Just wanted to share a couple of ideas, and hopefully catch the eye of a blue. I believe that if a potential rework comes, and the spec is addressed properly, this should be the first thing they should look at.
This is a debate as old as Havoc. A lot of people do not enjoy this playstyle, and a lot of people do. Numbers were always given by parties, but they were never backed up by anything.
It is not my intention to go further into that debate, I’d like to simply stick to facts. I should mention that most of what I’m going to talk about applies only to the min-max situation of this game, or when playing the spec to it’s maximum theoretical potential.
This is World of Warcraft, and in pretty much every single PvE scenario you can think of, a burst oriented damage profile is king (timing varies, of course, but the shorter your cooldowns are and the stronger they are, the better the spec is, generally - look at Retribution Paladin and their 30s profile).
The “choice” of opting out of movement talents is not only a gameplay choice, it’s also a profile change one.
This is because both Cycle of Hatred and Shattered Destiny promote a playstyle that drops the usage of every single skill that isn’t either Blade Dance or Chaos Strike, so while using other talents together is certainly possible, more often that not is not optimal.
So in reality, your choice is not really a choice. You have the option to play your burst talents, which is the Inertia + Essence Break setup, or you either drop the movement talents entirely and go for a sustained DPS profile that is not optimal nor strong in the majority of the situations. And I personally see no purpose for a set of talents that are just worse no matter the encounter.
Whether this is intended by design, or whether it is simply a tuning issue or an oversight, I believe it can be handled in multiple ways.
Before getting into solutions, I’d like to mention the uniqueness of Havoc, that is movement as DPS, and a couple of facts around it.
- The gameplay profile involves using Vengeful Retreat every 20 seconds, and Fel Rush either once every 40 seconds, or multiple times in a row, potentially once every 8 seconds (provided an infinite proc chain of A Fire Inside), limited by Fel Rush charges, and whether the talent procs or not.
- The encounters are not designed around Havoc having to dash and move around. There’re a multitude of encounters - raids or dungeons - that either cause friction with Havoc movement, or in some extreme situations, prevent it entirely, causing either a delay on the usage of them, or not being able to use them entirely. Spread/stack mechanics, dodging stuff, zones in which you can’t move out of are all example of common mechanics used in encounters that cause friction with it.
- Moving around inherently puts you in more danger than the other melee specs are. This is a new set of skills that every Havoc player has to develop, spatial awareness.
- Havoc is the only spec in the game having to face this unique punishment.
- There’s no unique reward for executing it correctly in comparison to other specs that follow more ‘classic’ or ‘legacy’ rotations.
- There’s not a single system inside the spec to prevent/mitigate this unique punishment, it all relies on player skill, and more often than not, it’s not enough.
- The end result is that Havoc uniqueness is a system that only creates unique ways of punishment, but it doesn’t produce new rewards. In the situations in which Havoc cannot move freely, for a lot of people, this feels incredibly frustrating and unfair. Similar to how parry feels in general.
- Practically nobody will play the “mover” play style if “no mover” is remotely close in damage profile and throughput.
- And finally, the complexity of Havoc is increased massively by having to play this set of talents. The spec is completely barebones without this playstyle.
Having said all of that, I don’t disagree with “movement as DPS” being Havoc’s main identity, however, I believe the spec should accommodate and proportionate ways of mitigating the drawbacks, or either rewarding the player with unique stuff.
The designers / developers should decide whether they want “movement as DPS” to remain and be the core focus of Havoc or not. Trying to accommodate for mover and no mover has historically never been accomplished with the new Dragonflight talents, and the difference in profile and complexity will very likely be a thing if the baseline Havoc and CoH/SD are kept as is.
Stuff like hero talents are already showing the cracks: looking at Aldrachi Reaver, a hero talent that is night unplayable because of the massive cognitive load it adds to the “mover” talent set, and something that is “playable” with “no mover”, simply because the second play style has no complexity to speak of (beware, complexity doesn’t mean punishment).
So, a set of ideas:
1- Rework Havoc. Mover talents are baseline.
The complexity of the mover playstyle is reduced. Perhaps some mover talents like Initiative are removed.
The spec adds ways of mitigating the unique friction of the play style. For example, a 2 minute cooldown that prevents the next 2 Fel Rushes in the next 10 seconds from moving the Demon Hunter. Something that doesn’t remove movement from the rotation, but helps to limit the friction with encounter design.
This frees talent space. All the left talent branch can be merged into a single talent, moved to the first gate. This adds room for new talents that complement the playstyle, or add QoL to it.
Cycle of Hatred and Shattered of Destiny should probably be removed at this point and be replaced with stuff that complements the play style instead of creating friction with it.
2- Rework Havoc. Havoc no longer uses DPS as movement.
Probably the hardest solution. Rework Havoc entirely, remove Movement as DPS and think of a new resource that Havoc has to play around.
Perhaps making souls into Combo Points (rework them entirely, so they’re a reliable resource) and creating a rotation around them would be a solution?
Regardless, as I mentioned before, the spec is completely barebones and lacks any complexity or skill expression without the mover talent set, so I strongly believe if this solution were to be taken, something should need to be added to Havoc to add spice. I know some people enjoyed the BfA playstyle, but let’s be honest, no spec is in a healthy state pressing a button on cooldown and doing nothing else.
3- Give “no mover” a burst profile similar to “mover”.
One single talent comes to mind. Chaos Blades.
I don’t know why this talent hasn’t come back, but maybe it’s time it should.
If no mover is given a burst profile that at least is usable in some timings (Chaos Blades would be a 2 min burst profile) these set of talents would see play at least in some situations, which would add to build variety.
As long as Cycle of Hatred and Shattered of Destiny are the staple of “no mover”, this talent set will remain inferior in virtually any situation because of what I explained at the beginning of this thread - unless of course massively overtuned -, so I still believe these two talents should go and be replaced for new things.
So what are your thoughts?