Oh yeah, the above is actually my more current wishlist. Much more of an overhaul.
Key notes is we’re reminiscent of a demo warlock that had demonic transformation, and there’s much higher potential for haste / crit scaling. If crit provided a boon to demonic hatred gained, that and haste would be really good for us. We have a second resource that makes demonic transformation and eye beam the climax of our rotation, and when we’re not in eye beam it feels like we’re working to get back in it.
Otherwise, yeah not all ideas are gonna be winners haha.
What I found was it wasn’t an overtly complex rotation by any means, but the abilities were all tied together by one or multiple synergies.
This so far is a bit more interesting then the other/older stuff I read of yours. Though I only dabbeled a bit so far, there is a lot to read and I will slowly digest it.
Note: I have and will continue to edit it with additional ideas as a “work in progress” but that reflects my “ideal” way I think a Demon hunter should play for both Havoc and Vengeance.
For starters, in your first tier, how are souls generated?
Excluding chaos nova, obviously, I’m not seeing a methodology by which souls spawn. Are they baseline, and generated by chaos strike?
Right now they’re baked into DA, which you have as a talent. My assumption, then, is chaos strike generates souls. With that assumption,
What I still don’t like about this is that it’s reliant on chaos striking the target, rather than just based on fury spent. Personally, I think fury spent to reduce eye beam cd is far better design.
Issue here is it would lead us to pooling souls and being forced to stand still. Imo any mechanic that requires a havoc demon hunter to stand still is antithetical to the fantasy of the class. So, the alternative is the latter idea, which is effectively the same thing as your blind fury.
So, like I said, other two talents don’t stipulate how souls are spawned, so I assumed they were baseline. If they aren’t baseline, other talents need some rewording to clarify. So, I like the interactive element of this ability, but if the idea in mind is that it’s the momentum build, some issues here:
momentum isn’t designed well right now. 15% for six seconds is an awkward middle relative to how it used to be (20% for four seconds)
that said, what made momentum so good was the higher damage increase, but also because DH’s had more burst cd’s to complement momentum
chaos strike is an extreme low point of the rotation. If you’re chaos striking with momentum buff, it feels kinda wasted. You want to be pressing stronger abilities in what should be a short and powerful window of enhanced damage
Same complaint as above. Not sure where souls are coming from. Assuming baseline, this ability is also awkward with demonic appetite, if your first idea would be implemented. You wouldn’t want to pick up souls outside of meta, so you’d go the majority of the right not having this buff. Also, this would require you to tip-toe around the battlefield, trying to only pick up a single soul at any given time
While I like this idea and do agree immo aura should be a fury spender and deal more damage as a callback to its Warcraft 3 design, I’m just not sure if the idea is practical or would feel good to use. Constantly having fury drained and having to fight our fury bar by spamming demon’s bite more frequently probably wouldn’t feel very good. If immo aura were to be redesigned, though, I would think a talent like this should be baseline. This row is known as a fury generation row, but this talent is doing the exact opposite of that, so it’s awkwardly-located.
I don’t care for this much at all. It’s just adding more passive to passive. Also, would likely be broken. We’re a haste / rppm-oriented class. Enhancing attack speed by 10% just cause would be insane.
tier 3
I really don’t like that you killed unbound chaos, which is easily the most fun addition to the havoc DH, and replaced with with a chaos strike modifier. We really don’t need to see a return to Antorus, and this talent would just make chaos strike all the more powerful.
I think glaive ricochet is a tad overkill. Bloodlet is sufficient enough as a modifier to throw glaive. If anything, put bloodlet here.
tier 5
Don’t like chaotic onslaught. Think it functions much better it its current iteration as a conduit. It, as mentioned above, also drives us closer to the days of Antorus. I really don’t want to be a two-button class. First blood and bloodlet would enhance our rotation by adding a new button. Chaotic onslaught takes away from that idea. Also not in love with RNG being a talent option. I’m okay with essence break being removed, but I think it should be baseline, if anything. Debuff maintenance would be a great addition to our toolkit.
Personally, I think fel barrage should be moved to this row, and it should revert back to the Legion iteration, with five charges that have a chance to recharge when damaging enemies.
I don’t love this because this moves it away from being a utility row. This talent would effectively be mandatory and would be used for offense rather than for utility
Tier 7
I don’t have much to say about demonic. It’s fine I guess. Don’t really think the edit is necessary. Seems pretty underwhelming
Momentum fel rush generating fury is a good change, but I still think the damage % should be increased to 20-25%, and the duration should be reduced to 4 seconds.
Personally I just think chaos blades should be its own ability, not a passive effect of being in meta
Does making the single target baseline of the kit go from DB and CS to Db, CS and BD really make it too complicated though? I’m gonna throw a hot take here and say no.
Snarkiness aside (I apologize), The reason people rally for first blood is because it opens up that row for some interesting dynamics, especially if replaced with bloodlet. You have the simple talent of cycle which beginners or people who are just trying to chill can take, presumably bloodlet which would have great synergy with momentum and the fel bombard legendary or just pvp use, and then you would have essence break, which actually feels way better when used with first blood. (You can get the combo in torghast, it feels great)
Essence break and first blood together adds some nice depth of gameplay to the spec that sorely needs it as at least an OPTION. It means you have to think about pooling resources and having blade dance up to fit 2 nice first blooded BD’s into that essence break window along with getting as many chaos strikes in as possible.
I wanted to bring more Soul interactions into havoc beyond the standard way of killing an enemy or chance to proc from Chaos Nova and Chaos Strike from Demonic Appetite.
Talents
Blind Fury
Does not have an inherent method to generate Souls.
The reasoning is that this talent should get the most benefit from Souls in that you only need to consume 10 total to reset Eyebeam CD and get a max fury bar again. So between using Eyebeam and the time it takes burning that Fury away + Chaos Nova or Fel Eruption Souls, you can quickly start the cycle over again. Lets say you get 3 souls from AOE Chaos Nova targets or Boss fight (Stun Immune) Fel Eruption, then that’s already nearly 1/3 Eyebeam CD. Mix in GCD of burning Fury and some time building with Demons Bite/Blades and perhaps killing a target for another soul or using Kyrian ability for souls, you quickly find out that you don’t have much time left on Eyebeam CD to use again. Giving its own method to generate souls would make this too strong imo.
Demonic Appetite
Does what it normally does with Chaos Strike having a chance to proc Souls.
Concerning the Meta interaction, if you used meta, then you want to consume every soul you can to reduce the CD and/or increase the duration. Outside of meta, you want every soul to reduce meta CD. You cant pool souls because as soon as you move i.e. jump in air with meta, it will auto consume your souls. So you cant “game” the system. You will always want a soul asap.
Fel Blade
Speaking on the Momentum side of things… I used Momentum quite often followed by Eyebeam because of Demonic and then First Bloods Blade Dance and then spamming Chaos Strike back in Legion 7.2-7.3. With Chaotic Onslaught trait, it become amazing to dump as many Chaos Strikes in that window as you could because you can not only get those extra strikes of damage in, but you get more and more fury returns. So I disagree on NOT using Chaos Strike in that momentum window.
Insatiable Hunger
Souls comes from the following…
Talent
Demonic Appetite’s Chaos Strike
Fel Blade
Fel Eruption
Baseline
Chaos Nova
Killing Blow on enemy
Note:
I wanted to not “force” everyone to have to manage souls. It is supposed to be a choice. Thus why some talents have no Soul interaction.
Of the Talent interactions with Souls, I wanted to make them mostly passive in that you just grab them. No pooling like how it was in 7.3 with Eyebeam + Demonic Appetite where you didn’t want to move when you had a lot of souls spawned and EB was almost off CD.
Burning Hatred
This is a high risk / high reward talent.
You are risking less Fury generation and increased Fury spending for high constant AOE damage.
This is a talent, a choice. It is not baseline and so that means if you don’t want to manage it, you choose a “safer” choice.
Demon Blades
Fair enough. I tacked this bit on because I know in the beginning when stats are low, this feels bad. I was trying to make it feel good to use in the beginning when gear stats are low.
Tier 3 comments
Fair enough, however, I was trying to stay away from having having more mobility utility (Fel Rush) Talents. I wanted to provide a talent that supports the primary attack of each core ability (Chaos Strike, Blade Dance, Throw Glaive).
Tier 5 comments
100% disagree in that you are wanting choices removed. I am “adding” choices. Right now its just Blade dance. Before we had Blade Dance, Chaos Strike and Throw Glaive builds. I want those options back. You don’t have to pick it if you don’t want it.
Fel Eruption
Why does this granting souls a bad thing? Same Row we have Chaos Nova modification talent, and that ability grants souls as well. How about this. It ONLY grants souls if target cant be stunned. Therefore, you don’t loose the utility option as you don’t get any benefit via souls if it stuns.
Demonic
As I mentioned, I think having fury interaction on that row would add a little spice in how you choose to deal your big defining feature of the spec playstyle.
Momentum
I agree with you on this one.
Chaos Blades
I wanted some interaction with other talents with chaos Blades. My thought is that you want to always pair it up with Meta and so I just made it so it does it for the entire duration of meta at the cost of a shorted CD and shorted duration. But with Demonic Appetite, it can be enhanced.
Complicated? I did not say this.
I did use the word “simple” in the context that I think blizzard wants to keep the spec and its overall playstyle really “simple” in that they don’t want players to have to manage the CD of that and its interaction of this etc.
Baseline mind you. I think they want the Baseline to very stupid simple. Then add more complexity in the talents. This is what I think their intention is and I agree.
We want the same thing “fundamentally” but we are coming at it in different directions.
You want to remove the interaction choice and just force it on everyone.
I want to add just as good interaction choices for those that don’t want to use your rotational AOE ability as the best single target ability.
If they made First blood Baseline, then Chaos Strike is just filler and almost not needed as it just takes a back seat permanently.
So here is food for thought, what if they make First Blood Baseline and in its place, they add the Talent I suggested Chaotic Onslaught.
Chaotic Onslaught
Chaos Strike refunds 50% more fury and has a 10-20% chance to slash an additional time.
I think it would would then become the new First Blood in that you would be forced to take it as the other 2 talents don’t compete.
If that is the case, then the problem is NOT first blood, its just how strong it is. Thus I think giving it actual competition is the better route to take.
I agree it adds a level of gameplay synergy. However, I disagree with having this amped up damage window via debuff on target. That is just warriors colossus smash / Warbreaker and it works for them because they have slow big hits. Imo, Demon Hunters are fast moving and attacking playstyle. So debuff windows on enemies just feels odd. I rather empower myself with Demonic / Momentum / Demon Soul consumption.
Got into beta in the last wave, have been testing out the kit.
Levelling up I went inner chaos + cycle of hatred - it meant single target I don’t use blade dance just eyebeam + chaos strike spam… and it felt ok, specifically because of the burst nature of levelling, unbound chaos became a nice “here comes the boom” moment.
All that changed once I got the dancing with fate conduit, all of a sudden it brings blade dance back into the ST rotation (and locks in the two cookie cutter talents).
I am really confused with what they are going for here because it doesn’t seem like anything but the cookie cutter talent/conduit build will work right (unless we see more iterations.
I think its mostly going to be number changes at this point. Which is a shame because outside of dancing with fate conduit… which actually has the potential to do interesting things to our resource management- i.e try to stay as close to full fury as you can so you can dump during essence break windows (use demon bite over chaos strike if it wont over cap if essence break doesnt proc)… the rest of the conduits dont really do anything… more damage on chaos strike (fury dump), more damage on immolation aura (fury gen used on cd).
I just wanted to reply to this in case anyone missed it.
I agree that making First Blood baseline isn’t the ONLY option but likely the most probable because it is indeed the path of least resistance.
I’d equally support another solution that gives us another button in our baseline rotation that feels good to press. The First Blood modified version of Blade dance feels good to me because it does a lot of damage for the resource cost, especially when paired with Trail of Ruin. It’s a short cd that adds just a little something to our build/spend cycle between longer cds.
I’d also be on board with Fel Blade being made baseline. It’s a medium cd but adds a little interest via the reset mechanic, charge and resource generation.
Really what I’d like to see is SOMETHING built into the core spec to make it just a little more interesting and has some synergy. Preferably something other than some sort of burst window, I’m personally not a fan of the Colossus Smash style mechanic.