Havoc Demon Hunter: An Analysis

Hello!

After almost a year of no changes to the Demon Hunter class, and the Havoc specialization in particular, I felt it is important to highlight some of the issues that I believe have plagued the class and spec. Some of these issues have persisted beyond even our small “revamp” in Amirdrassil - and to be clear, it was not a full rework, the basic core remained the exact same - and some of them have only really become glaring with the introduction of hero trees. Buckle up, this is going to be a long one, likely the longest post that I have ever made on the forums.

Who am I?

No one special, really. I’ve played Havoc since mid-Legion casually, and then seriously starting in Battle for Azeroth. I’d like to think that at least a small subsection of the Havoc playerbase might recognize my name with the resources I have attempted to create and maintain, but at the end of the day, I’m not a big streamer, I’m not a World First raider, I’m not a Gladiator, and I’m not a Title Key pusher. I would like to think my views represent the views of a good chunk of the playerbase, but I am absolutely not representing this as such. The views that follow are mine, and mine alone.

The Good

I will start off with the positives. As far as the class is concerned, it does have access to a lot of new things that it did not have the ability to have before. Some of the largest complaints that were made in the later parts of Shadowlands (when Venthyr and Sinful Brand were the go-tos) surrounded just how critical borrowed power systems became for the class and the very limited number of things we could do at once. Having to choose between Cycle of Hatred or First Blood sucked, and having a whole tier where your entire gameplay loop consisted of extending Sinful Brand as much as possible made Havoc nearly unplayable. I enjoy the current gameplay loop, and I enjoy the damage profile. I will grant that - at times - it is weak, and the effort put in does not match the result, but the general playstyle now is one I like.

The Bad

Here is where I get into my criticisms. There are many. The long and short of it is that the class tree is a mess, the bugs we have are irritating, and the spec tree is full of superfluous things that could just as easily be built into the core of the class and spec. With that core complaint in mind, let us begin.

1. The Bugs

There are a lot. This is not an issue specific to Havoc, and there are numerous classes that have their fair share of bugs, but some of these have existed since the new talent trees were first introduced. The most egregious bug that comes to mind is the interaction Know Your Enemy has with cantrip effects and trinkets. Other classes have had interactions like these purposely removed because it was disproportionately beneficial. Hasted PPM was heavily limited (or it was hinted that attempts were being made to limit it) because of how overbearing it was for some classes. The fact that this has existed since the first iteration of our spec tree back at the end of Dragonflight’s Alpha is a testament to how little effort it feels like Havoc has received. Let me be clear when I say this: I am not saying Havoc is intentionally an afterthought or is maliciously singled out, but instances like this do give the impression of such, and the number of people who have expressed this to me - in public and in private - is alarming.

I would get into detail as to all of the bugs, but at this point, they are documented very publicly, and would only serve to inflate the size of this post beyond reason.

2. The Class Tree

It genuinely feels like a mess. Paladins complained early on that there were too many massive throughput options at the bottom of their tree, and the tree was reworked. Every single capstone at the bottom of Demon Hunter’s class tree is a throughput node. This is compounded by the fact that there are a lot of very useless nodes that you have to path through to get there. You are required to take two nodes that involve parry in some way just to get down to this part of the tree. And then, of course, the largest elephant in the room is the fact that Darkness was divided into two nodes and stuck in the bottom of the tree.

Rallying Cry and Anti-Magic Zone are one-point nodes in the dead center of the Warrior and Death Knight trees, and these are arguably stronger raid defensives than Darkness depending on the situation. Why is Darkness unique? What makes it so special that it needed to be cut in two and stuck in the bottom? If I could make one change immediately to the tree, it would be swapping the positions of the two parry nodes and the two Darkness nodes.

3. The Spec Tree

Here is where I really get into the meat of my problems. There are a lot of core issues with the tree that I take issue with. There are some that have called out my criticism of Shattered Destiny and Cycle of Hatred, and upon re-examining it, I realize I don’t take issue with increased Meta uptime, but in how it is delivered. Shattered Destiny on its own is probably fine, but Cycle of Hatred is just too much of a problem. Uptime-dependent-CDR has been phased out of almost every other class because of this. If Cycle were changed to reduce Eye Beam’s cooldown by 10 second per point invested in the talent I would have much less of a problem with it.

That is only problem one.

Problem two is the superfluous talents that exist. Demon Hide and Scars of Suffering seem so silly, both providing what amounts to an aura buff to our spec. Scars of Suffering literally reduces our threat generation, something that I’m sure could just be turned down with a global threat generation aura tweak. They’re so bland and I don’t understand why they exist. Could they not just be cooked into the spec?

Problem three is the Throw Glaive talents.

I take no issue with their existence, I take issue with the fact they seem to have so much friction with so much of the tree. They don’t interact with anything else on their own (save Burning Wound, which is another issue entirely.) The fact you have to invest into a talent that adds a cost to it also frustrates me, but that could simply be due to the fact that we were spoiled with the Amirdrassil tier bonus. A friend of mine suggested that perhaps Essence Break could increase the damage of Throw Glaives during that window to really make them feel good, but as of right now, unless you play Aldrachi Reaver, there isn’t really a point to them.

Problem four is Burning Wound.

Okay, this one is admittedly a bit more minor, but I dislike strongly that the only way to apply it en masse is via Throw Glaive. You need Burning Wound to really play Ragefire, and considering Havoc is not a DoT class at its core, the way to play around it without wasting global cooldowns is to tab-target. It’s not great, and we already complained about this back in Shadowlands. Could Blade Dance - at the very least - also apply it?

Problem five is Chaotic Transformation.

When other classes want to use cooldowns, there is very little in the way of setup. They might have a couple globals, but when they want to use their cooldowns, they use them. Havoc is not like this. You have a number of GCDs you have to expend to build into your Metamorphosis cast, and then you can use it. It’s frustrating beyond belief. Your cooldown on Metamorphosis is not just 2 minutes, it’s 2 minutes and however many seconds until your next Eye Beam, and it feels bad near the end of fights when you can’t get your full combo in.

Problem six is the combo itself.

There are sixteen global cooldowns in your opener. Some of them are only added because of Fel-Scarred or Aldrachi Reaver, yes, but the fact it takes a full twenty seconds to even get into your rotation is insane. We have so many stacking damage amps that it has made many express they feel like they put in three times the effort for barely equivalent damage to other specs. Obviously that’s a tuning thing, but when you need to line up Sigil of Flame, and Eye Beam, and Immolation Aura, and Vengeful Retreat, and Essence Break all at once just to do a small six second burst, it feels overwhelming.

There are likely a few other problems I could mention (movement playstyles versus non-movement playstyles), but those issues are already heavily discussed as is, and considering I take no problem with movement-for-damage, I don’t believe I can expand properly enough on that complaint to do it justice.

4. Aldrachi Reaver

I hate this tree and hope it never sees the light of day. There, I said it, crucify me later. I dislike the playstyle requiring souls to activate it. I dislike that the “Aldrachi combo” only has an illusion of choice (you always Blade Dance first, Chaos Strike second, there is no other way to do it). I dislike that it’s so uptime dependent as a consequence of the first complaint. I strongly want it to be reworked. I don’t know to what, but I hate it as is.

5. Defense

Havoc’s defense boils down to leech and Blur, and leech has been nerfed a lot. It can’t trigger on absorbs, you can’t rely on it when you’re off the boss (or any mob at all), and it applies after the damage has occurred. Other classes have a few defensive options they can call on. Havoc has two, with one being on a three minute cooldown. As a side note, Netherwalk being on the GCD when it removes your ability to actually attack the target feels overkill, can this get removed from it?

In Closing

I hope I didn’t come off as ranty. Like I said, all of this is my own personal belief, and I encourage debate. I don’t know what else to do, really. Hope at least a little of my feedback can be applied for good and improve the class. Thanks for reading.

144 Likes

The fact that important quality of life talents such Precise Sigils even exist is mind boggling when for any other class it’d just be a toggle. It’s also locked behind the talent “Lost in the Darkness” which does nothing. Lost in the Darkness, which is obviously designed as a PvP focused talent, doesn’t even work in arena!

Our talents just need an absolute complete overhaul. It’s a mess. That’s not even getting into the horrible feeling that is our gameplay. We bring quite literally zero utility to a group. Darkness is one of the most bait worthy defensive talents in the entire game. The only reason to bring a DH is if it brought incredible damage, which it doesn’t even do. Hell, to do even competitive damage you need to execute one of the most complex movement required rotations in the entire game. It’s lunacy.

31 Likes

Things like this are just the minor problems that all add up to the tree itself being so flawed it boggles the mind, absolutely.

15 Likes

I just want to say that your views on the demon hunter class are very well thought out.

I would like to see Aldrachi Reaver get some quality of life changes (less souls to trigger RG, df s3 tier bonus implemented for better usage of tg talents, reaver’s mark applied to self and not the target) before canning it entirely.

Hopefully the right people see this! Keep on keeping on, my friend!

-Aldrachi Solreaver

13 Likes

Agreed on every single point made. Netherwalk being on gcd is especially repulsive, something like blade dance applying burning wounds would be a welcoming QoL change for sure.

18 Likes

Agreed on pretty much every point. I also do want to stress that like you I truly enjoy the current playstyle of havoc (felscarred), but indeed it needs some love - especially the talent trees. And indeed NW being both on the gdc and stopping your damage feels like its too much, especially when other classes have way better immunities (also the fact that even if you NW and you run through something that gives a dot, you’ll still get the dot)

9 Likes

Agree 100% with the points made here… something I’d like to stress is how bad it feels for the KYE bug with cantrip’s that causes us to depend on trinkets, especially for ST dmg in some season’s… Its hard for all of us to agree on what we want for DH, but I do know we agree that we need communication on the direction the class will be going in the future…

6 Likes

I do enjoy playing Havoc still as the movement is fun to do damage, But I do agree on all these points, Netherwalk being on the gcd is stupid, the useless talents ones we are forced to take are annoying. And it feels with no matter how well you perform your combo even if you do it perfectly, you arent gonna top because of the tuning, there is no risk to reward in a way. I feel its why so many dont play it. Why learn this complicated rotation just to get out dps by a hunter who hardly has a rotation? I feel for how complicated it is, and how hard it is to pull off in certain fights with a ton of movement restricting mechs (dungeons included) there should be more reward

11 Likes

I think this is an excellent write up and I strongly believe DH is in desperate need of a rework. The class tree has no real choice in it, and the spec tree feels like it’s held back by this desire to make sure there are hard gates that limit builds.

Other classes, like enhance or death knight, make a build throughout the tree, and use the capstones as finishing touches that bring it all together. Meanwhile, havoc’s has no actual choices to make through most of the tree, and the bottom of the tree is flooded with mandatory two point nodes. KYE and the mastery nodes take up 5 entire points, right at the end of the tree, and are passive stat scaling nodes.

9 Likes

As a side note, I think it’s kind of silly we have to take a capstone talent to make our mastery good…

16 Likes

While I agree with most of the points, as do most of the DHs in the world, I still believe Movement as damage should be brought up as long as it causes unique friction, with no way to mitigate it, no matter how much hatred I get for it.

A playstyle shouldn’t just be extra hoops you go through that just cause annoyances or disruption. Think of it like parry, that’s movement as damage for me.

Whether people enjoy using it or not is largely irrelevant. The fact is that the playstyle doesn’t produce anything unique in terms of throughput/profile to justify the drawbacks as it is. It only produces uniqueness in Havoc (because no mover has a horrible profile).

I’m neutral on this, as long as there’s no friction on encounters and I can rotate freely, like every single other spec in the game can.

I can’t use my rotation on Ky’veza interphases. I can’t use my rotation properly on some instances of Ulgrax, I can’t use my rotation properly on the 1st boss of Dawn (Beams + VR sending you in random directions), just to name a few.

The damage that Havoc does under perfect execution doesn’t justify the amount of effort it takes to pull off.

EDIT: Not my plan to hijack this thread, but I went into a long exposition about this here, if someone cares, as I believe this is probably the first thing to fix should a rework come: Mover vs no-mover, going forward, and the division of the community. A couple of ideas

10 Likes

Thanks for your well-thought-out post - fully agree with everything you’ve said.

The initial 10.0 talents rework felt rushed and half-hearted, almost as if the developers had hit a creative wall. It was disappointing to see abilities like Eye Beam being carved up into Looks Can Kill & Furious Gaze,; Meta into Chaotic Transformation; and Throw Glaive into its various talents, alongside the nerfs to key cooldowns to produce Darkness/Pitch Black and Sigil of Misery/Improved SOM, just to pad out the talent tree. And the inclusion of completely useless talents like Precise Sigils and Lost in Darkness - which are still present after an entire expansion and a rework - is honestly just insulting.

You were spot-on with your point on Chaotic Transformation. It’s true that pulling off a proper havoc opener feels great, but the number of times that effort pays off versus how often it gets disrupted - whether by mechanics, the need to CC, or things dying too quickly because a warrior pops Bladestorm - is poorly ratio’d. This issue is only made worse by the extra globals we now have to weave in for FS.

While I do appreciate Blizzard’s attempt to work on AR, it really feels like they gave up after the first wave of feedback. Havoc’s rotation is in a decent place in terms of complexity compared to other classes (especially given the added positioning awareness requirements for Inertia/Initiative gameplay), but adding a punishing ability prioritization system to the hero tree wasn’t the right move if the goal was to “increase complexity.” The gameplay loop around collecting souls to activate the entire tree is just bad design. It removes player agency by relying on a combination of RNG and long cooldowns to activate Reaver’s Glaive, while also trying to sync it with your 40-second cooldowns. Requiring heavy target uptime over the course of an entire fight simply doesn’t work well for a melee class.

It’s also a glaring problem when our hero tree talents, like AR, rely on abilities from the class tree (Felblade being a prime example) just to function. It just screams that Felblade should be baseline but they don’t have anything at all for that node so it’s a cookie-cutter talent node for now.

A few other quick points:

  • Fel Barrage had a brief moment in the spotlight during 10.2, but it’s been reworked into irrelevance yet again. At this point, it might as well be a passive that deals AoE ticking damage while Meta is active, with Shattered Destiny repositioned to feed into it.
  • The Throw Glaive branch in our spec tree feels like wasted space, especially with Reaver’s Glaive still dealing physical damage for some reason. It won’t be viable unless the Amirdrassil Tier bonus gets baked into the tree, given how inefficient it feels to spend a global on Throw Glaive when Havoc is so dependent on globals.
  • And finally, talents like the parry talents—why are they still around two years into the reworked trees? Shouldn’t these be in the Venge tree?
3 Likes

I would rather they delete Aldrachi altogether and go back to the drawing board.

Any hero tree around glaive throwing or soul searching on the ground is a total design failure.

17 Likes

I wish they’d rework us lol… Keyword “wish”

8 Likes

in a couple weeks it’ll have been a full calendar year since any non numerical changes were made to the DH class / spec tree for either class kekw

7 Likes

If the devs read the forums this would be helpful

11 Likes

Felblade pulls all souls to you so you don’t have to go searching.

Apparently there is a bug for the green demon souls not registering when collected via felblade.

Not sure if that was fixed on Tues, but just FYI

1 Like

Fell devastation was amazing and felt really fun while it was practical. Having Glaive Tempest being usable was fun to a degree but it always feels like whenever there’s fun to be had playing the spec It gets Nerfed into the ground. I know the guy that was responsible for Demon hunters and rogues quit or whatever but I feel like both classes have gotten royally let down. Zero innovation

1 Like

Very good analysis. Yes to everything