I revised the original version of this post after reading some replies and doing some more testing, research, and thought. I even leveled and geared an entirely new DH just to have a fresh perspective on the specs. Here’s version 2, read it and rip it apart as usual.
The Shadowlands Havoc changes are either disappointing, underwhelming, or not good for many of us. A lot of issues have gone unaddressed and we’ve mostly just been nerfed. Here i’m going to outline most of the ones i see.
Rotation:
Havoc’s rotation is very simple. That’s fine, and it’s a reason many of us enjoy the spec. But many feel that a bit more baseline complexity would be nice to have.
Idk what could be done to address this, but i would suggest some sort of new ability that utilizes our resource in an interesting way. Or, by simply making popular talents that add a bit of complexity (like First blood and Demonic) baseline parts of the spec.
Cooldowns:
Havoc has one of the longest DPS cooldowns in the game. Having meta on a 4 minute cooldown is ridiculous, and creates some very annoying issues for the spec. The main issues are:
- Most raid fights with important burn phases are designed with the average DPS cooldown availability in mind (Every 3 minutes) so not having our cooldown for those phases cripples the usefulness of the spec.
- Some dungeons are designed with bosses that are very close to each other, resulting in there not being enough time between boss fights for meta to come off cooldown in time to be used on the next boss fight, resulting in Havoc suffering and being less useful for an important part of the dungeon run.
- Having frequent access to powerful cooldowns for periods of increased pressure on the enemy is extremely important in PvP, especially in rated arenas. So, many havoc players are essentially forced into running the Demonic Origins PvP talent to cover the extreme disadvantage of meta’s long 4 minute cooldown. This locks down a talent choice (or essence choice rn) in most situations and results in less choice for the player.
I think reducing the cooldown of meta to the standard 3 minutes would largely fix these issues, and would definitely be worth a decrease in the duration of meta for the sake of balance.
Mastery
This poor dead stat is the most disappointing thing to see on any gear that drops for a Havoc player, and that’s a problem. Mastery not only suffers from a lack of interaction with the design of the spec, but also from a complete lack of power and poor scaling potential.
I suggest a simple change. Have mastery work as it does now, but make it also gradually increase the chance Chaos Strike refunds fury (in addition to it’s current chance). This increase would be very very small, but it would give the stat some very clear and noticeable value to the spec. This may also fix how poorly the stat scales.
TALENTS:
Some talents are just way too strong, way too weak, way too bland, or feel so core to how the spec plays now that it would feel bad not having them (Demonic and Firstblood).
The Bland talents:
- Insatiable Hunger : Both bad and uninteresting. It has never been chosen and will never be chosen. Also, ith bad luck it’s essentially useless. Yeah you could get lucky and get 40 fury from one Demon’s bite, allowing you to Chaos Strike the next global. BUT, if you generate anything under 40 fury (like 39) and you had no other fury you’ll still have to use 2 DBs to be able to Chaos Strike, same as usual.
- Cycle of Hatred : Not only is this talent both bad and uninteresting, it also creates issues for the spec. Having RNG based cooldown reduction is never good and obstructs the player’s ability to manage their cooldowns effectively, thus removing a large element of skill. Additionally, the cooldown reduction it provides is extremely weak, and made even less effective because of how long the cooldown of meta is.
I suggest that these talents be removed from the talent tree and replaced with much more useful talents. Something just slightly more interesting would be a massive improvement.
The Weak talents:
- Fel Mastery : This is an fun talent, but unfortunately it suffers from just being too weak to compete with the other options, especially since Trail of Ruin can also provide a noticeable Single Target dps increase with very little effort. Also, bringing a mobility spell into the AoE rotation is a fun idea, but it also comes with the inherent weakness of asking the player to then choose between having mobility and having more output, unlike the other choices. I suggest giving the passive an additional effect to reduce the CD of Fel rush when it hits 3 or more enemies by a fair amount, thereby making the trade off of mobility for damage less drastic. Some further buffs to the damage increase this provides Fel Rush would also help offset that trade off.
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Dark Slash: Getting changed in Shadowlands so i’ll reserve judgment for now.
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Desperate instincts: Getting nerfed in Shadowlands along with Blur. Now this talent will be even less useful, especially compared to Soul Rending. I expect Soul rending to always be dominant in most cases, but at least this talent has it’s uses in BfA. If a raid boss or dungeon has frequent bursts of damage or some sort of unavoidable damaging mechanics that needs to be soaked the current version of this talent actually shines. Having a 50% damage reduction on a 1 minute CD is very useful for these situations, but that’s going away in SL. I understand why they nerfed Blur for PvP, but since soul rending is so dominant in PVP anyway i suggest this talent’s DR increase for Blur be brought up to 20 or 30%, that way blur can be about as powerful as it is now with this talent chosen. This wouldn’t be as powerful in PvP though because of the loss of baseline meta leech making soul rending much more dominant and basically required (also an issue).
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Momentum: (addressed in “The Demonic Problem”)
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Nemesis: (addressed in “The Demonic Problem”)
At the moment it looks like we’re very likely to be using the exact same talent build in Shadowlands as we currently do in patch 8.3, with even less choice. That is not a good thing.
The DEMONIC problem:
The biggest issue with both Momentum and Nemesis is simply that Demonic is just vastly more powerful, much easier to use, and way more fun to play with.
I wrote another post about it here: Demonic in Shadowlands
What i want to highlight here is the fact that Demonic works in every situation in the game, whilst the others do not.
Momentum isn’t a bad talent. It’s actually kind of interesting. But choosing it doesn’t really work out well in a lot of situations.
- In PvP Fel rush is very important for mobility, something crucial to Havoc
- In the open world players would much rather be able to freely use Fel Rush for mobility.
- Fel Rush just doesn’t do that much damage in Single Target situations, so players feel like they’ve wasted a potential dps action in order to buff themselves with a short term buff.
- For boss fights with a lot of movement, Fel Rush is better used for mobility instead of buffing the player’s damage.
- In some dungeons, trash packs can sometimes be so close that it may be dangerous to fel rush through them, thus causing the player to either have to hold back or waste time re-positioning themselves so that they can fel rush safely without pulling other packs.
- Ever been in a situation where you and your whole raid or party have to stand in a specific location for like 10-30 seconds frequently during a fight because there’s dangerous bad stuff everywhere else that will kill you if you touch it? Yeah Momentum just flat out doesn’t work in those situations.
Nemesis has the potential to be fairly interesting, but it still has to compete with Demonic. Nemesis does have some pretty interesting applications in Dungeons, whilst questing, and especially in Battlegrounds. However, in all of those situations it’s almost always better to have Demonic instead. Plus, the talent is just too weak in it’s current form, especially compared to Demonic. Additionally, any value the talent could have when used in an interesting way is stunted by the the duration not refreshing when you kill the marked enemy. Yeah you now have 20% increased damage on Humanoids, GREAT, but you only have about 20 seconds left of the buff. This is 2 MINUTE COOLDOWN everyone, wow.
Overall, Demonic is just too strong in that row. I suggest either reworking these talents, buffing them by a lot, removing them, or fulfilling the wishes of many Havoc players by making Demonic baseline and replacing the talent with something these two can compete with.
Firstblood:
Finally, i wanted to talk about Firstblood and it’s issues. Alot of us have grown used to having this talent and enjoy using Blade Dance in our Single Target rotations. Many of us want to see this talent baseline, but i believe that due to the current design of Havoc that would be problematic and is unlikely.
The issue is the rotations. Each dps spec has 2 rotations, Single Target and AoE. These rotations are never exactly the same. There is always at least 1 difference.
The same is true for Havoc, but only without Firstblood.
-Single Target Rotation: Demon’s bite, Chaos Strike, Eye Beam.
-AoE Rotation: Demon’s bite, Chaos Strike, Blade dance, Eye beam.
Spot the difference? It’s Blade Dance. JUST Blade Dance.
Here’s the rotations with the Firstblood effect.
-ST Rotation: Demon’s bite, Chaos strike, Blade Dance, Eye Beam.
-AoE Rotation: Demon’s bite, Chaos Strike, Blade Dance, Eye Beam.
Spot the difference? No, you didn’t. There is no difference. And that’s the problem. THAT is why we can’t have First blood’s effect baseline. It’s fine as a talent in the eyes of the developers because that change in the rotation is made by the player and is not part of the baseline design.
Whilst many of us want it baseline, the lack of any other difference between our ST and AoE rotations besides blade dance is preventing that change.
So, i suggest a rotational change/addition, that if implemented would allow the developers to make Firstblood baseline without compromising their design goal of having the baseline (without talents) Single target and AoE rotations be different. Remember, i’m not a dev so this is just a rough idea.
I suggest adding a new passive and a new AoE ability.
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New AoE Ability: “Chaotic Slash”: Channel chaotic energy to slash up to 5 enemies in front of you with both weapons dealing ### chaos damage to each enemy hit. Requires 1 stack of Chaotic Fury to use. 6 second cooldown reduced by haste.
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New Passive: “Chaotic Fury”: Hitting 3 or more targets with Eye Beam or Blade Dance grants a stack of Chaotic Fury, enabling the use of Chaotic Slash. Chaotic fury can stack up to 5 times and lasts 20 seconds.
How this works and why I suggested it: Basically you’d gain stacks of Chaotic Fury only during AoE which would allow you to use Chaotic Slash. This ability doesn’t cost Fury so it’s not disruptive to the existing resource gameplay of the spec. It also has a short enough CD to be used frequently, but long enough to not be spamable. You could store up to 5 stacks of Chaotic fury to prevent wasting stacks and allowing the player to save them for later use if they want. This was inspired by the new version of the Cleave talent for the Arms Warrior in Shadowlands.
The main point here is that Chaotic Slash is a strictly AoE ability that always makes the AoE rotation different from the ST rotation.
This might be a dumb idea, idc, BUT YOU GET THE POINT. Ignore my idea if you don’t like it, focus on the main point. The baseline AoE rotation has to be different from the single target rotation in some way other than Blade Dance in order for Firstblood to realistically be made baseline. It doesn’t matter how that is done.
As for what to replace the talent of Firstblood with, idk. Maybe revolving blades, or even something that gives Throw Glaive a bleed or wtv.
We’ve taken Firstblood every patch for about 4 years. It’s time for it to be baseline.
Conclusion:
That’s everything i really wanted to talk about. Feel free to criticize, add constructive comments, or add additional thoughts on issues you believe the spec has that i didn’t mention and that we haven’t seen addressed yet on the Alpha. It’s still alpha, so further changes are technically possible, speak up now.