As a demon hunter in World of Warcraft: Legion, you’ll also start with the ability Fel Rush, which has two charges and takes 10 seconds to cool down on each charge. This move is familiar to any Warcraft player that’s fought demons, as it plows through a group of enemies, laying a fire trail on the ground and doing about 10,000 fire damage to anyone in melee range. It’s also an additional short-term dash for moving around quickly, and you can use it in midair or while gliding. It’s also an amazing tool for “tapping,” or getting loot rights on, a large group of enemies in one place.
Warning: the Shattered Abyss has lots of cliffs that drop off into space. I narrowly avoided annihilation a few times where I cheerfully Fel Rushed through a group of monsters and right off solid ground, recovering only with a quick double-jump and second charge of Fel Rush.
The incredible mobility of the class gives combat a different feel for the demon hunter. You’ll use Fel Rush during combat with multiple enemies, which means lots of zipping around and repositioning. I liked it a lot, and while the damage feels a little undertuned at the moment, that may be due more to the crappy starting gear than the class itself.
The last ability you’ll get to start is Spectral Sight. This outlines monsters (living and dead) in a red blood-like fire, including those inside caves or behind walls out of sight, and outlines treasure chests in purple fire. It slows your character; on the build I played, it was about the speed of an unboosted cat druid in stealth. It is active until you turn it off.
Spectral Sight sees through stealth and invisibility and only has a 10 second cooldown — a powerful spell indeed for player-versus-player realms. If you listen closely, you can hear rogues screaming on the Blizzard forums from here.
The last thing in the area isn’t an ability, but a ground effect: After killing demons, a small cloud remains. Passing through the cloud gives you the “Demon Soul” effect for a dozen seconds or so, which increases your damage by 20 percent. It does not stack, but it does refresh if you run through another cloud. It was unclear whether this is specific to the starting zone, or something that will happen anywhere you kill demons as a demon hunter.
Above: Zoom: This is what the wings look like that pop out when you glide.
Abilities and rewards you pick up on the way
One of the early quests gives you access to the Fel Saber, the demon hunter class mount. This undead demonic catlike mount features lots of fel green and glowing smoke — it looks sharp. Still, it almost feels like a shame to ride it, since it doesn’t have the vertical mobility or sprint mechanics of the character while running, which you quickly get used to.
Of note in this demo was that as a blood elf demon hunter, I could summon both my own class hawkstrider mount and the night elf black nightsaber cat mount. I’m not sure whether Blizzard intended that behavior.
Early treasure chest loot included a reusable agility/stamina flask buff item on a 15-minute cooldown and a 28-slot bag (you start with 16-slotters.) Many treasure chests contain Legion healthstones, which operate like standard healthstones/potions.
One of the quests will award you Eye Beam, a 50 Fury-cost spell that channels for a few seconds to do 63,000 damage in a line in front of you. It’s on a 45 second cooldown, causes your character to appear to transform, and does a satisfying job of making things melt.
You’ll also learn Consume Magic, a spell-interrupt and 3 second silence effect that fills your Fury bar if you use it successfully. It’s on a 20 second cooldown. Your only ranged attack is Throw Glaive: a 40-yard toss that will be useful to pull bosses as a tank in Vengeance spec. It does about 12,500 damage and can ricochet to up to two additional enemies within 10 yards. It has a 10 second cooldown.
Finally, toward the end of the zone, you’ll learn Metamorphosis, the 10 minute cooldown spell, and choose your spec (Havoc or Vengeance) going forward. In Havoc spec, Metamorphosis leaps and lands on your target, doing 8,000 damage in an 8-yard radius and stunning everyone in the area of effect for three seconds — again, a monster ability in PvP. It also transforms you into a demon for 30 seconds, giving you 100 percent leech (so that all your damage also heals you for the same amount) and boosting the damage of both your Demon’s Bite and Chaos Strike.
Metamorphosis as a damage player turns you into a giant winged demon, looking more like Illidan than like demonology warlocks’ current Metamorphosis spell (which is going away in Legion.)
Your bonus for your mastery stat also becomes active at this time: for damage, it’s Furious Havoc, which gives you a 13 percent chance to earn double fury on abilities.
Above: A demon hunter attacking from midair.
Early signs of the demon hunter tank spec
As I mentioned, the tank spec demon hunter was not playable in the demo — if you chose Vengeance from the options given, you were put in Havoc spec regardless. However, there were a few clues about things to come for demon hunter tanks.
Early screenshots show the Metamorphosis form for Vengeance is a massive demonic wall of flesh glowing with fire. The tooltip in the demo on the spec selection screen said that Metamorphosis for that spec will be on a two-minute cooldown, give max Fury and health, and reduce incoming damage by up to 60 percent, with the damage reduction increasing as health percentage of the demon hunter decreased. It lasts 15 seconds.
LeCraft said the Vengeance spec will focus on protective spells and inflicting pain with fire, including flame whip, firebrand, and a short-range area of effect damage spell immolation aura. The demo suggested Eye Beam turned into the aura (a 6,000-damage short-range AE for 10 seconds). Mastery was Inner Demon, which improves Leech by 13 percent.
Their abilities will disrupt enemies, protect the demon hunter, and protect other people, he said. Demon hunters will be able to parry with their glaives.
My final act in the demo was to take a fel bat to the Fel Hammer to return to the Black Temple and meet with Illidan (the demo ended before arrival, sadly). Fel bats are goofy looking: dangly feet, green fel eyes, definitely a different skin than the undead bat mounts currently in game. Expect to see them pop up on the mount list sometime soon.
All told, the demo took me from 98 to about 100, and took less than two hours to complete, even with various running around and random shenanigans.