I came back for Midnight; I haven’t played an expansion enthusiastically since Legion. I came back for a few reasons, 1 being because I heard Devourer plays extremely similar to Legion’s Shadow Priest ‘Surrender to Madness’ mechanic. I’ve loved how Devourer has been playing
& the clunky, satisfying nature of a perfectly played Collapsing Star.
Why are you completely changing the direction of Devourer in 12.1 Blizz? A lot of the top parsed Devourer’s are saying this will likely be a 20% spec nerf. Scary, but fine, I enjoy the playstyle. Well, part of those nerfs is completely gutting Collapsing Star. A 30-35% nerf for Collapsing Star. All the top parsed players are saying the build will have to be centered around the ‘no collapsing star’ build. Which I refuse to play. And plays like havoc which we already have. It does not have a unique direction or feel.
Blizz, why are you so afraid of niche playstyles? A ‘no collapse star’ build plays like every other boring melee build. Some people don’t like the ‘perfect or fail’ playstyle of devourer, fine, go play another spec. It’s not for you. We should be able to have difficult specs with high rewards.
Am I alone in this? Am I the only one that thinks this is a really stupid decision by Blizz, and that they are completely moving away from the one thing that makes Devourer so enjoyable?
I won’t go Havoc because the tier set is so uninspired. So, I now have to figure out another spec I’ll play or I’ll just quit again if I don’t figure it out lol.
These are the only people I’ve seen discuss it, but to act like there isn’t this sentiment out there among top players is just being obtuse. I trust these people, I think Shadarek even writes the guides for Wowhead, where a ton of people get their builds from.
If you’d like to point me to anyone who is saying the 12.1 changes are a good thing, I’m definitely open to changing my perspective. I think 3 sources is a great place to start with an opinion. I don’t have the kind of time to listen to 20 DH’s opinion on the matter. I doubt there’s even that many top parsers that also content create XD
the changes aren’t really that bad. they mix up the rotation a bit adding more focus on reap but collapsing star is likely still being played because it’s just a big damage button. you’re dooming for no reason. also shad doesnt write the guide for devourer he writes for havoc
Yea, you didn’t say that the ‘no collapsing build’ would be the only route, that was a quote from Shadarek to be clear.
You did say ‘mastery is getting shot in the head’ which mastery is entirely centered around metamorphosis, so that’s what I construed from your opinion. I guess I took an extra step in connecting you to the ‘no collapsing build’
You’re right on Shad. I couldn’t recall if he did both or not. Just does video guides on Devourer. It’s been years since I have played, do they usually do class balancing prepatch or will these ship?
And I’m not trying to ‘doom’ but I also want to get the word out that I don’t want the direction of the spec to change. My understanding is Blizz wants feedback on changes, that’s why I’m posting my thoughts.
My gripe is that we’re going from ‘Star does massive damage’ to ‘Star does damage & so does a bunch of other stuff’ Do you see my perspective? I like the huge numbers on the screen lol. To be clear, I’m not worried about the nerfs/buffs. I think we’ll be in a fine spot there. My main issue is that the direction/impact/spec fantasy is changing.
So like the fact that devourer doesn’t exist outside of meta is a problem they are attempting to rectify in the next patch. They’re doing this with a bunch of specs actually, who deal very little damage outside of their cooldown windows.
This hits annihilator very hard because annihilator puts a lot of emphasis into casting collapsing star and spending time in meta.
Void Scarred on the other hand, does not care about being in meta for very long, and by default has a lot more out-of-meta damage. On top of that, VS cares a lot more about casting reap for damage than annie does.
Void-scarred also does not care about casting collapsing star at all, it doesn’t get really any bonuses to the damage of cstar, nor does it really have the talent budget to take apex talents.
Right now, the tuning they did is a very half-hearted and poorly thought out way to achieve their goal. So we’ll have to see if they actually go anywhere with it, or if we’re in another situation like we were in the beta where they just won’t do anything.
Maybe, I can just say from experience with Shadow trying to make the time spent not doing the thing the spec is designed around more impactful / a higher proportion of gameplay doesn’t tend to go very well. The rotation’s simplicity is excusable because of the drain mechanic / star, when those two things aren’t on the table it doesn’t really matter if you’re doing damage or not.
tbh i stuck with rogue from tbc to tww .. i wont mind a bad/mid season with the new class i want to play ^^ only need 3.4k in m+ . 1950 in pvp and some aotc and im content for the season ..
So im gonna stick with devourer , maybe go tank to make grouping easier but devourer till next expansion for sure ..
devourer needs a talent tree rework anyways regardless of what they nerf/buff in it. Impending apocalypse being above emptiness/soul glutton is a huge slap in the face for any attempt to not run collapsing star and eradicate locked behind star fragments is the same. impending apocalypse is strong enough that it can switch with eradicate as an end tier talent and make more sense placement wise. Eradicate can be used by any spec/build, and emptiness/ soul glutton are a mandatory choice, them both being locked behind a talent related to something you may not even have in your build is crazy bad spec tree design. it doesnt help that the entire apex talent section is already almost entirely revolved around collapsing star. they had absolutely no foresight into how a non-collapsing star build or voidblade/hunt build would be desirable.