[Beta] Havoc Discussion

[Vanyali]

No ring for us though. :/

?? Did it get stealth-removed this patch? Not talking the WoD ring, the Legion ring that makes Dbite/ Dblade give more fury.

[Etrnlaffair]

?? Did it get stealth-removed this patch? Not talking the WoD ring, the Legion ring that makes Dbite/ Dblade give more fury.

Oh. I'm really dumb. :/ or my brain is fried from the insane amount of online classes I'm taking... Probably both. :/ I'll go back to my lurker status again. Sorry. :/

[Vanyali]

Oh. I'm really dumb. :/ or my brain is fried from the insane amount of online classes I'm taking... Probably both. :/ I'll go back to my lurker status again. Sorry. :/

no worries dude! We've spent the last year with that being the legendary ring and I didn't even connect that xD

[ChakanDH]

Interesting to see Celestalon actively asking if people are still able to cancel fel rush/VR, pretty much lays to rest the debate whether there is any sort of "working as intended" for cancelling, which is good to hear.

[Deleted]

sigh, they really are just going to keep buffing DK-simulation talent until it's the go-to talent. Blizzie you disappoint.

[Arthael]

Sorry for the following but would anyone mind giving me a quick idea of how the spec plays?
(Any reference to the existing classes in WoW, RIFT, GW2, or action RPGs like DS, DA would really help - I am new to the game, but I played around with all the classes so far)

I went through the last 20 pages of the thread and just came out more confused. I am currently trying to figure out what to play and none of the existing classes really hit home.
There seems to be a momentum build (which I assume is the talent based and managing its uptime) so you zip around back and forth as needed? What is the other alternative, and I guess which one is better? Are we strong DPS wise (relatively competitive), and mechanics that engage you or are we going to be another set of monks?

Thanks for the help, sorry for any inconvenience.

[Dimzum]

Tried the DB/Nem/Demon Reborn/CB build last night for a few heroics. Figured with the changes and nerfs to finally give it a reasonable effort. Obviously bosses are easier with this and the damage seems ludicrous for short bursty fights. Trash and AoE is meh and definitely miss the feel of momentum/demonic for that.

The biggest thing I noticed was doing world quests. DB/Nem/CB is just awful. You don't have that on demand burst with momentum and sure as hell don't have the self healing from demonic. Every 2 minutes you can crank out the damage, but after that you're about worthless.

I wish they would make Demon Reborn not tied to Meta. It would even be nice if it reset or reduced the CD of meta, but in doing so it would become the mandatory talent for that row, unless moved to a more competitive row.

[Deleted]

Hey guys!

I haven't been fortunate enough to gain a beta access and i'm really interested in switching over to Demon hunter. Since i don't have the opportunity to test the class myself, i'd appreciate if you guys could help me bring my knowledge up to date by answering some questions for me.

First, some questions about the abilities. So Eye beam isn't worth it on ST anymore unless you are specced into Demonic. Just to make sure, Anguish of the deceiver and chaos vision traits do not change this? How many targets do you need to hit for Blade dance to be worth casting? How about the artifact ability, Fury of the illidari. And does Rage of the illidari trait make the Fury more appealing?

Then the talents, i'm bit unsure about the flexibility of the builds. For example, as i understand it the Moment build is Fel mastery/Prepared/Felblade/Momentum/Demonic. But is it okay to break that build so that you take instead on the first for Chaos cleave if there are 2 targets, is it ever ok to skip Felblade for First blood for example? I just want to get an clear picture on what is necessary for the momentum playstyle.

I think another talent build i've seen is the Chaos blade one. Chaos blades, Nemesis and Demon reborn have somekind of synergy going on with them but how would i want to finish this kind of build with the three first rows. I guess the first row is self-explanatory but on the 2nd row you have Prepared and Demon blades, i'm guessing Demon blades is better now with the buff at least when you are not going for momentum? On the 3rd row you probably want felblade unless the fight is aoe'ish and you'd maybe rather want First blood?

Then lastly on individual talents, do you ever realistically want to use Blind fury and is Demonic appetite ever better than Prepared/Demon blades? Are bloodlet, fel eruption, master of glaive and fel barrage talents that you would want to use for anything?

Thanks in advance, i would really appreciate anything you can help me with. If you want to answer any one or two parts here, feel free to do so if you don't want to tackle the whole post.

EDIT: I knew i'd forget something. Is there like a set 'rotation' for keeping up the momentum buff? If so, it would be awesome if someone could educate me on this as well.

[jayinjersey]

I can brush a couple of your questions from my reading this and beta's forums religiously.


Apparently Eye Beam is only worth using with Demonic...and even then you should cancel it to use your Demonic abilities (which is so sad)

Blade Dance, even with First Blood is only ever worth using over a Chaos Strike if there are over 4 (could be 5) targets...so I guess you wouldn't even TAKE First Blood unless there was a 4/5 boss fight where hitting them all was worth it (also very sad...2 best looking abilities basically ignored for best DPS...)

[Qlix]

Isnt FB/CB/Nem beating Prep/Mom on ST? Pretty sure that was the consensus atm. Which means youd be Blade Dancing on CD. I agree with you on the eyebeam shit. Totally flippin ridiculous. Thats like THE iconic ability that needs to be standard as a DH. Fuck canceling it.

[Manu9]

I can brush a couple of your questions from my reading this and beta's forums religiously.


Apparently Eye Beam is only worth using with Demonic...and even then you should cancel it to use your Demonic abilities (which is so sad)

Blade Dance, even with First Blood is only ever worth using over a Chaos Strike if there are over 4 (could be 5) targets...so I guess you wouldn't even TAKE First Blood unless there was a 4/5 boss fight where hitting them all was worth it (also very sad...2 best looking abilities basically ignored for best DPS...)

Didn't this change after the refund nerf?

[TKTank]

I really don't get people problem with Demon Blades...it provides a better feeling allowing you to push a stronger button more often; provides a smoother rotation (from my very small sample and anedoctal evidence, but nonetheless); allows a bit of "in-depth hidden knowledge" that will allows some differentiation in players that are aware and those who are not...

I'm glad they're moving towards that road and I believe it would be even better if Demon Blades was baseline and you could opt to Talent out of it with Demon's Bite.

On the AnimCanceling front, it's certainly clear they wouldn't like or want a whole new class debut with a gimmick requirement on its core gameplay. Even more so, the more I play with it more I get convinced they expect the flow to be Fel Rush or Retreat according to map/CD allowance to get buff up and mostly FelB back in, allowing skill/positioning/preparation to squeeze more uptime.

@Arthael

Momentum build plays (to me) like a Warrior from Tera mmo or like Dust: An Elysian Tale (sidescroller found on Steam). It's a "always keep moving" type of gameplay, where you have a somewhat simplistic rotation but gotta pay attention to positioning and environment to pull it perfectly (or animation cancel and stand still for most of it).

The idea is that Fel Rush and Retreat nets you a 20% damage bonus for 4sec, so you want to keep that buff uptime as high as possible while maintaining boss uptime as high as possible for a net uptime of both as high as possible, while doing the fight mechanics.

The option to this build currently is a Nemesis build, which is basically a CD-oriented setup. To me, it resemble old Combat Rogue or Enhancement when they used Bloodlust+Wolves+SR+Trinket and went balls to the wall ham.

Being able to reset your CDs, the idea is to align your CDs during a window where you can maximize their use along with benefiting from Nemesis 2-part buff, on yourself and on the target killed.

Due to the need of maximizing dps time on CDs, it's a much more stale build in terms of ambient movement and also ST oriented.

In terms of DPS, tunning is still an ongoing process even beyond launch day but all considered I'd expect a new class to be released on the upper side of DPS balance. There're certainly some specs overperforming Havoc right now but many as well underperforming and considering the current trend of slowly getting small buffs in the recent patches (after some heavy nerfs) I assume we'll end up in a good spot (I definitelly wouldn't want to start OP and get heavily nerfed before Mythic opens).

[Deleted]

I really don't get people problem with Demon Blades...it provides a better feeling allowing you to push a stronger button more often; provides a smoother rotation (from my very small sample and anedoctal evidence, but nonetheless); allows a bit of "in-depth hidden knowledge" that will allows some differentiation in players that are aware and those who are not...

At least for me it's the feeling of talent. Having it makes Havoc play like old DK specs where you had tons of free time between abilities. I personally don't like the feeling of having that free time. Not that spamming same ability is much better. Would prefer to have more on CD abilities.
+ it does actually reduce Havoc's already rather small repertoire of abilities (you can argue it's not small all you want, but that's how I see it).

[High Marshal Sigismund]

provides a smoother rotation

Apparently smoother = braindead now.

Such interesting human beings in this thread. This class is shit. Beyond shit. Only monks will be less popular than this class after the initial surge.

Have fun with your 2-3 button rotations. One guy even made an entire post desperately explaining to me how Demon Blades is this complex mechanic when it was obvious he was struggling to believe even himself.

[grizzlysaurusrex]

I mean Demon Blades isn't that complex, it's just more complex than the tooltip indicates it would be.

[Zeeket]

it does actually reduce Havoc's already rather small repertoire of abilities (you can argue it's not small all you want, but that's how I see it).

I see this said a lot, and i agree DH's do have a relatively small ability pool, but people always seem to either forget, miss out or just dont know that A LOT of specs now have a relatively small ability pool so its not like DH is alone in a sea of having few abilities , where most specs (DH included) get fleshed out is in the talent tree's and DH's have a fair few actives thrown in from there and stuff to track

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Apparently smoother = braindead now.

Such interesting human beings in this thread. This class is shit. Beyond shit. Only monks will be less popular than this class after the initial surge.

Have fun with your 2-3 button rotations. One guy even made an entire post desperately explaining to me how Demon Blades is this complex mechanic when it was obvious he was struggling to believe even himself.

Demon Blades may not be super interesting, but it isn't braindead as you seem to think, it makes you work around GCD's and such to make sure you don't overcap, sure if you just wanna sit and spam and swing then yeh its probably boring to you and would seem shit cos you're not playing the talent correctly, but it really isn't as garbage and useless as you think.
But if you REALLY dislike the class so much, then why are you in the DH forum moaning about it? just ignore the class and move on with your life.

[Mefistophelis]

At what ilvl do Demon Hunters end up after finishing the whole introduction experience ?

[Vanyali]

I see this said a lot, and i agree DH's do have a relatively small ability pool, but people always seem to either forget, miss out or just dont know that A LOT of specs now have a relatively small ability pool so its not like DH is alone in a sea of having few abilities , where most specs (DH included) get fleshed out is in the talent tree's and DH's have a fair few actives thrown in from there and stuff to track

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Demon Blades may not be super interesting, but it isn't braindead as you seem to think, it makes you work around GCD's and such to make sure you don't overcap, sure if you just wanna sit and spam and swing then yeh its probably boring to you and would seem shit cos you're not playing the talent correctly, but it really isn't as garbage and useless as you think.
But if you REALLY dislike the class so much, then why are you in the DH forum moaning about it? just ignore the class and move on with your life.

I'd like to point out on this front that I have exactly the same amount of keybinds as DH as I do Feral on live. I dare anyone to call feral braindead with no abilities.


Also, just ignore LoO. He's just a guy that pops in here to troll, gets banned, then pops back here or the lore forum. Nothing constructive from any of his usernames.

[Factor]

I'd like to point out on this front that I have exactly the same amount of keybinds as DH as I do Feral on live. I dare anyone to call feral braindead with no abilities.

I think that speaks to mechanic design more than anything. Gameplay centred around building up to using a single very strong ability sounds great in theory, but when that ability is intended to be spammed until you're out of resources and then built back up (with a singular ability) until you can spam it again isn't the most engaging thing in the world. When 70% of your key presses are two singular abilities imo something is wrong. I understand that the momentum build breaks up that monotony but it can't be used every fight, at least it couldn't in the current raid tier so thats probably the case going forward as well. I'm desperately hoping that DH doesn't feel as shallow as it currently looks on paper. I love the lore and class fantasy, but the gameplay looks so...rote.

Granted Felblade definitely helps. But choosing that negates the choice of First blood which removes Blade Dance from ST. It also precludes you from taking Bloodlet. Rotational complexity, outside of momentum, is removed just by having FB being a talented ability. Imo, make it baseline and let that talent in that row change the way its used instead.

[Vanyali]

I think that speaks to mechanic design more than anything. Gameplay centred around building up to using a single very strong ability sounds great in theory, but when that ability is intended to be spammed until you're out of resources and then built back up (with a singular ability) until you can spam it again isn't the most engaging thing in the world. When 70% of your key presses are two singular abilities imo something is wrong. I understand that the momentum build breaks up that monotony but it can't be used every fight, at least it couldn't in the current raid tier so thats probably the case going forward as well. I'm desperately hoping that DH doesn't feel as shallow as it currently looks on paper. I love the lore and class fantasy, but the gameplay looks so...rote.

Granted Felblade definitely helps. But choosing that negates the choice of First blood which removes Blade Dance from ST. It also precludes you from taking Bloodlet. Rotational complexity, outside of momentum, is removed just by having FB being a talented ability. Imo, make it baseline and let that talent in that row change the way its used instead.

If you're just pushing 2 buttons you've misunderstood and are doing the class very wrong. Even in the ST build.

As a note, I had a DH do that in a run I was healing. He pulled a cool 80k.

Competent DHs pull anywhere from 200-250k, for reference.