A long time ago in an Azeroth far, far away Demon Hunters were the uncrowned kings of melee cleave. We had options we could choose from when it came to what talents to take to make a style that would suit our needs. Then everything changed when Devs attacked.
This is going to be a post about where I think Blizzard went wrong with Demon Hunters, and my own personal opinions on what direction I think they should go to fix it. To understand what direction I think we should head, let’s take a look back to where we’ve been.
LEGION
These times will be missed if you were a Demon Hunter main. The Legion artifact weapon ability, Fury of the Illidari, not being on global cooldown led to incredible AoE burst when used in tandem with Eye Beam. This was further amplified if you were lucky enough to acquire the Raddon’s Cascading Eyes legendary early on in the expansion. If that was not enough you would have Demonic and Soul Rending which would make you an unkillable machine for the duration it was active. Overall, it felt like all of your abilities had so much synergy that it made playing the class feel incredibly fluid. Legion also allowed us many other unique and interesting ways to play around with our talents. We had talents builds revolving around Bloodlet ( which put a stacking bleed onto an enemy when you used Throw Glaive) and Master of the Glaive which led to interesting solutions to certain situations in PvP. Of course these were not always the most “optimal” builds but they let you have your own class identity. Whether it be for AoE, single target, or a ranged throw glaive build you had the option to spec for it without if feeling weak. Of course there were issues with the talents during this time period too. The entire defensive row of talents felt incredibly lackluster to the point where you had to choose Soul Rending. It also felt that talents were just scattered into random rows without any thought put behind it. This was a great expansion if you got the legendaries you wanted early on.
BATTLE FOR AZEROTH
Let me preface this by saying I absolutely hated this expansion. There was too much going on behind the scenes with the Azerite traits and having to optimize them to an ungodly extent to even feel viable. To top if off, whoever decided that there should be a cost to be able to reset your azerite traits made the start of this expansion unbearable for me.
Right off the bat, they added Demon Reborn as a baseline function of Metamorphosis which led to many high burst situations with double Eye Beam. This was a great change because it made our opener in many encounters give us ungodly amount of cleave damage. During this time, they reworked Fel Barrage into a minute long cooldown that did massive AoE. This allowed us to still reign over most, if not all, other classes when it came to (burst) AoE damage. These changes numbed the pain of losing Fury of the Illidari to some extent, but Blizzard has a special way to inflict pain unto their victims. They took the RNG that we had during Legion looking for legendaries and cranked it up to 10,000% while we grinded out the perfect set of Azerite traits for every situation. (Sure, many people didn’t do this because they are extremely casual, or they don’t really care about optimizing their character to this extent. Personally, I don’t fault anyone who just plays the game to enjoy what’s in front of them, but these people are also being inadvertently punished through these systems.) I wish I didn’t have to complain about this, but since it was such a integral part of the early to mid stages of this expansion it feels like I’d be unable to pass by without doing so. Honestly, I just think it felt bad as a player when you had two people pressing the exact same buttons, and one player was just drastically behind in dps because of a trait you’d find on a piece of gear. There is no real interaction that you can find in that sort of mechanic.
SHADOWLANDS
I like the idea of Covenants, but they don’t work for us.
Venthyr would work if Demonic was baseline and the ability would proc off of Demonic being activated, otherwise it feels lackluster in both single target and AoE situations.
Necrolord has the coolest concept in my opinion, but I don’t think it should have gone past being a concept. There is just no place in the game where this sort of ability can shine. Perhaps, if it allowed you to rip out an inner demon from the target that was stationary so you could do remote damage to them it could be a niche/viable option. I haven’t put much thought into this covenant since the launch because the abilities just have no cohesion with the Demon Hunter class.
Kyrian is by far the best when it comes to Vengeance Demon Hunter, while still providing good AoE for Havoc although it does feel a bit clunky and doesn’t really fit the identity of Havoc DH at all. I think this is one of the two covenants that hit the mark, but unfortunately it didn’t hit the mark for both specs.
Night Fae is the covenant you go if you want to PvP. If you want to feel like you aren’t hitting somebody with a wet noodle you go this spec. If you want to be able to feel like you do damage you go this spec to see a big number.
Too bad you won’t be able to push any high M+ keys unless you have a dedicated group willing to do two things. 1) Take a melee with affixes that make you useless. 2) Take a Havoc DH when there are melee classes that do our job better right now.
Lastly, our legendaries suck, and unless you are doing early raiding you won’t be able to get any of the less sucky ones. Erratic Fel Core is a 30% reduced CD on Fel Rush so that’s ok I guess. Chaos Theory and Collective Anguish are locked behind raiding which isn’t a big deal, but when it comes to player power I personally had arbitrary walls like this. I understand locking the best loot in the game behind raiding, but when things directly impact the way a player plays or uses his abilities I don’t think locking those away from us is the best option Blizzard has.
Our talent tree feels the worst it ever has to me.
Row 1) They should just remove Demonic Appetite at this point. It doesn’t feel as good as getting Felblade resets, nor does it give you on demand fury generation like Blind Fury does.
Row 2) I actually refuse to take Demon Blades because it would remove another button from my bar even if it’s a better choice at times.
Row 3) As is, Unbound Chaos may be the worst talent I’ve ever seen in the Demon Hunter tree. If they reverted it back to an uncapped AoE with a demon slamming into enemies and took away the need to use Immolation Aura to activate it I could see it possibly being a competitive talent. Glaive Tempest is a nice addition.
Row 4) I think this is the row that’s closest to balanced between the choices. Although, I still can’t see a reason to take anything over Soul Rending even after the nerfs to it. If they shortened the CD on Netherwalk to 2 minutes I could see it being picked in PvP, especially with how much shorter and bursty the current PvP environment is at the moment.
Row 5) You have First Blood and Cycle of Hatred in this row. Both of these talents pair up with what I think are our two best legendaries at the moment. So it’s a choice between AoE and single target. If I had any complaints to make it would be about how irrelevant Essence Break will be for the entire expansion because it was put on this row.
Row 7) Make Demonic baseline. It’s the bread and butter of our spec and class. Open up this slot for a fun new ability. I want to be able to use Fel Barrage again, but as long as it is in the same row as Demonic I know I won’t be able to.
Unfortunately, I don’t see a place in the current WoW landscape where we are needed. If a raid needs Chaos Brand for the 5% magic damage they’ll just take a Vengeance DH to tank. If they need a melee DPS I can’t think of any who have it worse than us aside from Survival Hunters. We have nothing we excel at anymore, we’ve lost our class identity, and I feel like I’m playing league of legends with how few buttons I need to press.
Hopefully, we can see some sort of response in the near future that will address the concerns that we have about our class.
still doing on the forums? 