Devourer Feedback 12.1.5: Initial Thoughts

In Development Midnight: 12.1.5 Public Test Realm
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Hey all,

This is my first time posting a thread of this type on the forums so I will preface it with an apology for poor formatting and if it is a bit rambling, I will try to keep it concise.

With that being said, I would like to take some time to review and give my initial thoughts and feedback to the first iteration of changes that have been announced for devourer on the 12.1.5 PTR.

The Good

Firstly, I would like to start with the changes that I would consider to be good (or healthy) for the spec in general.

Many have given their feedback on the topic of collapsing star (myself included) and it seemed obvious that changes were needed with regards to the frustrations cancelling a collapsing star. These seem like very good quality of life changes that I don’t think many people would have issues with.

It is probably worth noting that these changes should not add much to your throughput outside of extremely niche scenarios such as the first pull in Algethar Academy as annihilator where you will cap souls on your first collapsing star

The Bad

The remaining changes only affect the void scarred hero tree and appear to be directed at void scarred not using collapsing star. The initial posted changes do not appear to actually fix this issue in any way and will result in the hero tree being worse overall. I will make note of which changes I think need to be revisited.

This change sounds decent on paper until you actually sit down and play around with it. Firstly this change most synergizes with the Apex talents (giving you a free collapsing star at the start of meta), the Emptiness capstone talent (allowing you to stay in meta longer, thus getting more stars / hunts), and Devourer’s Bite.

The issue is that there are simply not enough talent points available to be able to take all of these and The Hunt, which is also a capstone, without sacrificing essential talents elsewhere.

Further more, void scarred uniquely suffers from a lack of soul generation when compared to annihilator due to spending a large amount of its time not casting abilities that actually generate any souls and not having access to voidfall meteors. It seems counter intuitive to me to have the tree want to generate souls to cast star and then immediately follow it with a hunt combo that does not generate many souls.

The first change does not really make any sense as casting soul immolation inside of meta is already not an efficient use of casts

It is obvious that the latter change here is directed at wanting void-scarred to cast collapsing star to hunt while in meta but really what this will result in is never using the hunt outside of meta and only holding it for inside. But as mentioned earlier its nearly impossible to path to a build that would be able to utilize both cstar and the hunt effectively.

The End?

The remaining changes are mostly just tuning changes so I will not cover them as they would be the most likely thing to change.

Hopefully we can generate some healthy discussion regarding these changes in this thread and I will attempt to revise if new changes are posted.

Thanks for reading.

Tl;dr Collapsing star QoL changes are good; Void Scarred changes seem misguided and do not really fix any of the issues.

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I’m going to post this here since i posted it in another similar post and its relevant:

honestly i think that instead of doing whatever they just did to void scarred, they should instead look at the disaster that is the spec tree.

There’s so much wrong with it that it genuinely needs a rework as soon as humanly possible and the focus should be on the spec tree before the hero talents.

Theres not enough points to get all of the necessary talents, instead there’s multiple 2 pointer nodes with useless crap like “increases rotational ability damage” or straight up secondary stats, or even stuff that’s arguably worse, and that is talents that just break up what base abilities should already have just so you CAN spend points on something, the best example i can think of are predators thirst, umbral blade and the whole of Apex: Midnight. which screams to me that the spec was pushed out way before it was truely ready.

Devourer does not have a real talent tree. most of if not all of the specs dont have to invest this many points just to make their basic rotation exist. thats usually all top to top middle of the tree stuff.

All 3 capstones are too important to the design of the class to be capstones if it was any other spec.
Eradicate is basically all of our aoe outside of void ray and could easily be combined with moment of craving as they both have the same trigger condition outside of the current tier’s 4 set bonus, to me it feels as if it’s like if frost scythe on frost dk was a capstone. its not. its an important rotational button!

Soul Glutton and Emptiness are the kinds of “major cooldown altering” talents you’d normally see directly underneath said major cooldowns in the talent tree. They’re extremely necessary pickups for literally every single build of devourer that being said, i think they’re the only capstones i’d be okay with remaining at the bottom middle of the tree.

The Hunt isnt a capstone on Havoc. i get that since it’s build defining, you wouldn’t take it on a ranged build, but it’s so important to the melee build identity that being a capstone makes it difficult to get to long with limiting how much you can actively interact with it on the rest of the tree, it would be nice for example if it was higher up on the tree and had more passive interactions on the left side, even if it really only makes leveling slightly more interesting.

Devourer’s Bite is not really a very fun talent at least in my opinion. while it does make hungering slash worthwhile, i think that its kinda toxic to have all the power in this short window of time where you’re at high stacks of devourer’s bite instead of actually in hungering slash, void blade and the hunt. i’d much rather see this talent replaced with one that upgrades hungering slash to hit multiple times or something that looks visually interesting.

Going back to what i was talking about before with our Apex: Midnight, i really detest it’s design. instead of an apex being a strong “cherry on top” kind of talent, it’s simply so necessary in order to make Collapsing Star function??? i dont understand why collapsing star at base doesn’t automatically crit and why the rank 3 version of midnight isn’t in the middle of the tree under collapsing star itself. If anything on the spec needs to be completely gutted and reworked, it’s the Apex. i would instead have our apex do something interesting like be a proc that makes us temporarily summon a void simulacrum that copies our casts at reduced effectiveness or something else that’s noticible, interesting and good.

all of this mostly boils down to:

  • Remove uninteresting filler talents (Voidrage, Predator’s Thirst, Gift of the Void, Demonic Instinct, Devourer’s Edge)
  • Move our rotational stuff further up the tree/combine it with the base skills so we can take them easily (Eradicate, Apex: Midnight, The Hunt)
  • Make new and interesting talents that evolve the gameplay instead of degrading it.
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I am just lazy and I honestly do not think there needs to be 40+ threads where each person is posting their likes/dislikes about Void-Scarred Devourer so I am going to hijack donkey’s.

I like the new changes a lot. There were 2 things I always hated when playing Void-Scarred since alpha:

1. It felt bad never pressing Collapsing Star.

2. Burning Blades has almost no damage with 0 up time compared to Havoc.

Having Collapsing Star reset The Hunt is a phenomenal idea because I want to play Emptiness and this gives me a reason to want to be in Meta longer. My gripe with the new change is that, for as short as it is, I do not want to have a cast time on The Hunt during Meta I want – after I press Collapsing Star and receive the free charge/reset – it becomes and instant cast separating it from Havoc as well as out of Meta form Devourer.

This bring us to Burning Blades. I would like for all Devourer abilities – yes even throw glaive – to apply Burning Blades and this also includes the tier set proc. Burning Blades seems criminally underused and underrated as Void-Scarred.

Voidr Ray, Consume, Reap, The Hunt, Voidblade, Hungering Slash, Collapsing Star, and yes even Voidsurge, Throw Glaive and the s2 midnight tier set proc should apply it on everything. I want to see it among top damage as I do with Havoc.

Lastly, I wish that Collapsing Star would apply/create it’s own Voidsurge around the primary target – this would help with aoe and not always force you into melee range depending on what’s going on and what’s on the ground.

Edit: If Soul Immo Resets are a thing you want to focus on then, as with Havoc, let the first Soul Immo pressed when entering Void Meta also Voidsurge.

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Having spent a good couple hours trying builds and seeing if anything worked, the conclusion i came to is that our Spec tree is probably the worst in the game, and that more casts of The Hunt through Collapsing Star resets does not make the rotation any better. What it does do, is make us have double the amount of hard cast spells that we cant move during, and are forced to be in melee range even more than what is on live. I do not think the direction of VS should be tied to more The Hunt casts.

Like others have said, we simply DO NOT HAVE the talent points to get everything that Voidscarred would need to have a optimal rotation. In no world is dropping Eradicate, or Dbite, or Calamitous in order to the Apex talents going to be a real build that can do competitive damage.

Personally, I find the current Void-Scarred rotation in 12.1 to be incredibly fun and satisfying to play. Theres just enough decision making on when to use your melee buttons that it has me constantly adapting to what is happening during the encounters, while still only being in Melee range of the boss for about ~15% of an encounter based on casts done. In ST encounters, or ones where adds dont live long enough to do the AoE rotation, the spec played perfectly to me.

In AoE encounters however, I do agree that the “afk” portion of the rotation is very bad and should be fixed, however I do not think the changes made in this first ptr cycle make the spec any better, and will balloon the melee range time tremendously due to the increase of casts on The Hunt (probably another 10-15%, as every hunt also adds an extra Hslash cast, and every Cstar also reduces Voidblade CD). This should be avoided as one of the tension points with a melee hybrid spec is always going to be the forced movement aspect, and The Hunt is the worst form as it has a cast time, upredictable pathing, and very often can glitch out and send you under platforms (ulatek comes to mind).

Now for Collapsing Star. I do agree that both hero talents should WANT to press collapsing star, it is the specs big button after all. Not discussing tuning however, VS just does not want to press it, and with the current changes is being pulled into two different directions. Ill quote Jom, one of the APL and theory crafters on the DH discord:

Void-scarred has a difficult tension between its two core nodes, it feels like they are pulling in opposite directions:

  • demonsurge wants to rapid cycle meta, use voidsurges

  • demonic intensity wants to extend meta, use hunt

Playing around one takes away from the power of the other. Could tune either to be the “stronger” way to play, but there’s an identity feel-bad/unintuitiveness in that tension IMO. At this point, demonsurge feels like the odd talent out.

VS should not WANT to extend meta. Its against the whole identity of hero talent, which wants to cycle meta quickly and get off more void-surges. Why else would Soul Glutton exist other than to enable this playstyle? Annihilator should be the the spec that wants to extend, and get more stars off using Emptiness.

There was a simple solution that I still believe is the best way to solve the current issues that VS has, and its to simply make VS modify Collapsing star in a way that only lets it cast Cstar once and have it end meta immediately, that way it can preserve the quick meta cycling gameplay that it has currently. Only issue with this solution is that Cstar would have to be ALOT of damage to offset the value we lose from Rolling Torment.

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Melee Void-Scarred in 12.1 is super fun and feels more engaging.

For the 12.1.5 changes I’m in agreeance with the OP & Frostingale as it pretty much kills Void-Scarred viability all together given the current state of the spec’s talent tree.

Collapsing star is way less meaningful in Void-Scarred builds compared to Annihilator. On Void-Scarred builds it does way less damage and in most encounter cases (Single Target/Cleave) it’s an overall DPS loss. Collapsing star was always designed/optimized for Annihilator, and our Apex is pretty much an exclusive setup that favors this one ability. To top it all off all of Collapsing Star’s core multipliers are in the Annihilator tree, not Void-Scarred.

Biggest (and smallest change) should be to turn a couple of the 2-point bottom nodes into 1-point ones so Hunt + Glutton + Eradicate + midnight can actually coexist. Make Collapsing star baseline, and make the first CS cast after entering meta trigger a Voidsurge. Gating the melee kit behind CS talents to access Soul Glutton is a very unnecessary tax to the build.

The Rank 4 Midnight Apex talent (instant star upon entering meta) again only favors non-Void-Scarred builds. Make it more meaningful (e.g. Empowered Hunt, extra Voidsurge, or even a Pierce the Veil reset). It could even be setup as a choice node that empowers players (Annihilator or Void-Scarred) with a pinnacle talent that benefits either of the two enabled hero talents.

Oh, and please leave Violent Transformation as it is currently in 12.1.

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move the hunt to the class tree, and reshuffle the talents in the dev dh tree.

i dont play the spec frankly and there isnt much i can say to help out. but considering that havoc and dev both have the hunt in their respected spec trees. it makes me think about the few times in dragonflight where abilities such as that were in the class tree since it applied to more than one spec.

frankly im a tad bit bias and only type this so veng can get the hunt again. but considering the issues dev has rn regard talent point bloat. i believe this solution is probably the best for everyone to allow more talent flexibility

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I dont understand why they removed the hunt from the class tree. Vengance losing it feels giga bad.

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This need to be notice!

The VS changes also effect a lot in PvP, totally change how you used play the spec when you bursting.

The other problem are the same as op mentioned, talent points are super awkward, if you insist to forcing player to play stars, at least make the first Apex talent also immediately have access to use star, but this just going to let players ignore the final Apex talent. You guys need to adjust the talent more to balance it.

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Honestly why dose collapsing Star do like 25% the damage of Eradacate. I cast is somtimes just to see the numbers is like 75k to 250k on all enemies, not the prio .

they say they don’t want all the power in the tier set, shouldn’t you do the same with apex talents?

also why is it so hard, I feel like a 4 button speck should be intuitive but i had to look up and constantly think about the rotation, and its like I’m balancing a plate. and in raid i can lose so much damage delaying something by 5-10 seconds. or dropping an eyebeam on a dead mob.

alot of people will calme the game is supper easy but it is not, you just only play this game and only one charter. sure some of you mabe great at several but its hard fror me. constantly looking up guides and when i visit an alt i mained, its just different idk.

I been low damage in the raid and its getting to me.

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I wish we could chat with the blizzard dev who is crafting these changes (I mean that genuinely, though I know just how badly that has gone historically), mostly because while I can understand the initial thought behind these changes (cStar is core to spec, We Want You To Use It), I wish we could explain to them (or at least, know that they’re reading these posts and taking the feedback) why this feels like a bad change. Being forced to take the apex talents to make cStar feel like a worthwhile button to press even after these changes, is just awful.

And that being said, my initial feeling is: It shouldn’t be a bad change! I love casting cStar, it’s got a really fantastic animation, and when you talent for it it also hits relatively hard, what little I played of annihilator in Season 1 pushed me to want to come back and play it again, only to find out that Anni performs worse in most content in S2, and we’re now forced to play VS which is (currently, pre-12.1.5) rewarded for not casting cStar and yet for ST you still want to sit in VoidMeta for a long time to generate souls, and in AoE you want to drop it ASAP.

Now, I feel like Blizzard’s response will be to see that people will still not want to play Devourer after these changes (or even a mass exodus) and either just accept it until they have the time/desire/resources to change the spec in a future expansion… or gut all of the talents that make Dev do decent dps (Devourer’s Bite, Rolling Torment, Eradicate, and Calamitous seem to be the four key talents that make up a large chunk of VS’s dps, and I feel like these are some of the first talents that will get ripped out with no compensation), and then say “There, you have the 4 talent points to take the apex!”. Or, secret third option (kind of a joke), get Ion to go live again and say “We’d rather you not play Devourer”. Which I’d almost rather them say, at this point. Which sucks, because Devourer is the entire reason that I picked up DH at all this expansion.

I haven’t enjoyed playing DH in a very long time (The last time I played it seriously was BfA, and I’ve only really played it for heroic/timewalking dungeons or old raid farming since ~2019) and Devourer in S1 was VERY fun to me (I don’t care for the high up-time “exciting” VS build, let me spam Consume, VRay and cStar and do 60% of your dps please) and VS has overall been a net negative for my enjoyment.

Ultimately, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I am extremely knowledgeable (I don’t have the time, skills, or baseline knowledge to run the math myself of why these changes are bad) but I can even just look and on paper SEE that it is a nerf. This feels like them saying “We’d rather you not play DDH” without wanting the bad press of saying it outright. This feels like the kind of temporary band-aid that makes the spec as a whole unplayable just enough that it gives my original “guess” some credence- Make DDH so bad mathmatically that people stop playing it so that in a year or two (or three) when they finally completely rework the Devourer spec tree, you’re not displacing that many people as you make changes.

If you’re going to do that, Blizzard, at least reach out to the big DDH names and take their feedback now, store it somewhere safe, and check back on it in the future. There are a lot of really solid ideas here (one of my favorites is making cStar just end Meta while in VS talents, but I’m not sure how that would work realistically without completely changing the ST build, too) and I don’t want to see this spec entirely abandoned. cStar is a very cool ability, I want to press it, just fix the spec tree… please.

TL;DR: A lot of words to say “these changes could be good in a universe where talent reshuffling was going live alongside them” but we do not live in that timeline (yet:tm:) and thus it makes these changes bad. Pls revert

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yeah taking feedback from some of the big boys in the scene would do this spec wonders.

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