Throw Glaive Build Idea for Shadowlands

Classes Demon Hunter
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Wanted to post this on beta forums whenever I got beta, but who knows when that will be. These are my thoughts on some talent changes to fix some things and involve throw glaive in the rotation more.

First would be to make First Blood baseline. Please do this blizzard a lot of demon hunters are asking for it. With First Blood in this talent row there really isn’t any meaningful choice, which is something blizzard seems to be pushing hard in Shadowlands. If First Blood is removed or nerfed that would just remove Blade Dance from our single target rotation, removing a button that feels meaningful to push right now.

Ok now that the First Blood complaint is out of the way onto throw glaive stuff. Once First Blood is made baseline I suggest replacing it with the old Bloodlet from legion. I’ve seen this suggestion before, so it seems popular enough. Bloodlet would read:
Throw Glaive bounces to 2 additional targets, and causes them to bleed for 150% of the damage inflicted over 10 sec.
With this have it so that Bloodlet could hit up to 5 targets. This fits in with the 5 target aoe cap on a lot of abilities going into Shadowlands.

Next rework Momentum. Most demon hunters really hate the gameplay of momentum, even if it would be a dps increase in shadowlands. A major problem with this talent is it is not worth the risk of using all our movement for a minor dps increase. If the dps of it is increased enough to be worth using, then the other talents have no role because they would be so far behind. Something needs to be done with Momentum.

My suggestion is instead of having fel rush trigger the 15% damage buff you have throw glaive trigger it. You could keep the Vengeful Retreat part in there, but I bet that would still upset a lot of demon hunters. So it would probably be best to remove that part and balance the talent in other ways. Another change that could be done is instead of giving you the damage buff, throw glaive puts a 15% damage taken debuff on the target for your attacks and abilities. So, it would be up to 3 targets hit for 15% damage taken debuff for 6 secs and then if talented into bloodlet would be up to 5 targets.

So with these changes you are looking at a build that uses Bloodlet to get a dot from throw glaive and hit up to 5 targets, taking Master of the Glaive to gain 2 throw glaive charges, and taking the new momentum to gain a 15% damage taken debuff for 6 secs on your targets hit by throw glaive .

Some initial problems I see with this that could be fixed in a number of ways are:

  1. Bloodlet and Master of the Glaive have a little bit too much synergy with this new momentum talent, making them almost mandatory. Bloodlet less so because the number of targets hit would only affect aoe situations and not single target, so some other talent in that row could be better for single target.
    Master of the Glaive is now mandatory for sure with this new momentum. We could be given 2 throw glaive charges baseline and Master of the Glaive only gives throw glaive a slow now. With that though Master of the Glaive might be too weak compared to the other talents, but it kind of already is currently. Maybe increase the amount of the slow on the talent.

  2. Issues with the cooldown and gcd of throw glaive. Throw glaive has a 1.5 sec gcd whereas fel rush has a 250 milliseconds gcd. This means you can use another ability faster after you fel rush than after you press throw glaive. This might not be that big of an issue overall since no one plays momentum currently, so they don’t have a predetermined feel of how fast the build should flow.
    Throw glaive has a 9 sec cd reduced by haste whereas fel rush has a 10 sec cd. This seems pretty easy to change, just increase the cd of throw glaive. The cd reduction due to haste could be kept if the Vengeful Retreat portion of momentum is removed. This way haste becomes a better stat for this build as the expansion goes on and the talent improves as we get better gear and more stats.

  3. Duration of the momentum buff and bloodlet debuff differ. Might be some weird things you have to do if bloodlet accounted for too much of your damage, but that would hopefully just be numbers tuning that blizzard could do.

If you actually managed to read everything and get through this post, I would love to hear any feedback people have about other problems they see or if they just like or dislike this. Hopefully someone at blizzard will read this and make some meaningful changes to demon hunters in Shadowlands.

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With the talent Momentum you trade a little mobility to have an increase in damage, given the excess of mobility that the DH has, it does not seem to me to be a big penatlity.
If First Blood is put as a basic skill, what would you give in return?

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If this was true a lot a demon hunter wouldn’t have as much of a problem with momentum as they do. On live demonic is a dps increase over momentum. This looks to be changing in shadowlands though with them making a legendary, erratic fel core, that just screams “we are pushing momentum down your throats” and that they nerfed demonic. Demonic also increases survivability at no cost on live. Again in Shadowlands we lost all leech in meta unless talented into it.
Momentum is also not trading a little mobility for dps, it is trading all our mobility for dps. You use Vengeful Retreat on cooldown to get the fury generation from it. So, this will never be up if you need to use it for mobility. You also always keep at least one fel rush charge on cd, often times both charges are on cd. When both charges are on cd and vengeful retreat is on cd we don’t have anymore movement abilities. If you need to use a fel rush charge when you still have the one up, it is most likely going to be at a time where you are either clipping into an existing momentum buff or you don’t have enough fury built up to properly use the momentum buff. Both these cases cause a dps loss for the spec. This is a major reason why most demon hunter don’t like momentum, you are sacrificing all your movement for dps and it isn’t even that much dps that you gain.

I’m confused by this? Are you saying for demon hunters to get a talent baseline we should have to give up something else in a upcoming expansion where every other classes has had multiple abilities added to them and even some getting good redesigns? I hope you also saw the pattern above where we had demonic nerfed and lost leech in meta. We have also had a lot of other things removed or nerfed with not much being added. If you really think we need to lose more I’ll give up the fury generation from Consume Magic to have First Blood baseline.

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People overestimate Demonic way too much. Demonic is my preferred playstyle because I like how fast we can get with plenty of Haste and weaving in and out of demon form, but Demonic is behind Momentum without Furious Gaze.

Blizzard does this thing where they nerf something for the next expansion based on how it’s performing currently, but without Furious Gaze and corruptions, Demonic is behind Momentum when it comes to numbers.

Do not forget Momentum was simming ahead of Demonic at the start of the expansion, but people still didn’t play it just because it was a hassle and unfun. Momentum is bad and this is a consensus between the vast majority of DHs.

We shouldn’t have to give up anything. Tune the numbers around having FB baseline, but it’s extremely silly to think that we should give something up just to keep a functional rotation.

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I’m new to DH and I might be blind… but do we not have a single proc? I have nothing lighting up anywhere. I understand DH is fancy and fun, but shouldn’t we have something lighting up? LOL.

This leads me into a different idea for throw glaive. Make (insert ability here) give you procs of Throw Glaive, now the initial damage remains the same, however, we bring back Bloodlet on these procs? I know bloodlet was a dot, I am not sure if it was physical or not. IMO make it fel/chaos touched to follow class fantasy.

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We have Felblade as a talent you can pick that will work like that, but other than that no we don’t. That’s another thing that is bad about the dh rotation is that it’s just build and spend and press your cooldowns when they come up. We don’t have anything that would happen during the middle of our rotation that would be like “Oh cool this happened now I can press this ability and do more” or “Wow I got really lucky this fight and was able to press this ability a lot more because it procced a lot”.

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Felblade, Demon Blades and souls through Demonic Appetite are all RNG procs. Frankly I enjoy being less reliant on RNG for my damage.

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Is your main reason for wanting to play a class because of procs and having buttons light up? If so I don’t know what to tell you. We have procs and like the poster said above me. I don’t want our damage to have to rely on rng so much. Rng is bad, consistency is key.

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Not at all! I mainly played shaman through BFA and I’ve grown accustomed to seeing the red Lava Burst proc indicator around my character. I was just surprised that the flashiest class in the game - Demon Hunter, didn’t have anything similar. At least from what I saw initially. I did test Felblade and it does light up. I just thought Demon Hunter would have that indicator around your character, not sure what that is called.

I 100% agree that I want my damage to be predictable and a reflection of my ability. However, I think a small amount of RNG is good and more importantly can be fun.

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Just because some spells light up doesn’t mean that the class/spec isn’t a flashy one. All it means is that that certain spec you play has procs lol. Havoc dh is as flashy as they come, just press your abilities. You’ll see exactly how flashy they are