[Beta] Havoc Discussion

[BiggestNoob]

Finally one of the legendaries will be worth getting.

Nerfed Darkness even more into the ground.
Don't know if the chance for Demon Blades to proc changed or is just now specified in the tooltip so... more on that later after someone tests.
Fel mastery, nerf? buff? who knows?
Prepared nerf. Saw that one coming. Not sure if it's even still worthwhile now.

Thoughts?

I was seeing DB at ~50% before, I thought for a while it was every other autoattack. Fel mastery is a buff unless you have a really low crit rate, but Prepared needed a nerf. I gave feedback a while ago that it was more than twice as strong as Appetite. I don't know how much fury DB gives, though, but it replaces bite so until we're in T19 4pc it won't be likely a DPS increase over either of the others.

[Vanyali]

I feel like Prepared will always be worth it, so long as Momentum is in a completely separate row and is still 20% for 4 seconds. Until they either destroy Prepared, nerf Momentum or put them on the same row, I have a strong feeling that will always be the best setup to roll with. I don't know if Blizzard realizes it isn't necessarily momentum or prepared specifically, but its both of them together.

But what do I know. I'm just a lurker who mains a druid. :P

This, with VR being off the GCD, is essentially correct. The lower CDR and free fury in addition to the +20% is what makes this talent shine, and the fury nerf is a non-issue with enough crit.

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I was seeing DB at ~50% before, I thought for a while it was every other autoattack. Fel mastery is a buff unless you have a really low crit rate, but Prepared needed a nerf. I gave feedback a while ago that it was more than twice as strong as Appetite. I don't know how much fury DB gives, though, but it replaces bite so until we're in T19 4pc it won't be likely a DPS increase over either of the others.

Dblades wasn't 50% really.. Kaedys on the official forums has really good mathy shit, but what I gathered was that every hit off the GCD has a chance, and NOT procing upped that chance. It worked out to 2 swings was a guarantee, more or less, of a proc. Which is why you needed the swing AND GCD timer so you didn't overdo your chance (a 130% [completely made up number] chance is a waste of the increase). If it's a static 50% regardless of GCD it's a pretty good buff.

[Soulfròst]

I was seeing DB at ~50% before, I thought for a while it was every other autoattack. Fel mastery is a buff unless you have a really low crit rate, but Prepared needed a nerf. I gave feedback a while ago that it was more than twice as strong as Appetite. I don't know how much fury DB gives, though, but it replaces bite so until we're in T19 4pc it won't be likely a DPS increase over either of the others.

Sounds like they just decided to tell you the chance in the tooltip, then. I'm good with that. Seems definitely possible to overtake Prepared with high enough crit rating. Depends on how much fury it gives on proc. I'd initially propose the same amount of fury Demon's Bite gives, but given varying haste ratings, IDK.

I know one thing, though. That change to Eye Beam certainly has me taking another look at Blind Fury, especially combined with the legendary helm.

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If they'd just get around to adding a Pandemic effect to the Momentum buff, I'd say many more people would choose First Blood over Felblade, and also pick Fel Mastery over Chaos Cleave. Edit for those who haven't played Havoc (cough @Unanilnomen) I say this because with the Pandemic effect, it would be feasible to Vengeful Retreat, then Fel Rush back in (utilizing Fel Mastery), thus reducing the reliance on the charge effect on Felblade (which is still buggy as hell on some bosses) which frees up First Blood for better AoE and potential single target variation.

At the end of the day, I'm glad to see the Havoc spec and talent tree improving over time during beta.

[Drahkais]

Crit rate aside, not taking Prepared is just going to lower your Momentum up-time. While I can see the appeal in DB, the more crit we have the less we're going to be worried about Fury. Given that the Eye Beam change is a nerf to higher levels of crit, while the Fel Mastery change is a buff, Blind Fury just seems less appealing in general to me.

For some AoE heavy fights its going to be fun with the Legendary however.

[Vanyali]

On the Dblades change, because this dude has a much better grasp than me:

"* Demon Blades is a buff. Before, it had 20 RPPM, and we get in 46.15 auto-attacks per minute, before haste (which scales both values at the same rate, and thus doesn't change the math). That's 43.3% per attack. Now it's 50%, which is a 15.4% increase in the proc rate per auto-attack, and by implication no longer has the GCD restriction, meaning that in practice it's likely a larger buff, since there's no longer a chance to clip part of its benefit by casting a GCD at the wrong time. However, it's also arguably less reliable now, because each auto-attack has a fixed 50% chance, while before, casting a GCD ability bumped the following auto-attack to an 86% chance, or even 100% (if timed poorly)."

- Kaedys / Bnet post

[Kaedis]

"* Demon Blades is a buff. Before, it had 20 RPPM, and we get in 46.15 auto-attacks per minute, before haste (which scales both values at the same rate, and thus doesn't change the math). That's 43.3% per attack. Now it's 50%, which is a 15.4% increase in the proc rate per auto-attack, and by implication no longer has the GCD restriction, meaning that in practice it's likely a larger buff, since there's no longer a chance to clip part of its benefit by casting a GCD at the wrong time. However, it's also arguably less reliable now, because each auto-attack has a fixed 50% chance, while before, casting a GCD ability bumped the following auto-attack to an 86% chance, or even 100% (if timed poorly)."

To expand on this, since my mathy post is buried somewhere in that feedback thread.

With RPPM, your proc chance is RPPM * (1 + haste%) * TimeSinceLastProcableAttack / 60. The Twinblades have an attack speed of 2.6s, and tend to stagger their attacks. If they are perfectly staggered (one every 1.3 seconds, before haste), that gives (gave) our attacks a 43.3% chance of proccing Demon Blades (this chance is independent of haste, incidentally, since the base 1.3 second TimeSinceLastProcableAttack gets divided by (1 + haste%), factoring that part out of the overall equation).

However, attacks made while on the GCD don't (didn't) count as "procable attacks" for Demon Blades. That means that if an auto-attack occurs during a global, the next auto attack (assuming its not during a global) inherits the time from the first attack, bumping the proc chance to 86.7% for that next auto-attack, since it's now been 2.6 seconds since the last procable attack, instead of the normal 1.3s (note that this percentage stays the same regardless of attack staggering).

The problem comes (came) in when we consume 2 consecutive auto-attacks within a global (or two back-to-back). In this case, the time since the last procable attack is 3.9 seconds, which gives that attack a 130% proc chance. However, DB can't proc twice from a single swing, so the extra 30% is simply wasted. This occurs during the last 0.2 seconds before either hand's swing, assuming they are staggered perfectly. This also translates to a loss of 30% of a DB's damage (around 100% weapon damage) and 7.5 Fury worth of Chaos Strike damage (around 250% weapon damage, though it depends on your crit chance), though the loss can be as high as 73.3% of a DB proc (~900% weapon damage total) if the attacks were not perfectly staggered, maxing out when they are instead perfectly aligned. Regardless of staggering, that deadzone where casting a GCD would result in lost DPS covered precisely 13.3% of the auto-attack cycle, 0.4 seconds before haste, which would necessitate a swing timer tracker to effectively avoid the DPS loss.

The new version by implication no longer has this GCD effect. This means it's at least 15% superior in overall benefit, just from the increased proc rate per attack (50% instead of 43.3%), and also no longer suffers from the potential overcapping of proc chances and the waste this caused.

[Schlosh]

So will it take simcraft to figure out if/when Demon Blades overtakes Prepared? At what crit%? Or will the Legendary ring be the deciding factor? Or is it still too early to tell at this point? I'm not majorly concerned but just wondering if anyone has figured it out at this point. Could require the legendaries being opened up for testing again in beta to figure out maybe.

[Kaedis]

So will it take simcraft to figure out if/when Demon Blades overtakes Prepared? At what crit%? Or will the Legendary ring be the deciding factor? Or is it still too early to tell at this point? I'm not majorly concerned but just wondering if anyone has figured it out at this point. Could require the legendaries being opened up for testing again in beta to figure out maybe.

I could probably make a decent stab at finding such a point, but it's going to have larger error bars than are useful without a tool like Simcraft. The problem is, it's not a direct comparison. Prepared objectively gives you up to (now) 160 extra Fury per minutes, which can be directly translated into Chaos Strike damage. However, it also gives that Fury specifically during 5 seconds out of every 15 (rather than evenly spread out), which has difficult-to-formulate effects when combined with Momentum and Demonic.

Demon Blades is more complicated, however. The amount of fury it gives is governed by haste, and since its completely out of our control, can cause overcapping issues far more easily than Prepared. In addition, we lose all of the Fury gain (and damage) from Demon's Bite. The net is that it's frankly too complex to easily calculate formulaically.

However, I suspect that Prepared will actually gain ground over Demon Blades with higher crit, since higher crit means more refunds from CS, which means more often overcapping from Demon Blades procs. Demon Blades, however, scales with haste where Prepared does not, so that could be the balance.

[Vanyali]

For the PvP'ers - Cover of Darkness is now the 3rd row on the 3rd tier. Of the three, it replaces Rushing freaking Chaos, the only good option of that tier

[BiggestNoob]

However, I suspect that Prepared will actually gain ground over Demon Blades with higher crit, since higher crit means more refunds from CS, which means more often overcapping from Demon Blades procs. Demon Blades, however, scales with haste where Prepared does not, so that could be the balance.

It also procs damage, and a nontrivial amount. In that row, Appetite will continue to be mandatory on demon bosses, though, and now isn't quite as much of a loss to Prepared.

[Unkhrahuun the Atoned]

It also procs damage, and a nontrivial amount. In that row, Appetite will continue to be mandatory on demon bosses, though, and now isn't quite as much of a loss to Prepared.

I was under the impression that lesser soul fragments didn't give you the damage increase, was this changed?

[Vanyali]

I was under the impression that lesser soul fragments didn't give you the damage increase, was this changed?

They always gave you the damage.

Only thing lesser do differently is heal less / no FoTS.

I do wonder though... how does the damage for demon's soul and momentum work. Multiplicative.. additive.. because I can see that going absolutely insane, and causing the single instance where prepared is *not* BiT for Momentum.

[Kaedis]

I was under the impression that lesser soul fragments didn't give you the damage increase, was this changed?

They most certainly do give you it. They don't proc Feast on the Souls, but they give you the demon's soul damage buff, which is huge.

They are, however, nearly impossible to see during a raid fight as well.

[Vanyali]

That is why I make them fel green! Speaking of which, need to remember to see if that's fixed this build.

[Schlosh]

For the PvP'ers - Cover of Darkness is now the 3rd row on the 3rd tier. Of the three, it replaces Rushing freaking Chaos, the only good option of that tier

That really upsets me...now DH's need a snare I feel like, before you could get away with it b/c of the 10 yd range of chaos strike. Now, this is not gonna be good for PVP

[Kaedis]

So...this is new. Demon Blades can either proc off itself currently, or can double-proc off melee hits:

[Vanyali]

So...this is new. Demon Blades can either proc off itself currently, or can double-proc off melee hits:

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/jTwpLGl.png[IMG]

...well. That seems broken af for a non-momentum build, particularly with the ring and/ or the tier set.

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That really upsets me...now DH's need a snare I feel like, before you could get away with it b/c of the 10 yd range of chaos strike. Now, this is not gonna be good for PVP

Yeah it's uh.. not good. It traded mobility for a self-root. When we're already suffering pretty hard for lack of mobility if snared.

We do have three snares (one base; two talents [one pve, one pvp]), but their main issue is that all of them are defensive abilities used offensively which is weird. EB counts as that now, as it's purely a demonic-machine in pvp.

[Donovan4893]

...well. That seems broken af for a non-momentum build, particularly with the ring and/ or the tier set.

I tried it out and it still feels too RNG-y, sometimes it will proc a ton and get a full fury bar quickly other times I will be starved just auto attacking maybe with the set bonus and getting a lot more crit (only have 30%) it will feel better. Also would the legendary ring even affect it since the ring says demons bite and not demon blades? I wonder.

[Kaedis]

Ok, so, some testing. It looks like Demon Blades still cannot proc during the GCD. However, it "saves up" procs now, with each melee attack off the GCD now procing up to two Demon Blades hits until the "bank" has been depleted. This means that while you're spamming Chaos Strike crits, it cannot proc, but once you finish, you'll get an instant burst of Fury on the next melee attack the procs.

Not sure if there's still any sort of wastage potential in the new system, though it very easily overcaps you if you're not careful.

[Schlosh]

...well. That seems broken af for a non-momentum build, particularly with the ring and/ or the tier set.

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Yeah it's uh.. not good. It traded mobility for a self-root. When we're already suffering pretty hard for lack of mobility if snared.

We do have three snares (one base; two talents [one pve, one pvp]), but their main issue is that all of them are defensive abilities used offensively which is weird. EB counts as that now, as it's purely a demonic-machine in pvp.

Yeah, well, that means swapping out Awaken the Demon Within for Pinning Glare which, quite frankly, sucks, the healing from Awaken the Demon was some of our defense. The snare from VR is like you said, odd as it should work as a defensive in PVP, and taking MOTG over the other talents just for the snare is not really an option...so yeah, really disappointing to see this. It'll be interesting to see where they go once they attempt to balance PVP b/c I feel like currently, DH's are going to be incredibly awful in arena unfortunately.