New Covenant DH abilities must be a joke

Classes Rogue
1

Has anyone looked at the covenant abilities that are currently showing for DH in Shadowlands? I hate to jump overboard but giving DH an AOE reverse bloodlust or a rooting/damaging charge/shadowstep without LOS requirement just screams insanity. Maybe it feels more balanced than it sounds - curious to hear if anyone has any experience with it.

It feels like the guys at Blizzard who play DHs hated the idea that ranged classes might have a chance or that you could stun a DH and melee burst them down - problems solved…

Venthyr: DH gets AOE reverse bloodlust that does massive Shadow damage over 8 seconds. Rogue gets a move that does less damage, requires stealth and uses 50 energy…

Demon Hunter
Sinful Brand: Brand an enemy with the mark of the Venthyr, reducing their melee and casting speeds by 30% and inflicting (400% of Attack power) Shadow damage over 8 sec. Activating Metamorphosis applies Sinful Brand to all nearby enemies.
30 yd range, Instant Cast, 1 min cooldown.

Rogue
Slaughter: Slaughter the target, causing (95.472% of Attack power) Physical damage. The target’s anima mixes with your lethal poison, coating your weapons for the next 5 minutes. Slaughter Poison deals Shadow damage over time and steals 15% of healing done to the target. This also awards 2 combo points.
50 Energy. Melee Range. Instant. Requires Stealth

Fae: Demon Hunter gets a charge that damages, roots and then subsequently allows for Shadowstep with no LOS. Rogue gets some crap 1 min DoT that can only be used on targets under 35% health.

Demon Hunter
The Hunt: Charge to an enemy, inflicting (250% of Attack power) Nature damage and rooting them in place for 3 sec. The target is marked for 1 min, increasing your Fury from Demon’s Bite and Shear against them by 50%. You may reactivate The Hunt every 30 seconds to teleport behind the marked target and ignoring line of sight.
30 yd range, 1 sec cast, 3 min cooldown.

Rogue
Sepsis: Finishing move that poisons a weakened foe’s blood, dealing (12.53% of Attack power) Nature damage over 1 min. Can only be used on targets under 35% health. Sepsis generates 5 Combo Points and 25 Energy over 5 sec if it does not last its full duration.

Kyrian Covenant: Demon Hunter gets ranged land mine, Rogue gets another finisher (might be useful but underwhelming vs. some of the other covenant abilities)

Demon Hunter
Elysian Decree: Place a Kyrian Sigil at the target location that activates after 2 sec. Detonates to deal (120% of Attack power) Arcane damage and shatter up to 3 Lesser Soul Fragments from enemies affected by the sigil.
30 yd range, Instant Cast, 1 min cooldown.

Rogue
Echoing Reprimand: Deal (60% of Attack power) Arcane damage to an enemy, extracting their anima to Animacharge a combo point. Damaging finishing moves that consume the same number of your combo points as your Animacharge deal damage as if they consume 7 combo points. Awards 3 combo point.
30 Energy. Melee Range. Instant. 45 sec cooldown.

Necrolord: Don’t know Demon Hunter ability yet

7 Likes
2

“Hero class.”

3 Likes
3

We didn’t give you gouge, but we did give DH better versions of your iconic abilities! - Blizzard

8 Likes
4

In all fairness.
We’ve only seen nerfs in our abilities.

5

also i believe its a 3 minute cooldown

6

Realistically your class should just be deleted, it at no point ever has had a single new game mechanic. Demon hunter is easily the least imaginative flop in wow class designs ever, it has no redeeming qualities and should never have been made. The guild name you have harkens back to the former druid ability thar ironically has more depth and creativity than the entire demon hunter class has ever had.

Also, to the OP, thank you for illuminating this discovery,you just saved me another 60 bucks on the price of shadow lands,I can see now blizzard has not yet learned anything, maybe 10.0 will fix it?

10 Likes
7

This sounds like a personal problem lol

8

dhs are hardly alone in that boat now. windwalkers have little thats unique, enhancement and feral are not much better.

its not a dh problem, its a game wide problem of many melee specs feeling too similar besides visuals

3 Likes
9

Devils advocate here.

Venthyr
The first DH ability you have a problem with basically has a 3-4 minute cooldown because it relies on you popping meta at the same time, unless testing shows that meta from something like eyebeam counts, this complaint is pretty pre-mature for such a long cooldown. Also a 30% debuff for 8 seconds aoe damage? That sounds like a tank or support dps cooldown for large pulls more than anything offensive.

Compared to the rogue ability, which doesn’t appear to have a cool down, and gives us an additional “deadly poison+wound poison” of unknown strength, that might be great for FoK dotting, raid boss dps, etc.

Fae
Pretty clearly a pvp gap closer ability that emphasizes that mobility is the strength of the DH. It lasts 1 minute with a 30sec chill time, so they essentially get 3 teleports on a 3 min cd. Thats not exactly gamebreaking.

Compared to the rogue ability, where you omitted that it does ~380% AP X CP over time. Which is a huge execute ability for pvp. Like, very good. Drain Soul warlock execute days good.

Kyrian
DH ability for ranged aoe on a 1 min cd. Pretty generic.

Compared to the rogue, which gets not just a semi-permanent combo point, but has it’s 4/5 point finishers count as 7 point finishers. Uh, yeah. That could be amazing. What does a 7pt Kidney Shot look like? 7pt Evis? And we can do that repeatedly for the duration? lol.

Necrolord rogue ability is out now.

Unclear how the rogue ability works. It sounds like a weak dot that you move around and make into a big dot, but it’s unclear to me. This one sounds like a pain in the — but who knows until we see some gameplay.

2 Likes
10

Well they basically took holy power mashed the rogue class and the paladin class together and a bad version of blink and that’s the monk class. Then blizzard thought, lets just make every class a monk with a different magic theme, and 6 years later here we are.

It’s great! ‘sarcasm’

1 Like
11

necrolord ability sounds like Kingsbane, didn’t want to give it to us baseline, or as a talent so they locked it behind a covenant

2 Likes
12

That’s not how that ability works. When you use it, you gain a buff with the number 2, 3, or 4 on it. When you next use a finisher with exactly that number of combo points, the buff is consumed and the finisher deals damage scaled to 7 combo points. There’s no duration to it, and nothing about it is a “semi-permanent combo point”. Also, while I don’t have alpha to confirm this, the ability specifically notes damage, so Kidney Shot shouldn’t be affected.

3 Likes
13

bad design.

14

The Kyrian ability was previously showed off on youtube providing a semi-permanent combo point. Perhaps it’s changed.

1 Like
15

My source is this bug report:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/feedback-rogue-class-changes/490696/6?u=xaedys-thrall

1 Like
16

I just tested this out for you. It really only affects damaging finishing moves, so that’s Eviscerate, Shadow Vault, Secret Technique and Rupture.

Slice and Dice and Kidney Shot are unaffected by the buff.

1 Like