Feedback: Aldrachi Reaver Demon Hunter

Classes Demon Hunter
21

Well, the fantasy is what I expected being the Aldrachi introduced during the Legion and their lore of fierce glaive warriors explained in the FelHammer research notes that talk about the Tank artifact weapon, a set of talents focused on maneuvers and weapon attacks. 10/10

  • Art of the Glaive/ Reaver’s Glaive. 8/10
    Basically a CD whose time varies depending on how efficiently you can generate and consume Souls. If it were possible I would like it to be better explained how the enhancement works, is it one that you can spend on ST or AoE? Are there two that you can spend how you want? or is it one and one for ST and AoE?

  • Keen Engagement and Preemptive Strike. 8/10

  • Evasive Action and Unhindered Assault. 10/10
    Both skills seem very useful to me in different situations and depending on what build you have. I’m not Tank but the tank’s kiting power is scaling quite a bit with Evasive Action and I don’t know if it would be too much or not.

  • Incisive Blade. 6/10
    " When enhanced, Chaos Strike and Soul Cleave deal 30% increased damage" a damage increase on a basic skill at a currently unknown DC. :man_shrugging:

  • Aldrachi Tactics. 8/10
    This ability helps generate fragments and therefore improves the “CD” of Reaver’s Glaive, a clarification about the enhancing that this ability gives would help to better understand this.

  • Army Unto Oneself and Incorruptible Spirit. 8/10
    Good defensive options

  • Wounded Quarry. 8/10
    Another ability helps generate fragments and therefore improves the “CD” of Reaver’s Glaive, the damage part sounds like to minor to considerate.

  • Intent Pursuit. 8/10

  • Escalation. 10/10
    With this things get interesting, first you don’t see a duration but a limit of %, and the increase will occur regularly depending on the “CD” of Reaver’s Glaive. This looks a lot like an execution mechanic, the longer the fight lasts the better, and strength in PvP will depend on how long the fight is made. Perhaps a clarification is required, does it last? hard from combat? If it has a duration, does it refresh or not when accumulating stacks?

  • Warblade’s Hunger. 4/10
    In principle there is nothing wrong here, it is a simple ability that gives more damage when you consume souls, but it doesn’t even say how much, it almost seems like a plaseholder :stuck_out_tongue:

  • Thrill of the Fight. 8/10
    Another damage window, it’s effective I guess. But I think it is necessary to clarify the empowerment thing to make it clearer to understand.

ALDRACHI REAVER it seems functional to me and has a strong theme associated with the use of weapons, in general I find it “good.” But I have a problem with it, damage windows, Reaver’s Mark adds to an already extensive number of damage windows (at least in Havoc), for a total of 6 damage windows of which you can have 5 in a build. In fairness most are so short lived that it’s not possible to stack them all, but that won’t stop people from trying, and at the end of the day what good is a damage window if it doesn’t feel impactful? Right now there are so many that our base damage depends on them instead of being a tool for damage spikes.

My final note is an 8/10, I have no doubt that it will be good and the fantasy is there, but adding another damage window to the pile repels me.

PD: If Fel-Scarred is not base in Metamorphosys and Illidan (maybe with a permanent version of Meta) I can tell you that you are going to look very bad with this community. Good luck :+1:

5 Likes
22

I agree with all of this except the combo point idea; instead, I think souls should shatter out and then automatically come back to you, as they do for vengeance when you already have 5 out.

2 Likes
23

Yeah i’ve been crying like a baby to my guild the whole expansion about how hard they’ve been pushing DH into the Throw Glaive corner. It’s sad that even with the overwhelming majority of the playerbases constant outpour of distain for this they still think it’s a good choice. I’ve been playing literally every other class in my alts recently and have been loving every minute. DH as a main for me (since coming back to the game in legion) is over with if this is the final tree and they keep on pushing the garbage Throw Glaive crap. Time to have a talk with whoever is the DH lead, they clearly know diddly about the class, or it’s “fantasy”.

5 Likes
24

I think Dragonflight havoc is the worst it’s ever felt. I’ve played since Legion and tried every build this Xpack, but I cannot understand how people enjoy inertia/momentum/throw glaive. They don’t feel good at all, and sure, old DH was easy, but it was so smooth and fleshed out it just had no CDs, which was fixed by the hunt/glaive tempest. I hoped Aldrachi would lean into souls and physical glaive attacks(soul cleave, fracture, blade dance) but not throw glaive and not as a buff but just raw damage/stacks that enhance the next cast to hit more.

11 Likes
25

I am against further leaning into throw glaive being a rotational/CD ability for havoc. I think this current tier set makes it better by not making you press it, but it still takes away 3 talent points I’d rather invest elsewhere. I get this is the vengeance-themed hero spec, but it worries me about the direction they are taking, dh, since it doubles down on controversial talents for havoc and a button that is niche even for vengeance. DH was a direct damage sustain with few buffs before, and you can complain all you want about it being easy to play, but having a simple but smooth rotation isn’t bad. The class felt good to play, and it just needed 1 or 2 more CDs to fill in the downtime, which the hunt/glaive tempest fixed. A buff/debuff-managing burst playstyle isn’t bad, but it shouldn’t replace an existing spec. This has been an ongoing controversial topic, and it feels like the devs have fully sided with inertia/Throw glaive players with these last few updates.

6 Likes
26

Just because an overwhelming majority voted for the season 3 set bonuses to carry on into season 4, doesn’t mean that we love playing glaives; it just means that bonus offered the greatest numerical/QoL improvement.

EDIT: Had more time to think about this. Here are some additional thoughts:

  1. While I personally do enjoy the inertia playstyle of short super bursty windows, adding one more buff wouldn’t feel as good since it does reduce the window given its GCD. If you guys have to stick with this design, then at least make it optimum NOT to use Reaver’s Glaive during inertia windows; make it an entirely separate window. That should make the rotation feel more dynamic and make you feel less like a wet noodle outside Demonic/Inertia windows.

  2. The tree seems absolutely lacking in flavor/visuals. So you’re buffing Chaos Strike and Blade Dance, will they look different? Will they make you feel more like a whirlwind of blades?

  3. The buffed abilities offer no room for choice, you know you’re going to use both after Reaver’s Glaive and that’s it. Why not remove the CD of BD during the Reaver’s Glaive window and have different combos do different things, like maybe have CS do a stacking diminishing returns debuff that increases magic damage and BD can increase physical damage. Make the choice of what you cast matter

5 Likes
27

people voted for season 3 because it’s good and because it means you don’t have to press throw glaive to be honest.

4 Likes
28

If this is the hero talent tree that is adding a bit more ranged flavor to DH, it’s should have a talent making the Metamorphosis form ranged like it is in Warcraft III. It will be a huge missed opportunity otherwise

3 Likes
29

I get that people are tripped up since the vengeance artifact weapon had Aldrachi in the name but if you just look at the spec descriptions themselves you’ll see this is clearly the more havoc themed hero tree:

Havoc: A brooding master of warglaives and the destructive power of fel magic.

Vengeance: Embraces the demon within to incinerate enemies and protect allies.

1 Like
30

MY main cook for the dh tree and gameplay in general was that for years since dh came out they have been my main alt because they were so easy to play I could keep them geared and play them in any content I had already learned. I also don’t understand how so many demon hunters can love the movement builds.

Why is it that any other class in the game if you added power to their movement, utility, or defensives, would throw a fit, like if mages had to blink in combust to do dmg, hunters had to disengage to get focus, Priests had to use fade to get mana back, or rogue had to use feint for dps boost, oh wait one of those happened and it’s trash. For some reason though DHs are required to use their movement for dmg and most people who play the class think it’s amazing? I don’t get it. Imagine if when you warbreaker on arms warr you have to heroic leap out of the pack and charge back in to get a dmg buff, or if you were playing rogue you had to grapple out and shadow step back to the boss to get energy back, or on WW if after every time you used Rushing jade wind you had to flying serpent kick out of combat and chi torpedo back into melee before using fists of fury. Those classes would feel much worse to play and those players would not stop complaining that these utility movement options are required to be used on cd for dmg. Why is it okay for dh? I don’t think it is, that’s why I don’t like the movement build on dh. Make demon form dh more complicated but don’t make me use my movement to buff dmg.

For inertia and momentum why do they have to be tied to fel rush our main movement utility? Why can’t it be tied to Felblade? Felblade is a button you can use to get close to an enemy to do damage to it. It makes much more sense to make this the button that gives you a damage amp instead of a dash, because it can be used in melee range anyways.

For this tree specifically though I feel that throw glaive is super uninspiring. At the very least change throw glaive to replace demon’s bite and make it build fury so it’s a true filler that feels rewarding to press because it’s a builder. You might have to increase the cost of the other spenders to compensate but it would probably feel better. I also feel like if you’re putting so much emphasis on glaives then why is there zero synergy with glaive tempest? Glaive Tempest should just always proc the buffs of Reaver’s Glaive, or better yet, make it affect glaive tempest instead of throw glaive. Then you can have each soul over the amount required to empower reduce the cd on glaive tempest instead.

I also see problems with the ease of use for a lot of players. The capstone for this tree makes it so you next ability does 30% more dmg? okay well what if you have to move and your felrush ends up being that ability? What if newer players don’t understand this and use a random ability on accident or without knowing? I think it would be better to enhance an specific ability like eyebeam or glaive tempest. Have the combo move sett that starts with a gaive end with the ultimate glaive.

Another ability that it could enhance is Essence break. I already hear outcrys from some demon hunter players that are saying that this will make very tight albiet solved and almost scripted damage windows. So why not lean into that and reward it? make the combo start with an ability, like eyebeam, which enhances your next chaos strike, and that chaos strike enhances your next blade dance, which enhances your next glaive tempest, which then enhances your next Essence break to reset the cd on all of those other abilities when used. Reward the dance. Maybe you can even have the “dance” be random every time you use the ability. Okay, might be a huge cook, but it would make different buttons light up in a different order and the rotation wouldn’t be hard set in stone like it was scripted.

Final note: Do not bring back chaos brand. The only reason it was fun was because you did top dmg pressing 3 buttons and it made other people mad. Bringing back something that easy is a bad cook. If you want to bring back the demon form build then it needs a new button that changes the rotation, like a button similar to Overpower that increases the dmg of your next eyebeam/glaive tempest/fel barrage stacking and the cd resets on fury spending, or like old overpower where spending fury procs an ability that lets you smack the enemy like a truck or like whirling dragon punch where if both eye beam and blade dance is on cd you can use whirling fel punch. Or, you know, keep the current iteration of throw glaive, which is like adding a damage amp window to Heroic Throw on warrior. I was joking, that was a joke, please don’t do that. I would cry. for both Havoc and Warr in those cases.

9 Likes
31

I like this one quite a bit.

I hope that fel scarred will be focused on demonic/meta uptime, while this on burstier profiles.

They should probably change how souls work though, having to literally pick them up is a bit of an issue, especially with how short the range is, especially on havoc.

2 Likes
32

Maybe because it’s the only unique & interesting thing the spec originally had, was an original selling point in Legion, and requires a modicum of skill with your decision making?

I don’t understand how so many demon hunters can play a DH and just want to stand still like a Rogue/Monk and want the movement DPS options removed or gutted. Sounds like they want to play another class that isn’t a DH to me.

Same, though I’m not huge on the throw glaive emphasis. The “comboing” for the strikes is pretty neat.

2 Likes
33

Because being forced to use movement abilities to keep up DPS, especially during higher level content, is a surefire way to get yourself and, possibly, your Raid killed.

4 Likes
34

Aldrachi Reaver

Art of the Glaive

Souls are a weird activation for Havoc but I don’t hate it. Adding an activation requirement to Throw Glaive also causes friction with some of the existing Throw Glaive talents. The second charge granted by Master/Champion of the Glaive seems to become a wasted part of that talent, and the effect of Perfectly Balanced Glaive in Vengeance becomes a mostly wasted, in an already somewhat weak talent, as it seems very unlikely that there will be instances where Vengeance consumes 20 souls in 9 seconds. On the Havoc side of Throw Glaive talents I think the biggest issue is actually Soulscar. Soulscar as a stand alone talent needs to be tuned around pretty high uptime so either Reaver’s Glaive needs to hit hard enough to offset the loss of Soulscar uptime or Soulscar becomes a lackluster talent in a Throw Glaive centric tree. Serrated Glaive and Burning Wound will also share a problem where there will be scenarios where you want to apply their debuff to targets though changing targets and hitting the associated ability. This was an issue that we encountered initially during Dragonflight Alpha that was rectified and is now rearing its head again. The last talent I will touch upon is Furious Throws. Furious Throws has the issue that if the second thrown glaive is also a Reaver’s Glaive is a Reaver’s Glaive the talent seems extremely strong, conversely if the second glaive is a regular glaive the talent seems extremely weak. Overall it seems that despite the tree triggering off of Throw Glaive everything about it pushes you away from the Throw Glaive talents which is counterintuitive but I don’t think it’s a bad idea necessarily. We should get some way to track the number of consumed souls somehow if the activation requirement stays and perhaps better clarity for the souls out on the battlefield for Havoc. Empowered abilities only emphasize going Chaos Strike/Fracture into Blade Dance/Soul Cleave which is fine but the way I am envisioning things it makes the 5 second duration of Reaver’s Mark a really tight window potentially. This gets compounded by other effects on the tree that I’ll touch on later on. What does the empowered Blade Dance/Soul Cleave section mean when it says 3 additional glaive slashes?

Keen Engagement/Preemptive Strike

Pretty straightforward pair of talents, not going to spend long on them. They both have their uses. Furious Throws the 25 cost + 20 gain from Keen seems weird. Additionally does Preemptive Strike’s AoE trigger anything like Soulscar?

Evasive Action/Unhindered Assault

I have a bit of concern in what ways Evasive Action interacts with Initiative,Tactical Retreat and Momentum, I think ideally it just doesn’t interact with any of them. Unhindered Assault seems like a nice QOL talent but may also bring Havoc closer to a point where we’re flooded with Fury again that we moved away from with the talent tree changes in 10.2.

Incisive Blade

A tuning knob for the tree, not much to say. The increased damage to Chaos Strike does add to the damage window issue mentioned previously but again will come back to that later.

Aldrachi Tactics

Adds to the flow of the Hero Talent tree. Much much stronger for Havoc than Vengeance currently.

Army Unto Oneself/Incorruptible Spirit

The defensive creep of the game as a whole is already out of control in my opinion and I do not think any of the Hero Talents needed defensive nodes. Regardless as far as these are concerned I think they are kind of weak which is fine as DH is one of the tankier classes until the absolute highest key levels.

Wounded Quarry

Again what is meant by a glaive slash? That aside this seems like a nice talent that adds to the flavor, flow and power of the tree. There is also a small conflict with Havoc that comes back to the damage window issue but it is far more minor in that I think part of the play pattern might want you to Reavers Glaive into Eye Beam to trigger Demonic and it doesn’t seem like Eye Beam would trigger this talent.

Intent Pursuit

Everybody likes The Hunt, more The Hunt is a good node. Only concern is the actual tuning of timings on activating Reaver’s Glaive converting to how much CDR this actually converts to.

Escalation

Kind of boring talent but also nothing to really complain about.

Warblade’s Hunger

Another boring but fine talent. Only issue I see is with Vengeance. Vengeance consistently consumes multiple souls but also generates far more than Havoc so it’s a bit moot on that point.

Thrill of the Fight

I’ll start off by saying that Thrill of the Fight should not be a blanket next ability does 30% more. A few abilities that would currently trigger this but would be actively bad uses include Consume Soul, Metamorphosis and Demon Blades. Here is where I’ll put my damage window rant. This only really pertains to Havoc. Havoc is already in a spot where there are numerous damage amps with short windows to play around and as a whole it currently works somewhat well but adding a 5 second window via Reaver’s Mark and trying to maximize Thrill adds to this pretty heavily. Currently we look to do something akin to Immo Aura > Eye Beam > Fel Rush > Essence Break > Blade Dance > Meta > Blade Dance. The addition of these 2 talents ask us to weave in a Reaver’s Glaive and a Chaos Strike before probably the Essence Break. This is just napkin math but it seems likely that Reaver’s Mark will fall off before the second Blade Dance hits in this rotation which then in turn would mean that Blade Dance is being buffed by Thrill but not Reaver’s Mark. You could say well don’t play Essence Break and problem solved, but why then punish a player for taking a talent that seems like it had natural synergy with the tree? Incisive Blade would also emphasize Chaos Striking inside of the aforementioned Essence Break window but you would then not get the last slashes of the 2nd Blade Dance inside the window thus losing a lot of damage. I’m down to have friction in talents to make interesting choices but to me Reaver’s Mark is probably just a step too far.

35

Given that they have just revisited havoc and are implementing this system on top of it, I think we’re likely stuck with how havoc plays for the next expansion, and I think that’s unfortunate. Vengeful Retreat remains problematic and awkward as an offensive tool, and stacking buffs on top of the movement based buff from Inertia continues to feel like too much. Maybe consider making Essence Break a single target ability rather than a short AoE cone, and replacing Initiative. Both of these moves would open up a lot of the rest of the tree.

Throw Glaive has always been the least cool ability/theme for the class. It also just doesn’t make sense that throwing a Glaive would be what increases vulnerability for further physical strikes.

It is understandably challenging to design more strong themes for a class that is already stronger thematically than any other class in the game. At the core of the demon hunter experience though is the inner struggle with the demon soul that fuels their powers. This hero spec as representative of the side that’s doing better with this struggle is only doing okay with it.

From a Vengeance standpoint, I hate using VR and that makes this tree a non-starter, assuming the other tree has nothing to do with VR. For Vengeance, this tree seems super set-and-forget, and otherwise a big yawn.

Maybe go back to the drawing board, and build a new spec not tied to Glaive toss? Why not raid Diablo for ideas, as the game has done from time to time? The D3 Demon Hunter had Fury AND Discipline - maybe look for strong Discipline themes and mechanics to build from.

6 Likes
36

I do not think havoc needs more short duration buffs to align with our already busy combo windows, and mentally tracking the 10% consecutive ability damage and the 100% buff on the 2nd enhancement seems overwhelming without the use of weak auras. Unless of course in real gameplay it actually doesnt matter and you make 0 decisions and it’s all just static anyway, in which case it’s very boring.

Not to mention that throw glaive as a rotational ability in single target scenarios feels pretty bad, and at best feels okay in m+. This of course is alleviated by our current tier, but after it’s gone it’s just not going to feel very good.

5 Likes
37

Without movement havoc becomes a very basic 3 button class. It also acts as the main skill separator allowing for players with a deeper grasp on the rotation and their positioning to out perform players who dont have that. It is a fun and unique component to the spec that is not offered by any other class. That is why you are not blinking or heroic leaping for more damage: havoc is the spec that moves for damage. If you do not enjoy one of the main gimmicks of the spec it may not be entirely for you.

But that’s okay, less movement is only around 3% behind and 0 movement is like 8% behind. Both being completely viable options for any content you’d like to do. We even play 0 movement on mythic tindral for more treant and root damage

Also fel rush is only locked to inertia, for a momentum build you have many more options for keeping it up, and in the current opener between hunt and VR you dont even have to fel rush to get the bulk of the value of momentum.

This is a nitpick but fade to get mana back on priest would be a godsend since most priests in hard content are pressing fade very frequently

3 Likes
38

but it was not always that way, before you could choose if you wanted to or not, therefore if there is a complaint in this regard it is valid for both groups, the pro-movement and the anti-movement, Havoc also in its beginning was a simple and easy class to take, so the criticisms asking for this to return are also valid, if they need to make a third spec to fulfill with these valid claims they should do it, after all we have a free specialization slot.

6 Likes
39

As I said, you can still choose if you want it or not, and less movement and 0 movement builds are still very viable.

3 Likes
40

I think what it is is they’re trying to re introduce the ranged capability you saw on dh from wc3. And it’s been a periodic request on these forums to bring it back. I think they just need to bite the bullet and give dh a real 3rd spec so the people who have been playing a melee fel rogue for the last 8 years won’t feel like their class has completely changed. May the force be with you! This is exactly what happened with frost mage where they made the non pet options stronger and then got rid of our ability to have a permanent pet altogether. Blizz has no qualms completely changing a spec by favoring the playstyle they want to force down everyone’s throat. The silver lining is the last 3 expansions have had a lot of non class specific stuff so if you don’t like the change but still like the game you have 3 other classes to mess around on in the same armor class.

5 Likes