I’ve run into two problems with devourer that I need to post somewhere that they might be seen.
On the beta, While talented into the void-scarred hero tree and the apex talent, if you casted your initial collapsing star and buffered a voidblade cast, the voidblade would go first and then the collapsing star would reduce the cooldown of voidblade.
This no longer works on live and it is massive anti-synergy as collapsing star is the first button you want to press upon entering meta if you are talented into the apex as to not waste any souls toward your next collapsing star.
Second, the empowered version of the hunt that is granted from the void-scarred tree deals identical damage to the regular version.
Semi-related, I’m not sure if this is the proper place to leave feedback, but it’s better than just a blind feedback report that never gets responded to.
The current void-scarred build does not take the apex, which leads to void-scarred players not even casting collapsing star, one of the flagship abilities of the spec. From my time playing the spec, this is what i’ve found as to why this is, and hopefully some of these problems can either be worked around or fixed.
Collapsing star is currently EXTREMELY WEAK if not talented into the apex, dealing less damage than a zero soul reap. This is assumedly because it scales extremely quickly when you cast multiple collapsing stars within a single metamorphosis window, but it leads to a situation where casting 1-2 collapsing stars is similar damage to not casting any at all.
The current talent tree doesn’t support both melee dancing and collapsing star usage. This is due to multiple 2 point talent nodes in the bottom of the tree making it impossible to take eradicate, soul glutton, the hunt, and the points in the apex. This fundamentally discourages collapsing star from being used at all in void-scarred, as eradicate is mandatory for being able to do AOE damage, and soul glutton+the hunt are required to get full value from the void-scarred tree.
If void-scarred is intended to not use collapsing star, there are multiple talent points that are completely wasted in the capstone areas of the tree. For example, Impending Apocalypse is REQUIRED to be able to talent into soul glutton, but if collapsing star is not worth casting in the first place, this talent is completely wasted. Half of the voidrush talent is also wasted if collapsing star is cut from the rotation.
These situations make any build using the void-scarred tree feel fundamentally incomplete to build and play. I’m not on the design team, so any solutions i could provide would be flawed at best, but some solutions to this could be:
Change the 2 point nodes at the bottom of the tree to 1 point nodes. This would allow void-scarred builds to take the required talents for spec function, while still leaving just enough points to talent into the apex. This would solve the issue of collapsing star not being worth pressing at all, and would allow players to play the short cooldown/duration meta build, but still care about chasing every possible collapsing star in those short windows.
Add a talent to void-scarred specifically buffing the first collapsing star cast in each meta window. This would make it worth pressing at least once, even without being talented into the apex.
Put more power into the void-scarred specific tools, specifcally voidblade, the hunt, and hungering slash, to give the spec an identity seperate from collapsing star.
One thing that has always really confused me is why Void-Scarred just doesn’t synergize with the main big ticket ability of the spec, at all, and in fact seems Actively Hostile towards it. Why does it not trigger a Voidsurge? It makes absolutely no sense for it to be completely absent from triggering it. At the very least, making it trigger a Voidsurge would make casting at least a single one worth it, which would be a band-aid at best, but far better than the current state of things.
Collapsing Star is supposed to be the core ability of the spec, with talents that attempt to integrate it even into “melee”, none of the HT should exclude it.
Changing this would require a complete redesign of the spec, in which Collapsing Star could become a ranged capstone and a melee equivalent would be introduced, not to mention a complete overhaul of the Apex Talent.
That said, I think talents like Voidrush (which reduces VB’s cooldown by 10 seconds when using CS) are poorly thought out, CS shouldn’t lead you to melee, it’s the melee combo that should lead you to CS, after all, CS is supposed to be the center of the spec, not the other way around.
It feels like there is a lot of hesitation in regards to the advertised hybrid spec and what is live. I do feel if once fixed void scarred would surpass anni but that doesn’t matter. What is a bit confusing is the bottom half of the devour tree. There is an obvious 50/50 split between ranged and melee aspect but the melee aspects require far more talent point acquisition than its ranged (ANNI) counter part.
Collapsing star has synergy with one melee ability but is extremely lackluster and does not benefit the spec rotation mathematically , in function, nor in live scenarios.
many suggestions have been made, but why there are no responses from the creators who exclaimed how amazing the class would be wont return an answer or implement a fix is beyond words. No one is asking the the the big cheese, the ask is to honour your development and suggested class fantasy that was created.
The tree wont get fixed thats for sure of which has been problematic since pre-patch. Wildly apparent actually.
The class philosophy has a very strong filled out ranged aspect. Its very fluid, non problematic, time/rotation based to perfect, and amazing fun. However with the hybrid capability utilizing movement mechanics mixed with damage and getting the dodge out of the targets range is an even bigger fantasy that has not been answered.
one Might suggest a dual apex choice node that facilitates a synergistic approach to the hybrid voidscarred build. (Anni is not hybrid pure ranged)
Respectfully and unfortunately it does not appear anyone is getting answers in 12.1 with a patch designed around base class play with less reliance on cds and builds based around acquiring t-sets.
until then were half a 50% effort havoc that decided to drop chaos slash and pick up dart throwing with a dash of oo explosions
I’m going to answer to what I think what’s going on:
I’d argue this depends entirely on who you ask. The ranged part of Devourer/Annihilator is extremely simple.
Where the complexity comes from is from keeping uptime and not screwing up in a spec that is punishing beyond belief and, at least right now, it’s where most of its throughput comes from.
12.1 however is nerfing Void Meta substantially, and those nerfs include Collapsing Star, which I believe it is a good thing because of what I said before. I think Blizzard tried to pull off another Surrender to Madness, dial turned to 11 (sans the death on screwing up) but they forgot how impossible to balance it is.
I always found very funny how they’ve been steadily removing complexity and those kinds of mechanics from other specs, and then they created Devourer. It just makes no sense to me.
Bottom line is that some people might find the ranged gameplay fluid, fun or whatever, but realistically it is in an incredibly unhealthy spot from a developer point of view. To any developer that understands game design on a macro level at least.
I’m going to start addressing the dual Apex talent suggestion. No other spec implements it, Devourer shouldn’t either. What should be addressed instead is how Void Scarred wants something completely contrary to what the base Devourer wants.
They have to find a way to add Collapsing Star into the mix, giving it similar power to Annihilator in a much shorter Meta window.
This poses a very obvious issue. If a shorter window grants the same power as the longer one, absolutely nobody is going to play the longer window that is bound to more human error and it’s easier to miss a part of that power.
I said before that I think the core gameplay of Devourer should get reworked to a more healthy state that doesn’t involve RNG nor extensions, so I don’t think I should go further into suggesting what should happen to Void Scarred because it depends entirely on that.
What I’m going to mention is that a ranged DPS weaving in and out melee, again, while being a fun concept for some, it’s not something that generally plays well in content in which positioning matter, aka Mythic raiding or high M+. It’s a playstyle that introduces subjective fun at the cost of objective disadvantages. It’s something that I personally would avoid, at least in WoW.
Welcome to Blizzard developing where the tier set team doesn’t understand how the specs play so they design stuff that makes no sense and in which in every single development cycle they promise they will listen to feedback and be more proactive with communication.
Devourer already came into TWW prepatch undercooked and severely lacking, it isn’t a surprised they kind of abandoned it until they feel they can rework it from the ground up after they realized the mistake of its foundation.
I saw a couple players doing sims for scar for the next patch and it seems CS won’t even be used. Like, at all.
Even Devour will end up dealing more dmg than CS, all thanks to the huge amount of talents required to make it rewarding.
This is why I say Impeding Apocalipse is one of the worst ideas possible. You attach too much dps to that last CS, pushing the player into a compulsive playstyle for trying to get as many CSs out as possible, but not because the spell is simply better than all the others, but because it was balanced to give absurd numbers for the 4th or 5th of that spell. And this is specially bad for scarred.
My issue with voidscarred is that the buttons that it supports aren’t tuned correctly. Voidblade does negative damage and has several talents that support it anyway, The hunt is very undertuned and the main reason why both these buttons could be relevant is the most cringe talent in the tree devourer’s bite, which makes both of the above buttons important because of a stacking short term damage buff that requires movement. I repeat the only reason those buttons are borderline usable is their connection to the devourer equivalent of intertia, which thankfully is barely used because its talent points are mutually exclusive with having a usable collapsing star.
I don’t want my viable talents to be tied to devourers bite I want devourer’s bite reworked into something else and voidblade, the hunt, and hungering slash to do real damage.
People are saying that voidscarred will be the meta next patch and I hope that isn’t true, because fundamentally voidscarred is a mess in its current state. The buttons it should support are weak. It cuts out collapsing star despite having talents that are supposed to make a loop with it. It encourages soul immolate usage when the button is a dps loss outside of using it between packs.
It doesn’t help that devourer capstones don’t really make sense in a first pass. Eradicate is one of the most necessary “optional” talents I’ve ever seen it’s as if rain of fire, multishot, or any other bread and butter aoe button that should be at the top of the tree in you have to take this land was instead put at the very bottom of the tree for some reason. Impending apocalypse being the talent before emptiness makes sense. But in what world should you have impending apocalypse if you are going to take soul glutton?
In its current state it can be made to work numerically but the spec design behind void-scarred isn’t there at the moment. It should have strong buttons, but all of its unique buttons feel weak, and its primary value is that it plays better into soul glutton.
I covered that in my post, voidblade isn’t used for its damage it is used for the passives connected to it, the same can be said for the hunt. Voidscarred also has a fair bit of passives that benefit soul immolate which do nothing because you don’t use soul immolate over damage spells you use it for its utility or out of combat.
It certainly is possible for the highest damage iteration of a spec to also just be badly designed at the same time all it takes is wonky tuning.