With the announcement of the 10.0 reveal in April today, I am posting this to begin the conversation pertaining to a possible spec rework, and hopefully generate a community discussion among Havoc players of all levels going into the next expansion as to what it is we would like to see. My aim is to preempt any discussions that may take place pertaining to spec reworks and ideally get the changes needed for our spec to feel fun and relevant in all content.
Ask most Havoc players, and they’ll agree on one thing; Havoc is flawed. The reasons given may be different, but ultimately there is an agreement that Havoc is missing something.
Depending on how familiar you are with the game, this is either a spicy molten hot take, or one of the most obvious things on the planet. It lacks real secondary stat scaling[1], it doesn’t have a dedicated cleave spender[2], Mastery feels like a legitimate loss of power[3], and many would argue that First Blood being a talent is a crime against the spec. However, there is one major problem above all others that needs to be addressed.
The Metamorphosis Problem.
TL;DR – Demonic the talent and Metamorphosis the cooldown cannot coexist without some additional spell effect either empowering Metamorphosis the button to be significantly more powerful or another cooldown button being added to the spellbook.
Since Antorus, Metamorphosis the buff has had very high uptime for Havoc players. Seeing a Metamorphosis uptime of 50% or more is not uncommon in the average Havoc log for any given tier, except in rare instances where Momentum somehow pulls ahead. This is entirely due to Demonic, a talent that many would argue is fun, and some would argue should be baseline. However, this presents a problem; our only cooldown provides us the same buff that a talent does. This means that for Havoc to remain balanced, the possibility of Demonic being selected is likely always going to have to play a part in the tuning that Annihilation and Death Sweep receive, and consequently, it means that Metamorphosis cannot be too powerful on its own. With a cooldown of 4 minutes, that makes this button feel incredibly lackluster to press.
Ultimately this translates into a damage profile that must be very consistently high for it to remain competitive. On paper that may seem like a good thing; if Havoc always does good damage, it must always be good, right? Well, the reality of it is that this doesn’t work in practice. For Havoc to then do that damage it must also have very high uptime, and with how this game is designed – boss vulnerabilities or immunities, Keystone pull routes, arena, etc. – often you want very high damage in very concentrated windows, not spread over an entire fight. This problem has crippled Havoc for the past two expansions and is only becoming increasingly more obvious over time.
Keystone dungeon content has always been a sore spot for Havoc. Sure, on the overall it may look like it has done a decent amount damage, but where that damage is done is more important than the overall. Given the general strategy is to pull very large groups of dangerous mobs together and burst them down with CDs as quickly as possible, then kill smaller, less dangerous packs while waiting for those CDs to come back up, having no cooldowns makes it a hard sell. In Battle for Azeroth, Havoc got by because of Essences, Corruption, an overpowered Furious Gaze, and strong trinkets. Only one of those things are in Havoc’s base kit – albeit weakened – and as a result, it is extraordinarily unfavorable in most serious compositions when there aren’t external rental powers to fill that role. We don’t have the stopping power to kill the dangerous packs before our tanks get blown up, which means pulls have to be done slower, which ultimately inhibits how high Havoc is allowed to push.
Arena content also demonstrates this problem. For many players in lower brackets, Havoc is the noob stomper. To a lot of people, seeing they’re going up against a Havoc is frustrating. Havoc has a very low skill floor, and a low skill ceiling. This translates into very easy wins at lower MMR. The problem is that once you start going higher it becomes increasingly more obvious how to beat Havoc comps; control the Havoc, control the game. Havoc players do no damage when they’re sitting in roots, snares, traps, stuns, disarms, paralysis… you get the point. For Havoc to win, it needs to have very high uptime on a target to be applying its pressure. If they aren’t allowed uptime to apply this pressure, they’ll fall behind. Disregarding the possibility that you catch them in a stun with no blur and no trinket, if a Havoc player is spending most of the game not playing the game, you’ve already won.
Raiding is the one form of content people will say Havoc will always be strong in. As seen in Castle Nathria, that is not always the case. A consistent damage profile is undesirable in raid just as much as any other content. Between boss vulnerabilities where you want maximum burst, phases where you can’t hit the boss, and phases that need to be pushed fast because of their danger, consistency is not a strength. Sure, it will likely always have a spot in any raid composition because of Chaos Brand and Darkness, but as seen at the start of Shadowlands, Havoc can still end up on the bench completely in every single form of content when tuning falls short.
Now that I’ve highlighted the problem – Metamorphosis cannot be tuned like a burst cooldown as it is, and consistent damage is not ideal in most content – I’ll offer the solution. Realistically there are a few solutions I can recommend resolving this, but there are probably more that I have not considered.
- The most obvious is to remove Demonic and tune Metamorphosis accordingly. The most hardline solution, and likely not one many in the Havoc community would like. Demonic is just as iconic as Metamorphosis at this point. People like being in demon form, so while I would personally be fine with this solution, many others might not.
- Add another effect to Metamorphosis the cooldown to justify its continued existence. This would need to be incredibly powerful given a continued 3–4-minute cooldown on this button. Right now, the button feels like an extended Demonic window, not a powerful button that feels exciting to press. The downside to this solution is that the button itself is already overloaded, giving us a stun, a free mobility, an immunity frame, and 30 seconds of demon form.
- Give Havoc another shorter cooldown at base with a recharge time exactly half that of Metamorphosis. Chaos Blades comes to mind, but realistically this can be anything you would want it to be if it allowed for Havoc to have a cooldown that felt good to press. This is probably the cleanest solution.
I hope that I managed to post this feedback ahead of any discussion on class reworks for the coming expansion. Please consider implementing this feedback. The other points I mentioned in the opening are certainly worth discussing too, however I felt that this point above all others needed to be discussed first. Thank you.
[1] To this point, even something as simple as making rank 2 of Chaos Strike increase your refund chance by your critical strike (so that it is 20% + Crit, which already massively diminishes in rating returns past 40%) and allowing Eye Beam to do more damage for every 1% crit would be a healthy change
[2] Glaive Tempest looked to fill this niche early in Shadowlands. It was changed so that it couldn’t.
[3] With a half or more of our damage being non-Chaos, our mastery cannot ever be strong. Felblade and Immolation Aura are 100% Fire, Demon Blades is 100% Shadow, Demon’s Bite and Death Sweep/Blade Dance are 100% Physical, etc.
