This post is VERY LONG, I apologize but there’s a lot I had to say
Hello everyone,
for those who don’t know me, I’m VooDoo, a Content Creator focused primarily on Havoc, as well as an active part of the theorycrafting community for the spec. Today i figured i would share some feedback, both personal and that which I’ve gathered and heard from both my own community as well as the DH Discord. This might be a bit of a long post, but it will mostly be focused on the Hero trees and our tier set, although i will list current bugs as well as some general things for the class and spec trees (which do need work).
Fel-Scarred
Starting with Fel-Scarred, as realistically it’s the most “complete” of the two Hero trees. This one works reasonably well for Havoc, and i can see and understand a desire for a simpler Hero tree that already fits and accentuates what Havoc (and Vengeance) are doing with the demon fantasy they play into. It offers bonuses for things you are already doing, while also giving small amps and slight tweaks to rotations in the forms of Student of Suffering and Violent Transformation, which offer buff management to an otherwise passive hero tree (and has synergies within our spec and class trees as well.) However, there are some issues i have with the tree, and that I’ve seen brought up.
*Passivity
Personally, i think a passive tree is great. However, i feel Fel-scarred might go a little TOO far into that direction, as there are currently 4 talents on the tree that, in my opinion, are essentially invisible to normal gameplay (Untethered Fury, Focused Hatred, Enduring Torment, Monster Rising). Of these, it can be argued that Untethered Fury can be felt, since more fury allows for pooling, but in total these nodes are incredibly passive. Focused Hatred, Enduring Torment, and Monster Rising are fully invisible passive damage nodes, and while i recognize that each tree should be able to have passives, i think the tree having 4 very basic passives is maybe a bit much. My issue comes mainly to the two nodes that involve power outside of demon form. While i think this is an interesting way to raise the floor of the “troughs” a burst oriented spec like Fel-Scarred might feel, I can’t help but feel like i was wishing these had some more form of interplay with the rest of my kit, some form of synergy. Maybe stuff done inside of demon form empowers the buff, or the buff starts high and “fades” off as you leave demon form. There are lots of ways to make these more interesting, even if it means adding a more “active” choice against them on a choice node (as a few other trees have, the DH trees only have one throughput choice node, while many other trees have multiple)
*Visuals
The visuals on this tree are just a miss, and this is a theme that will echo for Aldrachi as well, although even more so. There’s just basically nothing, aside from the small green explosions (which are nice, but not sufficient compared to what other specs are getting). The biggest thing for me would be to add some kind of extra visual to the new empowers of Eye Beam, Immolation Aura, and Sigil Of Flame. These abilities get brand new icons, why not slap some extra effects to them as well? There were early datamined things along the lines of “each demonsurge grants you a more demonic appearance” as well, which i think would be great, or even some extra demonic-ness outside of demon form. Anything really would go a long way in making this Hero tree feel, well, Heroic
Aldrachi Reaver
Aldrachi reaver tries to hit on the fantasy of the Aldrachi, a fierce warrior tribe who stood up to Sargeras, using their martial prowess and the souls of their enemies. In this sense, I can see what the tree is going for, and the recent changes have made it better, but many issues remain.
*Souls
Souls as mechanic for havoc just frankly doesnt work very well, as the spec was never really designed to use them to the degree that vengeance does. However, the additions on the tree do smooth out generation in combat to the point where i don’t think this is that large of an issue. Instead, i think collection is an issue. Unlike Vengeance, who have two ways of consuming souls readily available (Soul Cleave and Spirit Bomb), Havoc has none. This is very problematic, as often you generate the soul, and either cannot see it, or it is in some position that is nearly impossible to get to safely. Many times over the weekend while i was testing in both dungeons or dummies, souls would spawn that i would simply have no clue where they are, or no chance to get without either significant risks to my survival or significant uptime loss. That feels Terrible. Adding some form of collecting the souls (my suggestion is on any movement ability, similar to how its implemented currently in our sims, but there are many other ways to do it) would go a long way in increasing the QOL.
*Starting combat drought
The recent change from 3 to 6 soul activation helped smooth the rotation of the tree out, however, it introduced another issue, which is on pull. Currently, we’re exploring taking both soul sigils and Sigil of spite on beta in order to smooth soul generation, which is fine. However, these only generate 5 (if you can find and collect all the souls) of the required 6 souls to get a glaive, meaning we are relying on the RNG aspect of Chaos strike generation to get our first glaive. Once we have our first glaive getting to the next few are fine, since the tree speeds up soul generation, but there is Nothing to help getting into this flow. This feels terrible, as we either have to open without our hero talent tree at all, or we have to delay our opener an unknown amount of time in order to RNG generate another soul. Adding some way of generating one (getting to 3 stacks out of combat, hunt granting one on combat start, etc) would really help this tree feel better.
*Downtime issues
The souls that determine when you get your next reaver’s glaive do not need a duration. This duration doesnt really serve any purpose, other than to punish any group which may pull slowly in m+, or to punish this tree being played on any fight with extended periods of downtime. Either of these things lead to you “falling off the train” of glaive generation, and needing to face the above issue of having no deterministic way of getting back onto it. Not only does this feel bad, but this makes the tree much weaker in a lot of scenarios compared to Fel-Scarred, where i wouldnt want to take it on any fight with random significant downtime, or any dungeon where packs are more spread out.
*Talent Interactions
Frankly put, i was excited to cook a build using the throw glaive talents and this tree, only to find that Reaver’s glaive does not work with half of them (Soulscar and Furious Throws being the biggest culprits) despite being a glaive itself. The glaive’s damage is weak enough as it is, this barrier shouldn’t exist, and further works to kill off the glaive talents, which currently don’t really have a nice or use case for them to be taken.
*Power
Right now, the tree, at least in Single Target, seems balanced around a near 100% uptime 30 % damage amp to a single target. This worries me a bit. While its undeniably powerful, it strikes me as the kind of thing that might be Too powerful, warping talent choices, gearing, and rotation so that we can main this buff as much as possible (Sinful Brand anyone). As it stands, the tree isnt as powerful due to some bugs (outlined below), but this constant uptime seems, on paper, VERY powerful, almost spec warpingly so. Caution should be maintained here, as we dont have sims yet, and there’s been no testing, but when i see something like this it seems so powerful i would not be surprised if it becomes problematic. In dungeons however, i think this tree and fel-scarred are both perfectly competitive, and can see reasons for both to be taken
*Visuals
Visuals for this tree are much more subpar than that of Fel-Scarred, as currently the only visual is the purple glow around the glaive. This does look cool, but its basically impossible to see. Normal glaives are very hard to see currently while in melee, especially if you’re fighting multiple enemies, this glaive does not stand out and is practically as invisible. Aside from that though, there are literally no other visuals. Part of the allure of hero trees is the cool VFX and animations they would add to the spec to sell the fantasy, but at points while playing Reaver, i almost forgot i was playing a hero spec. The glow and new icon for the glaive is a nice touch, but even giving a little visual glow around your character would be cool, and aid in recognition of what’s happening without external tools as well. On that note, i think adding a glow or something to signify Chaos Strike and Blade dance are buffed would help as well, as without a Weakaura to track buffs, its hard to see
Tier Set
Honestly, the tier set is incredibly fun. While it is simple, pushing more blade dances and death sweeps has been a blast, and i would love if this was added as a talent somewhere down the line. One small issue does come in with trail of ruin, where-in if re-applied while duration was remaining, it would simple overwrite the buff, cancelling any remaining damage. It would be a great QoL change to make this function similar to ignite or devouring plague, where the remaining damage was added to the new dot. While you wont delay your blade dances so to let trail of ruin finish ticking before adding a new one, it does feel bad to know you are losing on damage.
Talent Tree
I won’t touch much on the tree right now, as the feedback is aimed at gathering thing’s for the Hero trees, but there are issues with havoc as a spec, despite the touch up we just received. The two main ones i do want to touch on are the glaive talents, and the point usage in trees.
*Glaives
As it stands, without the 2pc from Amirdrassil, glaive’s are just simple dead. Throw glaive as a button is very undertuned, and needing to invest 4 points into it to make it even anywhere close to a usable button feels really bad. This is further piled on with everything in s1 wanting us to use Chaos strike, both through the tier set and both hero trees amping it’s damage, and Chaos strike being needed to generate souls and/or blade dance resets. This pushes the glaive talents to the way side, being significantly weaker than anything we want to be doing, and requiring a lot of point investment to even be worth maybe pressing in some niche scenarios. Something needs to be added, either through an increase in power, or an additional payoff in the tree stronger than soulscar.
*Point Locking
As it stands, our tree just feels very restrictive to path through. Often times when making a tree, it starts out with just grabbing all the 28/29 points each build shares (aside from deciding between mover and no mover, which free’s up 2-3 points but still has the same issues) and then selecting the 1-2 points left over at the end. A big issue with this is the 5 different 2 point nodes we have on the tree (many trees have 0-2), which are there both in order to restrict pathing, and because we frankly just don’t have many nodes. Talent points like Know Your Enemy, Any Means Necessary, and Inertia are just hard locks for the spec in order to be competitive (Inertia less so, but most “strongest” builds require these) which already takes up 4 points in the bottom part of the tree (not counting points to path to them) further restricting point selection. On top of that, a lot of the nodes in the tree don’t really build on each other, there’s no empowering of abilities, no way to really dive into build options like you find on other trees (aside from glaives, movement, and immolation aura). This leaves many builds feeling “samey” or being forced to take talents that have anti synergy (Cycle of hatred causing eye beam to desynch from Essence Break, even though it leads into it) and just feel bad to play. This further restricts build choice and leaves us with only really 1 of 2 builds that end up being on top (Not counting no mover, which has been stated to be intended to be a less competitive but simpler option) with only 1 or 2 talent points changed between them. That is not fun, and leaves the spec feeling very similar patch to patch (War within DH is feeling very similar to s3 DF DH). While the spec IS fun, a little something different each patch would go a long way.
While there’s more i could get into, im going to round off this (long, sorry) post with a bug list.
*Thrill of the Fight is an Attack Power normalized auto swing speed buff, causing our attack power to lower as our Auto Speed increases to keep the total damage done of Auto attacks the same. This leads the node itself to cause us to deal LESS damage with it selected, and it’s currently better to either not take the node, or macro a cancel aura for the buff into every single ability
*The 4% pvp nerf done to havoc on June 4th was erroneously applied to PvE as well, and is active on the War Within beta.
*Isolated Prey does not currently give the 30% benefit to eyebeam when striking a singular target (and hasn’t since sometime during S3 of Dragonflight)
*The Hunt and Sigil of Suffering are listed as chaos damage, but do not gain mastery benefit from Havoc unless Any Means Necessary is talented
*Empowered Sigil of Flame from Fel-Scarred only applies the 30% extra damage to the initial hit, the dot remains the same as normal Sigil Of Flame
*Incisive Blade is only applying a 30% damage increase to the main hand hit of Chaos Strike, none the the off-hand
*Warblade’s hunger is not implemented
*Inertia trigger has no duration, can happen anytime after UBC drops (even after death)
*Momentum does not drop on talent change, can be stacked prepull and then remains when swapped to inertia
I’m predominantly a Havoc player, but a list of Vengeance Bugs has also been compiled by the theorycrafting community for that spec, which i’ll copy paste here:
*Warblade’s Hunger is not working
*Fel Desolation does not share a cooldown with Fel Devastation
*Fel Desolation does not benefit from CDR from Darkglare Boon, but does give Fury refund
*Soul Furnace last Soul Fragment to trigger damage amp counts as first stack towards new damage amp
*Fracture is not applying Reaver’s Mark after Reaver’s Glaive
*Shear is not applying Reaver’s Mark after Reaver’s Glaive and not consuming Rending Strike
*Incisive Blade is not applying a 30% damage increase to Soul Cleave
*Burning Blades is dealing slightly more damage than intended; intended is 10%, we’re seeing 11-12% instead
*Burning Blades damage is not allow-listed by Fiery Demise, and thus not increased by 40%
Sorry for the MASSIVE wall of text, but I’m incredibly passionate about this spec, and want it to do well and feel well. There’s many points of feedback here, because to many, Havoc has felt neglected since the Hero Tree reveals (DH is one of only 2 classes besides Shaman to recieve no Class or Spec changes, since Hunter’s is on their way).
Both trees have promise, and with some changes and some improved visuals, could be super fun pillars to build the spec on moving forward into the World Soul Saga.
Thank you all who read through this.
Peace,
-VooDoo 
