Personally I saw plenty of people asked for Fury of the Illidari back. Its hard to rate Glaive Tempest at this point because its definitely not in a finished state.
Honestly I feel A LOT better about the class after this latest round of changes. It still needs work but this is the first time I’ve felt like the class could get to a playable form in SL.
Really at this point if they make First Blood baseline so as to spice up the rotation and move Fel Barrage in its place then bring back Chaos Blades in the final row then I think they’d be in okay shape playstyle wise. That would make row 40 basically be pick your AoE while row 60 is pick how you want your cooldown/damage boost.
That’s not a real problem. Havoc, like Fury, Enhancement, and Outlaw, is ultimately a cleave spec. Having the ST rotation be the same as AoE is fine as long as the ST is engaging. In Havoc’s case it isn’t, but if that gets resolved then there’s no real issue here.
It’s a little different because we don’t have a button we only press for aoe. Fury has whirlwind (I guess they technically pressed it in single target to fill in any gaps in the rotation), Outlaw has blade flurry, and Enhancement probably has something I don’t know though because who even plays that spec. While these buttons aren’t super engaging they at least add a bit of variety to aoe vs single target.
That’s what a lot of DHs were hoping Glaive Tempest was originally going to be when it was first implemented as a 20 fury cost no cd ability. Blizzard called it an aoe fury spender that would add choice and complexity to the spec. It’s just a bit of a let down with how it turned out. It could have actually given us that one button difference in aoe vs single target like the other cleave melee classes, even if it was a talent.
I’ve kinda given up on replying to this guy haha. In this and many threads I don’t think I’ve seen anyone agree with the nonsense he puts out. Really just an annoyance
I don’t really disagree with you, but it would still be nice to have some differentiation.
All the same, our st isn’t engaging, so it’s a moot point.
Crash Lightning, which is the same as BD - if you take a talent, it joins the ST rotation.
Did they though? Blade Flurry is basically just a Sweeping Strikes with damage. A button you press to say “Okay now I cleave” and then continue with the exact same rotation for ST, except now you cleave. Havoc just removes that step and I’d rather not have an extra button just to start our cleave.
Honestly, no it isn’t very engaging and I would like to see more, but it is at least something. I would like to see complete redesigns of many classes, but I don’t think we are getting those now that blizzard has officially announced we are moving into the tuning phase.
I don’t know what your opinion is on Glaive Tempest, but a lot of demon hunters are acting like it adds more complexity to the spec. Even Blizzard thinks pressing one more button on cooldown is adding complexity for the spec.
WoW just has a low standard for what is considered adding complexity to classes.
Glaive Tempest doesn’t really have anything to do with when Blade Dance is used. Trail of Ruin is just kind of an added bonus to using Blade Dance. You would still use First Blood and Glaive Tempest together if those two gave the most damage in their rows. Right now that is actually what is looking to be optimal for almost all situations.
Leaving aside how I feel about Essence Break, yes if Essence Break is tuned to do more damage than First Blood then you wouldn’t use blade dance on single target anymore. Essence Break is being categorized as an AoE ability right now by Blizzard. If Essence Break is better than First Blood at single target it is also going to be better than First Blood at AoE. So, sure First Blood is still there on the talent row at that point, but it’s effectively a dead talent and never used then. You can say it’s technically still there, but should just be considered removed at that point. It would be like Nemesis was.
Sure you could say well why can’t they balance it so I take Essence Break on single target, but favor First Blood on aoe. They could do that, but that would need a whole redesign of the talents. That’s the big flaw in that row. Blizzard wants to make it a aoe talent row, but First Blood is fundamentally a single target talent right now. It would have to be something like Essence Break going back to a buffed up version of Dark Slash and First Blood being changed to instead of doing a large hit to a single target, it causes it to hit all enemies a second time or something.
So, yes Blade Dance can be our different ability between aoe or single target, but something has to happen with First Blood. Either it gets removed, never used liked nemesis, or it gets completely redesigned. You can argue over the semantics of something being actually removed versus it being a dead talent, but I consider them to be mostly the same thing.
In my guestimations GT and EB might work better in momentum than demonic, but on fights we can’t go momentum we can just go First blood + trail of ruin no?
GT and EB are probably more optimal for momentum, but since the cooldown of GT is hasted demonic isn’t entirely useless. If EB added enough more damage over First Blood you would still use it with demonic even if the cooldowns didn’t line up.
That was thought to be the case, but Xaedys posted something in the beta feedback for DH and it looks like either they nerfed trail or messed up how much damage it is supposed to do. So right now unbound and GT are way head of trail for damage even on single target.
Pressing Glaive tempest is more fun than passive TOR damage so if GT is in the lead that sounds good to me. Blizz has mentioned they want active gameplay decisions to outdo passive ones.
Except we’re replacing blade dance with glaive tempest, and we never needed to.
Think in this entire conversation you’ve neglected the entire idea of the OP - that glaive tempest simply wasn’t necessary.
It is effectively a longer-cd blade dance, which is not what our damaging rotation needed. We already have a short cd ST/aoe nuke.
Why not just make first blood baseline, and make blade dance do chaos damage? It then fulfills the role glaive tempest is trying to do.
Glaive tempest serves to be a more interesting choice than trail of ruin, with which I’m fine.
But that’s why it should be a spammable aoe ability (aoe chaos strike) rather than a gloried blade dance. We hardly deserve to do more dps with glaive tempest than we do with trail of ruin with glaive tempest’s current design (it’s a “set and forget”. This doesn’t require much skill). If, on the other hand. This ability was spammable, and some degree of a dynamic element was introduced, we’d still be motivated to use blade dance. Imagine if this spammable aoe ability (aoe chaos strike) and chaos strike both had a chance to proc a cd reset for blade dance, and also reduced the fury required? We’d have a clear distinction in our aoe rotation, and blade dance would likely be lighting up more, because more targets were being hit by the spammable ability. This is much, much more fun design. With glaive tempest, my aoe rotation looks like this (assuming demonic)
Pool fury - glaive tempest - eye beam - blade dance - chaos strike - DB/CS - DB/CS etc. No procs, nothing dynamic, just waiting for abilities to come off cd as we always have.
If momentum instead of demonic, only difference is fury pooling isn’t as important, fel rush in, eye beam, glaive tempest, blade dance, resume ST rotation. Throw in a fel rush here and there.
Once again, no procs, nothing very fun. Granted, momentum introduces an additional element, but it still would have otherwise.
Most demon hunters want more complexity or dynamic interaction in their gameplay. Removing/nerfing blade dance, a short cd nuke, from our ST/AOE rotation, to replace it with glaive tempest, a short cd ST/aoe nuke, was not remotely necessary. It’s redundant game design
We shouldn’t have to talent to have a dynamic, short cd high damage ability.
We still have all of the same problems we had before - without talents or borrowed powers, we have an extremely boring baseline rotation. Blizzard needs to fix that before they decide removing nemesis is priority #1
The first sentence is very true, and while it doesn’t look like we’ll have it baseline, we might have it endgame. Serrated blades + fel bombartment could mean that throw glaive might not be a filer but a part of the rotation adding interaction and dynamics. If GT outshines TOR, and EB empowered CS’s outpace First blood, then this might be the deepest rotation we’eve ever had.
With:
Fel blade
Demon blades
Glaive tempest
netherwalk
Essence Break
master of the glaive
momentum
A guestimate at the rotation might be something like:
Throw glaive (for 8% on eyebeam)
fel rush
Fel Blade
Eye beam
immo aura
glaive tempest
vengeful retreat
fel rush
Essence break
chaos strike spam till dry
fel rush
fel blade
Throw glaive (for Fel bombardment)
Chaos strike (dry)
vengeful retreat
fel rush
throw glaive (if serrated glaives fel off)
Glaive tempest
eyebeam
…and so forth constantly varying because of offset cooldowns and CS fury returns determining where you can set up your damage windows. Blade dance would get worked in after EB if you have more than one target. Interesting how other classes’ resource dump feels like their big moment, like fury, whereas our resource spender feels more like our filler.
Anyways, that talent build assumes: you can buff eyebeam with two different mechanics ( throw glaive and momentum), buff essence break windows with momentum buff and pooled fury for chaos strike dump, and empower fel bombardment with momentum buff on the throw glaive and immo aura interaction.
Not to mention we’ll eventually get sinful brand at 45 seconds, or whatever covenant people are going with, so if glaive tempest and essence break dont suck, there will be plenty to do for single target.
So “complex” and dynamic interactions for DH gameplay now look like they’re going to exist, but your biggest problem is they mostly exist if you’re taking Momo and you want that to exist for Demonic by redesigning the core of the class to do so. Serrated glaives and fel bombardment can still make it into demonic adding more interaction, but you want stuff like that baseline so they can add more legendarys that can add more interactions?
Regarding Procs can be fun, but don’t necessarily add fun - in the case of fire mages, procs can sometimes be bad when you’re fishing for hotstreaks that aren’t happening, or are sitting there dry on a ret hoping art of war procs for blade of justice. Some people have mentioned they like the removed RNG from DH.
At the end of the day Blizz might now be thinking the same way they did with feral, “if you dont like the blood talons complexity, go moment of clarity for a more flexible and forgiving rotation but with less skill and thus less throughput.” We took TOR and FB for 4 years saying we want more to do, so they’ve given us glaive tempest and Essence break, which gives us more to do. It’s not a shadow priest or enhance shaman rework but those classes were in such bad places that they needed it. Was DH SO boring and SO gimped compared to old shadowpriest and old enhance that we needed that level of redesign? Lets give GT and EB some time on the beta before we right them off.
Yes, because of momentum. In your entire thread of the rotation, it is momentum that offers the dynamic gameplay, which we already knew it would.
Yes, felblade has a proc, but fel blade is a fury generator. It’s not really that exciting to get procs on a fury generator.
It looks like we have lots of buttons, but when you really look at them, they’re not that interesting.
Fel Rush - can’t be overstated how awful it is to be necessary in a damaging rotation
Eye Beam - moderate cd nuke
EB - less interesting because you’re only using one of the two abilities it buffs on ST fights.
GT - replaces BD as longer cd nuke in ST, not buffed by EB
Vengeful Retreat - a momentum modifier. Not worth considering cause i have no complaints about it. As I already mentioned, momentum is what really offers the dynamic gameplay.
Immo aura - Eh. Not much to say about this one. Just another set it and forget it cd.
Chaos strike - our basic spender. It is the only thing we press in EB windows because BD is trash.
Throw glaive - borrowed power. Not really worth considering in context of this conversation.
Compare your SL rotation in ST with what the rotation would be in BFA, assuming momentum is taken, excluding the throw glaive legendary, and pretending first blood is baseline:
We lose blade dance in favor of a longer cd blade dance. We get EB, and spam chaos strike in that window, instead of CS and BD
Not particularly exciting.
I like momentum more than demonic. I think it’s a much more hands-on rotation and I want to want to play it. I think EB compliments it much better than it would demonic, because there aren’t two differing cd windows (30 seconds vs 20) But it being contingent upon fel rush is awful. I’m still going to play it, because demonic is much, much more boring (in my opinion), but I also believe Demonic should be baseline.
Still, it doesn’t feel good to talent into essence break if I’m only going to be pressing 1/2 of the buttons it buffs, unless we’re in aoe.
This is a complete misinterpretation of what I’m saying. Whether you choose demonic or momentum is completely irrelevant, because my problems with the class don’t concern the choice in our final talent tier. If you’re going to try to put words in mouth, I suggest you understand, at the very least, my OP.
Fun is relative. The argument I’ve been making this entire time is that we have none of the following:
Baseline proc
Baseline buff management
Baseline debuff management.
If we don’t get #1, give us 2 or 3.
We can get two by takenting into momentum, but that’s mutually exclusive with demonic. Mechanically, I’m fine with that, because I think momentum is more fun and is a much more interactive talent. That being said, it feels bad that we predominantly lose our demon identity, which is why I make the argument for demonic being baseline. It is a core of our class fantasy.
Still, I think it speaks to the elementary-level of design in our class that we don’t have any of the above as a baseline.
TOR is boring, but it’s really intended as an increase to aoe dps. I’m more than happy with having an active ability we press in the same talent row, but it did not need to be glaive tempest with a cooldown.
My argument is that blade dance could not only fill the role glaive tempest is filling, it would do it better:
it has a shorter cooldown, so we can press it more frequently
we aren’t forced to stand still
it is buffed by EB
Essence break should buff chaos strike, blade dance, and what GT should have been - an aoe chaos strike spender.
The one thing that you keep forgetting and need to keep in mind is that EB doesn’t outperform First Blood right now. EB is a redesigned version of Dark Slash. It added blade dance to the damage modifier debuff and causes the initial damage of it to be aoe. The damage bonus to chaos strike has not been changed from what dark slash was. Dark Slash was never used in BfA. I don’t think I’ve ever even talented into it, except for like the first few days to try it, and I’ve played all of BfA.
Blizzards goal for these changes was to make this an AoE ability, not single target. It would take an entire change in blizzard’s design philosophy of the talent or a change to First Blood for EB to ever be better than First Blood in single target. The more likely case is that Cycle of Hatred becomes better than first blood, especially with the addition of furious gaze now. That just feels bad because it takes blade dance completely out of the single target rotation without adding any extra buttons.
I haven’t seen any sims or logs from beta so maybe you’re right, but other changes have taken place to help the case of EB seeing some use. Demonic duration is now nerfed meaning 1 less demonic buffed blade dance and at least one less demonic buffed chaos strike meaning FB is already contributing less to overall output than the BFA DH. EB’s damage was also changed to chaos from physical which means more damage behind that GCD. BFA sims assumed TOR, but now GT is strong than TOR so blade dance now contributes even less to overall throughput. I didn’t take dark slash all of bfa either, but FB and EB dont exist in the same context now as they used to, and FB getting weaker consequently makes the other two options stronger. Maybe you’re right and FB is still king and we just FB+GT instead of FB and TOR idk. Proper simming will answer a lot of these questions for us, but i’d like to take something other than first blood for ST 1000% of the time, and blizz giving us two more buttons solved the problem of having less to do if we did.
I dont see the point in playing a DH while complaining the rotation is “too easy” or “too boring”. All the other classes are still recruiting…
I was happy as it is, but still, confused why demonic blades is STILL gone outside of a fancy cloak to maybe be played with in timewalks in later expansions.