Blizzard, please listen to your players. We gave feedback during beta about why aldrachi reaver is unfun. It is still unfun. It’s so unfun that demon hunters were worried when you buffed it because most people don’t want to play it. That shouldn’t happen.
I’m sure it’s too late any time in this xpac to do what I personally think should be done, which is to scrap aldrachi entirely for a completely new hero tree built from scratch, but can you please do anything in terms of design changes? Other specs are getting slight adjustments in 11.0.5, but the hero tree that people don’t want buffed because no one wants to play it is being unchanged?
These are some of the reactions from today’s (10/4) aldrachi buffs. Again, if the class you are buffing is reacting this way to buffs then something is very wrong.
I really want Blizzard to take a good hard look at their class devs. Who’s making changes, why they’re making changes and how they got there. For example, Outlaw rogue got hit with all abilities reduced by 4%, melee by 8%, dispatch by 10% a few weeks back, just for them to turn around and give us 4% ability and 6% dispatch buffs in damage in the coming patch. It feels like they don’t know wtf to do so they just make changes to say “Look! I did something!”. Like they’re unable to look at the root cause of why certain specs and hero talents don’t work or feel like to play.
This whole doing flat % buffs to troubled specs/classes has got to stop. We need real fixes, not bandaids.
The funny thing about AR, everyone was so sure it was going to be the “most play” build and it was going to be so dominate that all raid and mythic+ havoc players would be forced into it. In reality ended up being completely the opposite. Almost no one is playing it and FS has become the defacto build.
Guess it is a good thing everyone whine about it until it was nerfed into the ground…
that was a combination of AR being nerfed multiple times, felscarred being buffed multiple times, multiple bugfixes, and once one of those bugfixes happened people were able to almost immediately find a bug in the sims for FS that made it undersim and wasn’t able to be seen with the in-game bugs. So yeah, there were a lot of reasons for that lol.
I blame that on Aldrachi being so bad honestly. Everyone was so focused with AR that most people either didn’t leave feedback on FS or said things along the lines of “FS is bland but at least it isn’t aldrachi.” Admittedly i did a similar thing in my first comment on it. I don’t know how many comments i left after that about untethered fury doing literally nothing for us, or how having TWO “this only benefits you while outside of demon form” talents is boring and goes against the theme of the tree, or how the tree that is about being a big demon has anti-synergy with the talents that extend demon form because extending it past your next eyebeam gets rid of demonsurges. Would have been nice if they made literally a single design change to fel-scarred over the alpha/beta that wasn’t related to the tank/healing changes.
What’s the deal with AR? I know very very little about current dh but I heard fel is using the momentum play style and AR isn’t, though I’ve heard AR had some other gimmick.
Can anyone give me a quick run down on AR? Also, does anyone actually enjoy momentum or is it just taken to avoid an AR build?
AR uses soul fragment consumption as the basis for starting its combo. After getting 6 soul fragments (or using the hunt), throw glaive turns into reaver’s glaive which makes it do more damage and causes your next:
Blade dance to do an extra 3 slashes.
Chaos strike to put a debuff on the target that makes them take 7% increased damage from you for 20 seconds.
The first one you use does 10% more damage, the 2nd does 20% more damage and the bonus effect is doubled (3 goes to 6
or 7% goes to 14% for 20s).
after using both you get a damage amp for 10 seconds.
Havoc has very few guaranteed ways of generating soul fragments, and are very reliant on heavy uptime, rng, and chaos strike spamming for procs. If they don’t get enough procs they cant get their next reaver’s glaive before the 14% damage buff falls off, so they lose out on +14% damage to a RG, a buffed blade dance, and a double buffed chaos strike. It’s a frustating playstyle in single target that is VERY similar to s3/4 of shadowlands with sinful brand, where you had to hope for perfect uptime and rng with procs as you CS spam to keep your debuff from falling off. That’s the main problem for single target, but dungeons are another issue. When people talk about AR being complex (almost) no one is talking about raid, because raid uses the no-mover build and goes all in on making CS hit hard. In dungeons movement builds are still ahead for AR. Among people who like movement playstyles, the main thing most want changed is how many small damage amp windows it forces us to stack to be optimal. Aldrachi adds a debuff to the target and another amp to yourself. “Missing” any of these windows feels like you’ve ruined your damage. Juggling them all while doing dungeon mechanics and making sure to not fel rush into bad, feels like you probably won’t have fun. Plus it still has the soul fragment issues, and it’s harder to CS spam as a movement build.
Sorry, i just wanted to add 2 things for this:
1: I assume you mean movement builds, because while momentum is still a talent it hasnt really been used much since s2 of DF. It was replaced with Inertia, which is a short buff when you first fel rush after casting immo aura.
2: But to answer if people like movement, yes! Myself included. No other class i play
feels too much like dh, but when I play no-mover it feels more like them. I like having a different option, and for me it happens to be my primary choice.
Yea those buffs give me concern because there is a very good reason people aren’t playing AR and it’s scary thought that blizzard might just kneejerk buff AR into the stratosphere and nerf felscarred just because the metrics are bad when the underlying issue is spec design itself. Hell even if AR is like say 20-30% better than fel scarred a lot of players would still be playing FS. Needs to be reworked in 11.1.
Both trees are very bad, and so is Havoc class and spec tree. All are filled with issues, and Havoc in general needs a complete rework from the ground up, but Blizzard refuses to give us the attention.
FS got buffed massively (through bugs). The moment those bugs are fixed, FS is completely dead.
Havoc, to remain playable, is sustaining on bugs.
This depends on who you ask.
I’m neutral towards the playstyle, until there’s a boss, dungeon, or whatever you can think of that prevents me from Fel Rushing / VR, either causing me to use extra brain power, or to delay cooldowns. On extreme situations, you can’t use them at all.
At that moment I dread the playstyle, because Havoc is punished by using it and there’s nothing to mitigate it. It’s also the only spec in the game to be punished by it.
The real reason this playstyle is used is because it provides burst (which is the best DPS profile) and doesn’t increase the uptime requirements. The alternative (CoH + SD) is the complete oposite. Sustained DPS with massive downtime punishment.
1- Burning Blades and Demonsurge are scaling with 100% of our Mastery, not 80% (Any Mean Necessary)
2- Burning Blades is scaling with Mastery, effectively double dipping said scaling. It’s meant to be a flat amount of the original Chaos Strike / Melee / Throw Glaive. This is the reason Mastery is so valuable for Havoc currently.
At this point is probably intended, but all instances of double dipping are generally removed.
If 2/ is fixed without massive compensation buffs, Fel Scarred is 100% dead in Single Target/Raid encounters.
Tuning wise in raids we’re in a super good position. M+ not so much,
However, playability wise we’re hanging by a thread. The class tree is in shambles, and the spec tree of Havoc is full of talents that create friction between each other.
The ‘mover’ playstyle is still a sore spot for some that flat out refuse to move while in combat, and remains unaddressed. (The alternatives are not competitive and have their own set of issues on their own).
This is the major reason I don’t play it. I don’t mind rush being rotationally important, but it feels… restrictive, in a way? It takes way too much precious attention budget in an M+ environment, if that makes sense.
to play.