Surprisingly few people interested in this class?

[MyndZero]

I'm the opposite. I'm over all the classes in WoW, and I haven't even played them all at end-game, the ones I haven't just don't interest me at all, it feels like I'm just playing a different colour of another class I've already played.

DH has me interested, primarily because of it's mobility and after having played Wildstar it gives me a big smile seeing that in WoW. If DH combined with Legion being lackluster, I think after 10 years it will be time for me to finally stop playing the game for Good. Warlords sucked, I'm over all the current classes, I've done all the current and old content more than enough, so Legion is really the last step before I can completely quit - It will show if blizzard is still capable of making a compelling MMORPG to play at end game, or if their values have been stripped away too much in the last 10 years for them to achieve this anymore.

[Baelroc]

my bad then! Must have missed the sarcasm or a previous post!
@Mirishka
It's not Anecdotal evidence when I provide evidence?
If you look at the Alpha forums there is not much Demon Hunter posts around. Compare that to several other classes like Rogues with their massive sub thread, Warrior and Paladin in general, there is a clear difference.

The classes that are played the least on live raiding wise, also have the lowest post rate on the Alpha forums as well, which makes sense.

The guild I am in on Alpha has ~30 demon hunters in it, with 89 members total. So far only 2 of them, where I count myself, actually wants to roll one. Most of them don't give much feedback or at least don't write longer posts.

FOr my guild on live only I have expressed interest in switching, while we have 2 maybe's.

Comparing this to DK's there was a massive surge for it during both the Beta and the actual Wrath release. It died down after they changed the talents to not have every spec being able to do anything, but DH wise its not even close.

Maybe your social group all wants to roll DH and thats great, but it still doesn't show people on various forums or streaming sites, which is what OP was getting at!

Totally agree. There is a vast under-representation for DH. Even Monks had a larger following prior to MoP's release.

I associate it with too much stigma over a new "hero class". People saw the surge of DK's with WotLK and all the stigmas that came with them and want to avoid being "that guy" in Legion. Playing a DK in WotLK was an uphill battle. Every single pug group I was in automatically assumed because I was playing a DK I was a noob emo kid that didn't know how to play. I was constantly having to prove my worth in every situation, guilty until proven innocent if you will. I think alot of people are trying to avoid that.

[zurm]

As of right now, my guild only has two people looking to switch: me as havoc, and our existing pally tank wants to go vengeance. Of course, we are still in ALPHA, and the release is many months away. A lot can change in that time. Also DH's will be available before legion launch (I don't remember exactly when... with the prepatch?), so maybe when more people get their hands on them, they'll love em?

That said, I can understand why people wouldn't want to swap. There's a lot of attachment to established characters which you have worked on, and the idea of having to build out professions (fishing and archaeology are particularly painful still), transmog, having to relearn a new class, etc... as the game goes on, that can feel more and more daunting, especially to those who have played one character for many years/expansions. Add to that the kind of feedback a lot of misinformed people seem to be hearing (2 button class, no depth, bad, etc) and very few people to champion the nuance (though props to Wordup and the final boss guys for trying), and you have a recipe for poor class representation.

However, I'm OK with this. I'd rather there be a smaller, dedicated following to the class, then have it overrun as the FOTM (like frost DK in pvp right now).

[Raiju]

There's a lot to be said for havoc that isn't immediately clear until you actually play it and 'feel' it. Some thoughts:

Self healing / survival while leveling - or leveling in general. DH is weak out the gate. You start with only about 1/2 your toolkit compared to other classes are more like 3/4 due to having all their talents (the last quarter going to traits). The damage DH does isn't spectacular either when compared to the other melee such as feral, enhancement, fury - but this isn't a huge issue as DH does very well at bursty aoe and can make time in mobility. The main issue always comes back to your inability to effectively aoe at the first few levels, due to not being able to survive more than 2 mobs on you.

The rations help, but something actually within the class would feel nicer. A soulstoring mechanic to turn a corpse into a healthstone? I don't really care. It shouldn't noticeably impact survivability later when you have your tools, given we have fairly potent raid-minded defensives for a non-tanky melee.

I'd also like if other testers could go out of their way to get some data on the artifact quest mobs and how hard they hit. While we're getting inconsistent reports they both seem to be out of line in some ways. If you do bother, please make sure to mention whether this is your primary artifact or secondary, and what level you are doing them at (I understand it should be 100 for the first, but for clarity's sake)

My second issue is the Burning Rush & Vicious Retreat talents and their ramifications. These talents would be amazing if we could guarantee some passive ranged damage, such as dots or floor effects. Right now we can spec a dot on Glaive Throw, a slow on Glaive Throw, & the artifact ground effect.

Some ideas:
Burning rush leaves flames on the ground for a few seconds that deal damage
After using Burning rush/vicious retreat your attack range is extended to 10-12 yards - ideally include chaos strike in this as these are both generators and the spec feels clunky when your generators make you move around so much but you can't burn your fury effectively outside of eye beam

General talent comments:
1st tier - no real complaints, assuming the rush build actually goes somewhere.
2nd tier - demon blades is a trap at this level. It doesn't generate near enough for you not feel frustrated playing it leveling in my opinion. Should be moved later in the tree. Maybe merge into chaos blades /with tuning - as these do thematically similar things.
3rd tier - demon reborn lacks synergy, and could cause problems if the spec is getting a raid cooldown (darkness). Generally cooldown resets only cause issues down the road anyway, so I'd lean on removing it sooner rather than later.
4th tier - no complaints.
5th tier - momentum is covered above, bloodlet is fine as our only real dot source, nemesis is a nice theme but the effect seems poor, in both it's completely dull & arbitrary but not quite passive. Needs some creativity to change the effect so that it is more fun.
6th tier - we're already potent aoe so these are all pretty nice. I'd like if master of the glaive increased the bounce range a little - even 15 yards would feel massive I think over 10 and improve QoL. I assume unleashed power will seem more appealing once I have overwhelming power.
7th tier - As mentioned - chaos blades feels lacking and the above could fix. Fel barrage no comment as it's not working as intended right now (wordup has covered this), Demonic feels great as a 'passive' option. Not gonna lie I was hoping one would be a super meta or perma meta, but I can see why not (this expansion)

I want to re-iterate the class *feels* amazing, even if theres some mechanical problems.

[Deleted]

Totally agree. There is a vast under-representation for DH. Even Monks had a larger following prior to MoP's release.

I associate it with too much stigma over a new "hero class". People saw the surge of DK's with WotLK and all the stigmas that came with them and want to avoid being "that guy" in Legion. Playing a DK in WotLK was an uphill battle. Every single pug group I was in automatically assumed because I was playing a DK I was a noob emo kid that didn't know how to play. I was constantly having to prove my worth in every situation, guilty until proven innocent if you will. I think alot of people are trying to avoid that.

Heh, i remember this as well, i totally loved my dk in wrath, especially with the stigma you automatically had attached to you. Then suddenly WTF why is the DW Frost dk 2k above everyone else on recount!! Was a very satisfying spec to play during ICC with decent skill cap with the old pestilence refresh on your diseases glyph and was a monster after you got the saurfang trinket.

I actually hope its the same come release, as the diversity already provided from Havoc will be quick to separate the good DH from the fotm rerollers who are clueless because they normally play hunter or arcane mage.

[rhoark]

Vengeance is looking appealing to me, but mainly because I'm comparing to my warrior main where Blizzard is brining to bear even fewer new ideas than with DH. In particular, sigils seem interesting and Soul Barrier gives something proactive to do during periods of low damage.

[Deleted]

Why would I want a hero that is doomed to be a whiny bitch?

Whenever you look in warcraft lore demonhunters lose fights and than cry about it with hatred.

They are the Cloud Strifes of Warcraft.
Sasuke as hero class.
The Illidans of.. oh wait.

Casual Hero: "Fast, lets fight these Demons Champions!!"
Demonhunter: "No, I am my own demon *cries in demonic*"

Before I play a demon hunter who chose his way, because he hates something, or someone was mean to him I'd rather play a Death Knight. Death Knights are slicing up demon hunters since 2003. They also have two damage specs because there wasn't the danger of 'being watered down' (lol) when they got two damage specs.

Joke or not, I'm kinda agree with those points. X-P

[Deleted]

Please don't take my text as a constructive argument, it was more of a joke.

I don't think there is a lack of interest tbh, since most of the votes show that over 30% of players wanna pick a DH with legion. That would be 6-7 DHs in a LFR raid. Thats more than enough.

I also didn't judge what Blizzard will create. I've just showed up how demonhunters were in the books, videos, lore.

Everyone tells what kind of badass illidan wars, but tbh if you read the books he was just a spoiled brat doing whatever he wants, but not in the cool way.

which is why he is cool,lol although I do agree that he is a shitty character because he will apparently be a Champion of Light.

Whenever you look in warcraft lore demonhunters lose fights and than cry about it with hatred.

they rekt the entire Demon World like it was nothing.

[Deleted]

The class hasn't been a 2 button class for several months now. Don't understand why this interpretation of the class is still around.

Right now Havoc has 4 builds you can technically go, which was covered by FinalbossTV 2 days ago. It's actually one of the few classes on Alpha that doesn't have a clear cookie cutter build.

You can go the heavy movement with buff uptime set to get tested a lot on your ability to do the correct combos to pull off some good dps.
YOu can of course also go the safe route with just managing the demonic buff.

Havoc right now is having something to do constantly, and is one of the fastest specs atm.

Although most of what you're saying is true , what both you and fatboss are missing is that demonhunter only currently has so many options. As soon as the "best" option starts beeing fleshed out from simcraft etc. all the other options will be seens as less viable and we will be back to the usual.

Although it is fairly interesting that one single spec , basically consists of 3 different playstyles. Which is basically what all the tears for a third spec were about .

[Sangomah]

Although most of what you're saying is true , what both you and fatboss are missing is that demonhunter only currently has so many options. As soon as the "best" option starts beeing fleshed out from simcraft etc. all the other options will be seens as less viable and we will be back to the usual.

Although it is fairly interesting that one single spec , basically consists of 3 different playstyles. Which is basically what all the tears for a third spec were about .

When I was streaming the latest raid test (Monday April 4th), People were asking me to go the movement build.

Problem for me right now, and most testers based in the EU, is that due to the ping certain builds are unplayable in a raid environment, and to some degree, on dummies.
This means that the movement build (Fel Rush, Felblade, Momentum with Demonic) is really hard to pull off due to the ping making some of the abilities behave wierdly. Fel Rush can move you anything from 20-45 yards if you are unlucky. VR doesn't jump backwards properly, or is "slow" meaning your momentum uptime is weird.

On top of that, as you say, the cookie cutter build from my experience with raiding so far is the "Demonic Fury Dump" that plays very much like Arms warrior does.
It utilized First blood, Bloodlet, Fel Eruption, Unleashed Power, Demonic and plays out like this:

Pull with Glaive, Fel rush, demons bit, Eruption, Fury to 100, Eye Beam, 2/3 annhilation + Bladesweep, Pool Fury, Nova, 2/3 annhilation, Blade Sweep, and repeat.

Your self healing is really high with this spec and you are very self reliant, meaning there is little reason to heal you outside the obvious unavidable AOE that might happen (which you more often than not have Blur for. Spellblade Adds as an example).

The "Heroes of the Storm Illidan" build where you utilize auto attacks with Demon Blades, Chaos Blades, Felblade and Fel Rush, but it feels slow and boring to me. Waiting for auto attacks to generate rage was the thing that threw me off playing a warrior back in Vanilla.

MY fear is the DH ends up like the DK, where it started off really fun with 3 specs that could dps AND tank with different runes that needed to be managed. It was then changed in Cata and Blood turned into tanking, Frost turned into a dualwield/2h and Unholy 2h with pets.

I hope the different builds get to stay as they are so we get different playstyles, as well as a change to Demon Reborn first and foremost and to some degree, the artifact weapons.

PS: Chaos Strike is still waaaaaay better than any other ability due to how it interacts with everything. Need to balance the skills out more.

- - - Updated - - -

The best option talent wise right now for progress is already fleshed out due to the absurd dmg og chaos strike as well as the self healing that demonic provides.

First blood, eruption, soul rending, bloodlet, demonic is currently the best spec for progress/test raiding.

Swithing out for vengeful retreat and momentum for st might give higher numbers if you play correctly. Demonic with momentu and retreat is even better, but requierspractice ( impossible at 180 ping on the alpha due to being in EU. Demonic is rough enough right now.

[High Marshal Sigismund]

Class is missing something, at least Havoc is. There's something about the rotation that just feels incomplete.

Maybe an extra button, maybe some overarching mechanic that ties it all together, as it stands now the only real limiters are cooldowns and their resource. DKs have both plus their rune system, so they feel more complete.

[Sangomah]

Dk's only have 1 rune type now, so it has the same feel to it imo.

I dont know what the class could be missing tbh. The rotation is pretty darn full if you are playing Demonic with FB and FE.
Movement spec is even more insane (rush, VR, Momentum)
If you have the Auto attack build (DB, FB, BL, MOTG, CB) you have some more time on your hands depending on RNG, but it still pretty hectic.

I find the rotation pretty good right now imo.

Is there anything you can think of? Is there a buff that could be put up on ourselves, like roll the bones for Outlaw?

Demon Blades could be turned into that possibly. IDK

[Kithelle]

In the end of the day I've thought about it and I say good, to the name of the thread. If people don't want to play the class because they have no idea what they're talking about or because it isn't OP like DK was when it started, I say fine...less Illidan pretenders running around and the earlier I can start my DH without the starting zone being filled to capacity.

People want to make rash assumptions, fine...doesn't bother me one bit as I know I want to play a DH.

[Neudgae]

i was originally only interested in unholy dk enh shaman and guardian druid(like always) but after reading more into legion, it looks like i might pick up fury warrior as an option too, if guardian fails for me ill give veng dh a shot but thats only cause i find all the other tanks boring. otherwise ill be rolling dps and dh has nothing that interests me in that aspect as i dont pvp

[Sangomah]

Druids have a lot going for them right now.

Artifacts in itself and you have 4! for one class
They modify your cat and bear form depending on what artifact transmog you have
They are also very strong.

Vengeance DH rewards very good gameplay though. It is one of the more "active" tanks it seems. (others should confirm this cause it just feels like it for me)

Fury warrior is super fun!

That said, give Demonology warlock a shot. its so fucking funny to be a puppet master with your own army melting shit in your path while /laugh in the back

[Mamut]

When Dh was announced I was super hyped, then DH stopped interesting me but now Im again hooked and I think Im gonna roll one as a main.

[Raiju]

Vengeance DH rewards very good gameplay though. It is one of the more "active" tanks it seems. (others should confirm this cause it just feels like it for me)

It feels ok once you're taking some damage, but leveling it feels like the most dangerous aspect to your survival is the boredom induced from shear shear shear

[Ergar]

It feels ok once you're taking some damage, but leveling it feels like the most dangerous aspect to your survival is the boredom induced from shear shear shear

Pretty much the same with leveling every tank. For brm it was just spamming keg smash and sck, and for blood it was d&d with bloodboil spam.

But yeah i have to agree so far i haven't seen that many of my friends as excited for the class as i am. Pretty much the main reason is the "active" style of tanking as others have said, with the added benefit of only having 1 dps spec, so i don't have to learn more than one.

[Raiju]

Pretty much the same with leveling every tank. For brm it was just spamming keg smash and sck, and for blood it was d&d with bloodboil spam.

But yeah i have to agree so far i haven't seen that many of my friends as excited for the class as i am. Pretty much the main reason is the "active" style of tanking as others have said, with the added benefit of only having 1 dps spec, so i don't have to learn more than one.

Not really...? That's not how you play DK to begin with.

[Ergar]

Not really...? That's not how you play DK to begin with.

For me it was while leveling a dk to 100. Easier to just pull 10+ mobs and spam blood boil with your runes than to "waste" it on DS (This was before the BB nerfs).