Bumping this thread. Made this DH when the class was first introduced, and haven’t made a different character since. Havoc main for 8 years and counting!
Gotta say I miss Dragonflight DH. We had a hot minute at the beginning of S3 DF where we were meta, but besides that it still felt like we were in a pretty good spot. In TWW however, the one word that describes havoc would be “afterthought”. C tier ST, B tier AoE, countless bugs and strange interactions.
Give us some love please Blizz!
The damage that Havoc does under perfect execution doesn’t justify the amount of effort it takes to pull off.
Someone else said this and I couldnt have said it better. Blizz fix this please.
I completely agree with this, moving the high movement talents, throw glaive talents (and df s3 tier set as a talent), glaive tempest (along with a capstone to give it the legion damage store/explosion) talent, and the Aldrachi reaver hero talents into a spec focused more on weapon attacks and movement skills playing into the agile glaive user fantasy and allowing havoc to lean into the demonic spell blade fantasy. Could also be used as a way to expand demon hunter’s class lore perhaps by making a void blade spec drawing some influence from the Nexus-Princess Ky’veza trinket/fist weapon abilities, especially the animation on the trinket procs. Could be used as a chance to allow void elves to make demon hunters as well considering they just use blood elf models so there wouldn’t be extra animation work.
There’s also plenty of removed things that could make a come back for demon hunters, as I personally would like a spec that’s less focused on the transformation mechanic like we had the option to run in non demonic builds at the start of legion, and giving a new spec a cool down thats an alternative to meta would be interesting perhaps a return of chaos blades. In addition adding some of the “borrowed power” effects that have been central to the strength of DHs at various patches (like the corruption in BFA) could be reworked into abilities for a new demon hunter spec. A void based spec would also be able to have some beautiful animations and abilities inspired by the new space themed direction of void abilities since DF.
The problem with souls is that they are poorly integrated into Havoc, souls need the same treatment that sigils had at the time, an integration with the base class instead of a mechanical patch like what we have now.
Moving away from customization but staying in fantasy, both HTs fail to deliver a unique fantasy, at least with Havoc. Aldrachi Reaver seems to be designed to represent a more martial DH focused on weapon skills, however its complexity makes it unviable with the build that best represents that in Havoc (aka movement), on the other hand Fel Scarred has a more demonic fantasy but doesn’t work well with builds that seek to be in demonic form for an extended period of time.
In short, Aldrachi runs better on Demonic builds and Fel Scarred runs better on movement builds, the opposite of what one would expect from their respective fantasies.
This is terrible when we see the HT of other classes like the mage, the DK or the warlock.
i actually kind of enjoy how havoc is playing ATM, and have always been a movement playstyle enjoyer. However the game is not designed for it with Havoc being the only spec with that playstyle so we end up having to deal with very bad situations on any difficult encounters that no other mele spec has to deal with.
Do i continue my rotation and risk death? or do i stop playing my class optimally and tank my dps.
For myself and i believe many other movement enjoyers there is just not enough going on with the class to have no mover play styles to be enjoyable.
There is little to no interaction between all of our spells to the point where you just hit the buttons when they come off CD and it makes no mover builds incredibly dull.
This is never going to change. DH’s are very rarely in the top 1/3 of a tier. Usually mid or slightly below mid. Blizzard is putting their chips into Inertia because they want a class that zips around - which matches their Illidan build from HotS - which is a terrible hero. It’s also not what Illidan was in WC3 - a front-liner brute.
Blizzard promised “major rotational changes” in like BFA or somewhere around there, and nothing has changed. We still just fel rush around press chaos strike, blade dance, and eye beam.
Hence why I suggest a full rework and think of something else that’s unique to Havoc.
‘Flow’ and ‘movement’ can be achieved through animations without physically displacing the character.
For example, imagine a skill that teleported the DH vertically in small jumps, without physically moving the DH from place, and without locking you into an animation, then slashing from the air to the floor and doing an AoE slash with some extra particles when you land.
That’d look sick (at least in my head) and it’ll perfectly transmit the ‘movement’ and ‘flow’ that Havoc is meant to have.
The thing is, a rework needs a lot of work, specially if we get new animations, and I’m not sure that’s something Havoc is ever going to get.
I love the discussion going on here.
Overall I’m pretty content with the havoc rotation and burst oriented gameplay right now. Inertia for me strikes a nice middle ground on movement oriented gameplay. I concur with a lot of the comments here that certain things such as felblade reset on vengeful retreat needs to become baseline. So many of our talents feel like they are just designed to get our abilities working as intended rather than offer interesting differences in gameplay style.
One thought I had for a potential Aldrachi rework is to just bake in our Amirdrassil tier set and just completely lean into the glaive/dot based gameplay fantasy. That way Fel Scarred would be the direct damage meta centric build that rewards uptime maximization while Aldrachi could be the true master of the glaive. Aldrachi needs to be completely overhauled or scrapped it works decently for vengeance which has counting souls as part of it’s spirit bomb gameplay but really is at odds with most of havoc’s design.
Long term I do wonder if a third spec is the healthiest way to deal with the different playstyles that DH players want from the spec. In the meanwhile though I think better choice nodes and making sure our baseline kit is robust would go a long way to improving my enjoyment of the spec.
I decided to go back to read the Illidan novel by William King published in 2016 on a whim, because I was struggling to really think of what Demon Hunter’s identity is, and it struck me as odd some of the things that the novel lays out about Demon Hunters that don’t seem to be true in game.
They’re exceptionally durable, being able to draw on “the demon within” gives them strength, speed, and durability beyond their mortal kin. Very odd, given we seem to be about as tough as paper in game when it really comes down to it. “Leech” is only really sort of demonstrated through devouring Demons (body and soul).
Metamorphosis is an almost “berserker state”, not one that they can enter for any serious length of time without losing themselves to the aforementioned “demon within”. Odd, given how often we use it, and how long we’re in it. Gave me Surrender to Madness vibes, or at the very least, Void Form.
They use a lot more Fel magic than we do in game, throwing out bolts and lances of felfire pretty frequently in place of throwing their weapons. Minor thing, but it gets the point across.
The strikes Illidan and Vandel (the surrogate through which the reader learns about Demon Hunters) don’t strike to wound (leave DoTs), they strike to kill, so things like Trail of Ruin, Burning Wound, Soulscar, etc. seem strange.
Really, when summed up, it gave me the impression of some weird cross between Fury Warrior and Destruction Warlock; fast, angry, durable, and very well versed in Fel magic.
Dunno where I’m really going with this, I just find it interesting to see the disconnect between what King wrote and what we play.
Because that’s what we’re supposed to be, I’ve said it repeatedly on this forum, the DH is more similar to a magic/fel warrior than a rogue, much more in line with the warrior, the DK and the paladin, but fel and half naked.
You said it yourself, you looked for the identity of the DH, you found it, the question now is what can be done with it, for the Devs of course, we can’t do anything beyond what we already do, feedback. Although doing something with it would imply a complete rework.
Considering the release dates of the Book and Legion, two speculations come to mind about what happened. Either the lore and/or book people weren’t in contact with the gameplay team, or the gameplay team completely ignored what was established by the book/lore because it fell too much into existing mechanics at the time and they wanted the DH to be different from other classes.
I agree with every single point made.
I quite enjoy current DH’s playstyle, too (atleast in raids). Burst could be condensed into fewer globals, but it’s still a fun experience. It just feels bad to have such an intricate opener, just to deal less pure single target damage than most other specs.
I think it’s healthy to have mover and nomover options in the talent tree, but raid design obviously shouldn’t be impacted by it. It’s quite the conundrum, tho, to have damage being baked into movement abilities. Someone above said something about implementing flashier skills with vertical or horizontal movement that doesn’t move you (hitbox stays put) to sell the illusion of nimbleness. It’s an idea…
The tree itself is bloated with unnecessary and uninteresting stuff, as always.
Blade Dance applying Burning Wounds would single-handedly fix my biggest gripe with the spec.
But yeah, forever hoping for positive (and interesting) changes to the class.
I think in general pretty much everyone agrees on a broader scene. It’s Blizzard that doesn’t 
The only thing where people don’t agree on is mover vs no mover, as always.
Curiously, I took a very limited sample size poll of Felhammer. Most people who are frustrated with the mover vs. non-mover have most of their hate directed at Vengeful Retreat. There are, of course, some who dislike moving at all, but a lot of the hatred of the “Momentum” playstyle comes from needing to use Vengeful Retreat rotationally. I wouldn’t mind if it were axed from the rotation, personally.
I honestly don’t feel bothered by Vengeful Retreat in the slightest, because it’s movement is way less aggressive than Fel Rush, and god knows the type of tomfoolery that happens when you Fel Rush and clip a pebble in the ground.
What irks me the most is having buffs tied to our movement skills (Inertia, Momentum) on fights where you gotta stay in a certain position for a period of time (or you simply can’t move without suffering the consequences). It feels punishing in the most horrible way possible, because most of the time there’s no counterplay, you just eat the damage loss.
The WoW team could borrow FFXIV’s solution applied to the Red Mage class: you have Displacement (a skill with 2 charges that makes you leap backwards 15 yards), and you have Engagement (the same skill with 2 charges that does the same thing as Displacement, but doesn’t move you), both sharing cooldowns. That alone would make playing mover way less punishing.
I join to that, I like Inertia (not so much Momentum) but in order to take it I am forced to go through talents that I have no interest in, like Initiative and Tactical Retreat. They are good talents, I just don’t care about them, but they are mandatory to get to Unbound Chaos and Inertia, that line of talents as it is generates a heavy build in movement, there is no option for something lighter but still with movement.
Plus if they ever give us a root break it will probably go to VR by default since it is basically disengage, and man would it be nice to be able to just press the button if it’s needed. No worrying about it being on CD because you used it for damage, no worrying about freeing the root that lasts 3 seconds griefing your damage 10 seconds from now, just actually being able to use utility for utility.
souls did back in legion. it’s what reduced EB time. i can’t remember if it was a tier set thing or what, but it was there during Antorus.
I think if they just reduced the power of intertia to like 10% and gave us some sustained back those times where we couldn’t boost our self with inertia wouldn’t feel so bad. while we aren’t zooming around all the time anymore (really only doing it once or twice every 40s), the times we have to do it seem to come at the most inopportune times.
VR really isn’t an issue with FB and the ability to just FR back in. having d
said that, it would be great if the FB reset talent that Aldrichi gets was baseline to Havoc. it’s where it belongs, imo.
It’s also very annoying when you VR and FB but it bugs out and doesn’t leap
you forward. i think it’s a GCD thing. iirc, VR used to be off global. it really should
be even if it didn’t used to be, tbh.