The new tier set for havoc is quite interesting, but unfortunately has several issues with the optimal build for pure ST havoc going into 9.2. For completeness, below are the current set bonuses:
- 2P: Increases Blade Dance and Death Sweep damage by 20%.
- 4P: Every fifth Blade Dance or Death Sweep instantly refunds its own cooldown and cost. Casting this empowered Blade Dance or Death Sweep has a 15% chance to instantly refund its own cooldown and cost.
The goal of these tier bonuses is clear: press blade dance more, and make those presses feel more impactful, in all situations. This is a good playstyle change to aspire for. Unfortunately, as is, these bonuses are wasted in any single target build that uses Cycle of Hatred, which strongly encourages spending every last drop of fury into chaos strike for eye beam CDR. This problem is exacerbated by the Venthyr legendary, Agony Gaze (stated below)
- Sinful Brand deals 10% increased damage and Eye Beam (Havoc) damage increases the duration of Sinful Brand by 0.75 sec.
This legendary puts even more emphasis onto getting Eyebeam CDR, by not only tying eyebeam damage/meta uptime to it, but also the possibility of a huge amount of additional sinful brand damage. This playstyle is actually kind of an interesting take on cycle of hatred imo, but presently it has 0 synergy with the proposed tier sets. However, I actually don’t think the tier sets are the issue here! I think the issue is that cycle of hatred, which shares a row with 2 talents that buff blade dance in some way, has 0 interaction with blade dance, which will always keep the button out of any cycle single target rotation.
As such, I think the easiest solution, by far, is to simply change cycle of hatred to interact with blade dance. This both fixes the synergy issues going into 9.2, and actually makes blade dance a button you want to press in ST regardless of tier sets. Presently, cycle of hatred reads:
- OLD When Chaos Strike refunds Fury, it also reduces the cooldown of Eye Beam by 3 sec.
I think the correct change is to make cycle instead:
- NEW When Chaos Strike refunds Fury, or you cast Blade Dance, reduce the cooldown of Eye Beam by 2 sec.
The change from 3 to 2 seconds of CDR makes sure that this is not a buff to Cycle. However, now Blade Dance (which costs 35 fury), is an awfully attractive button to press if you’re interested in Eye Beam CDR - as it guarantees 2 seconds of eye beam CDR, at the cost of some ST damage versus a Chaos Strike cast. Whatsmore, this change would smooth out the CDR from cycle, making the talent feel a lot less volatile than it currently does, by effectively guaranteeing some procs.
I want to stress that the change to 2 seconds is not really that important - the amount of CDR can be nerfed to whatever is required to make this not a buff to the talent.
TLDR: The proposed change to cycle would smooth out gameplay, make blade dance an attractive button to press in ST, and ensure that the current tier set could go live and actually have synergy with the dominant ST havoc build in 9.2. Thanks!