I just streamed a video and saved it on twitch regarding what I think are the many problems with havoc dh’s on a fundamental level in the new expansion. Think it’s easier to watch a video than read multiple paragraphs, so for those of you who don’t think havoc dh’s are in a great place or don’t understand why there are complaints about playability, this may be a good video for you.
Note I’m by no means a video editor. Just streamed/recorded a video and the video’s an unedited result.
Link, if interested:
I go over other classes to illustrate exactly how demon hunters are lacking. Please give a look and provide feedback if you’re of the same mind that demon hunters are not in a good place.
Thanks!
Edit:
To be clear I’m not talking about the viability of DH’s in any given format. I’m simply talking about class design and the fun/playability of the spec over the long-term
Edit edit: Baator brought up a great point below.
Soul Rending - Baseline. Your chaos strike and fel cleave sometimes rend a lesser soul fragment from the primary target, healing you for x% of your max health.
Demonic Appetite would therefore simply add a fury element to the soul.
Feast of Souls (name and design credit given to baator) (Replaces Soul Rending on the talent row) - consuming a soul fragment heals you for an additional x% of max health over y seconds.
With this, we have a baseline heal, but one that is much more unique to the demon hunter class. Further talenting into it boosts the heal
Edit: I’ve updated solutions ideas here:
The video is great for addressing DH problems, however the solutions in the above article are more current to my thoughts on how to fix our class.
As a new DH, I’ve found your forum posts to be very informative and helpful, contributing largely to my understanding of the class. This video is no different and being a former priest main that’s been keeping tabs on Shadow, the comparison really highlights the lack of depth to the DH rotation.
Thank you for constantly putting in the effort and like the DH above me said, hopefully this is the kind of feedback the devs will pay attention to.
I agree with you in practically everything, except regarding the leech, I understand that you propose to change it to something more similar to what the DK does with its Death strike, but I think we already have a unique mechanic that is not used correctly by Havoc, the soul fragments.
My general idea is something like this:
Baseline ability Soul Rending: Chaos Strike has a chance to spawn a Lesser Soul Fragment.
Talent Demonic Appetite: Consuming any Soul Fragment grants 30 Fury and reduces the cooldown of Eye Beam by 2 sec.
in the fourth talent line (level 35) where was Soul Rending (leech) it gets something like:
Feast of Souls: absorb Soul Fragments heals you for an additional (X% of Attack power) over 6 sec.
I know that soul fragments are an inconsistent healing, but it is something quite ours.
Actually I completely agree. Some hours after making the video I thought to myself “you already have a healing ability why not just stick with souls?” I’ll edit the OP to show that change.
I’m on board with DA being baseline (healing component), but not too sure about it having cycle baked into it. I think that will just make the talent a guaranteed pick. Think cycle should just be baseline, and modified to reducing the cd based on fury spent.
Also soul rending would also have to work with fel cleave. Just the primary target, though, most likely
Thanks for the video, agree on something and not in others, part of is showing how other classes have more skills then DH, that is some of the things i like, coming from beta in 2004 we had so so many skills! was insane!
With all the systems all tougher there is some synergy:
immolation aura, will empower glaives, you do glaives that does 5 target AOE, and now with the conduit enemies been hit by the glaive take % extra damage from eyes, now you have extra haste and metaBladeDance.
-immolation aura empower the next fel rush with the talent, and with the last row even more power.
…
Some of this synergies are not chained(one after the other), that is good, that kinda force you to do a order of skill one next to the other, with that free us as players to use the next skill that we think is best, and not a specific one to use the buff that previews skill gave us. Locking down the game play to repeat the same skills one after the next one just because a we got the buff.
i do enjoy the current game play, i like that fel rush is been empowered a little more than BFA that adds fluidity to one play style.
Yeah, there are definitely some borrowed powers that introduce additional layers to the rotation, but that’s basically my point: we rely on borrowed powers to have a semblance of a meaningful rotation, rather than having that baseline
It feels bad when our class at max level is essentially less complete than a level 20 for another class. We shouldn’t have to rely on borrowed powers to have a fun rotation. We should have a fun rotation by our own merit, further enhanced by borrowed powers
Outside of numerical tuning which hasn’t really been done yet, I’d like to see the following changes.
First Blood baseline, replaced with Bloodlet (tuned to the row accordingly).
Put the 1 sec of dodge back on blade dance.
Make either Master of the Glaive or Fel Eruption baseline, I miss being able to get a stun and a snare in legion and having to compete with fel eruption has killed motg for all of bfa pvp.
And make glaive tempest stick to the target and move with it
Please no. A dodge mechanic should have never been baked into an offensive ability at the baseline level.
If we have a 100% dodge, it should be a short cd defensive button we actively press.
Having it included in blade dance:
lowers our skill cap
gives us a 100% dodge every 6-9 seconds, which is absurdly broken
sets a precedent that we’re okay with utility being baked into offensive abilities. Keep in mind that this logic is exactly what is wrong with momentum. Momentum takes a utility ability and makes it a core part of an offensive rotation. If momentum is badly designed, so is having a dodge baked into an offensive ability
Thank ya!
Yeah, thought process/philosophy behind a class I think is key. It’s really basic, but it’s something that (it would appear) blizzard overlooked.
A lot of people have really cool ideas for making the class better, but often they’re talents or revisions to talents. Personally, I think we need to fix the baseline issues before we can even really have a discussion about talents or anything else
Dude great flippin video I’m only at the 12 min mark or so, but so far you’re nailing it on the head. I main a DH (both specs) but I also play…10 other specs well enough for endgame content in all 3 roles. I’m going yes this dude gets it!
Wow. I don’t normally bother with videos linked in the forums, but you put your finger right smack dab on whats bothered me with this class since day 1.
The sad thing is that we know Blizzard can design the class to be functional and synergistic. Both artifact weapons and azerite traits had cool stuff on them that helped flesh the class out, but the baseline class is just sort of hollow.
And boring.
I don’t think they intend to fix it either. Which makes me very sad. And makes me seriously consider my warrior or dk instead.
I agree with most things in the video and og forum post. Unfortunately I think it’s too late for blizzard to make these changes, and with their general bad attitude towards diverging from a path they already set out on, I have zero faith in them to fix it before launch. I really hope they take notes of these changes and we can see them implemented in 9.1 or even 10.0. Dh to me on beta does not feel good to play at all, and I don’t want another borrowed power expac where I feel broken in 9.3 but spend the entire time not having fun waiting to get there.
Edit: I think the best proposed change is tying all the momentum based abilities to a baseline felblade. Fel rush is still buggy to this day and it feels terrible to miss an unbound chaos or whiff an MS in arena because of a buggy ability. God forbid you d/c.
