Momentoum is fun I use it every now and then could be cool if added additional FX.
Theres a few things I definitely disagree with in your big changes post.
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Fel Blades should stay a talent. The Fel Blades/Demon Blades build has been good in the past and should stay as a competitive build option in single target fights.
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They don’t need to introduce a spammable AoE ability. They could just give us the AoE component to Chaos Strike back as a talent. Possibly replacing one of the dead talents.
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We don’t really need a DoT outside of Trail of Ruin. If anything the DoT they should bring back is the one from Bloodlet. If they baked it into Master of the Glaive it would at least make that talent strong enough to compete with a single target stun.
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Soul Rending should stay a talent. In some cases the huge amount of leech is stronger than Netherwalk. The only thing that needs to go on that row is Desperate Instincts since its only use is/was against RMX teams in 3s. Personally I’d like to see the dodge from Blade Dance put there as a talent.
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All the Fel Rush focused items/talents shouldn’t have their effects also work on Fel Blades. That would remove the skill gap from Momentum completely. I’ve seen a lot of your posts complaining about lack of complexity/skill in the class, so I don’t think you’d want to make the class easier overall.
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I’d say buff Cycle of Hatred instead of making it baseline. Saying that 2/3s of that talent row should be baseline is too much in my opinion. Making it reduce Eye Beam’s CD and Meta’s CD would be a good buff.
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I know this is more if they completely removed the 40 talent line, but CT is a really important thing to have baseline. CT is a huge dps increase in Single target and AoE. It being made baseline saves a talent row from being another one option only row.
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We really don’t need a spammable AoE ability. Blade Dance, Unbound Chaos, Eye Beam, Immo Aura, and Fel Barrage are enough to keep us competitive in AoE situations. If anything our single target dps is complete garbage going into SLands and needs buffs.
Thats my main problem with your overall “redesign” of the class. It trying to change the class to be some other class, but somehow misses all of our actual problems going into SLands. We need more focus on the fact that Havoc has no way to compete in Single Target situations and will only be brought for the debuff.
Why wouldn’t it be with my redesign?
Why not? I think it would add a distinguishing element between ST and aoe
Bloodlet is a talented dot. My idea for bringing a dot to our baseline was to add that engaging element to the rotation. The dot is also the source of our blade dance / chaos strike synergy, which makes sense imo. Afflicting the target with a chaos dot renders them increasingly vulnerable, and we take advantage of that vulnerability by increasing the degree of our assault.
A talent should not provide passive leech. It’s not good design imo. Passive leech should be a baseline thing. however, souls are a far more unique element to our class, so revising leech to healing from soul consumption is better both in terms of class fantasy and in terms of uniqueness.
While this is true, my baseline rotation does increase the skill cap of the class overall. Not to mention, the active dodge ability increases the skill cap as well. In PvE, the skill cap is increased by having a more complex damaging rotation, which is found in my baseline. in PvP, the skill cap is more about utility and awareness. Dealing damage is just a given, though the rotation still needs a degree of complexity.
Remove Chaotic Transformation. It’s a baseline synergy that makes absolutely no sense, considering 1/2 of the abilities it refreshes aren’t even used in ST rotations unless talented into.
Cycle of hatred in its current design and location on the talent row doesn’t make any sense.
It’s on an “aoe talent row”, but uses a ST ability to potentially reduce the cd of a ST/aoe ability. Poor design, and incorrect location on the row.
First blood is made baseline, but it’s divided. the damaging component is baked into blade dance, which just makes sense, but the fury reduction is contingent upon the proc, which also makes sense.
My design of cycle of hatred does exactly that.
It’s terribly-designed. It’s based on a 4 minute cd and the only benefit it provides in ST is eye beam reduction, unless we talent into FB. Removing it from our baseline allows room for much better-designed baseline passive synergies. I need to update my solutions post to notate that it’s removed entirely.
I’m buffing our baseline ST by giving chaos strike more interaction, by bringing fel blade baseline, and by introducing the dot component, which is also stackable in demonic windows, and strictly applies to chaos strike / fel cleave’s primary target.
Interesting, I think our problems are:
- Lack of engaging baseline rotation because we don’t have any buff/debuff/proc mechanics. I introduce all three of the above in a baseline.
- Lack of a core rotation that reflects class fantasy. I absolutely resolve this problem in my redesign of the class
Making it baseline just slightly changes the rotation of the current build instead of allowing a second playstyle to exist. Reducing the class to one playstyle makes it easier overall which you seem to keep saying you don’t want.
There already is? If you’ve done higher M+ you’d know there different things you do in AoE vs Single target along with different builds depending on whats needed more.
A DoT doesn’t really add anything more to the class or change how we would DPS in any situation. Like you’d just make sure to put it on the priority target that you would be Chaos Striking anyways.
Leech should be both like its been since DH came out. Blizzard doesn’t like the passive leech though, so having it as a talent in a row of defensives is fine. Having both healing from souls and leech is part of the class fantasy that works completely fine as is with the only changes needed being ones for Vengeance.
They really don’t. If they made the changes to Fel Blades that you want then we would basically become a one button spec. Fel Blades would have a 7 second CD with two charges that applies a DoT, does instant AoE damage, gives fury, and gives you a 15% damage buff that you could keep up permanently. You would just Fel Blades > Immo Aura > Vengeful > Fel Blades > Fel Rush > Fel Blades > etc. for all situations.
The dodge being tied to Blade Dance increases the skill gap more than a “press this to dodge” button. It forces people to think about when to use it for damage or use it as a defensive. If you watch people doing 20+ keys then you can see the difference from a good DH who knows how to use Blade Dance to do both vs someone who just hits Blade Dance on CD.
What? Eyebeam and Blade Dance are used in ST all the time unless they are nerfed to a point where its a waste of globals to use them. I agree that Cycle is worthless right now, but its not an AoE talent row. First Blood is a single target talent thats overtuned at the moment. Essence break is a dead talent just like Cycle, but its most likely better in single target vs AoE since Chaos Strike is going to be used more often than Blade Dance with the lack of 3x Furious Gaze.
Making First Blood baseline fixed the fact that the other two talents will never be picked, but doesn’t fix the fact that the talents are still bad.
Again, saying CT is terribly-designed makes me think you don’t play the class above a casual level in PvE. Its the second most important Azerite Trait next to Furious Gaze from a DPS/Utility standpoint.
You are making the class basically a 1 button spec with the changes as explained above. It adds no complexity and just makes the rotation even easier.
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The rotations of Havoc are different for each playstyle choice right now. You want to remove one of the different playstyles and make that single ability OP. We don’t need to bloat our rotation with random procs/debuffs. That would just make us a leather Arms/Fury Warrior.
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I’m not an RPer so I don’t really care about class fantasy. I care about the class being viable for Raids, M+, and PvP. Right now Havoc is only brought for the debuff in Raids and nothing more. You’re changes do make an OP mindless spec, but I doubt anyone wants that.
The playstyle differential is in the final talent row, as it already is.
You understand we’re talking about baseline, not borrowed powers related to azerite traits.
Yes, and it would then add a proc mechanic to both our blade dance and chaos strike/fel cleave. It would also be modified in our demonic windows.
Agree to disagree. Leech has no skill element. If a class is going to have leech, it should be baked into abilities (like a Spriest’s VT / devouring plague). It shouldn’t be an all-encompassing effect as it is currently designed.
I think you’ve wildly misinterpreted my rotational design.
We would felblade once approximately every ten seconds to put up the dot. In reality, we wouldn’t even need to felblade more than once, because we could just fel cleave a different primary target, which would refresh the dots on all other targets. When did I ever attribute an aoe effect to felblade? Please quote me.
In aoe encounters, we would fel cleave to spread the dot and for added pressure. This would lead to more blade dance procs, so more blade dances, which would lead to more buffed fel cleaves. We would also be able to enter demon form quicker, so we’d be pressing eye beam more often. You also understand fel blade has a ten second cooldown and only two charges, right? It would literally be impossible to do my rotation as you’ve described. Also, why would you ever be pressing fel rush? it’s a utility ability. Has no place in the rotation. I’ve never once even mentioned fel rush
Which isn’t good design. Having a defensive ability still forces you to “think about when to use it”. Why should we have to sacrifice dps for defensive utility? Just get an active defensive ability we can press when we believe we need to. This is far better for the health of the damaging rotation.
Yes, if you’re talented into first blood. If you aren’t, you would not press blade dance in ST.
Yes, it literally is. Blizzard has called it an aoe talent row.
Essence break isn’t a bad talent at all. It’s just bad relative to first blood. It has great application in both ST and aoe if used correctly.
Also why i replaced the other two talents. There’s bloodlet, fel barrage, and essence break. Those are three good talent choices.
That is because of borrowed powers. You said it yourself. It’s an azerite trait. It is also contingent upon us being talented into first blood.
See above. It’s pretty obvious you didn’t understand what the rotation was going to look like.
What “playstyle choice”? We’ve had no choice for an entire expansion. Momentum isn’t a viable choice because it’s terribly designed. We have to play demonic, due to borrowed powers and simply because the other two talent choices are terrible.
Again, you don’t understand the rotation. This leads me to believe it isn’t such a mindless rotation after all.
I will break down the baseline rotation for you in ST:
- Felblade to apply dot.
- Blade dance off cd / when it procs.
- Chaos strike with 2x buff from blade dance, or otherwise when you have fury and have nothing else to do.
- Demon’s bite to generate fury.
- Immo off cd
- Eye beam when at 100 + demonic hatred
While in eye beam burst window:
- burn chaos blades
- Burn lingering demon
- felblade to refresh new empowered dot
- Blade dance off cd/when it procs
- Chaos strike, esp with blade dance buff, to increase strength of applied dot debuff.
- Reapply felblade dot debuff before leaving demonic window, and with enough time to reapply 2x chaos strike effect modifier.
That is baseline; not including talents which would modify that tremendously.
Having Essence break would introduce yet another ability to be pressed before your demonic window, to further buff the abilities you’ll be pressing.
Bloodlet would likely be used outside of demonic windows, as throw glaive isn’t buffed by demonic.
Fel Barrage could be used in / out of the burst window.
Having cycle would allow you to have more frequent burst windows, though would not effect chaos blades / lingering demon.
Having Momentum would make you want to press felblade as often as possible, but also keep in mind that dot uptime is #1 priority. Its stacking mechanic is more in line with the concept of momentum
Talenting into inner demon would be for the player who doesn’t want to have that additional layer of rotational complexity.
I’m happy to recognize flaws in any design, but your perceived problems don’t actually exist.
No one took Nemesis or Momentum in BFA. They did take Fel Blades/Demon Blades though which played differently than Blind Fury/Immo Aura.
Fel Barrage isn’t borrowed power. I guess you could argue trinkets are though.
Why would we need a proc on things other than Fel Blades? It sounds like you want procs just to have them not for a good reason.
Leech does have a bit of a skill element in PvE when its between Leech and an Immune. You need to be good enough to survive without an immune to capitalize on the leech.
Ok, so since you said you wanted all things that are used off of Fel Rush to work with Fel Blades I assumed you knew what Fel Rush had tied to it. Heres a list:
- Unbound Chaos - Activating Immo Aura will cause a Demon to slam down dealing AoE damage at the end of your next Fel Rush (thats the AoE part)
- Momentum - +15% more damage for 6 seconds after you Fel Rush (DPS increase)
- Erratic Fel Core - The cooldown of Fel Rush is reduced by 30% (Would work with Fel Blades with your changes)
- The changes you want to make giving it 2 charges at 7 seconds each.
Because sacrificing DPS to stop mechanics, save the tank, or just live adds a skill gap to the class. You keep saying you want more skill gaps yet mentioning the dodge makes you backpedal fast.
You Eye Beam in ST if you go Demonic not because of First Blood. Anyways you want to make First Blood baseline meaning you would use both in ST.
Ok, but its not. If it was it would have Glaive Tempest and Fel Barrage on that row.
Its bad from an actual numbers standpoint. It would need to be off-gcd to be worth using in its current state.
Its a Azerite trait being baked into the class. Did you forget that? Also stop assuming things are only good because of First Blood. Eye Beam > Meta > Eye Beam adds a ton of extra time to Meta.
You don’t even know whats being added. Please read what we know about Havoc.
Fel Blades + Demon Blades for Single Target at the start of the xpac. Fel Barrage vs Trail of Ruin for Season 2 to now. The last row isn’t the only set of talents that change things. If you did more than PvP you would know this.
Read above where I list everything.
Your changes are bad for the health of the class. Its fine if you don’t see why theres problems, but from a higher end PvE setting these changes aren’t going to make the class work outside of the insanity of the Fel Blades changes.
Found the blue post for you.
Oh, and cycle isn’t worthless. We might be playing it in Shadowlands. For the pre-patch it is looking to be better than First Blood at least.
On CT, I agree with Haugs that it is bad design. You are severely limited to when you can use meta. Yes, it boosts your dps, but now meta is a cd you have to follow a specific rotation to use properly. You need to make sure you eye beam and blade dance before you meta otherwise your are wasting damage from the meta cd. Those two abilities now determine when you can use the meta cd. Using the meta immune to avoid some mechanics and stuff was something skillful to do. Yes, you can still use meta for that, but now you are losing out on using meta ideally because you didn’t press eye beam and blade dance before trying to immune something. That just feels bad that you are now wasting part of the cd. I want meta to be more free form of when I can use it, not ok every time you meta use eye beam, blade dance, meta, blade dance, eye beam.
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And they would be free to make that same choice.
Felblade would be used baseline for its dot effect. How we want to improve our fury generation, however, would be differentiated.
Fel barrage is a talent. We’re talking about baseline. I assumed you were talking about azerite traits.
It’s Felblade. You keep saying “fel blades”.
Why would fel blade need a proc? It’s a fury generator in its current design iteration. Proc mechanics should be relegated to the primary high-damaging abilities. Felblade is to generate fury. Why would the high of a proc be allocated to a generator rather than a spender? I want a proc on blade dance because blade dance is a fun ability and is our highest-damaging ability on a short cd. Makes sense to me.
Immuning is more for mechanics and utility than it is for “oh crap i’m making a mistake”. Leech serves to correct the latter far more often than netherwalk does.
- Correct. You would immolation aura before using your felblade. This is a modification to the rotation.
- I revised momentum to last 10 seconds rather than 6, but it has a stacking component.
- This is a legendary. You’re citing a legendary in an argument against baseline. This manner of thinking is part of the problem. You’re contextualizing baseline around borrowed powers. Don’t do that, please.
- Which would hardly benefit you. Momentum lasts ten seconds. We wouldn’t need felblade to have a 7 second cooldown, which, again, comes from a legendary. It’s not worth discussing.
How does baking the dodge element into an active defensive ability hurt our skill cap? i can agree with the notion that, yes, before we had to make a choice as to whether we do damage or serve utility. My argument, however, is that that is not a choice that anyone should ever have to make. Offensive and utility are two different things.
Once again, think fundamental design. A defensive utility is baked into an offensive damaging ability. This in and of itself is terrible design. If you don’t understand why, I can’t really help you. It just is.
If we have an active defensive ability with a 100% dodge, we still have to control when it’s pressed. The only difference is it isn’t baked into offense. This would be a good thing.
Yes, I said CT refreshes the cooldown of 50% of abilities that would be baseline used in a ST rotation.
Your argument is with blizzard, not with me. They called it an aoe talent row, so it is.
This is a tuning issue. I’m not discussing tuning. I’m discussing having a meaningful and engaging baseline rotation.
No, I didn’t forget that. my argument is there are far better baseline passives that can be baked into our class than CT, when 50% of CT, in its current iteration, has no relevance in ST rotation.
I’m talking about my design. I do know what’s being added because I designed it. I said this in reply to you discussing my “one button rotation”.
My design does not in any way take issue with the above. There is nothing in the baseline design that invalidates any talent choices in any of the rows. If so, feel free to point out how. I’m welcome to criticism when it’s actually helpful. Avoid the personal attacks. If you want to involve them, I can laugh at a DH with a 50% w/l @ 2.1k rating after nearly 300 games in a 2’s bracket. I mean, you have two mythic slappers and you clear mythic raiding so i’m sure you have a mythic drest, and I’m sure it’d be no issue to have a gushing / vers set. That’s literally a free gladiator. Yikers
I read above. You’re blatantly wrong.
You haven’t once explained why or how. You’ve clearly misinterpreted the entirety of my design and drawn conclusions accordingly. Re-read everything, please, then get back to me.
Ok, I can agree with that argument for the immunity component. I personally still feel CT is a good addition to the class.
Why wouldn’t you take Demonic Appetite for fury gen if Fel Blades is baseline?
Its dumb to talk about only pieces of a class instead of the whole thing. Thats how you end up with really broken things.
Does it matter if I type felblades or Fel Blades? Its the same thing. Fel Blades already has a proc to reset itself built into it. Again, we don’t need procs adding them would just be bloat.
Again, we can’t look at just core abilities when these borrowed powers exist and augment how we play.
Because it adds a skill gap. Isn’t the lack of skill gaps in this class the common complaint?
Baseline doesn’t matter. The class as a whole with everything does.
Yeah, they also said they could balance Azerite and Corruption. What Blizzard says and the reality of things tend to be different.
A well tuned class will always feel good though. Theres a lot of people out there that think Feral feels good but don’t play it because of tuning issues.
I’m saying you only looked at things you wanted to change not the class as a whole. Thats what leads to thing like your Fel Blades > everything build.
I don’t really care about 2s rating since even real PvPers say its a joke. I only did it for the enchant. Removing the choice between Fel Blades/Demon Blades vs Demonic Appetite/Immo Aura does reduce the amount of playstyles.
You chose to look at abilities in a vacuum instead of the overall picture where your changes cause problems.
You ignored the issues by basically saying we can’t look at how things will interact from the xpac with the class. If we did that with BFA Fire Mages would be considered one of the weakest classes. See the problem?
Because as I’ve already made very clear, a baseline felblade does not generate fury. The talent “Felblade” would give it a fury generation component.
You design a class based on layers. The inner layer is baseline. The baseline should adhere to class fantasy and provide a meaningful rotation in and of itself. Talents, secondly, serve to enhance the baseline. Borrowed powers are the least important.
In its current design, Felblade is a talent that generates fury. A talent that generates fury.
This is why I removed the proc component from Felblade and gave it to blade dance. There isn’t bloat when a proc is reallocated to a better ability at a baseline level.
Yes, we absolutely can. Borrowed powers come later.
Give a class a comparable and meaningful baseline, and then design borrowed powers around that. This is basic class and spec design.
I think you’re confusing “skill gap” with “a decrease or increase to skill cap”.
if you remove the dodge component from blade dance and bake it into its own defensive ability, we maintain the necessary awareness of mechanics to use the ability when necessary. The only difference is we don’t have to sacrifice our dps to do so
You can make great plays without hampering your dps unnecessarily. I’m blown away that this is even an argument.
Oh. Yikes. This is just alarming.
This means absolutely nothing. They intend for it to be an aoe row. I have no issue with this. Many classes have multiple aoe rows, or rows that serve to enhance both Aoe / ST. The row, as I’ve designed it, does this. It is, from the designer’s perspective, an AOE row.
You also understand that you saying this reinforces my idea that a meaningful baseline is paramount. It is less for blizzard to balance. If the baseline and talents around it are meaningful in and of themselves, there is far less difficulty in designing borrowed powers such as legendaries and covenants.
Obviously. The point is that a class should be designed to be fun primarily because tuning should just be a given. Tuning is tweaking numbers. Fundamental class design and a baseline toolkit which reflects it is conceptual, and speaks to how it feels to play.
If I press a chaos strike that does 1000 damage vs pressing a chaos strike that does 900 damage, I still pressed chaos strike.
Is the ability fun? Great. Does it compete with other classes? No? Ok. Tweak the damage modifier.
If the ability isn’t fun, it’s not so simple as a tweak. Fun = conceptual design of a class.
Tuning = numbers tweaking.
And I’m saying this is absolutely incorrect. I looked at the class and spec as a while. The entire foundation of my design is “what is a havoc demon hunter, and how do we incorporate the identity into the rotation”.
I have no idea why you’re so caught up on Felblade. It applies a dot. It’s not even the most engaging element of the rotation.
I’m still confident you haven’t remotely understood my design. You’re just disagreeing with it.
Nowhere in my design is that choice removed. once again, please explain why you believe it is.
Borrowed powers should be based upon the baseline, not the other way around.
Not to mention, our legendaries are laughably awful.
When I make the claim that the class needs an overhaul because it’s terribly designed, that obviously carries with it the implication that borrowed powers need to be redesigned as well.
I’m literally saying this class needs an overhaul.
Once again. Priority/order of class design.
Baseline
Talents
Borrowed powers.
The only problem here is you’re dismissing what is an obviously and laughably terrible baseline and rationalizing its existence with borrowed powers.
Our legendaries are easily the worst among all the classes, so why you would even cite legendaries in an attempt to discredit my design is beyond me
So you think Fire Mages and Destro locks are weak right now? I’m not saying don’t look at the baseline. I’m saying you can’t just look at the baseline and put on blinders for everything else. If you insist that only looking at abilities in a vacuum is the way to balance then theres no discussion to be had.
It’s objectively inferior to Netherwalk in just about every way except 1-2 bosses per expansion. It should be removed with a real defensive talent in its place instead.
It’s really not and I’m more worried it’ll hold back future design for the class than the boost it currently gives. Eyes of Rage, First Blood, and even Demonic are much more important to have baseline.
DH is entirely a cleave spec like Fury and Outlaw and future designs should be aware of and compliment that. Throw Glaive letting the next Chaos Strike cleave to the targets it hit at reduced damage, while being similar to Fury’s Whirlwind, would really be the best AOE change for us to keep this identity.
I posted elsewhere but First Blood should be baseline with Demonic being swapped with Essence Break and Anguish added over First Blood’s empty place. Anguish and Cycle would need some tuning but it’d keep in line with the row being AOE and have the bonus of modifying your Eye Beam playstyle.
And while I know that no one brought it up, Essence Break is just a worse Colossal Smash but as engaging as Chaos Cleave. It should be removed and replaced with just about any of our old AOE/Cleave abilities. Even another nerfed version of Chaos Blades would be better.
sighs
I don’t know how to make this any clearer. I’m not discussing viability. I’m discussing fun. I’m discussing the desire for a meaningful baseline rotation.
I do agree there is no further discussion to be had. I don’t like repeating myself and it’s obvious you aren’t understanding the rotation I’ve designed, unfortunately.
All the best!
I literally don’t know what this is supposed to mean in the context of this discussion. Borrowed powers are temporary; core abilities should 100% be designed without a care for them. If borrowed powers make a core ability too good, then the borrowed power can just get nerfed.
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I don’t see how.
You want throw glaive to give a modifier to chaos strike so it’s similar to a warrior’s whirlwind
I’m saying we should just have a whirlwind. Well, idk what a fury war’s whirlwind looks like. If it’s the same as arms’, then yeah. That’s why I came up with fel cleave.
I personally just don’t see how throw glaive is a fun ability. We are a melee demon class that uses chaos damage and darts around the battlefield. What about that involves throwing a glaive? Warriors have throws, but they’re utilities or they just press them because they literally have nothing better to do.
This is why I think fel cleave is > throw glaive.
If, however, you want throw glaive in your rotation, then you can talent into bloodlet, which I included.
I prefer my design iteration.
You get bloodlet, fel barrage, or essence break. Now that you mention it, though, with demonic baseline (in my design), EB is pretty redundant. I’m fine with a third and different aoe ability taking its place. Not a big fan of anguish. If I remember correctly, anguish was a ST modifier.
Cycle replaces demonic and fills a much better role, in my opinion, in my design.
Agreed with this. No problem here
I said this which lead to this:
Which I point out is a talent and he starts saying we can’t include talents or borrowed power when talking about how things will be imbalanced with his ideas.
I legitimately can’t tell if you’re trolling or if you’re just that unaware of what’s going on here.
- It’s Felblade
- Never said anything about a 7 second cd. You’re calculating this cooldown by involving a legendary. Legendaries have no place in consideration of fundamental class design
- I’ve already asked you twice to explain where in my design you gathered that felblade will “do instant aoe damage”
- Gives fury, if talented
- gives a damage buff, if talented. It also stacks, and can fall off if you can’t cast a felblade.
Talents are not remotely comparable to borrowed powers.
You start with the baseline. You design talents around that. You design legendaries / borrowed powers around that.
Like for real are you trolling?
It deals almost negative damage and makes your next 2 single-target abilities hit 4 extra targets at 50% damage.
Fel Cleave is literally just an AOE Chaos Strike though. It is, for all intents and purposes, just a Chaos Strike with Chaos Cleave baked in and no fury refund. Replacing Chaos Strike with Fel Cleave in AOE situations isn’t going to “feel” better because if it refunds fury, then it’s just a better Chaos Strike, and it it doesn’t then it’s just a worse version. Having a net neutral ability that already has history with the class, like Throw Glaive and Fel Rush, augment your Chaos Strike to cleave would ultimately accomplish the same thing but feel better since you’d have the possibility for Chaos Strike refunds.
If you’re “darting” around then you won’t always be melee. That’s where Chaos Bolt (from the Illidan novel) and Metamorphosis making your autos ranged in WC3 came in. Except we got Eye Beam instead, which is fine, but the idea that we’re only melee isn’t entirely true.
And a better question is, do players not like Throw Glaive because it doesn’t fit the fantasy or because it serves no purpose? Bloodlet was generally a neutral talent, as you were either for or against its use and I remember most of the the toward it was due to Momentum and not it directly. Additionally, I’ve seen a lot of excitement for the “throw 5 boosted glaives” legendary, and while that’d be problematic with Throw Glaive allowing Chaos Strike to cleave, that comes back to the core vs. borrowed argument and is ultimately a non-factor.
I think the Havoc community is more open to using Throw Glaive in specific cases than you think. And honestly, trading a single target spammable button for an AOE version isn’t really thoughtful nor engaging when 2/3 of our core (Chaos Strike, Eye Beam, Blade Dance) are single target cleavers. Outlaw and Fury have to press an extra button to cleave; us having to press Throw Glaive to let Chaos Strike cleave is the exact same, as it’s a starter like Fury’s Whirlwind or Outlaw’s Blade Flurry.
Look at the 30 row of talents. Unbound Chaos - Activating your Immolation Aura causes a demon to slam into nearby enemies at the end of your next Fel Rush. The CD reduction actually doesn’t matter since you want Momentum to be 10 secs. You can talent into fury according to your changes.
Yeah, your changes didn’t take Shadowlands talents, borrowed power, or any of that into account. Thats part of the reason I have a problem with it.
This is a fair point; I need to change my wording. Fel cleave doesn’t have a primary target damage modifier, however its fury refund or % chance to spawn a lesser soul fragment (as baseline leech mechanic, in my design) are the same as chaos strike’s. Perhaps with increased targets, the fury refund chance could be increased, but no there isn’t a primary target damage increase with this ability.
The issue here is… why would throw glaive have any effect on chaos strike dealing aoe damage?
We throw a glaive so the next time we chaos strike we deal aoe damage? Just doesn’t really make any sense.
Can’t use fel rush. Keep that ability out of damaging rotations. Hence why fel blade is baseline.
This is a very good point, but it’s also why I redesigned fel blade to replace fel rush. Also, blade dance is technically “darting around”.
Displacement isn’t necessarily the only way to capture the fantasy. Ability animation does a great job as well.
If felblade is given a five yard range, we could in theory cast a chaos strike or a blade dance while moving away from the target and felblade back to the target within the next global, so there isn’t any need to fill the global the way we previously needed to with a bloodlet throw glaive toss in a momentum rotation.
This is an excellent point. For me, it’s about the fantasy. Purpose is tuning design. Fantasy (in the context of your question) is conceptual implementation of class identity.
I think throw glaive does serve purpose as a utility ability, though more so in pvp. Still, if you’re kiting or the mob moves away from you, it’s a global to spend.
Well, the idea of fel cleave also invites greater interaction because it:
- spreads the touched by fel dot, which:
- further increases demonic hatred generation
- grants a higher blade dance proc chance.
It’s not just an aoe chaos strike. Mechanically, sure, it costs fury and it has no cooldown, but it still brings with it additional benefits in the aoe rotation.
I personally think the havoc community is so receptive to throw glaive because of two reasons:
- it has history as being a core part of a damaging rotation
- it adds a button to our rotation, and we’re so desperate we’ll take virtually anything.
Personally, I don’t see throw glaive as having any relevance to class fantasy.
If you wanted to further explore a “spell” that’s an instant-cast ability that deals chaos damage at a range, I’m much more open to it. We already have fel lance in RFA, and exploring fel Magics is very much a part of our fantasy.
So, if you were to, say, replace throw glaive with a “fel bolt”, or something along those lines, and that bolt could jump to targets or could hit more than one target at a time, I’d be interested.
Edit:
Right, at a core baseline, felblade puts a dot on your target, and does a decent amount of chaos damage. That’s all that it does.
If you talent into felblade in row 1, it generates fury. You will only make use of this fury, however, once every ten-ish seconds, because dot uptime is imperative (if you burn felblade 2x in a few seconds, for example, you’re going to lose out on the dot being on your target for 7+ seconds.
If you talent into UBC, once every 25+ seconds, your felblade will slam a demon into your target. I don’t see a problem with this. Immolation aura is really the modifier here.
If you talent into momentum, you’ll increase your damage done by 5% once every ten seconds or so, up to a max of 15%. If you lose uptime on the target, you risk dropping momentum entirely.
I think this works very well with the concept of momentum. Over time, with increased fel blade casts, you’re building momentum.
These are also all talents.
Understanding the core design of the rotation will temper your expectation of these talents.
You have to maintain the felblade dot on your target at all times. It is priority #1. Because of this, you can’t just throw out felblade casts left and right.
That’s because our baseline rotation is so glaringly awful it has to be addressed.
If a foundation (our baseline) is breaking at the seams, I’m not worried about what paintings (borrowed powers) I’m hanging on the walls.