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.