After year of thinking and hating the spec for no reason, decided to give a shot. Feels I got what I wanted. (I know right)
I would like to ask what stats/azerite/essences shall I farm to be able to main a dh in 8.3?
Thank you in advance 
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You’ll want to sim stuff once 8.3 stuff can be simmed. You can then start setting your goals.
Stat priorities can be found in the icy veins guide. Versatility above all, mastery and agility are the worst. These might change in 8.3 and might change based on your gear, so you will always have to sim your upgrades.
This is what I currently recommend for 8.2. Trait wise I don’t know if much changes in 8.3, though I do know Overwhelming Power will get nerfed for DH so it might sim a bit lower and open alternatives. Comparing my spellbar to that of my Demon Hunter - #133 by Linaori-chamber-of-aspects
Essences in 8.3 will receive an overhaul, such as life-force will be nerfed and new essences will be introduced, thus my essences will probably be sub-par for 8.3
For azerite traits you will want 3 x Furious Gaze (1 on each piece of azerite), 1 x Chaotic Transformation, 1 x Eyes of Rage and 1 x Revolving Blades. For essences, I’ll go with minors first. Make sure you have purification protocols (procs about 1.5x more often for havoc than other dps specs because of the high haste we get from the furious gaze azerite trait), vision of perfection which will only get better and better at reducing our meta cd (every neck lvl you get, it reduces meta cd by an additional 0.3%, at neck lvl 70, which is max now, reducing meta cd by 21%) and the 3rd minor slot we will get in 8.3 can be filled by either the rated arena essence that gives you a stacking versa buff. Other options could be the nazjatar bodyguards essences that upon proccing it refunds 50% of the fury you spent on an ability (i think that’s what it does) or the eternal palace essence that upon proccing increases the dmg you deal to the target by 3% (i think that’s the value after the nerf) for 6 seconds. I did not mention crucible of flame because you will passively get that essence lvled up as you gain neck lvls. As for major essences, focusing iris hasn’t been nerfed so that remains the top choice in any aoe scenario imo. As for single target, despite the nerfs it might still be either the eternal palace raid one, some new essence or maybe crucible of flame.
Stats is vers + crit on ideally every piece of gear you can get stats on, you get haste from your 3 furious gaze traits, mastery doesn’t do enough for you to deserve any attention and agility is eclipsed by the pure + dmg, +healing and reduced dmg taken from versatility and the dmg increase from crit.
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Vision of Perfection and Memory of Lucid Dreams sim too low. You’ll most likely be going with Life Force as primary, Crucible of Flame and World Vein as secondary based on sims. 8.3 will change this of course.
Always sim your builds!
Now, depending on your goals. If you aim to do M+ in the spectrum of 10-15 keys, you can go with essences that you have and may not go full farm on some.
But if you wish to do higher than 15 keys, you need specific essences.
Major slot: Essence of the Focusing Iris. - Without a doubt the best major essence for DH in m+.
Minor Must have: Conflict and strife - Absolutely necessary to have it if you want to pump big numbers on pack pulls.
Minor Must have: Memory of Lucid Dreams - The chance to get fury back along with versatility buff on yourself is self explanatory.
Minor 3rd new minor slot: in 8.3 Vision of Perfection or Purification protocol look like they would be great choices for a minor essence.
As for traits, x3 furious gaze without a doubt, x1 revolving blades and x1 eyes of rage + x1 chaotic transformation. If you cannot get a chaotic transformation trait you could possibly grab a second eyes of rage or revolving blades instead.
Conflict and strife is not a must have. I’m “pumping” big numbers with out it. Purification protocol actually has a very powerful minor power that deals quite nice damage, and is far easier to obtain, especially in 8.3.
Sims lower than World Vein for me, be cautious with Lucid Dreams, it’s not that good, especially if you’re on Demonic Appetite. The regeneration on that build is neglectable and you’re better off with something else.
I’m pretty sure you’ll want to check the new essences as well, especially for that last slot
Honestly, before you comment you should check top m+ players and what essences they are running.
Of course DH will still PUMP without some essences, the class is just very good. But absolute BIS go to is IRIS + Conflict (MUST) and 3rd (+ 4th now) can be played with between purification protocol, vision of perfection, lucid dreams, new patch essences, etc.
I will explain to you WHY conflict is a must have.
Versatility.
It is the bis DH stat and you get a lot from it from conflict and strife.
Also Worldvein? Yikes. Maybe with 8.3 buff it is possible, but not now for sure.
The OP was asking what they need to main a DH, not what’s BiS. You don’t need BiS to main a class.
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Worldvein sims higher, that’s not a yikes, that’s a simulation that has proven it. Also, my DH has reached a point where it actually recommended me to use crit enchants and sockets on my gear instead of versatility. Vers is nice, but it’s not always the stat that gives the most benefit. My recent stat weights were 6.4 for vers and 6.34 for crit.
Don’t blindly use vers only always sim!
Conflict is NOT a must, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to top DPS as DH.
Mate, I will not argue with you. You can top dps on a dh with whatever essences you are using in keys you are running. Try to run worldvein in a 20+ key and you will quickly get kicked from the group if someone sees you running that instead of Conflict. Mark my word.
There IS a certain META always and right now WORLDVEIN is definitely not in meta for DHs no matter what you may “sim”.
Yea If OP only wants to play DH for fun its fine whatever essence you run, but don’t argue with me that the BIS is not a BIS because YOU say its not and thousands of other dhs in your opinion must be monkeys then.
Also your main is fairly low scored, you don’t strike me as someone who knows what he is talking about when his highest keys done are 15s and mostly failed or 1 chested. That doesn’t really speak for high dps numbers.
Each of my high score DH friends runs basically the same essence setup and stat weights. As well as all the randoms I have played with when pushing 19-20. There is a meta and off-meta, worldvein will be much better in 8.3 but it is most definitely NOT in 8.2.5, compared to other essences.
And yeh, crit is your second best stat so if you are very high on vers you might pump some crit in as well for enchants or gems. But in general you must aim for versatility because it’s the stat that best scales with DH kit.
I do not want to make you look like a complete nibber with what you say but you are clearly arguing because you want something to be the way you want it but it is not really the case here. I myself HATE pvp and cba farming conflict on my DH atm as it is my 3-4th alt (might change for 8.3) but that doesn’t change the fact its a go-to essence.
Argue with facts not feelings my friend.
C&S can be swapped out in favor of purification protocol / vision of perfection / lucid dreams and stuff.
I suggest you check out Demonchaya or other top DHs and what essences they swap in dungeons in general. Worldvein is most definitely not in the essence swap rotation for them at this point of time.
Not because worldvein is bad in terms of stats (they are tuning it up a lot for 8.3) but because its kind of buggy right now and not really working well in dungeons. Literally why it is most definitely not better than C&S right now.
I’m not saying it’s not BiS, I’m saying that it’s not a MUST HAVE. READ.
Get your elitist crap out of here. +15 is out of reach for so many people. Not to mention that dungeon runs take 5 people, nice to judge 1 persons performance based on that of groups.
Also please mind that I haven’t really started doing M+ until the end of S2.
Then why doesn’t this reflect my sims?
The majority of people that I know won’t even bother with the first rank of Conflict because it involves PvP.
I have not had any issues with world vein in dungeons. I don’t care if C&S better or not, we’re talking about what, maybe 700 dps max? Not worth the effort that it costs to drag yourself through PvP.
You can do end-game content with world vein. Anything above +15 I consider something that’s unreachable for the majority of the playerbase. My “low” score still got me to position 17,208 out of 270,560 for all DH, I consider that pretty good. I’d say 131,361 out of 2,786,599 isn’t bad at all when considering all classes.
Also please mind that DPS wise I’m still top DPS in pretty much every of those +15s by a difference of at least a few K dps, without my MUST HAVE essence.
Alright bro, arguing with you is like arguing with a wall, getting nowhere with this, plus you’re funneling your arguments with feelings, not facts.
Elitistic? I don’t think calling you an average player is elitist, as you said yourself you’re not even aiming to be a top player or anything along those lines.
You can play a DH without essences if you’d like as far as I care, play whatever you have fun on. But don’t argue which is better than what when there’s a CLEAR BIS for something. My argument was on what’s BIS not what WORKS, so you began our argument by trying to argue that the BIS essences are not bis and you now try to make it seem as if it’s not what you were trying to go for.
Why did I say some essences are a MUST have? Because if the player who posted this wants to play on the highest levels of content I suggested what he should aim to have. Nowhere in this thread did he say he wants to raid only normal and heroic and do <+15 keys, so HOW the hell am I suppoed to know he DOESN’T want to push 20 keys for example or raid mythic? Because if you DO want to do that you DO need your bis essences and gear, no argue in that.
I still don’t understand why you had to pull off this snowflake argument, my friend. If you want to have fun and you don’t want to do PvP to farm essences that’s completely fine! But when that essence is one of the BIS ones, if you wish to play harder content, you should definitely have it at least, for example, “just in case”.
I wrote my comments about bis to tell the OP what is bis and what he should aim for. If he doesn’t want to do PvP he is free not to. As I said earlier, he never stated what content he would like to play and if he wants to focus on pushing his limits, or just have fun. If you want to just have fun, you’re pretty much gonna have fun even if you are using the worst essences or none at all.
Also for you info, do some research on worldvein. You may not see it for yourself a lot, but the essence is CURRENTLY bugged. Thus why barely anyone is using it, but why, go trust your robot sims who will never take this into account, not actual people who have actually tested this a million times over in 8.2.
Also in my first comment I have stated if he doesn’t wish to push high keys and stuff he can go with whatever essences. So you trying to argue with me makes you look like a fool, because what works in high keys is already proven and I’m not stating my opinion, I’m stating facts.
Whatever you say sis.
Were you unable to read again? You said “your main is fairly low scored”. It’s not low scored. It’s elitist to call 1500 rio low scored. This is a score that the majority of players will never reach in S3.
It’s the end of season 3, first time I’ve even heard about it. If it was really bugged, I’d expect guides and sims to clarify this. I’ve never even seen this “fact” being mentioned in forum posts, this is the first time I’ve ever seen it.
Please link results, as you seem to have this proof somewhere.
I’d say you trying to push your BiS crap is making you look like a fool. You’re not stating facts at all, you’re posting elitist opinions and dismissing my sims and stat weights.
Go check what high key runner DHs play with, then come back with your stat weights and sims. Enough commenting from me on this topic.
By the way, 1500 rio is a very average, next to low score.
Have a nice day, sister
Edit: by the way, when high key players play the specific BiS in mind, that becomes a fact not an “elitist opinion”. You’re a special one, aren’t you. But enough energy waste on my side, just close this argument and stop barking. Play unbound force if you’d like
Check the high key runners. They combine different essences i ndifferent cases, but generally the go-to is kind of the same.
If you see any of hem running worldvein in +25s, i will delete my comments and send you flowers along with a cake
Last edit: Saw Stoneface is streaming M+ atm. Go ask him in his channel if u should run worldvein and see what he will reply to you. He will give u the same reply he gave to me and you won’t like it
Major focusing iris, minor vision (for more meta uptime which directly translates to more damage) and the second minor is purification protocol (because of our high haste, it procs a lot more often). Those are the best essences atm, in patch 8.2.5 for m+. The only dungeon where it’s recommended to go with life force major is king’s rest tyrannical on high keys. Conflict and strife was good at the begining of the patch, probably still is decent but it has a major downside: the stacks can fall off between pulls and that translates into a dps loss. That’s why vision is better atm and most top dhs run it. In 8.3, with the addition of another minor slot, cns might actually fill that spot if the new essences aren’t more desirable.
I notice a lot of talk about m+.
What would be a BiS setup for raid?
Replace Focusing Iris with CLF?
Bis setup for raid depends. If you go the autoattack fury generator build, you pick clf major with memory + crucible minors. If you go demonic appetite build, you go clf major with crucible + cns minor. In the first build you can try swapping crucible for vision if you can squeeze out 2 uses of meta, same in the second build, swapping either crucible or cns with visions if the cdr from visions gives you another meta usage during the fight
Thank you.
Appreciate all info in this thread. Will give the suggestions here some tries. Just recalled I’m waiting for the req changes in 8.3 for some essences so will soon get My hands on purification r3, lucid r3 etc.
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