Havoc Rotation is Boring Please Fix

DH’s were born in the Legion prune and Blizzard gave us two specs, citing the rationality that they wish they hadn’t given every single class three+ specs, so I can see how we started with a simple damage rotation.

Now, over three years later, I’m unsure why we don’t have at least one additional button in our core damage rotation.

Considering that every other dps class has all or some of the below as a baseline:

  1. Two ability resource types, such as combo points/energy or runes/runic power, and abilities which cohesively earn and burn these resource types
  2. Ability proc mechanics
  3. Ability synergy (Dark slash and its synergy with chaos strike would be a good example, but this talent is never taken)
  4. An engaging modification to the rotation during burst windows, such as void bolt for spriests

Why are we left with a resource earn and burn rotation with little to no variance or synergy?

Changes I’d like to see:

  1. Make the non-4 minute metamorphosis transformation more engaging
  2. Give us another ability.
  3. Give us a baseline proc mechanic
  4. Give our abilities synergy.

What do you guys think? Am I alone in thinking the havoc rotation is mind-numbingly boring?

9 Likes

Maybe Havoc is intended to be light.

I wouldn’t say it’s boring, but is designed for a starter to pick up.

Hells no!!!

At this point, stay far away from any further designs on DH!!!

6 Likes

“I wouldn’t say it’s boring, but is designed for a starter to pick up.”

This is not a viable excuse for end-game design.
This is how classes are designed through the leveling experience.

“At this point, stay far away from any further designs on DH!!!”

Why

3 Likes

Who are you to decide what designs are viable???
Havoc is no less complicated than many other specs within the current game, where not every class needs to be an Unholy DK, Demo Warlock or Feral, all of which are currently a shadow of their former selves.

Because your suggestions are objectively garbage :roll_eyes:

If you haven’t noticed, Voidform has been problematic for Shadow, and you want to recreate that trash into HDH???

:roll_eyes::poop:
DH is designed to be easy to grasp.
If you don’t like that, it’s on you!

9 Likes

Small note, demons bite does have a CD reset proc, its just baked into a talent via Felblade

You say Havoc doesn’t have enough base abilities they one recommended move is remove our fury builder. When to make them like all other melee classes they just need to give havoc one more ability like Felblade as a base ability or some other ability

Remove demon’s bite and replace it with an ability that isn’t so stagnant. demon’s bite is “hit a button get fury”, with nothing more to it

Please, for the love of god, NO!

We already have that mechanic as a baseline for a range class and a talent for a melee that’s consistently been tuned for 2 expansions as the only option for that spec, and it’s a mechanic that I loath. Adding that to DH would utterly ruin the class for me, in the same way that adding Momentum baseline would.

It’s not really any more boring than Steady Shot, Raging Blow, Rockbiter, Incinerate, Mind Flay, etc. All are simply resource-generating filler abilities with little interaction with the rest of the rotation. Thing is, generators don’t need to interact with the rest of the rotation to be valid, as long as the rotation itself has enough of that (and Havoc doesn’t, especially baseline).

I also resist the notion of making Demon Blades baseline. We have plenty of melee classes with passively-generated resources, including one with essentially identical resource mechanics to Demon Blades (Arms).

Havoc is the only melee spec in the game that generates resources purely through active abilities. DK runes, druid energy, rogue energy, survival focus, monk energy, shaman maelstrom, and warrior rage all generate passively either at a baseline rate, or from melee attacks. Many have additional ways to augment that generation, but all of them have some form of passive generation. I’d rather not trade out Havoc’s uniqueness in that respect, as it’s one of the big reasons I enjoy the class so much.

This. Havoc isn’t just an example of a class designed post-prune, it’s an example of a class designed using Blizzard’s new design mentality. Looking across the classes, it’s extremely clear that their goal is for every single class and spec to have a reasonably simple baseline rotation, and even where complexity-through-talents is available, it isn’t permitted (with a few probably unintentional exceptions) to be so significant as to mandate that complexity.

They want their classes to be playable, and playable effectively, by even extremely casual players. They also want those casual players to be able to pull at least reasonable numbers if they’ve taken even a couple minutes to actually read their spellbooks. Blizzard doesn’t want those fun high-complexity rotations anymore, because it hurts their bottom line, and they’ve cared far more about that bottom line than they have player fun for quite a few years now.

And frankly, I doubt that’s going to change much. I suspect Shadowlands will be better than BfA on class design, but only because BfA’s was so bad that they know it’s going to be a primary visibility point for players, and if they don’t improve it, the game will simply collapse outright. But that doesn’t indicate a change in design philosophy, just a willingness to pander just enough to keep peeps playing the game.

2 Likes

I’m really not sure how or why people keep skipping right over this. Or intentionally ignoring it. The days of rotary phones, VHS, answering machines and complex rotations are over. It’s a D3 world. Let it go and keep mashing your 4 buttons.

6 Likes

Seems like Demon Hunter (Havoc) is not a spec for you. Every single suggestion of yours tears down at what Havoc was built upon. You just want a new class with the same theme. Also, every suggestion is highly problematic in a mechanical level.

I’m all in for more abilities, but we are not going to, nor do I want it, to get overly complicated rotations that need 110% concentration to execute. Complexity for the sake of complexity is just as bad as something oversimplified.

Keep in mind that a simple rotation is the norm and specs such as Feral and Unholy are the exception.

9 Likes

I dunno about Unholy at a raid level, but Feral isn’t remotely complex. It has a reputation for complexity, but that’s based on prior expansions where it actually had that. The only “complexity” left is remembering to use Regrowth before your finisher. The dominant build even takes Sabertooth in almost all cases, which massively simplifies the rotation by making Rip effectively a fire-and-forget permanent DoT. The dominant build also tends to take Soul of the Forest, another completely passive and simple choice, over the talent that historically caused some of that “complex” reputation, Savage Roar.

On the trait side, Wild Fleshrending adds a minor amount of complexity by adding Thrash to the single target rotation, but the other “complex” trait, Iron Jaws, is almost universally avoided. None of the rest of the traits really add anything notable to the rotation.

I’ve played both and raided on both in BfA, and while Feral is certainly a bit more complex than Havoc, it’s definitely not what I would consider “complex”. That’s especially the case when the druid can easily opt out of almost all of the remaining complexity simply by taking Moment of Clarity and avoiding Wild Fleshrending, choices that are very much viable to make even at the mythic level (~10% of warcraftlog’s mythic feral parses took Moment of Clarity, and ~32% lacked even a single Wild Fleshrending).

Anyway, pedantic aside mostly to say that even one of those “exceptions” isn’t really an exception anymore. Blizzard has massively simplified Feral since the days it earned that reputation of complexity.

4 Likes

That’s one more reason for people to stop with this “havoc easy” nonsense then.

3 Likes

But it is easy.
The most complex mechanic in a havoc demon hunter’s rotation is soul management, provided the DH isn’t running felblade / demon blades. This mechanic literally requires us to stand still until it’s time to collect our souls.

Otherwise, it’s mind-numbing. Blade dance off cooldown. Eye Beam off cooldown (unless adds are spawning or something is about to happen that would require us to delay). chaos strike filler. demon’s bite to generate fury. None of the abilities really interact with each other. Eye beam rotation is the same as regular rotation. it is a monotonous rotation with straightforward abilities that aren’t in any way impressive in terms of design. I don’t know how any long-term DH raider or pvp’er doesn’t get bored out of their mind with our simplistic rotation. To each his own, of course, but this is after all an opinionated thread, and i’m of the opinion that the class deserves a fair bit more complexity. Not for the sake of complexity, but for the sake of me staying awake during encounters.

But if havoc is “built upon” a bad foundation, that isn’t good reasoning. You’re apparently saying it’s built upon simplicity. The degree of simplicity, however, is what’s the problem. I’m not asking for a reversion to earlier expansions where it felt like we didn’t have enough keybinds available to play a class. I’m asking for our class to have at least five baseline abilities, with some that actually synergize with each other in one form or another.

2 Likes

Yes, and this is absolutely intended!

Who are you to say it’s a bad foundation!!!

No, it isn’t!
It’s very much intended to be relatively simple to pick up, and your suggestions are quite frankly, horrible. Yet you’re too ignorant to realise that maybe the issue isn’t with the spec, but your expectations.

2 Likes

Ok, so let’s go. I’m not saying Havoc is not easy to play, because it is. The thing is, Havoc is not exclusively easy to play. Every spec has pretty much the same difficulty curve nowadays, with very few outliers. There are hardly any difficult specs to play nowadays and this is the direction Blizzard has chosen for the game.

Havoc WAS built on the base of simplicity, but now every other spec is just as simple, with some being even simpler. What you proposed was an amalgamation of Shadow, Arms, Rogue/DK on top of having more procs. That’s never going to be a good design.

Havoc’s design is pretty good as it is. Instead of thrashing it and coming up with something else, Blizzard should build on top of it.

2 Likes

I’m a person with an opinion, as I’ve already stated. Not sure what about this is difficult for you to understand.

I understand it’s intended. That’s what’s part of the problem. You haven’t really said anything of value in this thread; you’re really just here bashing me for having a different opinion from you. The point of the thread was to get a feel for how other demon hunters in the community feel about the current class design. Personally, I’m bored out of my mind. I’m not here attacking anyone for their opinion. You should offer the same courtesy.

I agree with you, my ideas were inspired by other class design, but that’s really just because I’m looking for what every other class has - a more synergistic damaging toolkit. I don’t want to be exactly like any other class, but I do want a reasonable amount of abilities in our toolkit, and i want them to work together, rather than being entirely individual abilities with no real interaction.

I agree. That’s the whole point of this thread.

1 Like

You got mythic logs for your feral ? The best ones have WF and JF check the top 10 mythic azshara dps. I ignore the first boss’s cause ppl can now just ignore most of the mechanics unlike first kills, and the time to kill those bosses is 3 minutes or less. Also moment of clarity is not even good as bloodtalons.

Yes, the best ones do. I never said taking Moment or skipping Wild Fleshrending was the optimal option. Re-read my post. I simply said it was viable, and the fact that there are boss kills in mythic with Moment, and without Wild Fleshrending (and not just a couple, multiple hundreds) is all the proof that’s needed for that statement.

Will you do better DPS, provided you can handle the complexity, by taking BT and WF? You bet. But that doesn’t mean those selections are utterly mandatory, even on mythic, and certainly not below mythic. Too often mythic players get trapped in this mode of thinking that only the absolute optimal setup is at all viable, and it just flat isn’t true, even at the mythic difficulty. It definitely doesn’t apply below that.

Oh, and I didn’t mention Jungle Fury even once, so not sure where you pulled that from.

2 Likes

When a boss is being killed in a short amount of time you can even talent the incarnation/moment of clarity build as there isn’t much dps lost due to short time killing the boss but this will depend on your team members overall dps. But when you take a feral in the beginning to a progression raid then the difference starts to really show. Feral is more about sustained dmg than burst dmg.

Sounds like you like the idea of DH, but not actually playing DH. Maybe it’s time for you to move to monk.