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.
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.
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.
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.
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.