How to get Firstblood Baseline

Classes Demon Hunter
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I know you guys aren’t the smartest bunch, but seriously.

Stop just mindlessly shouting for Firstblood to be made baseline without addressing the actual reason why it’s so unlikely to happen and offering a solution. It’s frustrating.

We all want it baseline, because even though it’s objectively not actually interesting it’s at least another button to press and it looks cool, but having Blade Dance as apart of our baseline Single Target rotation would mean that there would be no difference between our Single Target rotation and our AoE rotation.

Blizzard doesn’t want that.

No spec is like that, by design. Literally every spec has at least 1 difference between the two baseline rotations. Even super simple specs like Frost DK and BM hunter have that. Frost has Remorseless Winter (they don’t use in ST baseline) and BM has multi shot (only used in AoE).

For them to make First blood baseline they would need to have an idea for how to make the two rotations different other than Blade Dance. Give them ideas, good realistic ideas.

Example Idea:

Make both First Blood AND Glaive Tempest baseline. Tune Glaive Tempest to solely be an AoE spell. That way we get to use Blade Dance in Single Target and in AoE we add Glaive Tempest. Perhaps add in a passive that makes hitting more than 3 targets with Blade Dance lower the CD on Glaive Tempest to make Blade Dance still have high priority in AoE and help fill the gaps in our AoE damage output.

Then, replace the two talents. Replace First blood with Bloodlet like people have been suggesting and replace Glaive Tempest with Fel Barrage as it doesn’t belong on the final row in it’s current form, it can’t compete. Replace Fel Barrage with a new talent or just put Chaos Blades there, possibly redesigned.

Is it so hard to do this? Christ, they won’t respond to just “DURRRRR GIB MEH FrRssst Blod, Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”.

Be smart about this. We’ve been given more time to give feedback, so actually use it wisely.

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They have ignored everyone’s fantastic feedback on the beta thread. Realistically if they make any change at all at this stage it’s going to be something very basic.

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“I know you guys aren’t the smartest bunch…”

https://www.kidsworldfun.com/short-stories/the-foolish-king.php

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Diversity of tactics is good. Supporting your fellow DH players towards a common goal also good. Calling people idiots doesn’t generally win you much support, for future reference.

Many people have gone extremely indepth into why major change is needed in the Havoc tool kit, and have suggested many excellent ideals on how to make that change.

That has not resulted in a response, or any meaningful change to havoc.

One thing that is agreed upon across nearly the entire Havoc community is that First Blood is a mandatory talent, and it’s placement in the talent tree kills more interesting talent choices.

Blizzard is in crunch mode, we are likely not going to see any of the major changes that have been clamored for. It seems to me like a good idea to get behind a single request that will do the most good for the havoc rotation. Personally I believe, strongly, that change is making FB base line and replacing it with bloodlet.

Bringing back bloodlet with FB baseline would give those who want to play momentum a complete rotation. It would also open up more engaging rotations for Demonic with any of the three talents on that row.

As far as blizzard wanting to ensure there is a difference between single target and aoe rotations… My dude, that hasn’t been true for DH through their entire existence, havoc is the exception that proves the rule, as long as FB exists AT ALL, havoc’s rotation will always be identical in single target and aoe.

tldr; make First Blood baseline, bring back Bloodlet in its place, be kind to your community, profit.

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In regards to staying the same ST vs AOE, you say no class plays that way yet we have for 3 long years. It is quite silly to bring up that point. We have to present them with the simple change they can make instead of writing these long class design treatises as they are actually more likely to happen. First blood baseline and bloodlet replacing it adds significantly more depth available to the class by supporting 2 different builds in one move as well as some awesome synergy with bloodlet and fel bombardment.

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6

This actually isn’t true of a lot of melee classes. Outlaw just pops bladeflurry and goes about its business. Fury adds the occasional whirlwind. Ret switches out Templar’s Verdict in favor of Divine Storm. Frost dk, unless certain talents are taken, has zero difference between single and multi target rotation. Windwalker adds Spinning Crane Kick in on occasion. Enhance throws in Crash Lightening. AOE for the majority of melee is either the same or very similar to their single target. This has been the design philosophy for a while now.

So yes, actually, they do.

Asking for Firstblood to be baseline is a perfectly sound request from the community. Without Firstblood, our regular rotation (no cooldowns, including eyebeam) is, count them, 2 buttons. Firstblood makes it three. If you take demon blades and no first blood, your rotation is 1 button. For mechanics alone, Firstblood is very nearly mandatory to take.

Because First Blood is very nearly mandatory, that makes the other 2 choices in the talent row very nearly useless. It’s not even a question of tuning. It’s a question of “do I want my class to be fun, or mind-bogglingly boring?” Right now, First blood makes it tolerable. Making First Blood baseline would allow us to pick some interesting talents that could make the class much more enjoyable.

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I see a lot of requests to make First Blood baseline.
But I haven’t been convinced that is the ONLY route to take. It might be the quickest route to tighten a leaky faucet but the faucet imo needs to be replaced i.e. a spec redesign.

Now I get that a spec redesign is highly unlikely at this point, but I would like a list of all the reasons why First Blood is baseline. I ask for this list because as far as I can see, you can fix the problems by making better talent options vs removing the best best option.

Here is the reason I think people want First Blood Baseline.

  • It reduces Fury cost to be less then our primary spender (Chaos Strike)
  • It does more damage then our primary spender (Chaos Strike)
  • It becomes better with more and more haste as it is haste scaled

Those are what I see that makes it a GOOD talent. So then the question becomes… how do you compete with this talent?

These are the things a competing talent needs imo…

  • Fury interaction similar to First Blood in that it nets you more uptime with attacks just like First Blood does.
  • Increased single target damage just like First Blood does.

This is what I came up with…

  • Chaotic Onslaught
    • Has increased Fury interaction in the form of procing refunds more often and for more.
    • Has increased damage functionality modification just like First Blood in the form of a proc to slash again.
    • It has interactions with other talents I came up with that takes advantage of haste scaling in getting more procs and higher returns the more haste you get for more slashes used within short window buffs.
  • Bloodlet
    • Not going to get too much into Bloodlet here, but I included interactions with this as well that I think does “compete” with First Blood but clearly 4+ targets, First Blood wins outright. 1-3 targets, it depends on one of these 3 talents and other talent choices provided in other rows.

Again, I know it would take more work to make “competitive” choices to go alongside First Blood vs making it baseline.
But I would like to know if it NEEDS to go baseline, or that is just the path of least resistance. Because I personally do not see the reason to make it baseline as it will leave a problem not as bad, but still leaving the spec feeling clunky.

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My self and many other DHs have given long posts in the feedback thread that are more than just “make first blood baseline”. Blizzard hasn’t listened to or responded to any of those. Instead of typing out those long posts multiple times again and saying the same thing with different wording, it is a lot easier to just say make first blood baseline. We have tried the approach of explain things with well thought out long posts for many months already and it hasn’t worked. That is why the new approach. Maybe if all Blizzard sees is make first blood baseline they will at least respond to why they don’t want it instead of leaving us in silence.

I do think the whole class havoc and vengeance need a complete redesign, but I really doubt there is time for that before the expansion comes out. They have many other systems to work on that are more important than one class for the game. Even the class devs need to work on covenants. They want to make the abilities fairly balanced, so most of their time is going to be spent on fixing those in the coming weeks instead of making the baseline of the class better. We have seen this happening already. We are just being realistic and asking for what is still possible in the time left and hopefully before the expansion after shadowlands we can get a redesign.

This is pretty much guaranteed to not happened because of the new conduit they added that gives chaos strike a chance to strike an additional time.

Yes, it is the path of least resistance. Blizzard has not created anything new for us for Shadowlands. Everything has been a reskin or redesign of something from previous expansions. So, making completely new talents to compete with first blood is off the table. Changing the other two talents on that row is also very unlikely. Blizzard just changed both of those talents for Shadowlands, so for them to remove them and change things again seems very unlikely as well. They might modify cycle of hatred or essence break, but i do not see them just straight up removing either of them for a new talent. It is a band-aid fix to get us through shadowlands in hope of a complete redesign after.

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Literally 60seconds of googling proves this wrong. Frost has always used Remorseless Winter single target, even without the talent. You take the talent because it’s free damage and makes the rotation better, just like First Blood.

Havoc, WW, Outlaw, Fury, and Frost DK all have the same baseline ST rotation as they do AoE: it’s called cleaving and it’s fine. Arms and Enhancement fall into this as well right now based on a single talent choice.

Objectively false.

What an absolutely trash take. If you’re going to imply that people aren’t smart, you should, at the very least, make sure the rest of your statements are factual.

And I find it hilarious how people spamming “Give us first blood” aren’t smarter than you and your “Give us first blood and glaive tempest”. Ludicrous.

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Insulting your audience is a giga-brain opener.

So even if we pretended that this was a rule, Havoc DH has literally always been the exception to it. We have always had cleave abilities as part of our single target rotation. Eye beam, immolation aura, blade dance, bloodlet, chaos cleave, fel rush with fel mastery… I mean… are you trolling??

Do you know the only time we weren’t locked into First Blood as a talent option? Legion. The talents you could pick instead? Chaos Cleave and/or Bloodlet. It was literally not possible for us not to have passive cleave as a part of our single target rotation.

You can’t say that Blizzard doesn’t want that when that has been part of Havoc’s design for it’s entire existence.

So… did you not see the hundreds of posts on the priest forums with #removevoidform? You’ve rather grossly underestimated the power of a short and simple rallying cry.

The feedback on why First Blood should just be baseline has already been given… over and over and over again. At some point it becomes dumb to hold an entire talent row hostage with a talent you have no intention of tweaking to not be mandatory. Now pretend you’re a developer - which do you pay more attention to? A couple of long winded paragraph posts from a few people about why First Blood should be baseline? Or the post with hundreds of people posting #makefirstbloodbaseline?

I can almost guarantee you that Blizzard will not make First Blood baseline between now and Shadowlands release. I’d love to be wrong on that, but the push to make First Blood baseline is going to be a longer haul than the maybe 6 weeks or so that we have left.

Imagine insulting your audience multiple times while insisting on an objectively false premise. Come on, dude. Be better next time.

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I spent the last couple days going through the Demon Hunter Class Feedback thread and updated my own post on the things I agreed with and sometimes in my own “flavor” in how I would like it to be implemented.

But I didn’t come across any standout reason that screams the spec NEEDS Firstblood baseline. I agree that with the current row setup, it is the ONLY good choice. But I don’t think the answer is to just make it baseline. I really feel its a symptom of the LACK of choices regarding talent, not that Firstblood just needs to be baseline.

I really think blizzard wants to keep the idea of Havoc DH being a “simple” easy to get into spec and so I believe they don’t want to just make all kinds of things Baseline and thus force everyone to play the same way. But the result of making Firstblood baseline WILL do just that and lock them into that for the foreseeable future without causing massive outcry / backlash if they lets say move it back to a talent in the next expansion because they can actually add things that compete.

However, I do agree that the spec plays so clunky is just nonsense imo. Compared to my Shadow Priest that I dropped in Legion for Demon Hunter because of the Voidform system garbage… now with the revamp, its like silk water flowing all calm like and just feels good. But it didn’t come instantly, it came in a few phases of changing baseline abilities and talents again and again.

I would say if we have enough time, a rework is what we need and seeing how crazy low Havoc DH was on the meter in Preaches SL delay reasoning vid, I would wager that becomes a high incentive to do major work on the Demon Hunter. The question then becomes… does that rework take shape post talents in just conduits and legendaries? Or will they actually shore up those areas in actually delving deeper in our talents / baseline and putting in some real work?

As I mentioned, the Priests felt like all was lost when they said no major changes happening i.e. resource changes when shadow still had the decaying insanity as part of the core spec. But our “faith” was restored so to speak. Granted that was months ago and so it might be too late, but I don’t think its out of the question and realm of reality at this point.

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I don’t understand that argument. It would be easier for everyone to play the same way and Blizzard could balance the class easier if everyone was playing the same way. People have been locked into the same talents for over two years. When something is chosen so often and determined to be the only choice, that talent is usually changed somehow. We saw it with Demonic with them nerfing it. We saw immolation aura be made at least partially baseline. It actually baffles me that they haven’t nerfed First Blood or even done anything at all to the talent.

Blizzard has no problems doing that. We can already see an example of this where Blizzard took passives that Paladins had and made them active auras that they have to choose now. They lost passives they could have at the same time because of this and there was massive outrage from paladins, but Blizzard didn’t care.

Even if they didn’t want to make First Blood baseline, they should just straight up remove it. It goes against their design philosophy of making that talent row an aoe row, which they stated in a Blue post. It clearly limits their design of that talent row, so just removing it and replacing it with something else would be much easier than re-balancing the other two talents of the row. Something needs to happen with First Blood whether they make it baseline or just remove it.

Nothing is out of the question, but you have to think any baseline or talent changes to a class will most likely be done before pre-patch hits. That gives us two weeks to get those changes. That is not enough time for a major redesign of anything. Even if they had the redesign in the works and it gets put out right before pre-patch, you still need to test everything and see what works and doesn’t. Spriest still got lots of updates to talents and stuff that didn’t work quite as planned after their redesign. A simple solution is pretty much the only thing that will get done before that. They are still working on changing the Necrolord ability that they said they were looking at last week. After the pre-patch comes out they will want to focus on everything that is a Shadowlands exclusive feature such as conduits, legendaries, soulbinds, and covenant abilities.

Two quick reasons are the conduit Dancing with Fate and the legendary Chaos Theory. You think it’s going to feel good to use those on single target and have to press blade dance when it costs more and is a dps loss to press over chaos strike. If those two were clear aoe items I would say sure we don’t need First Blood for them, but they are both better in single target than aoe. Chaos Theory also has great synergy with Cycle of Hatred, but you can’t have cycle and first blood at the same time. Yeah you can just not take them, but why design them that way in the first place.

Haugs has also posted a lot of stuff about what First Blood baseline does for us and the need for a short cd high damage spender. Not sure if it was all in the Beta Feedback thread because I don’t think he had access to it right away, but there is a lot in the demon hunter class forums.

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Regarding the “simple” nature of Havoc…

  • Honestly, I think they just haven’t taken the time to seriously look at the spec. It played fine in Legion with the artifact but because the class was built around the artifact as well as the Voidform Shadow Priest redesign, they both suffer from the same issues of being clunky once loosing the artifact. Only difference is Shadow got the much needed rework and I would say it needed it more no doubt. But I think that leaves the Demon Hunter needing a real hard look beyond just as you mentioned bring back what we already had in a slightly different light.
  • So I think the same talents we picked was just what was left after the artifact was discarded which meant we didn’t have a choice. I don’t think that was the intention of blizzard, only just where the pieces landed.
  • This is why I think more then any other class atm, Demon Hunters need a hard look into once you taken into consideration how poorly both spec play, perform and the hollow shell from whats left after the discard artifact. This is something that I am having a real difficult time believing modification of conduits and legendaries alone will account for.

Regarding PTR class state…

  • This I agree is the most / best reason to not expect any additional baseline / talent changes for any class once this goes live. However… If we do in fact see any changes beyond making broken talents work and number tuning, then that would be a big sign that more may be wrong then we currently are aware of and opens the door for even more class changes. Unlikely sure, but we have already been surprised quite a bit thus far.

Regarding Conduits and legendaries…

  • As you mentioned, they just added in the Chaos Strike slashing again by changing the Demons Bite one and the 100% Meta legendary is still an issue. So obviously they need and will change those either by adjusting numbers or outright changing the core functionality of them. So I don’t see that as a “set in stone” in regards to its synergy interaction with talents like First Blood. Sure its less likely to be changed, but again, they need to adjust some things quite a bit to fix the balancing and I personally don’t think just changing numbers will do it, I think they need to actually change functionality. I just don’t know how far they need to take it be it limiting to conduits and legendaries or as far as talents and baseline.

I did a search for him, nothing came up. Got a good link by chance?

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Probably this thread

There’s a lot in there about a complete redesign of the class, but I think he goes into the First Blood stuff somewhere in there. He’s quite active on a lot of different stuff, so maybe he will see this and reply which would be easier than me finding the exact post.

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After briefly reading through his suggestions, I didn’t see/find much in depth reasoning for First Blood talk be it for making it baseline or fixing other talents that competes with it.

Mostly what I felt I was reading was changing / removing the “essence” of what a Demon Hunter is and as such, making it more a Warrior for example etc. This is something you yourself eluded to as well.

I will keep reading a bit and delve deeper, but at surface level thus far, I don’t see anything that is “simple” yet effective and anything that requires a bit more “work” doesn’t seem to come off as either fun or interesting let alone functional.

But again, I will delve deeper as see what gems stand out.

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Yeah, I don’t know for sure if that is the right thread. I remember him talking about it somewhere, but like I said he’s made a lot of posts so not really sure where it is exactly. I wouldn’t worry too much about looking for it right now. He usually responds to most threads for demon hunters, so he probably will about this topic at some point.

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Thats pretty much like that every expension for every class. I can’t remember them listening to feedback beside some bug fixing.

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Oh another toxic post from cezzar. Exciting.

Yeah I don’t think you understand how blizzard works at all.

Do you know that the implication of “make first blood baseline” is? It’s “we need a short cd central nuke that spends fury”.

If we tell them “make first blood baseline”, that is the obvious message. Blizzard will do what blizzard wants to do, but the point that we need that central nuke is clear. If it’s not first blood, it’s another ability. This would be more than fine with me!!

Sure, why not. I can come up with 15 ideas right now for variance in aoe. It doesn’t matter, so long as we have a central short cd nuke that’s usable in ST.

If it’s first blood and a new ability is introduced or glaive tempest is made baseline, fine. If it’s not first blood and a new ability is introduced into our ST rotation, fine. Problem here, however, is that it wouldn’t solve what is arguably the biggest issue with first blood - it dominates the row.

As I said above, you tell blizzard what you want. You can give suggestions, but ultimately they will do their own Blizzard-ized solution. You don’t have to be so toxic about it. Seriously, you’re awful.

We are. What you’re doing here? Exactly what we’ve been doing. You’re just yet another person with his ideas on how to fix our class.

“Reeeeeee”

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That post involved two things:

Fixing many issues with fel rush being the ability used to proc momentum / UBC by using Felblade. Because it uses felblade, felblade must be baseline. Because felblade is baseline, you have to justify its usage in the ST rotation, imo. Hence why I implemented a dot from felblade.

I then not-so-subtly took our chaos theory legendary effect and baked it into a baseline passive which interacts with the dot from felblade. With this, I combined a frost DK-like passive as well, yielding…

When you strike a target afflicted by “touched by fel” (dot from felblade):

  1. your blade dance causes your chaos strikes to deal x % increased damage, and the chance for them to refund fury is increased by y%.
    This could either be for a set number of seconds or a fixed number of chaos strikes.
  2. your chaos strikes have a chance to reset the cooldown of blade dance, cause it to deal chaos damage, and reduce its fury cost to 15

The dot from felblade, a baseline ability, brings meaningful synergy between our two core abilities - chaos strike & blade dance. Basically just a Chaos Theory + frost dk/spriest-like proc element for blade dance.

Nothing crazy, but relatively easy to implement, as it’s stolen from a legendary and other classes have similar procs

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Honestly, a lot of what you wrote just didn’t come off as fun to me.

However, I do like this idea though…

I think having a conduit to increase that chance would then synergize well with chaos theory.