Third Spec - Ranged - Glaive Thrower

Classes Demon Hunter
1

Yes yes yes, I understand there have been countless threads about possibilities for a third spec for DHs. And yes, I understand there have been a ton of threads about making DHs ranged for the third spec - what with us being a warlock or having ranged abilities etc.

I suggest a much more straightforward approach. Our third spec is a ranged DPS glaive thrower. All weapon choices remain the same - we will still be using one-handed swords, axes, and warglaives. Except now, our auto-attack will turn into an auto-throw, and the default attack range is changed. Our thrown weapon will simply be our MH weapon. Abilities will be a combination of magical and ranged abilities.

This can also be used as a template for other classes to use as a ranged spec, since we have a lack of ranged classes. Troll headhunters and axethrowers come to mind.

3 Likes
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Bows, so I can use Thori’dal.

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I honestly don’t understand how rabid some of y’all are for a third spec. Let’s say they implement this third spec, and you fall in love with it. But Blizzard, as they so often do, doesn’t tune it well, and the spec sits considerably behind Havoc. You now have a choice of playing the spec you love and doing crap DPS, or playing the top spec and sacrificing enjoyment for performance.

This almost always happens for classes with more than one DPS spec. If you just really enjoy Arms, well, tough, because Fury performs substantially better. If you just really enjoy Demonology, well, tough, because it can’t hold a candle to Destro right now. If you just really enjoy Arcane or Frost, sucks to be you, because it’s Fire or Bust right now. Same for Unholy, Subtlety, Survival, Enhancement, and probably a few others as well.

One of the benefits of having a single DPS spec is you’re substantially less likely to be asked to change classes than you are to change specs, especially this late into the expansion. Windwalker is the lowest logging of the top specs for each class, by a substantial margin (it’s behind all but 4 specs), and yet there were more than twice as many Windwalker logs as Arms logs during the last 2 weeks of Palace, despite Arms averaging a full 10% more DPS at the 75% percentile than Windwalker. Windwalkers are definitely struggling, and they have less than a sixth the parses as havoc DHs, but they see substantially less press to change classes than a mage or warrior or warlock etc sees to change to the highest spec for their class.

5 Likes
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I like the idea of a ranged spec, but I struggle with the idea of a glaive thrower. They already implemented many D3 class abilities into WoW (eg Paladin spinning hammers), and I see it as a win for demon hunters. Right now there are zero dual wield range weapon specs, a la D3 demon hunters. I would love to see demon hunters get dual wield crossbows. PEW PEW… PEW PEW PEWWWW

2 Likes
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How would you dual range bows and rifles?

I am getting inspiration from the old WC2 axe throwers, WC3 spear throwers, and WC3 Metamorphasis where he launches chaos damage meteors from his hands. We already have “throw glaive”, but instead make it an auto-attack where we throw MH and OH weapons, and our abilities are a combination of thrown weapon attacks and magic.

They already have to balance many classes and many specs. Just because it sits inferior to top-tier DPS, doesn’t mean it doesn’t get used. Not everyone is aiming for the highest damage on recount - those that do play the best spec. I would like to be able to pvp as a ranged class and then go about questing as melee. It’s all preference, which is what WoW should be about.

1 Like
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I would not actively ask for a third spec, but I for one would like a healer spec if a third one was to be added, even if it doesn’t “fit the theme”. Vengeance doesn’t fit the Demon Hunter theme either, so we actually have precedents and lore is pretty much irrelevant and has been for several expansions now.

But I’m comfortable with how Demon Hunter is right now since balance has never been Blizzard’s forte ever, I would prefer that my favorite class stays relevant as it is and don’t want to see it compete with itself. Believe me, it is more likely for one of the specs to suffer if the class has another same role spec, just like pointed out by Xaedys above.

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Bows, yes, because I want to throw Thori’dals at people

1 Like
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Did you miss the statistics that I cited? Arms averages a full 10% more DPS than Windwalker, but there are less than half as many Arms parses as Windwalker parses, because Arms warriors can easily swap to Fury, while Windwalkers cannot easily swap to another option (swapping classes means re-farming all of those essences, neck levels, regearing, etc). The fundamental fact is that if your class has multiple DPS specs, you experience much greater pressure to swap to the “best” one (especially if there’s a pretty solid gap there, which there is for most classes right now), and that’s doubly true if you’re doing any sort of progression raiding (doesn’t even have to be mythic level, though the pressure is often somewhat proportional to how “hardcore” your guild considers itself). Underperforming classes experience much less pressure to swap classes due to the re-gearing and re-grinding requirements associated with max-level progression.

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You don’t dual wield bows and rifles. Crossbows.

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So we’d have only one type of weapon available for use? Only one of the 3 types of ranged weapons used by hunters? Seems awfully restrictive. At least Havoc gets to use swords, axes, and fist weapons, in addition to their iconic glaives. I doubt that would fly.

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It’s only restrictive if blizzard doesn’t add them to loot tables. The actual nomenclature or designation for the weapon doesn’t matter if every boss drops a 1h crossbow (for example). :wink:

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The problem is, this basically forces them to only add crossbows to the drop table, as bows would not be usable. It makes the weapon pool for this new spec very very small, which is not good. Granted, the nature of personal loot means that large loot pools aren’t necessarily a problem, as long as the number of items relevant to any given spec on any given boss is manageable (generally 5 or fewer), and there isn’t a huge disparity between different specs and their available options.

The problem is the overlap. In Ny’alotha, for example, there are 2 agility daggers (which only Assassination and Sublety can use), and 3 weapons Combat could use (a sword, a fist, and a mace). Havoc similarly has 3 weapons (the same sword and fist, plus a warglaive). Warriors and DKs have 3 weapons (polearm, 2h sword, 2h axe).

There’s a total of 5 caster weapons: a wand, a staff, a 1h axe, a 1h sword, and a 1h mace. Of the casters, druids cannot use the axe or wand (3 weapons), mages cannot use the mace or axe (3 weapons), monks cannot use the wand (4 weapons), paladins cannot use the staff or wand (3 weapons), priests cannot use the axe or sword (3 weapons), shamans cannot use the sword or wand (3 weapons), and warlocks cannot use the axe or mace (3 weapons). So monks are slightly better off, but everyone else balances out.

But in this case, this spec would exclusively use crossbows, which overlaps with hunters, meaning either only crossbows would be on the loot table, or hunters would always have more weapons options than this new spec. It’d be like if this new spec was designed to use daggers and also swords, we’d always have more options than sin/sub rogues.

Now, if they were a different type of crossbow, specifically a 1h variant exclusive to this new spec, this issue would disappear, but then Blizzard would have to devote artist resources (and item table records, though that’s unlikely to be an issue) to these new weapons exclusively for one spec in the game. That’s asking rather a lot just so you can get in your D3 fantasy fix in WoW. I doubt that level of investment requirement is something Blizzard would be willing to entertain.

1 Like
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Yes, the idea is based on the addition of a completely new class of weapon. 1h ranged. I just assumed blizz would just use already created crossbow models and simply reduce the scale. It feels like most crossbow models already go unused as I almost never see a hunter with one, unless it’s a current expansion model, or a marksman legion artifact model.

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Draven from LoL would be fun as a concept for a 3rd spec for DH. You would use your mobility to catch your glaives to maximize your dps.

1 Like
15

That mechanic sounds horrifying inside a game like WoW. Latency would have too great an effect, and like Momentum, it would be utterly unworkable on higher difficulty fights with strict positioning requirements.

I mean, can you imagine that mechanic on a fight like mythic Zek’voz, Fetid, or Vectis? Get ready to either wipe the raid with your positioning at a critical time, or watch your DPS go down the toilet because moving to catch your glaive would spread the nasty and lead to said wipe.

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Havoc has three builds… momentum, demonic, and nemesis. I don’t see why something like Draven could simply be one of the builds existing within the spec.

Also, it’d help if you didn’t copy and paste the spec and instead modify it so it could work inside wow but still retain the overall idea of it.

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I mean, it has 3 talents on the final tier, that doesn’t translate to 3 viable builds*. According to worldofwargraphs, 99.14% of DHs with at least 1/8 in mythic Palace (as of 20 December) were using Demonic, and 98.53% of DHs with at least 1800 rating were using Demonic. Nemesis and Momentum just flat out are not use, and there’s very good reason behind that.

* HDH does have 3 viable builds, but all 3 use Demonic. The builds are defined by first and second row talent choices, not final row.

Heck, back in Uldir, Momentum was simming a solid ~3% ahead of Demonic, and nearly everyone was still running Demonic (and 3% is not a small DPS gap when it comes to talents, especially in mythic raiding. People will do all sorts of silly contortions for a half percent DPS gain). Momentum was, in theory, stronger, but in practice was rather terrible because you simply could not use it on so many fights due to strict positioning requirements.

The same would apply to this new Draven spec. It wouldn’t matter how well it sims, if you lose a boatload of your DPS because you cannot move to catch your glaive without wiping the raid, the spec would be DOA. No other spec in the game has that level of positioning requirement (they’ve in fact systemically removed most of those positioning requirements. Hunter minimum range is gone, MM’s mastery concept of doing more damage the farther they are from the target never made it past WoD alpha, Backstab no longer requires being behind the target (though it still gets a modest damage increase if you are), Shred no longer requires being behind the target, etc). Trinkets that trigger that type of positional play, such as Za’qul’s Portal Key, are extremely unpopular, because regardless of the theoretical DPS benefits, the benefits in practice are much lower due to inability to actually move to them sometimes.

That’s why Blizzard has rather intentionally divorces positioning from nearly all class mechanics. Backstab is really the only existing hold-out, and even it isn’t a mandatory positioning thing anymore (and can be “fixed” by taking Gloomblade instead, which is actually a DPS gain over the other two if you cannot be behind the target). Positioning should be dictated by fight mechanics and raid strategy, not by class mechanics.

This type of mechanism, where you move to catch glaives or similar, may sound neat on the surface, but it just has too many liabilities in a game like WoW. There’s too many situations where things like fight mechanics, latency, forced movement, etc would murder your DPS. The only way they could make it workable is to make the DPS difference between catching every glaive and only catching some of them quite small, which would make the entire mechanic little more than a “class flavor” novelty.

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I believe you are mentally just copy and pasting the Draven spec instead of seeing how blizz could work around it to make it work in the game. Instead of having to move over all over the place like in LoL to catch all your glaives they could instead reduce that significantly in wow to where it’s only 10-15 yards max and after catching a glaive it increases your attack speed by 20% for 10 seconds stacking 3 times (random example).

There’s ways they could take the concept and modify it to work inside wow.

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while i dont see it ever happening for DHs…this game really could use a new ranged class.

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10-15y is too much. Vectis, for example, only had ~12y between groups. Ghuun required 5y between people. Fetid required 12y, iirc. So moving 10-15y is plenty enough to break mechanics on fights with strict positional requirements.

If you’d like to attempt another way to implement this mechanic that wouldn’t break on fights with high positional requirements, I’m all ears. But the fundamental fact is that position-based class mechanics are almost always messy and awkward, and often spell DPS losses due to fight mechanics. See soul fragments, especially for Vengeance. See Momentum, and how intensely unpopular it was even when it had a considerable damage advantage during Uldir.

I 100% agree with this. I’ve been advocating for it being ranged for a while. Ranged DPS is the only role in the game where there are fewer specs available on retail than on classic. Since vanilla, we’ve gained 5 melee specs (frost, unholy, windwalker, havoc, survival), 1 healing spec (mistweaver), and 3 tank specs (blood, brewmaster, vengeance), and lost 1 ranged spec (survival). We really need more ranged specs.

The Draven style just doesn’t work well in an MMO, and I’m skeptical of a glaive-based on in general. Personally, I think that a ranged quasi-caster modeled after Illidan and Leo’s metamorphosis phases (where they had to be range-tanked and spammed spells on their target) makes the most sense, but it would probably be difficult for Blizzard to differentiate it sufficiently from Cata and WoD era Demonology.