[Beta] Havoc Discussion

[Gateway Ewok]

It might as well just be a button click to get 20% damage boost for 4s

You mean like Mana Tap for Destruction? Because that's a normal ability and it feels fine.

[Emek]

what is the keystone trait priority looking like? Since it's gonna be pretty easy to get the first 2, the third will be somewhat of a grind to get, so i'd like to get the best 2 first and not fuck myself

[Kaedis]

So I finally got into beta, and I immediately started playing around with the numbers I have access to. I was wondering what our Priority looks like for Demon Blades build.


Fury of Illidari
Chaos Blades if capping energy
Fel Rush if capping charges
Throw Glaive
Chaos Blade
Fel Rush

Is it really that small? Am I missing something?

Also, I'm using a really..bad swing timer through weak auras. Are there better ones out there? It seems pretty important.

Assuming you mean Chaos Strike here. Anyway, I'm not sure Throw Glaive will be in there unless you take Bloodlet (which you shouldn't). Fel Rush similarly shouldn't be in there, because you should never ever take Demon Blades and Momentum at the same time.

The goal isn't to use up as many of your globals as possible, because open globals is the only way you can generate Fury. So using a no-cost ability (like Fel Rush or Throw Glaive) isn't necessarily something you want to do, because not doing anything with that global nets you Fury income. Also, since they removed the RPPM mechanic and added a back-proc pool when you're on the GCD, you don't need a GCD tracker anymore.

That all said, Demon Blades is in a very questionable place at the moment. Dude linked a SimC output on the beta forums Havoc thread that showed Demon Blades to be worse than taking no talent at all on that tier. The build simmed was a Momentum build, which doesn't play nicely with Demon Blades (since you spend part of your time out of range, and need as much controllable burst Fury as possible during Momentum + Demonic windows), but it still suggests that even using a different build (like Demon Blades + Chaos Blades + Nemesis + Demon Reborn), the current tuning of Demon Blades may actually be worse that having no talent there at all (and that's still worse than taking Demonic Appetite or Prepared).

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You mean like Mana Tap for Destruction? Because that's a normal ability and it feels fine.

Mana Tap only provides 10% damage, and lasts a full 20 seconds. It's definitely not comparable to Momentum.

[Gateway Ewok]

Mana Tap only provides 10% damage, and lasts a full 20 seconds. It's definitely not comparable to Momentum.

It's certainly comparable, unless you're blind. As if 10% vs 20% somehow dramatically changes how the ability flows into a rotation.

Here are the similarities:
Both buff all of your damage done by a percent.
Both are low duration.
Both use a GCD and must be weaved into the rotation.

Here are the differences:
Momentum has a CD, Mana Tap doesn't.

[Kaedis]

It's certainly comparable, unless you're blind. As if 10% vs 20% somehow dramatically changes how the ability flows into a rotation.

Here are the similarities:
Both buff all of your damage done by a percent.
Both are low duration.
Both use a GCD and must be weaved into the rotation.

Here are the differences:
Momentum has a CD, Mana Tap doesn't.

Blatantly ignoring the duration difference. Momentum applies a buff that lasts for ~3 GCDs, while Mana Tap applies one that lasts for ~14. Momentum also requires you to take an action that could be dangerous or lethal (to you or another) in certain situations while Mana Tap just requires you to stop DPS for a global (and the health cost from the needed Life Tap can't even really be considered, since Soul Leech absorbs Life Tap damage now). Lastly, Mana Tap doesn't remove any of your defensive or mobility abilities, while Momentum effectively does (since you need to use them instead for DPS).

In terms of the profundity of their effects on playstyle, and the risks and costs they have associated with them, they aren't even in the same league, though I'll grant you that they are at least still playing the same sport.

[Antiplicity]

Been lurking this thread for the past couple of days and thinking about having a DH as a main-alt, my current artifact build is:

I have 2 traits that I can still put in but don't really know where they should go from here. I'm also a little bit confused on when to spend a GCD on Fury of the Illidari on Single target. I understand you should always use it in AoE scenarios, but when do we use it for single target?

[Vanyali]

Been lurking this thread for the past couple of days and thinking about having a DH as a main-alt, my current artifact build is:[IMG]http://puu.sh/pVi06/067fd8f07f.jpg[/=IMG]

I have 2 traits that I can still put in but don't really know where they should go from here. I'm also a little bit confused on when to spend a GCD on using Fury of the Illidari on Single target. I understand you should always use it in AoE scenarios, but when do we use it for single target?

Sharpened Glaives --> Critical Chaos

FoTI on CD, I believe, unless in Demonic meta

[Fragarach]

Btw guys, I'm realizing some inconsistency in Fel Rush. It could be because of the ping (180-200, I'm from EU) but like 40-50% of the times, when I Fel Rush through an enemy, it doesn't deal damage.

Did you have this issue as well?

OCE player here, happens all the time for me

[Antiplicity]

I can't help but feel that Felblade is bugged when you use it just after Vengeful Retreat. Meaning, as soon as I use Vengeful Retreat I should be able to immediately jump to my target with Felblade. This currently isn't the case; Felbade does damage, but doesn't propel me to my target. instead, I have to wait roughful half a second, and then hit Felblade. Kind of annoying.

[Vanyali]

I can't help but feel that Felblade is bugged when you use it just after Vengeful Retreat. Meaning, as soon as I use Vengeful Retreat I should be able to immediately jump to my target with Felblade. This currently isn't the case; Felbade does damage, but doesn't propel me to my target. instead, I have to wait roughful half a second, and then hit Felblade. Kind of annoying.

It won't charge if you're in melee range, because otherwise you can't use it on immobile targets.

[Yoshimiko]

Assuming you mean Chaos Strike here. Anyway, I'm not sure Throw Glaive will be in there unless you take Bloodlet (which you shouldn't). Fel Rush similarly shouldn't be in there, because you should never ever take Demon Blades and Momentum at the same time.

The goal isn't to use up as many of your globals as possible, because open globals is the only way you can generate Fury. So using a no-cost ability (like Fel Rush or Throw Glaive) isn't necessarily something you want to do, because not doing anything with that global nets you Fury income. Also, since they removed the RPPM mechanic and added a back-proc pool when you're on the GCD, you don't need a GCD tracker anymore.

That all said, Demon Blades is in a very questionable place at the moment. Dude linked a SimC output on the beta forums Havoc thread that showed Demon Blades to be worse than taking no talent at all on that tier. The build simmed was a Momentum build, which doesn't play nicely with Demon Blades (since you spend part of your time out of range, and need as much controllable burst Fury as possible during Momentum + Demonic windows), but it still suggests that even using a different build (like Demon Blades + Chaos Blades + Nemesis + Demon Reborn), the current tuning of Demon Blades may actually be worse that having no talent there at all (and that's still worse than taking Demonic Appetite or Prepared).
.

Wait, This confuses me. Why do you need an open GCD to gain fury? I continue to swing when I use abilities as far as I saw, as long as it isn't an actual cast, like Eye beam.

Edit:

So, that appears to be the case. What about weaving things in so every auto attack falls on an open GCD. Essentially, you have a 2.25... second GCD instead of 1.5. EG:
0 - Auto attack
0.1 - Fury of Illdari
2.25 - Auto
2.26 - Fel Rush
4.5 - Auto
4.51 - Chaos Strike

etc. This should allow you to fit all of the abilities I mentioned in priority list and even with my limited swing timer, I can manage this pretty easily.

After a bit of testing with this, I'm finding myself regularly pulling 20-30k more DPS than the other specs, but I'm not sure if I'm doing them right. 4% haste isn't helping anything, either.

[Kaedis]

Wait, This confuses me. Why do you need an open GCD to gain fury? I continue to swing when I use abilities as far as I saw, as long as it isn't an actual cast, like Eye beam.

Edit:

So, that appears to be the case. What about weaving things in so every auto attack falls on an open GCD. Essentially, you have a 2.25... second GCD instead of 1.5. EG:
0 - Auto attack
0.1 - Fury of Illdari
2.25 - Auto
2.26 - Fel Rush
4.5 - Auto
4.51 - Chaos Strike

etc. This should allow you to fit all of the abilities I mentioned in priority list and even with my limited swing timer, I can manage this pretty easily.

After a bit of testing with this, I'm finding myself regularly pulling 20-30k more DPS than the other specs, but I'm not sure if I'm doing them right. 4% haste isn't helping anything, either.

So, Demon Blades can only proc when you're off the GCD. Procs that happen while you're on the GCD are "banked" and will occur as a double proc when you next melee off the GCD, but you can't gain fury until you melee while not on the GCD.

That said, there's no real need to weave on auto-attacks, because procs that happen during a GCD are banked and simply happen on the next auto-attack outside of GCD. You can have a maximum of 10 banked charges, which is plenty of bank room, so just use your abilities on priority as they are available, and auto-attack when you have nothing else to do. You're also forgetting about offhand attacks. By default, the auto-attacks are staggered every 1.3s (MH -> OH -> MH -> OH), reduced by haste. So it's mostly impossible to ensure every auto-attack happens on an empty GCD. That said, it doesn't actually matter, because the charges bank anyway.

The other side of this, however, is that Fel Rush and possibly Throw Glaive aren't really useful to include in that rotation even though they cost nothing, because they still do take up a GCD in which you could be generating fury. You don't lose procs during that GCD, obviously, but it does still delay when you get fury. Fel Rush also takes you out of melee range in most cases, meaning it's very likely to be a net loss. Throw Glaive is more ambiguous, and could possibly be a DPS gain to include. We'll need aggressive simming to verify for sure.

Also, contrary to intuition, haste doesn't benefit Demon Blades much more than the normal Demon Bite rotation. It speeds up your auto-attacks, but haste also reduces the GCD, so it's mostly a wash. Only real additional benefit Demon Blades gets from haste is that both Prepared and Demonic Appetite are based around a fixed CD and thus *those* talents don't scale with haste. But it's a pretty small effect, so haste is still craptacular for Demon Blades.

Lastly, if you're getting more DPS with Demon Blades than other specs, you're definitely doing other specs wrong. Current sims are showing Demon Blades builds to be definitely inferior to other builds, and possibly inferior to taking no talent in that row at all.

[Fragarach]

I can't help but feel that Felblade is bugged when you use it just after Vengeful Retreat. Meaning, as soon as I use Vengeful Retreat I should be able to immediately jump to my target with Felblade. This currently isn't the case; Felbade does damage, but doesn't propel me to my target. instead, I have to wait roughful half a second, and then hit Felblade. Kind of annoying.

As Vanyali said you can't be in melee range so make sure you go back enough before hitting it or you get the dmg and animation without going back in haha

[dark666105]

Been lurking this thread for the past couple of days and thinking about having a DH as a main-alt, my current artifact build is:

I have 2 traits that I can still put in but don't really know where they should go from here. I'm also a little bit confused on when to spend a GCD on Fury of the Illidari on Single target. I understand you should always use it in AoE scenarios, but when do we use it for single target?

One of those points should go into balanced blades or your Blade Dance AoE is going to suffer.

I am imagining something like this when raids start http://beta.wowdb.com/artifact-calcu...JBBIAAAAAAAAAA

Though might shave a point or two off the left side if you don't have enough by then.

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Wonder if they will change that when you get a crit with both the chaos strike and the chaos cleave hit you get double refunded for the one chaos strike usage.

Also I wish they would lower the cooldown of Fel Eruption to 30 seconds, that extra 5 seconds makes its reset a mess with other cooldowns throughout a fight.

[Yoshimiko]

Lastly, if you're getting more DPS with Demon Blades than other specs, you're definitely doing other specs wrong. Current sims are showing Demon Blades builds to be definitely inferior to other builds, and possibly inferior to taking no talent in that row at all.

I keep seeing mention of sims, Can you give a link to them?

[Feawen]

I can't help but feel that Felblade is bugged when you use it just after Vengeful Retreat. Meaning, as soon as I use Vengeful Retreat I should be able to immediately jump to my target with Felblade. This currently isn't the case; Felbade does damage, but doesn't propel me to my target. instead, I have to wait roughful half a second, and then hit Felblade. Kind of annoying.

This has been happening to me since the last build when they fixed Fel Rush not doing damage.

[Kaedis]

I keep seeing mention of sims, Can you give a link to them?

The one I'm referencing in this particular case is this sim: http://downloads.simulationcraft.org...lents/100.html

Note that the builds in question here are far from optimized. They are all using Momentum, but not Demonic. Bloodlet instead of Felblade. Things like that. That's why I say that it's unclear whether Demon Blades is actually worse than no talent at all on that tier. However, even with a shitty no-Demonic build, Prepared is rather substantially better than no talent, hence why I was reasonably confident asserting that Demon Blades was horrendously far behind the other two options.

[zugus]

anyone know how to cancel VR animation
I used to have macro that work well
/cast VR
/cast FR
but it doesn't work anymore

[Phanex]

You DO realize Blizzard has been cracking hard down on animation canceling and been fixing almost every possible way animation canceling exists right? You're not MEANT do animation cancel.

Blizzard definitely isn't going to let people animation cancel. They spent time and money developing those animations not to mention the canceling of them is an exploit.

In a lot of ways I feel Momentum should have been something more for PvP. In raids I worry about it as it's just a matter of when (not if) we get fights where jumping around will screw with some mechanic. I know I'm probably in the minority there but it's the one major concern I have for this class going in to Legion.

[Yoshimiko]

The one I'm referencing in this particular case is this sim: http://downloads.simulationcraft.org...lents/100.html

Note that the builds in question here are far from optimized. They are all using Momentum, but not Demonic. Bloodlet instead of Felblade. Things like that. That's why I say that it's unclear whether Demon Blades is actually worse than no talent at all on that tier. However, even with a shitty no-Demonic build, Prepared is rather substantially better than no talent, hence why I was reasonably confident asserting that Demon Blades was horrendously far behind the other two options.

So strange. I feel like I have the rotation down, but I'm still regularly pulling more as demon blades. 101,688.9 DPS over 2 minute 40 with Fel Mastery, Prepared, Felblade, Fel Eruption, Demon Reborn, Demonic.

Basic rotation: Pool fury to high amounts, use chaos strike to keep from capping. Eye Beam(Demonic) to fit as many Annihilation as possible. Fury of Illidari on Cooldown, Vengeful Retreat on cooldown, Felblade on cooldown, Fel eruption on cooldown.

If out of range: Felblade / Vengeful Rush
Annihilation
Fury of Illidari
Fel Eruption
Eye Beam
If 90+ energy(130 cap): Chaos Strike
Vengeful Retreat
Felblade
Demon bite

Is there something wrong with this priority?

It's about ~140k DPS vs ~101k DPS between demon blades and prepared. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. :/ I'm not using Metamorphisis in either rotation. I keep trying to do tests, but the servers have went down 6 or 7 times this morning. Quite frustrating, but beta will be beta.

Edit: Aha, I found why it was so much higher. Skada can't tell the difference between two targets of the same name >.> Time to go somewhere other than orgrimmar! Woo!

Edig 2:Yeah, now I'm pulling ~95-96k DPS with some mistakes in the rotation. I certainly feel this could reach 100k dps. I really don't think it's going to be a 20% DPS difference, but demon blades will fall behind on certain mechanics, for sure. Fel Rush being part of the rotation makes it awkard on dummies. I can't IMAGINE what it'll do in dungeons.