i am mostly running low mythics and lfr. I see DHs with Death Sweep as their top damage source. On my havoc DH, immolation, elyssian decree and eye beam pretty much always beat out death sweep.
I am looking at the talent tree and I don’t recognize anything as making sweep the go to talent. and it is essentially a proc/
what am i missing?
To ask the most obvious…you are running Demonic, and do you have Essence Break?
Also, most DHs run Fodder rather than Elysian due to the demon soul you get, and a lot of Fodder’s value is going to show up in other abilities, like Death Sweep.
Looking back at my last couple runs (in low Mythics), I had Death Sweep on top one of the times, and a close third the other run. While pull size/length can affect it, the difference is probably largely attributable to Meta uptime, which was several percentage points higher in the run with Death Sweep on top. If you’re holding Meta more, for whatever reason, Death Sweep will end up lower than if you are able to use it more aggressively.
i understand that. i guess i prefer decree because it isnt random. i choose when to use it.
I guess i’ll have to play around a bit more with my spec etc
I can sympathize with that, especially for Vengeance when I would really like the snap threat of Elysian.
You have to merge Death Sweep and Blade Dance to see it as the first source of damage, Details doesn’t do that by default, as far as I am aware.
I usually play shadow on mythic plus and only recently started DH. The thing I noticed is that I would always consistently out dps any DH in that mythic on my priest, unless they were running glaive tempest. Out of curiosity I went into mythic as healer and purposely invited 3 demon hunters and the one with glaive tempest not only out dps the other 2, but also it was top damage done as a whooping 15% of his total dps with the other 2 having an usual immolation aura/ ragefire/ death sweep dmg profile as their top 3. I am using a non momentum build going into any means necessary and glaive tempest and im consistently doing 50-60k dps on mythic+ on a 385 ilvl DH.
Honestly at this point im not seeing the magic of the momentum build. Is it because it has a higher skill cap and maybe the tempest build is easier to pull off? I still need to figure that one out.
There is absolutely a higher skillcap. You need to be able to know how to stay inside of packs to keep momentum up while still getting immo ticks for ragefire, and making sure not to dart out of the pack and lose potentially millions of damage when immo expires.
For low tier content pressing GT is very much easier than managing all of that yeah.
believe you need to enable “Merge Player Spells” but even then, Death Sweep technically is not Blade Dance from a Details PoV. That said, OP may simply not abusing the Death Sweep cd reset on Meta for ex. Or not prioritizing casting DS in the first place.
Deathsweep should almost always be on top maybe eye beam/Fel dev depending on pull sizes and if mobs can die from 100% in beam but generally deathsweep. Ragefire even finished on top for me in an AV last night. EssB buffs DS/BD and with VR giving you imitative on your EssB DS should be hitting anywhere from 150k - 200k+ on main target during single sweep. Stacking crit with also help it hit harder. BD and DS are different spells they shouldn’t combine on details. FelHammer Disc has a lot of info under havoc-faq channel for builds with openers and rotations for each one. 413 running momentum and soulrend this week on mythic+s finishing 85-100k
Essence Break + Meta + Restless Hunter + Dancing with Fate + First Blood
… like come on man, And im not talking other modifiers like Fodder or Momentum, even Initiative
metamorphosis makes Death Sweep available. it doesn’t empower it. none of the tool tips specifically empower death sweep. some empower blade dance. if they also empower death sweep that would be something.
so which of those talents and abilities specifically empower death sweep?
momentum is an across the board damage increase; it is not a talent that directly empowers death sweep.
my original comment stands, unless you can point me to specific tool tips that say “increase the damage of your next death sweep by X” or something like that.
which talent or ability does that?
you need to read the tooltip there my guy. Death Sweep, IS AN EMPOWERED BLADE DANCE. Even says it ON THE TOOLTIP
Restless Hunter and Essence Break… Read the Tool Tips But those abilities are not whats making DS do insane damage alone, its a combination of our modifiers with our Crit. Its causing our Death Sweeps when we crit to do 80% more crit damage than usual because of KYE
Leap into the air and land with explosive force, dealing (38.92% of Attack power) Chaos damage to enemies within 8 yds, and stunning them for 3 sec. Players are Dazed for 3 sec instead.
Upon landing, you are transformed into a hellish demon for 24 sec,
Metamorphosis
immediately resetting the cooldown of your Eye Beam and Blade Dance abilitiesgreatly empowering your Chaos Strike and Blade Dance abilities and gaining 20% Haste[and 0% Leech].
thank you. this is what I was trying to understand.
There’s a lot of things that amp blade dance/death sweep damage:
Talents. Did you take all the relevant blade dance talents? They’re mandatory for all havoc specs I know of.
Momentum/initiative uptime. Are you getting BD/DS off when you have momentum up? Are you using VR on CD for initiative?
Essence Break Burst windows. Are you correctly utilizing your eyebeam—>essence break—>death sweep combos? Do you do it while you have initiative/momentum? Are you double death sweeping your target w/ meta while they have the essence break debuff on?
Are you casting BD/DS on CD? Blade dance/Death sweep is prioritized to press almost 100% of the time over other abilities. (some minor exceptions)
ABC: Always be casting. Are you always using a damaging ability, or do you have dead global cooldowns? Every millisecond you have a global cooldown available to you that isn’t being used, you’re leaving free damage on the table.
Stat prioritization. Crit/mastery stacking is the new thing for havoc in S1 of DF. Get more more more of it, then get more of it after that. I currently am sitting at about 51% crit after buffs, and roughly 55% mastery after buffs. These two stats combined w/ talents that give or benefit from stat stacking (any means necessary, know your enemy, initiative crit, etc etc) make us see some pretty big numbers. In raid after using puzzle box and getting lust/PI, I can usually crank out 2 500k death sweep crits back to back with a little bit of luck.
There are other tips to consider as well, such as positioning yourself so that you always hit the most targets available w/ BD/DS, but if you’re doing the above 6 with decent gear you should be hitting some pretty big numbers.
One thing to keep in mind when doing this, do not jump, then VR then Essence Break, this can and will cause Essence Break to not hit the targets.
First Blood makes Blade Dance and Death Sweep hit harder against the primary target and if you don’t have it you probably won’t be doing the most damage with it. Also, hitting for more damage with Death Sweep in total, as others have said, may require more meta uptime from you (counting Demonic). Furthermore, Restless Hunter won’t add to this because you only get it after demon form expires (unless you have Demonic, use that first, and then use Metamorphosis shortly afterward).
Death sweep always should be your priority after Essence Break. Preferably after vengeful retreat to proc initiative. Then you want to gather enough haste to proc last tik of Death sweep as you meta with relentless hunter. Dont forget to apply momentum beforehand as it would definitely use that bonus haste after eye beam.
thanks for this. i am working towards getting much better at all these. i have to admit that before this thred, i had no real idea how moment worked and what I need to do to keep it up and take advantage of it.
i have to work much better to do things in the correct order sometimes sigh but I have prioritized getting in that very last moment of DS which I used to ignore.
I have increased my overall dps by at least 20% and had some 100k+ dps trash pulls in mythics last night.
more work to be done and I appreciate everyone’s comments and help.