It is really simple to help dh out here blizz, just make first blood baseline and replace with bloodlet. It is easier than coming up with those new legendaries you made.
10 Likes
how about blade dance is kept as an aoe ability, first blood is removed, and a new high-damage low cd ST ability that deals chaos damage is introduced to the baseline rotation.
9 Likes
I’d rather just see first blood baseline and then bloodlet but revert glaive tempest to no cd aoe spender.
9 Likes
Eh I’m okay with blade dance being relegated to the aoe niche.
Personally I think having something like a “fel bolt” (15 yd range instant cast aoe ability that deals chaos damage with a short cd) as a baseline ability makes more sense where ST is concerned.
I’ve always liked first blood being baseline because it’s what we’ve known for an entire expansion and we’re frankly desperate for that short cd high damage ability. I just think that ability should be something entirely new.
6 Likes
This is just my opinion and long, but in regards to Blade Dance I believe there are two core issues right now, as evident by the current state of BD on live.
The first is that we only have two core Fury spenders: Chaos Strike and Blade Dance. If you take these abilities in a bubble without any other powers, it’s clear that CS is meant to be a single target spender, and BD is meant to be an aoe spender.
So the first issue, as evident by the current state of BD on live, is that BD isn’t worth pressing due to the cost to damage ratio on aoe fights where it’s intended to be used. Players have also tested and found that even with FB and ToR, it’s still underperforming all of the other choices in those two respective rows.
This means that one, at a very basic level Blade Dance is under performing at it’s intended role, and two, that even with talents it’s not competitive with the other choices we’ve been given in the respective talent rows.
Now we’ve been requesting First Blood becoming baseline because it directly affects the fury to damage ratio of the ability as well as makes it useable in single target. We believed this would fix all of our problems. However, we’ve now seen that Blade Dance with both talents is still not competing with the other talent choices in those rows.
I don’t believe the correct course of action is to nerf everything else in those rows but to rather fix Blade Dance to function properly in it’s intended role.
So the first immediate change is the Fury reduction from First Blood becomes a baseline effect of the ability. It doesn’t matter if it’s just baseline or a new rank, but the Fury cost must be reduced.
The second immediate change is an improvement to the level 30 aoe talent row. UBC and Glaive Tempest are both new aoe abilities given in this row which means that ToR must provide a competitive alternative to two new abilities. This is because ToR has to be balanced against the new baseline BD + UBC, and the new baseline BD + GT. So whatever that ToR slot becomes needs to be buffed with those two situations in mind.
The third immediate change is addressing First Blood, but it needs to be addressed in the context of the other two talents on the row: Cycle of Hatred and Essence Break.
Since we’ve now identified that BD should be a core rotation ability, Cycle of Hatred needs to address both CS and BD. This means that Cycle needs to be changed to a Fury spent model to support both core abilities, or it needs to be expanded to provide a CD reduction when CS is used and a second CD reduction when BD is used.
Next is Essence Break which is already boosting our two core rotational Fury Spenders. In the context of Blade Dance having a baseline fury reduction I don’t believe EB needs any additional changes other than the duration interplay between EB and Momentum being aligned.
Which now just brings us to First Blood. The first thing we must look at it is how Cycle and Essence Break function on the macro level of the class. Cycle is clearly boosting the Demonic play style, while EB can be used effectively with Momentum. This trickles down into the overall feeling of the class. Cycle is reducing Eye Beam which puts you into Demon more, which improves CS and BD, which then repeats the cycle. It’s very clean. EB has a higher skill ceiling due to lining it up with Momentum burst, but it’s also a somewhat clean implementation. If anything the Momentum window should better align with the EB window from a duration standpoint, but that’s another discussion.
So taking all of this in mind, I believe First Blood and ToR need some changes. The first change would be that the ToR dot and the single target damage increase of FB be combined into a single talent on the level 40 row. The second change would be changing ToR. Maybe this talent changes BD to have charges and gives it a cooldown reduction effect on a crit. I believe some kind of charge mechanic/cd reduction effect in this row is required to make it competitive against UBC and GT, but I’m sure someone has a better idea.
The short of it is that BD sucks right now. FB makes it better. Not enough, but better. I don’t necessarily think it should be replaced with Bloodlet, but if that gets us FB baseline then I’m down with that change.
12 Likes
It would be nice if that ability also had something to do with fel in it’s animation as well. Dh’s are the most unique class in the game, but only two of our abilities actually use fel.
8 Likes
Make first blood baseline? Yes please.
And also, immo aura needs to be chaos damage instead of fire.
10 Likes
On the contrary, First blood should be removed from the game. (It rewards bad gameplay in pvp.) You just spam it. And they should redesign dance by giving back the dodge mechanic, as well as moving our Mortal strike in the pvp talents to Blade dance.
1 Like
How does adding a button to a rotation make it reward bad game play? Without firstblood, you have demon’s blade and chaos strike for your core rotation. Giving us a 3rd option doesn’t reward bad game play.
7 Likes
Ngl, I’d rather have Felblade baseline.
2 Likes
Because spamming blade dance with a dodge is why it got removed, it should of never been part of the rotation.
Instead, have blade dance as a situational ability that is used skillfully.
And give DH Dark Slash baseline in its place, or another ability, do you see how first blood is bad design? First blood is tuned so that in order for it to exist, blade dance dodge can’t it seems. Remove it, make Dance situational and skillfull with the dodge mechanic, give dark slash baseline (Essence break as an upgrade to it) Ect. And you’ll have an actual class that manages a resource.
1 Like
It was more the massive amounts of haste that we got from furious gaze that broke it with dodge than First Blood. If we didn’t have First Blood, but still had over 100% haste the dodge would still be broken in pvp.
6 Likes
Not going to quote your entire thing, but upon reading it 3 times, it seems like your argument is “I don’t like it, therefore it shouldn’t exist because reasons.”
The dodge can exist, but doesn’t now because of the wpvp whiners, which was the only place where havoc was really complained about. And replacing first blood baseline with essence break (dark slash) essentially does the same thing, except on a 20 second cooldown instead of an 8 second cooldown.
Sounds worse to me.
Which still left Havoc very blah in pvp. Decent in casual and world pvp, but still so bad that before 9.0 there were, what, 3 havoc demon hunters in all of the top 250 players? Havoc was the least-represented spec in top pvp because it was so easy to counter.
8 Likes
The only people losing to DH were awful at pvp and stunning into blade dance. It took almost zero awareness to realize blade dance didnt have a 0 second CD.
Now you can have zero awareness and dunk on havoc. Blade dance was fine and should have been left alone for the opportunity of skullful play.
It was bad tuning and design that had it being used every 4-6 seconds as a core part of the rotation, and with the way shadowlands is looking we may just not use blade dance at all anymore:)
3 Likes
You sound very out of touch with competitive pvp if you think it was only world pvp, or duels that people complained about it in. Infact, it was mainly low-mid rated arenas where it was complained about. Lol. Its not about being worse or better its about having a more skillfull, indepth class that can have outplay potential, and some depth to gameplay.
make first blood baseline
11 Likes
A wonder, then, why you’re arguing for the dodge aspect of blade dance, rather than simply having a defensive ability with a dodge
6 Likes
Agree. We have Blur, it’s just not creative enough. What if in addition to a DR effect, Blur gave a 15% chance to dodge the next 3 attacks on a 15s cooldown, but each time you’re attacked added 1% and 1s to the cooldown up to a maximum of say 50/50. Then items and passives and stuff could be things like double stacks, max stacks, more dodge charges etc.
How about activating blur gives blade dance a 100% chance to dodge? Or maybe 100% for blur’s duration? IMO, interactions like these two examples scream Demon Hunter. Another one could be tying Bloodlet to Vengeful Retreat. For the duration of the snare after VR, you’ve got the target where you want them and your next throw glaive causes them to bleed out. Anyway, just tossing out ideas for fun.
First blood baseline yo! Many things should be baseline to make this class operate without borrowed powers, this is the first and easiest step!
5 Likes
Eh, I’d rather we have an ability outside of blur on a short cd like a rogue’s feint.
Gives us a 100% chance to dodge for 1 second. Maybe even generates a little fury for us when we dodge (reminiscent of artifact trait deceiver’s fury)
5 Likes