Havoc Demon Hunter: An Analysis

Again, this is not the issue, and this is why Dash of Chaos is completely useless.

The issue isn’t “I can’t get back to my original spot”. The issue is that “moving from my spot will kill me, and delaying my movement rotation will cause a DPS loss”.

What Valanthyr described is the problem and what he proposed (and I didn’t know it existed already in FF14) is a perfect solution, however this is basically the same as removing mover entirely. But at this point you just can’t negate the issue is there. This isn’t subjective, it is factual. Liking the playstyle or not is subjective.

Do you want specific examples? First boss of City of Threads. You can Fel Rush and VR if you go to the edge of the circle, but your solution would do absolutely nothing if you were to use the skills from the middle of it.

About VR: I find it more jarring to use than Fel Rush in general, mostly because camera turning and going through the boss with it is just incredibly backwards to what the skill should be doing, retreat. Personally, I also find it harder to measure where it’ll land in comparison to FRush. I definitely wouldn’t miss VR as a rotational skill.

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i’m the opposite, lol. i find FR harder to deal with.

I don’t disagree that movement is annoying. personally, i’m not a fan of using my movement abilities as part of my dps rotation. especially consider the nature of fight design. it’s always been crap, imo. however, this argument has been going on since DH was released and i just don’t see it going anywhere.

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This is what I’ve been saying since forever. If people are aware of the limitations of the playstyle, they should also be aware that Havoc is always going to be facing this situation, no matter the expansion/season.

Is ‘uniqueness’ worth the DPS loss? Personally, I don’t think it is. Either make no mover a viable thing, or force one play style or the other, but stop trying to satisfy both parties, because it’s never worked.

I’ve been asking around in my guild and other Discords what people think about the concept of movement as DPS, and most of them said it’s cringe, antifun and implemented in the worst way possible.

This matches with the steady decline in players that Havoc has been seeing since DF started (except S3 and the mini ‘rework’). To most people the spec is just not fun, and the concept of that gameplay just turns them away entirely.

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no mover was a thing in legion until at least the first tier in BFA (i quite after that and just came back). IMO, havoc was far better off then than it is now.

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Chaos damage is supposed to be an advantage, it is the exact opposite :

  • Something prevent physical damage ? It prevents chaos damage !
  • Something prevent magical damage ? It prevents chaos damage !
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It doesn’t work like this.

Chaos damage goes through the path of least resistance or more damage taken.

For example, in Argus HC in Legion, there were some adds that were weak to a single element. Havoc would get extra damage on all of them because of Chaos damage.

The only exception is with parry and physical immunities for some reason. Any Chaos skill with physical on it (Chaos Strike, Essence Break) can be parried and/or negated by BoP. However, it still goes through armor and does magic damage through the least resistant path.

TL;DR: Chaos damage is still a massive advantage, even if niche nowadays.

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Hello Atrayen and thanks for making this post on behalf of DHs. I think you touched on some of the most limiting / frustrating parts of playing havoc rn. I also started playing dh back in mid legion (as a resto druid main) as a way to check out the new class and swiftly fell in absolute love with it. So much so that I have played it as my main ever since. I have tried other classes more recently in tww but it never fails that I stop those others and this is the only class I end up playing. It feels like my class at this point. I think you did a great job highlighting some of the most glaring issues with havoc and articulating what it feels like to either play around or deal with when playing havoc. The talent tree feedback is absolutely brilliant. Just wanted to give you a shout out for the well written feedback because most of the things you listed have been on my mind lately. And for the record I love the mobility of dh and do not really have a preference of move vs low mover, but I do play inertia in both my ST raid and m+ builds. I have gotten so use to it that not doing that stuff would now seem weird, but I am always open to change so I don’t have a flag planted on this aspect personally.

The reason I came to the dh forums to begin with was last night a vdh friend of mine started asking me about havoc because he was asked to play it as os when needed and he knew I was familiar with it (we m+ here and there with some rl friends of ours). I spent about 10 minutes in dc talking to him because his first question was with the opener. He kept getting frustrated because of the amount of abilities to use and in a specific sequence and I quickly realized yea holy s this is a tough thing for some people to replicate with precision without a lot of practice. I ended up asking him to meet me at the dummy in dorn and spent another hour going over the rotation. By the end he was doing much better dps than when we started but at the hour mark he just said ‘you know what, i think this might just be too much for me’. I tried to give him some tips on how to break it up into sections and where aspects have similarities but he was struggling with the mental gymnastics it can sometimes feel like and it reminded me of the same when i started with the current talent setup. I hope at some point, selfishly soon, havoc gets looked at and I was going to make a post asking about some of this stuff but I saw your post and you pretty much took the words out of my mouth so just had to stop by and share a little, as well as take the time to say thanks for also loving the dh so much. I can tell you’re passionate about it and also want to see some of the things holding new comers off and old timers back with this spec. Cheers mate

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Ding ding ding ding!

When you play a class you really get super attached to this is what happens. I feel the same way with my DK. I always try to play other classes but always end up going back to him. I do want to try to branch out since I have been DK main since wrath. DH is the one class i want to learn to love because of its lore. I loved DK because of Arthas and I really love DH because of its lore and Illidan. I do hope both DK and DH gets the Ret paladin treatment.

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I agree, and I hope we do too. But ironically if you ask most Rets they’d say they’re bad and got nothing :joy:

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My friend is a ret main right now and he admitted that in the ret community there is an agreement to keep saying they are weak so blizz does not nerf them lol. It is really funny and shows how blizz is very reactive in their tuning and not really objective.

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Your friend might be the exception but in all honesty a lot of them really believe it :sweat_smile: maybe it’s because they gaslight themselves lol

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Ironically, the sinful brand build is possibly the time I had the most fun with DH. I also loved it in legion and during shadowlands when The Hunt build was strong too.

That said, I’m actually hating the spec in WWI. Pressing immolation aura 2-3 times for procs is very unintuitive, the whole opener is awful (we are not mages, and mages - no longer have this long of an opener?). Pretty sure our open is in the 15-20 buttons before rotation starts.

We rely so heavily on crit that it can be better to skip item levels than upgrade to a higher track level.

I can play it. It’s not fun.

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An opener and a burst that ends up with you doing the same damage as a Three buttons spec… That doesnt even seems fair. Hell, I had a hunter ilvl 610 in my group that was doing an overall of 1m+ dps , a bit less than me at 628 ilvl…
whats the point of getting gear in the end ? whats the point of doing that much effort in a complex rotation to deal crappy damage ?

Whats the point of the class anymore since chaos brand was nerfed ?

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I’ll say this again.

If you want to be rewarded for the complexity of your rotation, give up. Blizzard doesn’t tune that way.

If you want something done, ask for an easier rotation or QoL added to the spec.

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I do not.

Yes please.

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Yes easier rotation please

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Thank you for your post and I 100% agree to what you said.

Give me back my 100% Mythic Hivemind parse

On a side note, Legion system is where the Demon Hunter was the class-to-go-to if you were so verbally and mathematically challenged to understand how other classes worked. I mean, I’m not trying to throw any type of tantrum or say that we shouldn’t all put in the work, but let’s be realistic here. Not only people that are academically prepared can have a true taste of what these classes can do. Common… You know Demon Hunter was the easy class to go to… The fact that the developers implemented such change to the talent trees have only made me think that the change happen to carry it out to those much more knowledgable and prepared folks do it… I personally can get up there in the 90 percentile, like I did in BFA, or end of Dragonflight, but having such state of the game and how Guilds work, us, lower advantaged people have to deal with trying to make it work when in a battle or encounter… Change my mind. I dare you.

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Agree with everything on this, and also with what was posted by other people. BLIZZARD NEEDS TO STEP UP AND GIVE US A REWORK OR SOMETHING , instead of giving us just an icon recolor or 1 bugfix of the 30 bugs existing with the class. They really need to put effort on developing a healthy state for DH. I really like Havoc DH and have been playing it since Legion, but im questioning to quit playing because i really dislike the state of the DH right now, with the Aldrachi situation, or the Talents, or the Class talents. Havoc or DH as a whole feels horrible right now. Do something blizz. Stop the excuses. Fix the class

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Seriously man… no joke! I’m getting frustrated as heck lately and playing less…

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