Blizzcon 2019: I Feel Left Out

Classes Demon Hunter
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Now don’t get me wrong, Blizzcon 2019 was amazing. Stacked line up and amazing trailers all around. I’m ridiculously hyped for Diablo IV, even with what little they had to show and speak on. WoW: Shadowlands also looks very promising. But, that’s where this sense of missing out crept up on me.

The new character customizations look fantastic, and the un-pruning is long overdue. I sat and wondered, how does this apply to me though? I’ve mained a Demon Hunter since the day they were released in WoD. That’s all I play. I’ve dabbled here and there with a few alts, but shortly find myself returning to my beloved Demon Hunter. The aesthetic, mobility, and play style have just become too core to how I play to really enjoy anything else.

So when I see these allied races, character customizations, class identity discussions, and un-pruning I begin to feel like I’m not a part of those features.

Allied Races: Lore wise it makes sense to have only Blood Elves, and Night Elves on a lesser note because they were trained by Illidan in the Black Temple. The Death Knights faced a similar restriction because of the Lich King Arthas. However, the Allied Races are going to be opened to Death Knights with the events of Bolvar leading up to the Shadowlands. Could something similar not be done with the Demon Hunters? I feel like after the events I partook in the Demon Hunter order hall, I myself should be able to train new recruits as the Slayer. Arthas himself had to raise the Death Knights, Illidan did not solely create every Demon Hunter. Certainly the first few, but after that the Illidari had the training required to perform the rituals themselves. So hopefully the race restrictions can be expanded sooner than later.

Character Customization: The new customization options previewed look amazing, I’m very happy with the diversity shown. I just feel like a lot of the choices will be washed out with the Demon Hunter specific options. I highly doubt I’ll be able to change the color of the fel green orbs in my eye sockets, and that my Demon Hunter tattoos will cover any meaningful body custom option. I may have a few more choices on hair styles, but will they work well with my character’s horn options? I want to be a Demon Hunter first and foremost, but I also want my Blood Elf to be discernible from others as we are locked to one race per faction.

Class Identity: With class identity coming back to the forefront, I’m really at a loss of what Blizzard intends to do with Demon Hunters. From the time they were introduced to now, all spells and abilities have been either Vengeance or Havoc. Those specs share very little abilities (Double Jump, Glide, Throw Glaive, Torment, Consume Magic, Disrupt, Imprison, and Metamorphosis*). So how could they possibly bring any more abilities from the current pools to be Demon Hunter specific instead of spec specific? Maybe Eye Beam? I don’t really see anything from the Vengeance side that could become less restrictive as that spec is scarce on abilities as is, so if anything were to be relaxed it’d feel like you gained very little from going that spec. Additionally, some talents just need to become baseline to open up room for more dynamic choices. After Chaos Blades were removed, every Havoc Demon Hunter set Demonic as their choice and forgot about it. It feels like we are missing a top end talent because this is crucial to any build.

Un-Pruning: We haven’t had anything taken from Demon Hunters besides our Artifact abilities, and Chaos Blades. I really believe that our artifact abilities should have become baseline in some fashion as they were a essential core part of our identity. Through the entirety of BFA I have always felt as if something was missing from my class. I’m sure just about every spec in the game misses their artifact ability in some capacity, but when Demon Hunters had so little to begin with the blow is a bit harder.

I seriously hope I’m not left by the wayside in these upcoming changes, and would really like some clarification as how these changes will apply to me. I have faith that the Blizzard art team will wash away all my worries with the character customization options, as they consistently knock it out of the park. But the other 3 categories…I’m not so sure.

Fellow Demon Hunters, If I forgot anything please comment with your concerns. Or any class/character that similarly feels left out.

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For character customization, apparently they’re adding over 40 new customization options to Blood Elves alone, so you’ll probably be good there.

Otherwise there’s a ton of things they could do regarding unpruning DHs/class identity. Bringing back Fury of the Illidari and Soul Carver, making PvP talents like Demonic Trample and Illidan’s Grasp either baseline or PvE Talents, making spells like Fel Rush, Darkness, Immolation Aura or Felblade baseline for both specs, maybe taking another spell or two from Warlocks… if they don’t want to come up with new spells for DHs, there’s a ton of possibilities.

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This is actually something that has been worrying me for awhile now as well.

DHs were designed in a period of WoW post-pruning. Classes had already been stripped down to their basics and DHs were built with this in mind. With every class having tons of old abilities returned, that leaves DHs with… nothing. It’s already impossible to fill all of your bars with enough abilities as it is. How exactly is Blizzard going to address this?

One of the big takeaways from Blizzcon was that they wanted leveling to be impactful; they wanted you to gain something with every level. How is that going to work for DHs? We don’t even have 60 abilities/talents to fill. The only option is for them to create new abilities for DHs, something I just don’t see Blizzard taking the time to do.

I’m worried we’ll go in to Shadowlands with almost nothing new. I’m surprised no one brought this up or asked about it at BlizzCon.

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Abilities that they could either bring back or make baseline

-Rain from above
-Choas blade(we dont have burst anymore, meta has been nerfed because of demonic)
-Artifact (fury of the illidari)

  • bloodlet (get rid of the bleed from blade dance, too many mechanics in a single ability)
    Make the spec have sometying more to it, vengeance uses souls to increase either the healing or damage of abilites. Do the same for havoc. Seeing the new Covenant ability that grants go souls makes me think they could go down this route.

Hate to be thay guy but asmongold called it out about how the intentionally made DHs have less abilities or a way to show skill expression. Look at all the abilites from WC3 that illidan had, also look at hots illidan. They could have simply added those into the class.

There are tons of people who post ideas for DH fixes with abilities and a possible future spec…if only blizz payed attention.

I do remember an ability in the legion data mining that they never added during 7.1

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Pretty sure night elves weren’t a “lesser note” since illidad himself is a night elf.

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Maybe make all the mandatory talents we take baseline? That would open up some much needed flexibility.

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For Vengeance I would like to see abilities become baseline, like Felblade, Sigil of Chains, and Fel Devastation.

For things I would like returned, Charred Warblades (15% leech from fire damage), 100% uptime on demon spikes, Soul Cleave consumes 5 souls, and just bake pvp abilities into our class.

As for skill I’ve played a few classes that seemed to me to be easier then DH, such as outlaw and ret, maybe others? But this seems subjective.

Edit: Your comment about playing DH since WoD made me laugh.
Double Edit: I’m the noob, they were released at the end of WoD lol!

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Tell me about it, my main and main alt is Monk and DH. Not a single mention of Monk unprune on the panel. I can understand lack of DH unprune since it’s a pretty new class (and I assume they’re just gonna flat out give DHs new abilities to compensate) but nothing on Monks made me sad.

As for the racial options, this WILL effect DHs too. I can’t speak for NELFs, but Ion confirmed 40 new features to BELFs which will also apply to DH customization. Yes, it definitely sucks we are locked down to 1 race per faction, especially since DKs just got the race freedom they’ve been begging for.

I hope they add like a San’layn allied race that is playable by DHs.

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I think they are going to take a stab at reworking vengeance in such a way that Spirit Bomb isn’t vital to the spec’s damage kit, and it’s possible they’ll go further. Honestly though, the DH kit is pretty big, and if anything, I fear it being weakened. Just scroll down the DH subforum for a number of threads about how havoc needs to be nerfed, how its kit has it all, is too good for m+, etc.

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Its not that DHs have it all, it’s that other classes have lost a lot of their resources. The unprunning should alleviate this and by a lot. I believe they are still coming up with ideas and that’s why many classes were left out.

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Exactly what I was thinking when I was reading this.

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Not on the panel, but Holinka did release a tweet about monks saying they were going to get some unprun treatment as well, it was just too early right now. DH is officially the only class left out.

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That didn’t say anything. Every class but Monks got an actual example. I already knew Monks were getting unpruned since every class is. I wanted to see an actual ability listed.

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Well, the other “issue” is that DHs only have one DPS spec. It kind of has to have a mix of everything. If it didn’t, the spec would be pretty garbage.

I’m all for a third DH spec if they want to spread things out, but the problem is that Havoc and Vengeance are already fairly barebones. Any abilities they would make for a 3rd spec should instead by created/given to Havoc and Vengeance as they don’t feel “whole”.

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What do you think either spec is missing, dude?

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It’s not a matter of feeling Havoc is “missing” something in regards to ST or AoE. It’s more so that the spec is very, as I said, barebones.

It does what it’s supposed to do, but since Legion, it feels… lacking. It’s hard to put in to words. The problem is that DH was designed from the ground up with its Artifact Traits in mind. When those were all taken away, a lot of the what made the class work was removed. Azerite Traits kiiinddd of act as a bandaid fix but in reality most of that should be baked in to the class. We also need our Artifact Ability back.

Mostly, I just want a bit more. A few more decisions to make, maybe an RNG proc or another ability to use.

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Just going to have to disagree. To be sure, they could rebalance it so that some of the more complex talents yielded better performance, but the spec has felt a lot better to me coming out of Legion than so many others.

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I think they should do the opposite. Just make SB a standard part of the rotation.

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I can’t see how you think Havoc plays better in BfA than it did in Legion.

But to each their own I suppose.

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I don’t think it plays better, though stat values are way better balanced, but I think it did come through a lot more intact than many of the other specs did.