Feedback: Demon Hunters

In Development The War Within Beta Test
44

I tend to avoid being overly negative in my input. I feel like it’s oddly weird and personal to get too aggressive regarding feedback for a video game.

That said, holy hell I am disappointed in the direction of Havoc over the last few years, and it’s entirely because of this. I picked up Havoc back in Legion because it was simple, quick fun. I understand the desire to build up the spec’s complexity options a bit, but we’ve gone so far in the other direction that it feels like a chore to even consider playing the spec now.

To all those who enjoy it, I’m genuinely glad, but the old design has been completely lost and I just can’t help but feel a bit let down.

7 Likes
45

OK. You got me. I am a man and I can 100% admit when I am wrong.

I just tested these recent changes in arena and I would like to apologize for some of the things I have stated before.

Whatever direction you are heading in with these recent Aldrachi changes, I am all for it!

Now it makes complete sense why Reaver’s Glaive does not effect the glaive talents.

Some glairing issues still stand: no access to a reliable slow when you sit on a charge of Reaver’s Glaive waiting for CDs to send it with and – obviously – the biggest of all: no reliable way to consume/absorb those souls on the ground. Even in arena, having to back track or run out of line of sight of your healer to obtain souls does not seem like a great concept – I can only imagine in PvE.

Thanks for the recent changes. I knew my anger would get through to you… again.

Edit:

The Cleansed By Flame change makes no sense what so ever. It was our most reliable way to counter magic roots and casters in general. Now we’re just going to be stuck in the middle of the map taking the fat D. Other melees have ways to get out of roots and personal/group freedoms.

If Warriors can spin-to-win to break/immune roots while also being completely CC immune why was this change made?

Are we finally getting our own built in snare/slow/root break? Just tac it onto VR, since even in PvE, a lot of raiders and even some raid leaders were/are under the impression it works like Hunter’s disengage.

With the recent addition and removal of pvp talents for other classes, will we also be receiving some love in that department?

46

I’ve come here to say something I think I should have sooner.

Quick backstory. I’ve enjoyed VDH since legion but have often been relegated to BDK due to the state of the meta. But VDH’s unique gameplay style always felt amazing. Now mind you I’ve played DK since WoTLK so I love them and they will always be my baby.

That being said, when logging into the beta on a DH for the first time, seeing the hero talents felt a bit underwhelming. But I swallowed my feelings because I knew what everyone would tell me, “your class is already too op.” So I didn’t bother mentioning anything.

But here we are, a huge nerf has come in for sigil build, I find myself looking at BDK’s hero talents for the first time, and my jaw is on the floor at just how game changing and creative their hero talents are.

Quite honestly… I’m not sure what to say with so little time left before TWW launches. But I think that VDH hero talents and talent tree could use a big shake up, the class really doesn’t know what it wants to be, and the hero talents just feel very uninspired and lack any substantial game changers. And having to choose between certain class talent choice nodes feels awkward when you try to break out of a sigil oriented setup and you inevitably keep getting forced back into sigils.

My Key Takeaway For Blizzard
I see your attempts at pulling the focus away from sigils for DH. I think this isn’t a bad idea. However with fiery brand talents all being on the right side of the tree, we might as well still take the sigil talents while we’re there.

I’d like to ask you to consider moving some nodes around or entirely removing and replacing the sigil focused nodes, to steer the class into a new creative direction.
What could go well with a Frailty, Demon Spikes, Fiery Brand oriented DH spec? What new talent ideas could palate well with that in place of the sigil theme? and what new hero talent tree redesign could play off of this new theme, to perhaps actually make our gameplay feel a bit more inspired.

DH has always felt like a class that has farrrr fewer buttons to press than other classes. Maybe this could be the chance to finally do something about that. And in the process, help our class finally find its identity in the World of Warcraft. :smiley:

All of this likely could not be done before TWW, but I’d like to see a DH revamp at some point down the road. And honestly, a 3rd spec at some point would do nicely as well. Perhaps a support spec, focused around a theme of helping your party hunt their foes, using sigils to protect your allies and weaken their foes, and expose vulnerabilities on targets using their fel vision.

2 Likes
47

thank you for removing the utility sigil charges of illuminated sigils.

inccorupteable spirit is currently bugged and its giving a absorb based on soul fragment healing rather then a flat healing buff to soul frag healing. however if you can replace soul monger from the spec tree for thise absorb on soul frag % on whatever hp amount, it would make alot of people very happy. i wouldnt mind vdh being tuned slightly around it as well

more feedback to come

1 Like
48

I know the double sigils was OP. Everyone knows that. But actually tanking in M+ and having so much control was so much fun. So my thought is, instead of removing that fun, why not bring other tanks up to par? For example make DK Mass Grip have a shorter cooldown, or give them some stuns. Same idea for other tanks.

For M+ specifically, control is what’s fun (IMO). So I would like it if all tanks had that going for them, instead of just removing it from the only class that had it.

2 Likes
49

I feel like this should have come sooner, before the other nerfs to sigil cooldowns. Now when you stack both of these together, it feels too heavy handed. VDH still has threat issues early on in pulls and can definitely have some mitigation and resource management issues at other parts of an encounter. These issues need to get addressed or VDH will fall pretty far behind the other tanks now their utility has been severely cut.

Also, rename Illuminated Sigils at this point. Makes no sense to be plural while only affecting one sigil.

1 Like
50

first i want to say, ty for giving me the opportunity to test and play with vdh in tww. this feedback post will be considerably shorter than my other posts ive made on other characters/class threads. however a concern for future expansions, i hope you dont include beta access if you preorder the expansion again, im glad to see this thread hasnt gone off the rails unlike some others.

the post will go indepth with
spec tree
and hero trees

without further adue lets begin

vengeance demon hunter spec tree

  1. roaring fire as a choice node with sigil of silence isnt that great. silence sigil will simply be the better choice in all dungeon content while roaring flame stays unpicked for any content. this will be a very unpopular opinion, but i believe to further curb vdh extreme amount of stops (4 total now that illum sigils has been fixed) i think it would be for the best to make sigil of chains and sigil of silence to share a choice node
  2. retaliation, this talent has less value the more parry we get. simply cause parry’d attacks dont proc it. even if it does proc, the amount of damage it does is very low. i propose a buff while making it proc on every physical damage event done to the vdh no matter if it was parried or not
  3. perfectly balanced glaive, as long as throw glaive does lo damage then i dont see why this talent warrents existing. keep in mind throwglaive being buffed still wouldnt feel nice due to the amount of bloat vdh has in its rotation already
  4. feast of souls, this talent still amounts to nothing, perhaps if it effect stacks. it would be better
  5. bulkextraction, this talent does less than soul cleave. idk how to fix this, perhaps bake it into soul barrier? or perhaps replace the node with hour of reaping to make soul barrier proc after 40 souls consumed
  6. reveal in pain, is still extremely undertuned and buggy to use properly
  7. ruinous bulwark, this talent simply buffs us during our stronger point (demonic) it would be better if it makes fel dev spawns soul fragment
  8. sigil of chains, i have a personal vendetta for this talent. delete it lol
  9. soulmonger, as it stands. this talent does nothing until very very very high key content for specific scenarios where the extra padding is great for oneshots (like rlp dragon miniboss at the end of the hallway). keep in mind this talent only procs when your above 90% hp aka when your not in danger. so i simply suggest that you remove this 90% condition and just make soul frags proc a absorb at any hp %
  10. last resort, this is the worst cheat death in the game. it shouldnt be a capstone. please buff it to proc every 4 mins so it can atleast be impactful.
  11. the hunt and decree is chaos and should be effected by fiery demise

again thank you for bringing down illuminated sigils, that was number 12 in my feedback post. this was warrented simply cause IS was to oppressive as a talent and warped the meta endgame around it. not to mention extremely unhealthy to the game since it just encouraged dps players and healers to not use their stops due to this weird idea that “the vdh will do it”. ive been flamed quite a few times for failing to stop a cast even with all of my stops on cd, it wasnt fun and im glad to finally see it gone.

felscarred should have more visuals and should be tuned higher to compete with reaver. as it stands reaver completely blows felscarred out of the water.

  1. remember when i said TG would still feel bad in the rotation even if it was buffed to enormous amounts. reaver feels bad due to the bloat of veng rotation. idk how to fix it, throwglaive is just wasnt a thing v eng had to deal with for years and now theres a hero tree around it.

for havoc btw

  1. make fel rush/felbalde absorb souls fragments around the havoc demon hunter. they need it for make this spec feel better

please look at my friends post about frequent bugs for both hero trees

51

Again as Havoc DH.

You guys changed virtually nothing in terms of gameplay of Aldrachi, so it’s still incredibly annoying to play and sync the 6 DPS windows Havoc has access to.

Please:

  • Move Thrill of the Fight to RG usage/cast or delete it
  • Delete Reaver’s Mark and rework it for a Single Target CS damage amp (for just one CS) that makes it desirable over Blade Dance in ST scenarios
  • Add a way to gather souls for Havoc
3 Likes
52

Aldrachi: Blizzard still not listening.

Aldrachi needs a change to soul collecting.

Aldrachi need a change to rotation, an opener of 20+ sequence of spells that needs perfect execution and repeating during fights IS NOT FUN.

Blizzard you are still not listening and whoever is the devs working on it, we need to be able to get to communicate with you in a way that you are not drowned by suggestions but can get to the essential.

The essential is havoc players are not happy with the opener. Players are not happy with the complexity. Players are not happy with the soul collection. Players are not happy souls are hardly visible. Players are not happy other players souls are visible.

3 Likes
53

I advocated against Illuminated Sigils from the time it was announced, and support the nerf we all knew was coming. Now that it’s here, however, can we please revert the half-measures they took last month? Change Sigil of Silence back to 60s and Cycle of Binding back to 3s? I agree the bigger nerf was needed, but it was needed instead of the previous nerfs, not on top of them. Thanks!

1 Like
54

Asking again, WHERE are the Fel-Scarred visuals? Because spell icon changes can’t just be it.

The hero tree feels entirely passive with no visual feedback to spice up and compensate for the sheer passiveness.

1 Like
55

That is basically like half or more of the “hero” talents. No visuals, just passives.

56

It’s just ridiculous that we have huge swings between Diabolist warlock and voidweaver priests or conduit of the celestials monk and then these almost invisible other hero talent trees.

Sure, not every hero tree can have new active spells or super procs, but at the very least if this is the expansion feature meant to last 2 years till the next, we can get accompanying visuals like they stated was the goal of hero trees, to evoke specific class fantasies.

2 Likes
57

You’re not wrong, but given that they aren’t even working on every class, getting them to work on visuals seems really unlikely (unless you’re a mage or lock)

58

ya, they need to revert those

and they can just delete illuminated sigils

59

So, I have been testing: Aldrachi Design and Live by the Glaive, as Aldrachi – In PvP.

It is completely sad for havoc. The parry chance and heal are both in a sad state and need significant buffs, for havoc.

As a theme, I really do want to use the talents and abilities that are named after or fit the Aldrachi and right now they suck.

I am not even going to get into the glaive talents not working with Aldrachi, I know I stated I understood, but come on, let me live the dream.

60

Illuminated Sigils will still be important, and the default for M+. The parry it provides is powerful, and it still gives double charges of our #1 dps line item. They fixed Illuminated Sigils when they made it only apply to Flame not the CC.

1 Like
61

I have held off thus far on contributing because I felt that the feedback in general was generally in line with what I thought, but after seeing nothing change for Havoc since the start of Alpha I feel the need to dump a massive post.

  1. The Tuning

Havoc has - repeatedly - found itself being nerfed for no reason other than the fact that it does very well in frontloading its damage. It has happened thus far two seasons in Dragonflight, and it would not surprise me if it happens again in The War Within. It happens something like this;

Week one non-leveled Mythic dungeons come out. Havoc gaps literally everyone because all of its burst is frontloaded. Havoc gets nerfed 3 weeks in a row, each one amounting from somewhere between 2% to 3% (totaling a max of 9%). Later on in the season, it turns out Havoc’s damage is only frontloaded, so it becomes lower-middle of the pack. Once again it is sidelined for the true hero classes (Warlock or Mage) and the only contribution it really has is Chaos Brand (this is bad design.)

Couple the above with an unintended 4% PvE nerf that took place two weeks ago that has yet to be reverted, and the fact that Havoc is competing for tanks on beta logs, and you have a very unhappy community. Fix it. It’s ridiculous.

You can start with fixing the unintended interaction with trinkets and Know Your Enemy, and then buff our Know Your Enemy talent and Any Means Necessary talent back to 100% scaling to begin with, and buff our damage 5% minimum, then see how it plays out in the next round of testing. If we’re STILL bottomfeeder then buff us another 5%. And if it turns out we’re decimating low level dungeons in the first week, hold off until the start of the next season to gather all of the data before you make any adjustments at all.

  1. The Complexity

The long-lived meme of Havoc being easy is dead. We have nine rotational buttons and also need to worry about which way we’re facing, where we are located relative to the boss’s hitbox, and need to be constantly aware of everything around us because of the fact that we are the only specialization in the game that relies heavily on using our movement to do extra damage. It’s time to let the meme die and stop trying to add on more layers of complexity. We don’t need to have more reasons to hit Sigil of Flame, or more reasons to try adding Elysian Decree, or anything like that into our kit. I’d argue we are one of the most complicated specs in the game to play perfectly. This brings me to point 3…

  1. Aldrachi Reaver

It’s a mess. For context, our opener with this Hero Talent tree is 19 global cooldowns, and it takes 12 full global cooldowns before we even hit Metamorphosis. Stop it. There is zero reason to try to overcomplicate Havoc even more. Remake this tree, make it not focus on souls (like we’ve been asking for since it was initially released). It’d be one thing if you actually gapped with that level of difficulty, but the mentality for years has been that difficulty does not translate to damage. And since Fel-Scarred is weak, this brings me to point 4…

  1. Fel-Scarred

Almost perfect. A few weak nodes. The damage, though, is bad. Please buff it. Thank you.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

10 Likes
62

I apologize for making so many short posts, however, I am pointing things out as they occur to me or happen in game so I do not forget to note it late.

Trail of Ruin is just doing BFA numbers and needs some love in the form of a significant buff.

Everyone and everything has millions of HP and it’s only ticking for 46k per hit? Is it not scaling at all ? Because I for sure think it is not with Thrill and Reaver’s Mark.

I see a lot of outcry for changing Reaver’s Mark to just give Chaos Strike a 1 big hit, I am completely against that. I sincerely think they are not using the way it may be intended or I found a way to use it that really suits my own personal playstyle.

2 Likes
63

Thank you for finally fixing Illuminated Sigils. Here’s hoping you continue to monitor and tweak as you tune.

Wish List:

  • Tuning passes to keep DPS comparable to other tanks after sigil changes + hero talents
  • Reverting Sigil of Silence to 60s and Cycle of Binding to 3s would be nice.
  • Some better animations for Fel-Scarred talents
2 Likes