This may be a bit jumbled up but this is my impressions of playing Devourer over the last few weeks of Alpha, I will be posting more feedback as we do more content but due I figured I’d post what I see and feel and notice so far as I think there’s alot of talk about.
I’ve tried out both “builds” of this spec and I feel like the core loop is overall lacking. This week (October 23rd) the drain in Void Meta was doubled. This means that the caster build is no longer sustainable as I’ve gone from being able to cast up to 7 Collapsing stars to just barely being able to cast 4. While, I think this is completely fine and a healthy change as I don’t think its a good idea if this spec is just able to sustain being in Void Meta for over a minute, it does expose how lackluster the rotation outside of Void Meta truly is as now you spend much more time outside of Void Meta, and the benefits of entering Void Meta are not worth trying to fight against the immense drain. It feels as thought Void Meta is just not worth to keep up now so your best bet is to play Melee based talents, except Melee based talents have extremely long cooldowns as they are tied to spells with a 40s CD and a 1.5min CD, which doesn’t feel very melee like.
However, this brings me to my current point, the core gameplay loop of the spec only felt good in void Meta as you’d be spamming Void Ray and then consuming all the fragments and building up to a collapsing star. However, as of this week, this loop is no longer sustainable which was the only thing I felt the spec had going for it. The rotation before you get your first void ray in general is extremely lacking, all you do is spam Consume for 8s to build your first Void Ray. Which also brings me to the fact that loop outside of meta is extremely lacking, it feels like a 1,2 rotation where you spam consume multiple times and then press reap, then void ray again and rinse and repeat, even in Void Meta you do the same thing, the only difference being that because you’re able to access Void Ray without the fury requirement the rotation in Meta feels a bit snappier and faster, but it doesn’t change the fact that Devourer as a whole is lacking some form of abilities to be pressed between each Void Ray cast and while waiting for your Reap charge to come back.
While other classes in WoW will start a raid fight by entering their cooldowns within the first few seconds of a raid start or dungeon boss start, Devourer feels like it takes a while to get started even with Entropy giving you 25 fragments to begin with.
The AOE and Cleave aspect of the spec feels very lackluster, spells like The Hunt feel very barebones and weak to press as they don’t offer any gameplay benefits to the spec. Void Blade and Vengeful retreat gaining any AOE bonuses are hindered by the fact that these bonuses are on very long cooldowns as Hungering Slash and Void Step are tied to The Hunt and Void Blade which have very long cooldowns, this means the only way to do AOE is via Void Ray and Eradicate which feels incredibly restrictive. It feels like you don’t do any cleave in general or you have no form of damage in dungeons.
Overall the loop of entering Void Meta and then spamming Void Ray and consuming fragments to cast Collapsing is very fun but it feels like the spec is missing 1-2 more buttons to smoothen the rotation in between and to give it some more options in different content or encounters, and when I say that I mean that currently the spec feels very all or nothing, your AOE is lackluster and extremely restrictive at the same time as there are only very few ways to do AOE and ontop of that there are conditions that must be met.
I think this spec has a really really good loop in Void Meta but I think its not fun to play outside of it at all and what needs to happen is that there must be more to do inside Void Meta, and outside Void Meta both, currently I only count 4 abilities on my bar that are important to my rotation. Consume, Reap, Vold Meta, And Void Ray. Void Blade has too long of a cooldown to feel impactful, the Hunt offers only one point of Synergy but since its on a 1.5min CD it doesn’t feel impactful either. Spontaneous Immolation feels like a must take and ontop of that Soul Immolation just felt like a press and forget unlike Havoc where Immolation Aura has impact and can be modified in multiple ways. I just think there needs to be 1-2 more buttons to press as an overall. Its not fun to spam consume at the start of the fight, or in Void Meta if you ever have to. Its not fun to spam consume between Void Rays either.
In terms of class fantasy and defensives and utility , the Devourer Spec doesn’t have the Demon Hunter Tattoo’s passive which means that by playing Devourer you’re taking 10% more magic damage than other other DH specs, this feels very odd as tattoo’s and the fantasy of being versed in magical arts and defense against them or so. In addition, this is still a Demon Hunter spec yet the spec doesn’t gain any bonus from consuming a Demon’s soul, neither does it seem to get any bonus from Greater Soul Fragments, something both Havoc and Veng gain some form of benefit from. Its the small things that matter.
To summarize, I think the Devourer as a spec is quite unique and does have a fun core gameplay loop if you were to not think about anything else, unfortunately thats now how classes work, the way the spec feels during downtime is also part of how it plays, and so are the talent choices you have, and currently the loop outside of Void Meta feels very lack luster, and Void Meta itself feels rather weak for how well you have to play it to ensure you can get more than 3 stars off. In addition it feels like there’s some rotationally filler missing that would help smoothen the gameplay both in and out of meta, the Melee playstyle is quite fun but its hindered by the fact that you can only use it every 40s or 1.5 minutes which for one single attack each, which doesn’t feel like a strong talent point investment as in dungeons most pulls are dead within a minute, so in the time that you got off one Hungering Slash, other people have been spamming their AOE spenders and doing damage while you’ve been pressing mostly single target buttons in a pull with multiple mobs. This is never a fun feeling and even in the caster build its the same as in the caster build you have even less AOE options as you’re pretty much reliant on Void Ray which feels like only one button kit is actually meaningful in AOE, its never fun to spam single target buttons in AOE pulls, its never been fun for any class to do that. I just think the spec needs some more gameplay synergy and rotational filler that will make you feel more impactful in in a variety of situations rather than being this caster who has only one goal and not much wiggle room.
