Yes. While I focused more on momentum, you also have to consider talents like unbound chaos and legendaries like erratic core.
It’s obvious blizzard is very much into designing talents and borrowed powers around movement. Presumably, this is centered around our class fantasy of speed, mobility, and reflexes. The issue here is it being based on fel rush.
I like and understand where their head is at, but fel rush isn’t the answer… felblade is.
Think this would then be getting overly complicated, and would add yet another button to our rotation. If momentum, we’d have felblade, and potentially this new ability you’re talking about, and potentially glaive tempest.
Where I’m coming from is “blizzard likes movement. They’re gonna design stuff around it, so we have to have a movement ability that’s baseline. However, that ability can’t be fel rush”.
That’s what I’m thinking. Idk if we should have three charges of fel rush, but I’m thinking the base cd of fel rush could be higher, like 15-20 seconds (revised from my initial idea of 20-25 seconds), and the talent would reduce it to 10 seconds.
Wouldn’t hate that, but like I said earlier, I think blizzard is intent upon making mobility a staple in our rotation. Personally, I actually think it’s a really cool idea, and would make us, and our damaging rotation, very unique. It just has to be executed properly
Could just leave erratic felcore the same and leave the pvp ms talent the same. So, the legendary is just for if you want more movement or more ms for pvp. Still wouldn’t be our worst legendary.
The new ability was just an example. It could be another passive fury generator. I think it’s fine though because all these extra abilities are talents. You have the choice if you want more abilities for a more complex rotation or less abilities with more passives. So, it’s just one extra ability difference from my version and yours and if you make the new talent a passive instead it’s the same number of abilities.
I’m fine with Blizzard making some demon hunter abilities designed around movement. I just think the better approach for Blizzard would be to make all these abilities talents. So you keep your baseline movement abilities completely separate and then if you want movement abilities tied to damage it’s a choice to gain these extra abilities with these effects tied to them. I get that it would be easier to design things around a baseline movement ability. A lot of players don’t want this and I bet some would still think fel blade is too much for momentum. I just feel if Blizzard wants to take this unique approach of tying damage to movement, they should take the extra time and make talented abilities that do this.
The ability fel blade could still have a charge on it. So the new talent to replace momentum would still be a movement ability. This just wouldn’t be a baseline ability. You are just choosing the extra movement ability now with the momentum buff tied to it.
Edit So, thinking about it more, the movement of fel blade is nothing like the movement of fel rush. I forget fel blade even has a charge most of the time I use it. You are already right up next to the boss, so the charge doesn’t even do anything most of the time in a raiding environment. I think this is the main reason Blizzard is so hard stuck on keeping momentum and damage that is tied to movement on fel rush. There isn’t any thought involved with positioning on using fel blade versus any other damage ability we have. Fel Rush we have to think about where we are going to end up and make sure we are positioned correctly before using the ability. This is all coming from my perspective that is mostly focused on raiding. I just don’t see much difference between fel blade and say an ability like chaos strike. You seem to be more pvp focused, so maybe from your perspective there is more of a difference for you.
Eh, issue with that is it won’t be viable in raids. There would be no offensive benefit to it, because it would no longer benefit momentum. I really can’t imagine ever wearing that legendary.
Ms talent being tied to fel rush and momentum being tied to fel blade would be… A LOT, haha. I have to do a charge to get a buff, and then a dash to apply a debuff. And I gotta keep doing that highly-regularly. It would just feel a little too overly spastic, and I’d have fewer globals to actually do damage.
Yes, and no.
We have to be given a baseline toolkit, but how we use it is what should be augmented by talents and borrowed powers. Momentum is a great example of this. Fel rush is baseline, but momentum converts it to an offensive/buff-maintenance ability. Problem is, fel rush is a bad ability for this purpose.
In my design, fel blade is baseline, but would otherwise be a charge and a fury generator (I updated it to having a baseline fury generation). Baseline, this isn’t significant enough to justify getting a legendary to support it. However, if I talent into momentum, now erratic core looks a whole lot better, because it buffs a baseline ability which is no longer just a fury generator and a minor charge. It’s now also what procs my damage buff I have to maintain as often as possible.
Talents should be centered around augmenting / enhancing our baseline, and additional borrowed powers should be the final layer, but again they have to be focused on the baseline. You can’t have a legendary that directly boosts glaive tempest.
This is a good point, but a few things to consider:
you’ll start the fight using it as a charge.
any time you ever move away from the boss, you’ll use this ability as a charge back as soon as you get in range
it generates fury, so it is logically tangential to the concept of building momentum
it has a highly-mobile animation (doing a front flip), so even if we don’t displace, we’re still leaping off the ground, if only slightly
In reality, for pvp, I have less complaints about fel rush being tied to momentum. It’s just a matter of consistency. If momentum procs from fel blade, and all movement-based talents / borrowed powers are centered around felblade, pvp should be as well. Otherwise it’s just too busy
So, that row is an “AoE row” right now. Put Fel Barrage on that row, replace it on the final row with Chaos Blades. Having a talentable CD is exceedingly common amongst DPS specs, and can also be exceptionally valuable to the only DPS spec with a >3m cooldown on their major DPS CD. Throw Bloodlet on the 5th tier as well, people seem to adore that talent (I don’t really get why, but w/e), and bake Master of the Glaive into it for good measure. Maybe also make it cleave to an additional 2 targets, for 5 total.
For the final talent, a passive would be proper design, so either Revolving Blades (azerite trait) or Anguish (artifact trait) would work well there.
That just leaves filling in the slot of Master of the Glaive with another utility/control talent. I’m open to ideas on this one.
Is it? Fifth row is Cycle, first blood, and essence break. I guess If the idea is “cycle reduces eye beam, therefore aoe”, but that also benefits ST. I guess first blood reduces fury cost? But it seems more ST-driven than aoe. EB is a hybrid, really. If you use it in ST, you aren’t pressing blade dance. Using it in aoe does benefit blade dance though. For an aoe row, it’s awfully confusing. Then again, the first blood talent row has been a problem child for many years now, so it’s not a wonder it’s confusing.
Wouldn’t it feel a little redundant to have two rows committed to aoe, especially considering our class is already so aoe-inclined?
Then again, I suppose saying that sounds a bit hypocritical, considering I’m advocating for a mobility row. Still, it would be the only mobility row, and I do believe most classes and specs have something to that effect.
Then again, if fel rush isn’t nerfed as I initially proposed, my entire motivation for making it a mobility row is effectively void, so I really don’t know what I want it to be.
I’m 100% in favor of removing fel barrage in its current design, but I just thinking having glaive tempest and fel barrage as talent options is too redundant. I don’t think we need them both.
I sincerely don’t understand it. It harkens back to legion “snapshotting” play, and it wasn’t good design. Also, what does bleeding opponents have anything to do with our fantasy? Maybe if it were reworked to “causes your Throw glaive to erupt in felfire, burning your targets hit for x chaos damage over y seconds, I’d be on board with it, I guess. At least the snapshotting element doesn’t exist any more, so that isn’t a problem.
I’d say keep the talent for the slow factor. Bloodlet can have the additional charge, but MOTG would have the slow.
Also, humor me on this.
I keep thinking about felblade, as a baseline, generating fury, and I don’t like it. I don’t like that as a baseline it competes with demon’s bite.
So, what if I baked in the passive blade dance effect (chaos strike/fel cleave proc’ing blade dance) into felblade.
So, as a baseline, felblade would apply a dot for 8-10 seconds (lower or same duration as the felblade charge cooldown) that has the effect of causing your chaos strike or fel cleave to reset cd/reduce fury of blade dance. In aoe fights, fel cleave would spread the dot to enemies around the target, and those secondary targets would (with a diminishing effect) further increase the chance of proc’ing blade dance.
I think I want felblade to be essential to the rotation outside of momentum, but I’m just having a hard time fulfilling its niche as a baseline.
Neither is Chaos Theory, heh. I guess it just depends if they want all the spec legendaries to be all dps increasing ones. The general class ones aren’t, so they could maybe get by with one spec one not being a dps one as well.
Yeah, that would probably be too much. Do you think the ms talent would need to be buffed at all since it wouldn’t be an aoe spread anymore if it was on fel blade?
I agree, but Blizzard already has talents that are abilities that don’t really do anything to our baseline. Glaive Tempest is one example of a talent that does nothing to our baseline. You could slap that on a warrior and it would work the same.
That depends on talent setup. With momentum yes you would probably open with it. With Blind fury, Burning Hatred, Your new Demonic Talent, you would most likely precast immolation aura, fel rush in, eye beam, blade dance, dump some fury and then press fel blade. Especially if you are going to have fel blade give fury baseline, you might not use it right away because you would over cap with Blind Fury.
Depends what you were doing by being away from the boss. Maybe you were killing an add. If that is the case you might not have a charge of fel blade up so you would just fel rush back. If you are playing momentum it might not be the best case to use it instead of fel rush to get back. If you are using fel blade at 0 fury to get back, you then start a momentum window with only 40 fury on the boss. It still keeps some of the same decisions as fel rush because it is both a movement and a damage increase in this case. Some people see these as issues with momentum and others see this as added complexity.
I guess. I feel like this point and the next are stretching it a little bit. Demon’s Bite and immolation aura build fury as well.
So is blade dance. We even sort of spin when we immolation aura.
As I think about it more momentum probably just needs a complete overhaul with a name change if it is going to be untied from fel rush.
It’s been one of my main points in the beta feedback thread of why first blood should be baseline or removed from that row. First Blood doesn’t really fit the theme as well as the other two for aoe damage. The whole row is just a mess and I don’t think Blizzard really knows what they are doing with it.
I think that is the main reason they are making two rows of aoe talents. They seem to be doubling down on demon hunters as an aoe class. All our damage legendaries are aoe focused except Chaos Theory, but that still has us using blade dance, an aoe ability, to trigger it.
I think it was more that it added an additional ability to our rotation. It was also a high damage ability that didn’t cost any fury so we could weave it into our momentum windows easily. With the Fel Bombardment legendary I don’t think we really need bloodlet back for this expansion at least.
For me some of it comes down to it not having the proc chance anymore. I think the proc chance of the original fel blade is what keeps it somewhat fresh and different from demon’s bite. It isn’t an ability you always know when it will be available. If it’s just a recharge based ability with a set cd that isn’t reduced by haste, it just becomes something that is set in the rotation that you press every 10 secs instead of demons bite to generate your fury. There’s some thought with momentum and things, but with fury generation backed in baseline as well, it’s just a bigger Demon’s Bite we have to also make some talents viable.
Yeah, but I think we both know erratic core was designed with momentum in mind
Tbh I’m a little concerned about having an aoe ms altogether. Literally no one in the pvp community is happy about DH’s being given ms, except for DH’s of course haha. Aoe ms is really, really powerful. As much as I like having it, I don’t personally think we should have it. Felblade would correct this issue, actually.
Right, but the talent does enhance/augment our baseline by giving us an additional button to press. It’s just that no legendary can specifically target it, because we might not take it. When legendaries target baseline abilities, you have the abilities. You then just have to decide which legendary best enhances the play style you want, and how that play style changes what you do with your baseline.
Right, that’s the context I’m discussing. It was in answer to your point that felblade may not necessarily displace us, which is why blizzard may be leaning towards fel rush for momentum
Sure, there’s always unique situations. Generally (and ideally), my thoughts would be you killed the add, pooled a good amount of fury, such that when you’re returning to the boss, you felblade, and away you go
Right, but they don’t involve moment, so they don’t check that box. Though, I’m having some doubts about felblade generating fury as a baseline
See above
I mean I really am on board with us “darting around the battlefield”, so I kinda want momentum to remain as a talent that enforces that fantasy. It just can’t be fel rush. It has to be more controlled movement, and I feel like felblade is just the only way.
Hell, felblade’s animation could be reworked. Make it like a mini death from above, or whatever that rogue ability is called, where the rogue jumps in the air and charges down. This would work whether we displace or not. Granted, we wouldn’t want this to take longer than a global, so it may be an impossible design. I really do think felblade is the way. Implementation is just difficult.
It’s actually concerning that blizzard themselves call that an aoe row, haha. It is no more an aoe row than it is a ST row. I’d make the argument it’s actually geared more towards ST than aoe
That’s actually kinda concerning. I haven’t paid too much attention to legendaries but being primarily aoe focused is much less influential in pvp, and isn’t great in ST fights.
Yeah, the paradox of chaos theory vs first blood vs essence break is… well, it’d be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic haha
Doesn’t that speak volumes? Like, please, blizzard. We’ll take anything just give us more buttons, haha.
That’s the thing though. I think we should have a baseline proc chance, but I don’t like the proc being baked into a fury generator, cause it doesn’t feel that exciting or rewarding. Plus, it proc’ing when we’re capped on fury feels awful. That’s why I think blade dance should get the procs, and felblade should be reworked to having two charges (effectively replacing fel rush)
So what do you think of my idea that, instead of it baseline generating fury, it actually applies a debuff to the target that is a chaos dot and also provides the blade dance proc chance? Only if it’s talented will it provide fury as it does now, and even then, that isn’t necessary DA could still be a viable talent choice for momentum. Blind fury probably less so
I think it’s a fine addition to fel blade. It gives it a reason to press it and something else for us to consider. I like the idea of the blade dance proc.
I’d prefer if it just put a buff on you when fel blade is used. That’s part of the reason I don’t really ever play a warlock or spriest is because I’m not a huge fan of dot or debuff management. It’s also why I’m not a huge fan of Essence Break.
I mean, they explicitly described it as an “AoE row” when they were talking about the new Cycle:
I don’t really see their reasoning (First Blood is clearly a single target talent, it barely benefits AoE), but hey, w/e. If they think that row is AoE, might as well stick with that, I guess.
Nope, that would actually be rather appropriate:
Unholy rows 25 and 45
Shadow rows 30 and 40 (with an option in each that literally does nothing in ST)
Arcane rows 35 and 45
Frost (DK) rows 35 and 45
Enhancement rows 35 and 45
And those are just the ones that are unquestionably AoE-centered row:
MM’s row 25 is rather strikingly an AoE row, but their row 50 also heavily benefits AoE (with one talent being specifically an AoE talent that just happens to also be worth using in single target).
SV’s row 25 is an AoE row, but 2 of the 3 talents on row 50 are themed around AoE, and all 3 benefit AoE.
Fire’s row 45 is AoE, and like SV, 2 of the 3 talents on row 35 are themed around AoE and all 3 benefit it.
Elemental’s row 35 is somewhat focused around AoE, and all 3 talents on row 50 arguably benefit AoE far more than single target due to the nature of Elemental overloads in AoE vs ST.
Affliction’s row 35 is their AoE row. However, due to the Malefic Rapture being Aff’s AoE spender as well as single target, all 3 traits on the level 50 row also buff their AoE. Same for Destro, actually, 35 row is AoE, 50 all benefits AoE (with one specifically themed around it).
So ya, having 2 AoE-centered rows on an AoE-centered spec kinda makes sense. It’s not really that uncommon, tbh, especially when you have Trail in the mix being only kinda an AoE-centered talent (rather like Unholy’s Ebon Fever is only kinda AoE-centered).
Fel Barrage serves it’s purpose, and is distinct enough from Glaive Tempest, imo. Much longer CD, in theory much higher damage (not in practice, at current tuning), channeled ability that does more and more total damage as your haste increases. It serves as our ultimate AoE burst cooldown. It just needs to compete with other AoE options.
Hell if I know, but it’s one of the more common asks, so I figure why not. Some peeps clearly see something in it that you and I don’t, so w/e. It’s at least an AoE-focused option.
Just having the slow there would be pretty pitiful. That talent is so rarely taken as is, and only ever for the second charge. In nearly every other situation, Fel Eruption or Unleashed Power is going to be more useful.
It needs to be a utility/control effect with similar punch. Perhaps your concept talent would work here:
You’re specifically giving up a single target stun and a free and more often available AoE stun to get that, so I feel like that balances. Two talents allow you to control others better, the last makes it more difficult to control you. All 3 have niche/situational usage in PvE, and all 3 have arguments in their favor in PvP depending on the specific type.
Yeah, I get that. My thoughts are that it has to be given utility to make it unique and worthy of being pressed in the rotation without overtly stomping on another ability like demon’s bite. Taking the baseline blade dance proc as I designed it makes sense.
Then, I thought “debuff, or buff?”
Well, as a buff, it might feel like too much. We already have demonic providing a buff, and now we have furious gaze. If talented, we’d also have momentum. What we don’t have is a debuff. Also thought it’d be cool to apply the dot to primary target, then watch it spread with a fel cleave, then watch blade dance procs light up in aoe fights. Beyond that, it’s really not too hard to keep up the dot. Hardly any more difficult than maintaining the buff. Only difference, really, is in aoe fights. Even then, it’s basically just spread after a single fel cleave.
First blood is still a talent
Momentum is still contingent upon fel rushing
we have no baseline ability synergy, buff/debuff/proc mechanics.
Edit: Sure, we have furious gaze, buuut really it’s just a side effect of using an ability we’d already be pressing, and there’s no direct synergy there. it’s not anything we actively manage. it’s a nice addition, but we still need a little more. Demonic being baseline would be great. Having a proc as i mentioned in the wishlist would be great too.
You’re crazy
Sure, though I’d want more green/fel glyphs than shadowflame, tbh. Both would be cool though
So, take the talent. If you make it baseline, then your adding more power with a new talent to take. Unless you want to remove the tier. DH are good place (or used to be).
Plenty of other classes I can deal with procs. I’m happy with something closer to what WoW once was.
That’s exactly what i suggested. The tier is removed and replaced with a mobility tier.
Procs provide an interactive synergy among abilities. Obviously this is personal preference, but procs are my absolute favorite element in a damaging rotation. It’s really a bummer not having one as a baseline.
“Power” is subject to tuning, and every class and spec gets fully retuned with each expansion. Moving a talent baseline doesn’t have to be compensated by anything. That “power” is taken into account when they do our overall DPS tuning.
Unfortunately, I am. I was gearing up to be a hunter at the start of BfA, when the devs set a release date and went into “feature freeze” mode, where only tuning happened prior to release. And the message we got was that we were out of luck until 8.1.
And yep, that’s how long it took before MM got even some of the changes they should have had before even release.
Once they’re in that last month before the prepatch, the changes are simply done. You might see a few after the prepatch launches and before release, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for anything to change substantially before 9.1. That’s simply Blizzard’s development model.
My statement didn’t contain a time constraint, nor is the OP really concerned with it being implemented pre-shadowlands.
I mean, it’d be nice, but if it targets what I think is wrong with the class and the solutions provided are reasonable to myself and others, I’d say that’s a good thing.
There’s a lot of stuff I’m excited for in shadowlands, particularly pvp, but there’s still significant room for improvement.
Would love to see a lot of these changes implemented at some point or another. If not before shadowlands, at some point during.
Sadly, there’s basically zero chance of changes of that magnitude happening mid-expansion. I think I can count on about half a hand the number of times they’ve done changes even a fraction as significant as that mid-expansion.