Here’s is a theory crafted rotation that would put an end to the 3 button DH faceroll memes and Blizz is quite close to pulling it off. All it takes is changing essence break windows to buff blade dance for single target and GG they have the first blood competitor they’re looking for.
Assuming the talents:
Felblade
Demon Blade
Unbound Chaos (because your Blade Dancing Less w/out First Blood so no TOR)
Netherwalk
Essence Break
Momentum
Here’s what a fun rotation would look like with Momo buffing Eye Beam and Essence break windows with Momo boosted unbound chaos dumps
First window-
Immo aura
Vengeful retreat
Fel rush (& unbound chaos on target)
Eye Beam
Second Window -
Fel Rush
Fel Blade
Essence break ----- Blade dance if essence break would buff it on first blood levels!!! ----
Chaos strike spam to dump fury
3rd Window -
Fel Rush
Fel Blade
Chaos strike spam w/ throw glaive when dry
4th window -
immo aura (when close to essence break coming off cooldown)
Vengeful retreat
Fel rush (& unbound chaos on target)
Essence Break ----- Blade dance if essence break would buff it on first blood levels!!! ----
Chaos strike spam to dump fury
5th Window -
Fel Rush
Fel Blade
Eye Beam
Rinse and repeat
Now This feels much more fun, engaging, and challenging than the Demo, eyes of rage, demonic appetite spam that BFA face rolled with. The only problem is Essence Break. If they change the damage modifier on Essence break so that Chaos strike does 40% more but blade dance does XXX% more damage to the first target hit, we could still use blade dance in a single target rotation, just less often than with first blood which is every time its off cooldown.
As it is Essence break buffs blade dance cleave, but Blade dance is already good at cleaving and the talent its competing with buffs blade dance for single target. Not to mention Essence Break does cleave damage itself that a first blood taker wouldn’t have. Remove the flat 40% damage buff to blade dance and have Essence Break give it a SINGLE TARGET BLADE DANCE BUFF.
First blood and trail of ruin pair so well together and nobody wants to take Blade dance off their toolbar for Single target if they’re ditching first blood for another build. Essence break is the answer.
Blizz you guys are close to making some engaging game play.
Demo builds can still work with Trail of ruin and first blood, momo builds can work with unbound chaos and essence break.
Are you trolling?
No one wants to press fel rush as a part of a damaging rotation. It’s bad design.
Essence break already boosts the damage of blade dance. It’s also a bad talent. Its debuff modifiers are effectively the exact same as demonic/meta
This is the only viable solution. Essence Break has a 8s duration and 30s cooldown, so it’s never going to be on First Blood’s level. Remember it’s not about the damage, but gameplay.
Some people like momentum, and the momentum talent isn’t in question its Essence break vs First Blood. The fact that essence break already boosts blade dance isn’t the issue, it’s that it boosts it by the same amount it boosts chaos strike so you still don’t want to blade dance during an essence break window in single target rotation when you could spam chaos strike instead.
The fact that essence break buffs the same abilities as demonic/meta doesn’t make it bad, its another option for a more involved play style, which is what this whole post outlined above - how it can be used if you’re not demonic.
TBH I don’t want to demonic appetite, trail of ruin, first blood, and demo, for another two years with every other talent dead, but if you do great thx for adding to the discussion.
It actually has a 20 sec cooldown. That was one of the big complaints about darkslash is that it doesn’t line up with demonic at all. Even when you could reduce eye beams cd, they aren’t always guaranteed to line up.
Then it also lasts 8 secs, whereas momentum lasts 6 secs. People didn’t understand blizzards intention when dark slash was made because it just didn’t line up well with demonic or momentum. It felt awkward in both situations.
The only talent it truly worked with was nemesis, and that’s the only time it has actually been used. People have used nemesis plus dark slash for super high burst in arenas. I can’t see essence break being any different in shadowlands, in fact it will probably be worse because we are losing the Thirsting Blades azerite trait that fueled the arena combo.
That’s the whole point of my post. Game play that removes blade dance is not fun. First blood adds blade dance. If essence break added blade dance to single target, that goes back to being fun while feeling different than first blood, as it would still be used in the rotation the way I have outlined above.
Just to point out why this is likely to never happen, Blizzard actually doesn’t want this row to be focused on single target damage. They made cycle of hatred an aoe focused talent by changing the reduction to eye beam. They made Essence Break, an aoe focused version of darkslash by adding blade dance to it. In fact First Blood is the weird one in this row now since it is mostly focused on making blade dance a single target option. If you don’t believe me here’s Blizzards words on it from the last blue post they made about their changes to DH.
I love momentum. I think it’s a much more engaging talent than demonic. Don’t get me wrong, I like Demonic too; I think demonic transformation is a fundamental concept of our class identity, so much so that it should be baseline. That being said, Demonic didn’t really add anything to our rotation. We simply become a demon, and then we carry on pressing the same buttons we’d be pressing anyways. Momentum, on the other hand, involves a short-term buff that we actively manage, and adds another button to our rotation.
The issue is that button is Fel Rush.
You’re seeking much more complicated solutions than you need to be.
You’re discussing things that aren’t going to happen.
Just keep it simple - first blood needs to be baseline.
Essence break needs to be redesigned - it is a poor man’s demonic.
If first blood and demonic are made baseline, which is a reasonable ask, we don’t need essence break as its currently designed as a talent.
If you want to discuss wishlists, you need to maintain some level of grounding. Otherwise, you’re off on a tangent and people can’t possibly follow you.
Does momentum have to be the same duration as essence break? By the end of the first window in my post, after eyebeam you still have the momentum buff, so the fel rush and fel blade in the second window add to the momentum timer which is right when you press essence break.
Also, not everything has to line up or make sense with dEmOnIC
No, it doesn’t have to. I was just telling you one of the complaints people had with darkslash when it was implemented that blizzard never addressed. Why make it 8 secs? Blizzard is making these abilities, but for whatever reason they chose 8 secs which was the duration of demonic, but it had a different cd than eye beam. They could have adjusted it to 6 secs to show better synergy with momentum, but they chose to offset it from both talents. Thus one of the reasons it was only ever used with nemesis.
I never said it had to, but as a talent it better make sense with one of the options in our last row and right now that is nemesis, not demonic or momentum.
Who only discusses things that will happen?
I want first blood baseline, probably not going to happen so I’m putting other ideas into the community. Demonic doesn’t have to be baseline - it’s cool and works as a talent. First blood is too core to all game play which involves too few spells that not having it is too punishing for any play style. A more reasonable ask is just for First blood baseline, not both FB and demonic.