizzard desire to keep every race with the same number of classes availables to them it would probably lead to Night Elves loosing one of their other playable races. My bet would be on warrior, since all the other options are too deeply rooted in the Night Elf racial fantasy.
Another thing we need to adress is the question of hero classes. Hero classes have been a feature of rpgs for years, and blizz certainly toyed with the idea of implementing them. However, hero classes in the traditionnal sense of the term : classes that are just stronger than regular classes, failed on their face when they actually tried to implement them. See early wrath dk for that. I am going to assume that blizz originally plays with the idea of making both dh and dk real hero classes in this version of the game, but it’s eventually scrapped during the developpement as they realise the balancing issues. So no hero class, dh is just a class like all others and starts at level 1 like everyone else in this version.
I) Leveling
Now that this is out of the way let’s get on with meat of this subject. It’s 2004 and you just created your Demon Hunter, how different is it from the retail version ? Well quite a lot. A lot of the things we associate with dh today would simply be impossible with tech and design philosophy of vanilla. So no dobble jumps, no gliding, no dashes. The class would also have three specs, or should I say three talent trees, like all others but they would be much different from retail’s version. The core fantasy of what a demon hunter is wouldn’t have changed as they have the same inspiration, the wc3 hero, but the implementation of these ideas would be very different due to the context.
Dh would still wear leather, although they would start with only cloth and would unlock leather at level 20. They would still be dual wielders and be the only class to start with dual wielding unlocked. They would still have their iconic warglaives, but would be unable to equip them until a class quest at level 30.
You would start as cloth wearing dual wielding melee, with the ability to cast spells to compensate your weak defense, which mean your only ressource would be mana. At level 2 you would get your first class quest like every other class, awarding you your first spell : Mana Grasp. This versatile spell allow the demon hunter to interrupt a cast and gives him a five minute long bonus to one of his stats depending on the school of magic of the interrupted spell, so for example interrupting a firebolt would give the dh a little bit of haste for five minutes.
At level 10 you would get another class quest, which would sent you to hunt down a powerful satyr hidden somewhere in teldrassil, with of course no indication of where he actually is. Finishing this quest would give your first sight ability : Demon Sight and an actual headpiece, a blindfold, which would be an extreme rarity in vanilla at such a low level. Unlike in retail dhs would have several different sights spell. Like in retail they would give you the ability to see things through walls and stealth but each sight would only work against a specific type of magical creature, so one would only work on demons, one on elementals, etc. And unlike in retail the sights would stay on until turned off, and drain your mana while active. What about pvp use ? Well at level 27 dh would be able to learn Shadow Sight and at level 32 Predator’s Sight, the first one working on rogues and the second on druids.
At level 20 you would get your first aura spell, Immolation Aura, after a class quest requiring you to use Mana Grasp on a number of pyromancers. It would work much like the current version but drain your mana and it would be a toggled spell, just like in wc3. It would also generate a lot of threat, and make a lot of low level dungeon group wipes as an unexperienced dh unaware of that would activate it and grab aggro from the tank. Just like with visions, auras would come in different shapes unlocked at different levels. Manaburn Aura would burn the mana of nearby casters, and Hellfire Aura would do high damage but drain your hp instead of your mana.
At level 30 you would finally gain the ability to use glaives after a training class quest where you would face up against other dh initiate npcs, which would also grant you your first pair of warglaives, two rares warglaives called the Demon’s Bites, the quest would be pretty hard with the initiate being overtuned and very difficult to beat for a fresh level 30. Nevertheless most dh would try and complete it asap as those glaives would be bis for you for a very long time. Warglaives would almost always be the bis weapons for dh, as blizz would make sure to give this iconic weapon a lot of love and almost all other melees would be kinda jealous of dh as they would still be the only ones able to use them. A negative consequence of that though would be that at level 30 a dh would have to level his warglaives weaponskill from 0, and everyone would just assume dh only need warglaives so they would almost never get other weapon types in raids. This would become an issue as no raids would drop warglaives until AQ40 and so most dh would be stuck with either crafted warglaives or if they were good at pvp honor bought warglaives for most of vanilla.
At level 34 dh would get one of their most iconic ability, Fel Rush. Unlike it’s retail version this one would not be a dash. At rank one it would be another toggle ability which would increase your movement speed by 20%, your dodge chance by 10%, but also augment your chance to miss attacks by 10% and of course drain your mana while active. As the ability ranked up it’s movement speed would increase, aswell as dodge chance, but so would the chance to miss. To counter this, dh would later learn another spell called Focused Hatred, on a two minute cd this spell would negate both the chance to miss and mana drain of fel rush for 8 seconds but it would drain your hp, the higher rank of fel rush being used the more costly it would be.
At level 40 you would learn the dh exlusive profession of tattoo artist, that’s right unlike retail were dh tattoos are just cosmetic they would be a full blown profession here. This profession would allow you to mark yourself with various tattoos giving a wide variety of buffs, some of them being really powerful like the Marks of the Fearless Hunter which would give the dh a chance to resist fears, and reduce the duration of fears on them. However the reagants for those tattoos would only drop from certain high level mobs and be very expansive on the AH, meaning that most dh would rarely change their tattoos and just go for the Marks of Unbound Flames, the bis dps tattoo that increase your chaos damage, or if they were tanking the Marks of the Fel Defender which increases their armor and magical resistance.
And at level 50 you would get your final class quest, the most difficult yet but that will reward you with your most iconic and powerful ability : Metamorphosis. But like everything in vanilla, it’s more complicated than in retail. For starters, you would be given a choice between hunting three powerful demons which were all elites. And just like the hunter legendary class quest you would have to do it solo. And depending on which demon you slained you would gain a different Metamorphosis, different in both gameplay and aesthetic, with no way to switch. The first demon is a powerful void creature, as those were considered demons back then. It would award you the tanking dh meta, which would turn you into a giant void ghost, making you highly resistant to magic damage and just a real pain to kill. The second one would be a more traditionnal winged and hooved type of demon, which would give you the dps meta, focused on ranged chaos attacks. Finally the last one would be an alpha fel hunter, killing him would give you a pvp oriented meta, focused on stuns, interrupts and your different visions. All metamorphosis would have a massive 20 minute cd, and last a minute but all would be very powerful, turning the dh into pretty much a mini boss. Casting it would however require an expensive reagant called a Gem of Soulbinding.
And that would be the vanilla dh leveling. Overall they would have the reputation to be a pain to level, second only to warriors in term of difficulty. They would be extremely fragile with their low armor, which mean small pools only with the need to eat to eat in between pulls as they would have 0 self heals. The mana bar and their many toggle abilities would also require the player to be very careful with their mana and most likely necessitate regular drinks. Finally most of their most powerful abilities would be locked behind difficult class quests, which most wouldn’t be able to complete at the level where they became available. However they would have some of the best flavor of all classes in the game, pushing many people to at least try them out, and they would also attract a lot of inexperienced players which would often struggle with the class, and wipe their groups on several occasion, giving the class kind of a bad rep.
Specs and talent tree
As mentionned before this version of dh would have three specs, like all other classes, but they would be much different than their retail versions. First spec would be called Combat, and would be a total mess not unlike many vanilla specs. Basically that tree would try to do too many things at once, with both melee damage, tanking, and ranged damage talents, because yes dh would also have ranged physical damages, focusing on glaive tossing aswell as throwing weapons. However they would be kind of a of like melee hunters, in that all of their ranged abilities would be terrible. But that tree would also held vital talents, such as warglaive specialisation, which would force dh to dump valuable points into subpar talents just to access those. This tree would also be important for dh tanks as it would hold most of the dodge related ability and talents, with the final talent being an ability not unlike our modern blur but, you guessed it, as a mana draining toggle. Overall with monks not being in the game yet, and dh having a history with dodges since one of their wc3 ability was a passive increase to dodge chance they would feel the niche of agile dodging tanks.
Next up is Havoc, this one would be focused on your magical damage, aswell as your various auras. Overall a pretty decent tree, with nice passives reducing the cost of your auras mana drains and some neat abilities like an active ability called Aetheric Hunt, allowing your Manaburn aura to actually transfer the ennemy mana to you while active. The final ability would be the previously mentionned Hellfire Aura, dealing heavy aoe damage in exchange for draining your hp.
Finally Vengeance, this one would be focused on your anti magic capabilities, which would be a big part of the class like in wc3. So things like your Mana Grasp, stuns, silences and various burns and drains, aswell as your sights. The final talent being Spectral Sight, as in the actual Spectral Sight from retail, which pretty much every dh would hate and would probably be featured on many of alternate Hirumardex videos on weird and bad vanilla ability, as it would only have pvp use and most dh would much rather quickly toggle on and off Shadow Sight and Predator’s Sight to check if a stealthie was around.
Overall dh talent trees would be on the more messy and unbalanced side of things, like many other in vanillas, as both tank and dps would always be forced to go pick in all three of them. They could kinda ignore vengeance, as it was more pvp focused, but pvp minded dh would then have to often switch their build in between bgs and raid.
Like all classes in vanilla, dh talent tree would eventually get a rework and a big one. Havoc would become the melee dps tree, Vengeance the tanking one, and combat would be dropped and replaced by Mayhem, which would be the ranged dps dh spec, focused on glaive toss, throwing weapons and the various dh ranged dps spell, like Felfire Bolt, a spell that would have hit like a truck but cost health, and a lot of health, bringing the ire of your healer if you use dit. But muck like melee hunters, ranged dhs would be terrible for many expansions.
III) Closing thoughts
Overall demon hunters would be a very different class in this alternate universe. Although the core concept would remain the same, it’s implementation would drastically change it. From a fast paced and very condensed class, this dh would still be fast but it’s gameplay would be centered around toggleable abilities and a careful management of your mana and hp, as both would get drained by your abilities. In pve melee dh would be kinda bad, as it’s damage although good in burst would lack the sustain required in raids due to how mana intensive it would be both for you and your healer. Ranged dps, although technically a possible build, would a be complete joke build. Dh tanking would be decent, definitely on the higher end when it comes to classic tanks but still wouldn’t come close to warriors as they would still lack a taunt, like many tanks. In a way it would be very similar to paladins, where their main weakness would be their mana as they would simply run out during the raid fight. They would however have their uses, with immolation aura aoe threat generation making them great dungeon tanks, and they would also have the highest dodge and magical resistance of all tanks, making them great on certain fights like the Twin Emperors in AQ40. In pvp they would be good, but have a very high skill ceiling so people could make best use of their burst and mobility while mitigating the negative effects of their spells, they would also be great against casters, and the bane of rogues and druids. Playing this vanilla dh would be fast paced, for vanilla, and put the players always on the razor edge in a delicate act of balance between their powerful spells and their negative effects, much like the balancing act every demon hunter faces in lore regarding it’s inner demon and how much power it draws from it.