Hello there, thank you for clicking into my post. The intention of this post is to provide preliminary feedback on the Havoc tier bonus from the perspective of a long-term Havoc player as well as provide a few suggestions to follow up on the topic.
For those who just want to respond, the tl;dr is a request to change the tier set to buff Eye Beam damage as the two-piece bonus and bring back the Raddon’s Cascading Eyes effect (Eye Beam damage reduces the cooldown of Eye Beam) as the four-piece.
Now with that out of the way, let’s get into details. To start, Havoc this expansion has almost never pressed Blade Dance. There was a brief period of time in Castle Nathria where Havoc used Chaos Theory and thus had to press that button, and now First Blood is a viable selection as Havoc because of the Dancing with Fate buffs combined with the Frost Domination set. As it currently is tuned, the tier set would continue to allow Blade Dance to see significant use in Mythic Dungeon scenarios; however, when it comes to raid there are going to be much better alternatives, with those choices ultimately pushing Havoc away from any build that would desire Blade Dance on single target, and only encouraging use of the ability for very specific cleave scenarios outside of it.
Furthermore, with the decision to enable players to equip two legendary items, a theoretical “best” combo has already been found. Darkglare Boon and Agony Gaze - while playing Venthyr, of course - have a fairly powerful synergy, one that will push Venthyr to see a lot of play in single target and sustained cleave situations. Venthyr as a playstyle discourages the use of any spender that is not either Chaos Strike or Eye Beam, as the goal of that style of play is to refund as much Eye Beam as possible to extend your Sinful Brand debuff. Blade Dance will never be justified as a useable button for Venthyr, and as such, invalidates the tier set entirely in these scenarios.
Regarding Night Fae, Momentum Havoc would want to layer Essence Break and Momentum windows together on add burst which justifies the current two piece, but the four piece is practically useless as you wouldn’t use it outside of those small burst windows. First Blood Night Fae is only meant to be a Single Target spec and will be outshone by Venthyr given that the Night Fae Blazing Slaughter effect remains the way it is currently and is not reworked. Basically, Blade Dance is not something that will see much use at all for any Raid spec, which in turn means that the tier bonuses are currently buffing a niche, near-useless ability. To my knowledge, the only other tier set bonus that buffs a nearly-unusable ability right now is Restoration Shaman’s.
Given the return to spec-defining tier sets is likely meant to be met with a lot of fanfare, the knowledge that the current iteration of the tier is likely only useful some of the time feels pretty bad. That being said, there is another ability that could be considered “iconic” that many Havoc players also love to press: Eye Beam.
Every covenant and every current iteration of Havoc - Momentum Night Fae, First Blood Night Fae, and Cycle of Hatred Venthyr - press Eye Beam, and there is no circumstance they do not want to use it. While the impact for Momentum Fae is admittedly lower, the impact for First Blood Fae is much larger, as it gives them more Death Sweep casts per fight, an ability that is hitting extraordinarily hard on single target with Dancing with Fate and First Blood. Venthyr wants to cast as many Eye Beams as possible. Both of these covenants see a lot of play. If Eye Beam damage were increased by the tier’s two-piece bonus all playstyles benefit from it. That would leave the four-piece which I request be a throwback to one of the most beloved Havoc legendary effects of Legion; Raddon’s Cascading Eyes.
To refresh memories, the effect was as follows:
The remaining cooldown on Eye Beam is reduced by 0.3 sec each time it hits an enemy, up to a maximum of 20 sec.
If you remember back to Legion when this legendary made its debut there were clips of Lower Karazhan runs where Demon Hunters were quite literally spamming this ability back-to-back. And that was fun! Better, though, is that Night Fae Momentum benefits because they get more Furious Gaze uptime to potentially pair with Essence Breaks, Night Fae First Blood benefits because it grants them more Death Sweeps by virtue of being in Demonic more, Venthyr Havoc benefits because they want more casts in general, and the Havoc playerbase loved Raddon’s. Everyone wins!
In summary, please make the effects of Havoc’s tier 28 bonuses the following;
2 Pieces: Increase the damage of Eye Beam by X%.
4 Pieces: The remaining cooldown on Eye Beam is reduced by 0.Y sec each time it damages an enemy, up to a maximum of Z sec.
Thank you for any consideration of this change.