For Demon Hunters single target (not concerned with AOE) I can go Double EoR OR Double Thirsting Blades…I’m assuming double thirsting blades is the superior choice for single target?
Mind you I will still have 1 EoR if I pick up double thristing…I’m also running Demonic Appetite which leads me to believe that double EoR might come out on top but I’m not entirely sure
So, I mean, both stack on damage. But for both Eyes of Rage and Thirsting Blades, a fair chunk of the DPS benefit is in the first trait benefit, the CDR or the fury cost reduction, respectively. So having more than one has a more muted effect.
The dominant build of 3x Furious Gaze, 1x Eyes of Rage, 1x Chaotic Transformation, and 1x Revolving or Thirsting is dominant for a reason, because Furious is the best, and the rest are mostly good for their first-trait benefits.
Edit:
This makes me think you’re under the mistaken impression that the cooldown reduction portion of Eyes of Rage stacks. It does not. You get 0.7s off Eye Beam’s CD per soul regardless of how many Eyes of Rage traits you have slotted.
Edit2: Also, re-reading the context, it sounds as if you’re saying you can have either 2 Thirsting Blades and 0 Eyes of Rage, or 2 Eyes of Rage and 0 Thirsting Blades. If that is correct, then Eyes of Rage is functionally mandatory for Havoc right now. If you are running Demonic Appetite, you must have Eyes of Rage slotted, it’s not an option. So the pair of Eyes of Rage is the better of the two, though still far from optimal (it’s nearly a wasted trait slot).
The best combination of Azerite pieces for a single target build are actually both Azerite pieces from Carapace of N’zoth and N’zoth himself plus Hood of the Slithering Loa from the M+ vendor due to the Swirling Sands traits.
These are indeed the most dominant traits, but just trade Thirsting Blades for Swirling Sands if you can equip Hood of the Slithering Loa. Revolving Blades is still best for AoE and the best piece is usually Stygian Guise from Maut that has Revolving Blades.
If you can only choose between Eyes of Rage and Thirsting Blades though, double Thirsting Blades is generally better in a pure ST environment.
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Except if you’re losing Eyes of Rage entirely. You can’t do that in a DA build. Double Thirsting won’t outweigh entirely losing the Eyes reduction.
Edit: actually, probably better off going Blind Fury with double Thirsting.
OP mentioned he’s equipping at least one Eyes of Rage regardless though.
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Derp, missed that amongst the almost complete lack of sentence form in the OP. Ya, as long as you have EoR regardless, and the choice is between 1x EoR 2x Thirsting, or 2x EoR 1x Thirsting, then double Thirsting wins in single target by a long shot, it adds substantially more DPS to the single-target rotation even with the best soul spawns. EoR obviously wins in AoE.
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To wit. Because of how Thirsting stacks and how it applies to each weapon*, from a pure damage perspective (ie. ignoring the fury savings), it can be thought of as adding an amount of DPS equal to roughly 1.5 * (1 + Mastery) * Tooltip damage. With 35% mastery, a 480 Thirsting adds ~708 DPS.
Eyes of Rage at 480 adds 3180 damage per Eye Beam cast, also affected by mastery and doubled by critting. At 35% mastery, this is 8586. To do more than Thirsting, you’d need to Eye Beam no less often than every 12 seconds, which is not feasible for Havoc (which averages Eye Beam every ~20 seconds at best even with a DA/Eyes build).
*Thirsting applied to both hands, at full strength (without the offhand 50% penalty), and is affected by our 11% spec aura, but stacks every 1.5 seconds. Net is 2 * 1.11 * (2/3) = 1.48 = ~1.5 tooltip to DPS ratio, before mastery.
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