Ideas for Demon Hunter (Havoc) going forward

Classes Demon Hunter
1

How to fix Havoc Demon Hunter:

Demon Hunters require more abilities, however, blizzard seem to lack any creative juices on how to make the classes more for filling.

After the poor results of the alpha test it is apparent that with the return of old abilities to the OG classes the demon hunter is now lacking, I propose the following changes:

First, dig deeper into “demon” abilities, we spent our first 10 levels killing demons and stealing abilities, this should be done even more so, second talents need to spice things up more, the process of giving us an ability baseline and then talent-ing the extra features is just boring and makes the class lack lustre, save that stuff for artefacts and the like.

Spectral Sight is activatable like stealth, once deactivated by attacking or turning it off, it has a 30 second cd until it can be re-engaged.

Make felblade baseline, no reset or fury generation.

Give Immolation Aura the fury generation standard.

15 Blind Fury (Slight Tweak) Demonic Appetite (No Change) Demonic Smash (New)
25 Insatiable Hunger (NC) Demon Blades (NC) Burning Hatred (ST)
30 Trail of Ruin (ST) Fury of the Illidari (Returned) Fel Barrage (NC)
35 Soul Rending (NC) Desperate Instincts (NC) Nether walk (ST)
40 Momentum (ST) Nemesis (NC) Essence Break (NC)
45 Seduction (New) Master of the Glaive (NC) Fel Eruption (NC)
50 Shivara Form (New) Nethrazim Form (New) Demonic (ST)

Blind Fury: Eye Beam puts your fury to maximum and lasts 50% longer, it also follows your primary target.

Demonic Smash: Felblade now deals its damage to all enemies within 10ft of the target and knocks-back enemies with less health then the demon hunter, it also has a chance to reset cd when shear is used and generates 40 fury.

Burning Hatred: Immolation Aura is now an activatable passive, it does 50% less damage while on and causes all fury generating abilities to generate 15% less fury, it remains on until switched off.

Trail of Ruin: Dot lasts 8 seconds instead of 4 and reduces fury cost by 10

Fury of the Illidary: The artifact ability returns, Throws the your weapons in a whirlwind of energy, causing (7 * (38% + 38%)) Chaos damage over 3 sec to all nearby enemies.

Nether Walk: while nether walk is active you can not be affected by anything including things like stuns, mc, slows.

Momentum: fel rush increases damage by 15% for 6 seconds and does +100% damage. Momentums cd is reduced by 10 seconds and generates 40 fury.

Seduction: you have gained the abilities of a succubus, you can mind control the target for 15 seconds. Only works against humanoids. Gain a succubus tail.

Shivara form: When you enter metamorphosis you sprout 2 extra pairs of arms, all your auto attacks now slash all enemies within 10ft and you cast Fel barrage for the entire duration of your metamorhosis, your haste and crit increase by 20% you loose the bonuses and abilities of your normal Meta.

Nethrazim Form: When you enter demon form you sprout your wings and take to the sky, you fly (hover) around 30 ft off the ground but may move around as if you were on the ground (as a hovering character would move) and can not be targeted by melee or aoe effects, you may use Fel lance and throw glaive to generate fury and may spend it on an enhanced eye beam that cause you to strafe in a 15ft by 40 ft line (your character moves like a death knights breath of syndragosa attack)

Demonic: When chaos strike refunds fury reduce the cd on metamorphosis by 4 seconds.

Also after using eye beam or an Ally dies you activate demon form for 6 seconds.

Im currently not in alpha test (hence this not being posted there) but have watched many streamers who play havoc, and I hope even if this doesn’t fix the class by launch it at least provides food for thought for the devs going forward on what they could do.

2

I like the idea of the last row specializing in what type of demon you turn into, but there’s just 0 chance for the majority of the proposed changes to take place because they are just too powerful.

  1. First row

a) You just changed the wording a little bit, but that’s how it works currently, except for following the primary target. Following your target kind of defeats the idea of a “blind fury” now, doesn’t it?

I’d add some more %haste after finishing casting just so it can compete better with Demonic Appetite and Fel Blade later into the expansion.

b) Demonic Appetite is already plenty powerful, so it’s ok for it to remain like it is.

c)

You did just this with Fel Blade. I honestly lean more towards making First Blood baseline and leaving Fel Blade as it is, but it could also work if tweaked correctly.

Now there are two problems with your Demonic Smash talent: Fel Blade is useless without it. Like not even worth pressing useless, unless it does very good damage baseline.

The other problem is that if it starts doing AoE damage now, but it does very good damage baseline and generate Fury, it’s suddenly too powerful. Knock-back is not needed and in fact would be a nuisance instead.

  1. Second row

a) Insatiable Hunter absolutely needs a redesign. I was bouncing some ideas around with Xaedys and we’ve come up with a talent that would make Chaos Strike have 10% more chance for a refund of Fury as well as refund 10 more Fury when it does OR cost less Fury with the 10% more refund chance.

b) Demon Blades is OK as it is.

c) I 100% agree that the Fury generation of Immolation Aura should be baseline. It’s very insulting baiting us with it, but then making the main reason we even chose the talent to begin with still be tied to a talent.

We already have an effect that makes it last indefinitely as long as it does damage to an enemy in Torghast. It’s pretty OP because we get infinite Fury generation + a bit of damage.

I think that even with the 15% less Fury generation it would still be plenty OP. Immolation Aura damage is mostly irrelevant.

  1. Third row

a) Trail of Ruin is plenty strong already. It really doesn’t need even more power.

b) Fury of the Illidari wasn’t all that interesting before, so I don’t really see much merit in bringing it back. Also, hitting all enemies goes against Blizzard’s new (lame) philosophy for AoE damage.

c) Fel Barrage needs to hit more than 5 enemies. Make it at least 8 like other major AoE abilities because this is THE AoE talent for us.

  1. Fourth row

a) Soul Rending is OK. It is really powerful in BfA, so I was kind of expecting some kind of nerf. I just think they might consider not nerfing it too hard. Maybe we should keep 10% leech on Meta without it instead of the 20% we currently have.

b) Desperate instincts is trash. Making it auto use while incurring the cooldown is just stupid. The talent should be something along the lines of: Blur no longer grants additional dodge chance but grants double additional damage reduction instead (making it effectively 40% reduction, 5% more than current Blur).

c) Netherwalk is ok currently. It’s not a true immunity and it really shouldn’t be. 2min cooldown is really powerful and 3min cooldown in Shadowlands still makes it a very good talent. It would be way too powerful as a true immunity.

  1. Fifth row

The problem I have with this row is that First Blood needs to be made baseline (or something that takes its place on the ST rotation), so my thoughts are presented with this in mind.

a) Momentum is cool and all, but its movement requirement is inherently flawed on higher levels of content. There are some fights and/or environments you just can’t go zapping around. I like the idea of baking Fel Mastery into it, though.

b) Nemesis has to go, it really does. Nemesis is a boring, uninspired and uncreative talent. If there’s a fight with different types of enemies, you are gimping yourself by target switching even if your target dies.

You need to commit to a single target for a full minute, which on certain mythic fights will have your team wipe if they can’t count on you effectively switching targets. There’s a reason I don’t like Vendetta.

b) Essence Break is terrible. It feels like Demonic 0.2 instead of 2.0 because it tries to do the same thing, but it’s just soooo much weaker. We don’t need two windows where Chaos Strike and Blade Dance do more damage, where we need to overlap both of them.

Just redesign this trash talent and make it something worth pressing.

  1. Sixth row

We don’t really need to change anything here. Seduction also feels extremely weird for us and I don’t really like pet mechanics. Just leave it how it currently is on live.

  1. Seventh row

As I’ve said before, I really like the idea of making this row the demon row. The problem is that the proposed changes are just way too powerful.

It also makes the Demonic effect baseline, which I’ve been advocating for some time now. I wouldn’t go forward with the ally’s death effect though.

a) Shivara Form is stupidly OP for AoE. Casting Fel Barrage for 30s plus 6s every time we Eye Beam on top of making auto attacks AoE is just absurd.

b) Nethrazim Form is stupidly OP for PvP. You essentially turn into a raid boss against melee DPS and I can also see this breaking several mechanics in PvE. It’s pretty cool though.

c) So Demonic is just Cycle of Hatred then? Cycle of Hatred is already very boring and weak compared to its competition (First Blood, because Essence Break sucks) and now it’s even weaker when competing against the other demon forms.

Or is the 6s demon form after Eye Beam still part of this one specifically? If not, then I guess (current)Demonic is not baseline after all? If the 6s demon form is part of this talent specifically, then it’s also way too powerful for a single talent.

3

I get what your saying with blind fury, maybe your right and a haste buff after cast instead of following target would be better.

I like your insatiable hunger design

the idea behind burning hatred is that immolation aura generates no fury now, and reduces all other fury generating abilities by 15% while the ability is turned on. I worded it poorly

I disagree about the true immunity statement of nether walk, you are phased out of existence so you can’t interact with the game and the game can’t interact with you, all you can do during it is move, it should be a true damage immunity, its not op as pallies have had bubble for years, and they can still attack and heal while bubbled, all we get is a speed boost.

I really like the idea of more demonic abilities and this is like a slightly stronger version of the pet ability, instead of cc’ing like we already can do with prison, it mc’s for a very short duration.

with the sixth row, you either get the base demon form more often and have it trigger after eye beam or you can have a different form.

nethrazim is a better defensive move yes, but it should be putting out maybe 5% less damage then the increase from demonic (including extra procs of demon) but more damage then the base demon forms actual metamorphosis time, they could balance it in pop by possibly including extra damage from ranged sources.

Shivara is the pure damage form, the glass cannon, it is less vulnerable if you take the soul rending talent, however you get no extra health, no extra armour, no enhanced base abilities, you just get 30 seconds of barrage 20% haste and crit, and aoe auto attacks, this will have the highest burst damage of the 3 but be the most fragile of the 3.

and yes as said, you only trigger demon form for 6s after eye beam if you take the enhanced base form.

4

No brainer, its insulting this wasn’t done.

Would have to burn hp too 1-3% per second or something.

No just no.

It seems like the changes they are making to havoc are:

  1. reduce AE
  2. severly cripple surviviability
  3. cursory effort at changing “default” talent choices but they havent gone far enough.

I just want a fast gameplay mode rushing everywhere and having super speed, as long as they dont ruin that I am happy… I do like the AE too round everything and blow it up, target limit to 8 is gonna suck.

5

That’s a nerf on level with Concentrated Sigils. If you can’t keep your Eye Beam pointed at your target, you’ve got issues, the beam has significant width. I’d rather be able to control the direction I point it, thank you.

No uncontrollable knockbacks please. Knockbacks are questionable as a melee DPS to start with, we definitely don’t want them built into primary rotational buttons. Also, attaching a knockback to a gap closer seems really really counter-productive.

15% less fury? That’s guaranteed to be a net DPS loss.

Meh, never really saw why everyone loved FotI so much. Also collides heavily with Fel Barrage, you’ll have two 1m CD AoE abilities on the same tier. Definitely not happening.

Ew. Forcing me to choose between those 3? Hard pass, all 3 suck.

That seems…phenomenally overpowered. Meta would be a UDK-level AoE DPS cooldown.

Rain from Above needs to go die. I definitely don’t want that mechanic in PvE. Everything about this one feels gimmicky and really annoying to play around.

6

It still sounds like a very bad talent. Immolation Aura is not picked because of its damage, so not giving any Fury on top of reducing your overall Fury generation by 15% seems more like a nerf than anything. Immolation Aura’s damage is mediocre at best.

But Netherwalk IS a true damage immunity. We already have (had) plenty of survivability, so I don’t see why we need a true immunity (although I’d like it, of course). It just won’t happen on a balance perspective.

This is broken both on a good way and on a bad way. It will be extremely OP against melee and ground mechanics and it will straight up break the game in the sense that stuff just won’t work. I can already see it bugging bosses and despawning them or making other mobs evade forever.

This is just like absurdly OP. Passive auto attack cleave + Fel Barrage for its entire duration + crit + haste. Hell, Fel Barrage alone already makes it broken, the other effects are just the cherry on top.

Like I said before, I really like the 7th row being the ‘demon row’, it’s just that the proposed changes are waaaaaaaaay over the top.

I second that. And while we’re at it why not do the same for Mana Break, Mana Rift, Glimpse, Eye of Leotheras and Unending Hatred? They are completely useless talents that never get picked no matter the situation.

1 Like
7

I agree with many points, however these have not been “balanced” they are more to show flavour, I agree with you completely things would need a rework, for instance if immolation aura did more damage it would fix the qualms you had with it, thats something a dev could figure out.

I understand the phasing issue might occur with nethrazim, but if the game treats it merely as you are 30ft (further) away at all times at worst you will just have bosses running in circles on the spot figuring out how to close with you.

The Shivara ability is based off what a shiver does in hearth stone, so maybe it’s not feel garage but something with a similar look that does less damage to balance it.

I totally agree with you about all the pop mana abilities, they all need to be twice as good or just disappear.

if they want us to be “anti-mages” from data then we need to steal more mana per hit and do more damage per mana missing on activatables as everyones mana gen is so high it makes our effects useless.

my problem with nether walk is the fluff doesn’t match the gameplay, any decent pvper seeing you pop nether walk simply shackles you in place till its over making it a useless ability for survivability outside a raid or dungeon, it needs to be that nothing can effect you while you use it.

again this is post is about getting ideas out for the devs, id hope that people that review it assume that these would be balanced to all be fairly even options if they went live.

Id prefer to here opinions on does the flavour seem good, and do people have other “flavour” options on where the devs could take DH’s going forward?

8

While yours do seem really over powered I would killlllll for the last row to be 3 different forms based off the demon of your choice each with a different play style it fits the demon hunter aesthetic crazy well plus I loved the succubus talent and I wouldn’t say it’s op because we’re squish with no on demand heal so we’d be sitting ducks during it

9

I love Eye of Leotheras, I choose it 100% of the time in warmode, and use it arena. Im sure its quite useless in higher brackets but i find good use of it in lower brackets. If i can get a mongo boomkin, Spriest or warlock sometimes it wont even fall off of them before the CD is up. Theres been numerous times its been my highest damaging ability. But admittedly that isnt the case the higher up in the bracket you go.

In warmode however people almost never notice it on them. Its amazing for those pesky spellcasters that try and safespot while im fighting a group of mobs, just drop that on them and continue to eat my souls while they kill themselves.

10

Yeah, Eye is useless in higher brackets. You just need to stop casting harmful spells for 6s and it’s gone. It really never see any play above 1600s.

11

You know they put a big emphasis on keeping this momentum build, but why don’t they add a push back with our wings? That way we rush into them to continue the the rotation.