Reasonable Shadowlands Class Changes, PT 2

Classes Demon Hunter
1

After lengthy conversations in the first thread, I’ve had a lot of changes in thinking as to what would be considered reasonable changes that could be made to our class before shadowlands.

Of course, having first blood and demonic being made baseline are, in my opinion, two of the most important revisions we could ask for.

What started a very long conversation was around my third and obvious point…

Our class doesn’t have a baseline engaging, dynamic element to our rotation. While Demonic being baseline does add a degree of synergy to our rotation (eye beam buffs blade dance and chaos strike), it doesn’t change anything about our rotation. We have a burst window, but it doesn’t change anything about the buttons we’re pressing. We still blade dance off cd and press chaos strike/demon’s bite otherwise.

A lot of people have their own ideas on solutions to this problem, but in my opinion, they’re far too “out there”, so to speak. We all have our wishlists, but as the point of the thread is to talk about changes we could actually see blizzard implementing, I want to change my way of thinking.

For starters, look at our base toolkit (this assumes we get first blood and demonic baseline)

We have:

  1. Demon’s Bite. It generates fury. That’s it.
  2. Chaos Strike. Basic spender. Has a 40% chance to refund fury. I very much miss the crit vs 40% modifier, but at least it has something.
  3. Blade Dance - Our basic short-term cd nuke. In meta, it gives a 100% dodge buff. Personally, I think this is broken design. I don’t believe a core offensive rotational ability should have such a powerful defensive modifier. I would much rather we were given a short-cd defensive ability we can actively cast that gives 100% dodge. Keep in mind this allows us to have that niche 100% dodge function in groups, while also not tying it to an offensive ability. It would also greatly increase our skill cap in arenas. Keep in mind that if you think momentum should not be tied to movement, your rationality is “offense should not be baked into utility”. I’m applying that same exact logic - “Defense should not be baked into offense”
  4. Eye Beam - our longer cd nuke. It grants demonic. There are talents that can enhance it.
  5. Immolation aura - moderate cd aoe ability that grants a small amount of fury. Talent can enhance it.

When I look at the above, I notice two things:

  1. Demon’s bite is a mechanically very boring ability.
  2. Blade dance has a defensive modifier. It is our primary offensive short-cd nuke.

With this in mind, these are the two abilities I believe need to be modified to shake up our offensive rotation in an engaging way.

Doesn’t get much more simple than to look at our base toolkit and identify problems.

Blade dance, I think, is fairly easy to fix. Make our auto attacks have a chance to reset its cooldown.
Solves our issue of not having a baseline proc.
Also solves what a lot of demon hunters are really sad about - only getting one blade dance in a demonic window. Blade dance, being our primary short-term cd nuke, deserves an offensive (not defensive) modifier. If there isn’t a 100% dodge baked in, there would be nothing wrong with its cd resetting from a proc.

As for demon’s bite, there’s really any number of modifiers that could be applied to it. Some examples would be:

  1. Applies a stacking buff to ourselves, enchanting a secondary stat
  2. Applies a stacking dot to the target
  3. Chance to proc a buff which causes us to passively generate fury
    And so many more possibilities. Those are just a few examples. Then think about momentum. Imagine if momentum didn’t require fel rush, but instead required that we cast demon’s bite 2x in a row. Doesn’t it make sense that we’re conceptually already building momentum by casting demon’s bite and generating fury? Momentum as a talent simply incorporates this rationality.

Of course, this might make a person wonder “well, what if we talent into demon blades?”

Answer - the talent shouldn’t exist. Our base toolkit is already so boring. Why would we have a talent that takes away demon’s bite? Instead, make demon’s bite not terribly boring, then either remove DB entirely, or bake it into a baseline passive, just not nearly as strong.

Tl;dr

  1. First blood baseline
  2. Demonic Baseline
  3. Auto-attacks have a chance to proc cooldown reset of blade dance
  4. 100% dodge effect of blade dance is removed, replaced by an active defensive ability (similar to a rogue’s feint) with a short cooldown, which gives 100% chance to dodge.
  5. Demon’s bite is given a modifier effect. Demon blades is removed entirely, or baked into a baseline passive ability with a much weaker effect.

Not only are these simple changes, they adhere to class fantasy, they work with a core toolkit, and they fix the broken part of blade dance.

3 Likes
2

Yes please. And it’d also be nice to get Furious Gaze and Chaotic Transformation back in some way, especially with the massive nerfs we’ve received in other areas.

No thanks. Adding rng procs - ie random button presses - doesn’t make a class more fun, it makes its damage less predictable, and therefore, less desirable. See also: outlaw, enhance, frost dk, and a couple of others. Random procs ≠ more fun. It’s one of the many reasons I switched mains from outlaw to havoc after 14 years. (Granted, there were many other reasons…)

We already have 2 good defensive cool downs, and IMO, we don’t really need a third. I would say revert the 100% nerf for pve only.

Honestly, I don’t know why this is needed. A lot of generic resource generators across classes don’t have an added affect. They already do 2 things: deal damage, regenerate resource. Some occasionally have a proc or something else, but it’s not really needed. As for Demon Blades… This has to be one of the most boring talents in the entire game. It could be a 30% damage increase over Bite and I still wouldn’t use it. It takes a button away from our rotation (which many complain is already pretty short on keys), and the energy regen is sporadic and leaves a lot of empty gcds. No thank you.

3

Well, not really. The proc chance just leads to us pressing our primary damaging ability more often. Less predictable would be something like one of three abilities might get proc’d, and we wouldn’t know which one. You want to press blade dance as often as you possibly can. Giving it the ability to proc simply increases the amount of times you can press it. In other words, it’s a cooldown reduction. This offers a more engaging element, because it’s reactionary. Plus, you get used to it pretty quickly. And, again, it would fix one of the most fundamental issues of demonic as it currently stands - us only being able to land one blade dance in the demonic window.

What’s not desirable about our baseline is how simple and boring it is. A proc mechanic serves to keep us engaged.

Well, not really. We have blur, which is fine. But darkness is more of a niche raid aoe defensive. Then, we’d have to talent into netherwalk if we were to take it.
The primary purpose is for us to retain the dodge mechanic, but to take it out of blade dance. A defensive modifier has no place in an offensive rotation ability, just as momentum should not be tied to fel rush. Our skill cap would be greatly heightened by having a feint-like ability in our rotation. Predicting things like kidney shots or leg sweep stubs or just mitigating damage from a powerful ability are great plays.

Well, it’s not really needed, but the consideration is all those other classes who have those resource generator abilities have multiple other engaging elements of their rotation, so they don’t necessarily need their generator to have any special effects.
In our case, we have nothing. We have nothing dynamic or engaging about our baseline rotation. Because of that, I targeted the two abilities that, in my opinion, are eligible for enhancement. Demon’s bite is one of them

4

Isn’t chaotic transformation baseline now with the upgraded rank of meta? Like level 52 or 54 as I recall?

1 Like
5

Yes. CT is a rank-up perk in SL already

6

Haugs - You might want to update your OP with that info

7

Why? CT being baked into a 4 min offensive cd doesn’t really have anything to do with my OP

8

I pretty much agree with points 1 to 4, but I’m not really a fan of #5. I don’t know if adding a modifier to our generator is the right call and I like that Demon Blades is an option.

I also think you should add to your OP that Meta needs to go down to 3min. Every expansion we have some bs borrowed power mechanic that lowers it cooldown to 3min, so just freaking do it already Blizz!! A 4min cooldown is absolutely horrible and it’s not even powerful enough to warrant it.

9

You originally had the loss of the Chaotic Transformation azerite trait as a loss but it’s actually now built in.

It looks like you edited that out so good to go

10

? Must be thinking of someone else’s thread. I don’t think I’ve ever discussed CT being baked into meta (I have no edits to my OP)

It’s up in the air for me, but I just think it needs something to spice it up a little.
Us getting a baseline proc is a great start, but we still lack any sort of active buff/debuff maintenance. We don’t have a baseline dot/debuff we apply, nor do we have a buff we can actively manage on ourselves. I think having one of those two will then give our baseline a comparable amount of interaction.

With what we have in our base toolkit, I think it’s either on demon’s bite or chaos strike to add this last bit of depth to our rotation. CS at least has the fury refund, while demon’s bite has nothing, which is why I honed in on demon’s bite.

I also have momentum in the back of my mind. I think demon’s bite is the most reasonable ability to proc it. Pressing DB 2-3 times in a row procs momentum (if talented). If momentum is designed this way, DB can’t exist. I understand I’m taking some logical leaps here, but that was my methodology.

11

I would like to weigh in here. I believe the real problem with our class is that we only have 1 dps spec to play. IMO they really should come up with a 3rd spec that is 100% high end skill based. The only problem is how much more % wise should it do?

I’ve been playing this game since it released, I’ve played all melee classes and specs. Some over the years have had builds that required a lot of skill with proper time to pull off. If you did you were rewarded with amazing damage numbers and if you miss timed it or missed a proc you were playing hell to catch up. I used to love those types of builds, mainly because I am a very competitive person. However I was unlucky and became disabled a few years back and no longer have the ability to play those kind of builds.

I started playing the DH because well the rotation was simple, practically the same for ST and AOE. I started playing the DH when Antorus was released and I have really spent most of my time playing with the Demonic then and since BFA playing DA/IMMO. It is really simplistic and with the use of macros I have been able to perform really well and even be competitive in Mythic.

TBH I enjoy the game, and I absolutely love the current iteration of DH. I do agree some things need to be address but at the same time I don’t think we need to be gutted. If we had a “demonic” spec and a “momentum” spec and let say MOMO was 5-7-10% ahead if it was played perfect. I would be ok with that if I could still be viable with what we have now.

I agree that I don’t like a dps ability be tied to our movement, sadly as much as I love the dodge baked into blade dance and I do abuse it as much as I can now. I agree that a defensive ability should not be tied into an offensive one.

12

I understand what you’re going for here, but blizzard isn’t going to create a third spec for the sake of it being more difficult than another spec.

Mages have fire, frost, arcane. Makes sense.

DH’s would have… tank, dps, harder dps?
Doesn’t really work that way.

It’s possible to accomplish what you’re asking for via talents within a spec, rather than designing a new spec entirely.

13

looking at all the other classes out there they don’t really fit 2 viable builds within a single spec at the same time. It seems balancing something to that effect would be rather difficult which is what is causing all the drama about Havac atm. Some of us like and prefer a more passive and dumbed down spec that is still fairly viable. While others want a pure skill-based spec that has to make a choice between ST and AOE. We truly can’t have both in one spec I believe.