Momentum vs Nemesis

[Haytur]

So not a ton of info that i can really find about momentum would prefer a bit of clarity.

1. How much of a dps gain is momentum vs nemesis. Does that gap become greater with gear?

2. I saw that in raids you want to go from side to side on the boss, how does momentum work in dungeons? I am assuming Vengful retreat + Felrush is a bad choice here as it would reduce up time.

[The Archmage]

1. It depends on the nature of the fight. On pure ST, the combo Nemesis / Chaos Blade can actually pull ahead of the Momentum / Prepared build (although only slightly). Where Nemesis really loses ground is where AoE, both bursty and sustained, comes into play. It's to early to talk about scaling, we have yet to see how stats properly scale.

2. I think dungeons are exactly the environement where Momentum shines the most, since you are actively figthing trash a lot more often than you are fighting bosses, which can contain AoE components aswell. Your assumption is correct: you should never use 2 Momentum-enabling abilities in quick succession. What you can do, for example, is vault back via Vengeful Retreat, Eye Beam on the pack, Throw Glaive (with Bloodlet, pretty much mandatory these days) and the Fel Rush back in.

[Deleted]

The strongest part about Momentum is that you can couple it with high fury moments where you dump (Eye Beam, 3x Chaos Strikes, Bloodlet, Fury of the Illidari) whereas in Nemesis you will inadvertently have moments in which you have to demon's bite. I believe Momentum just flat out has more uptime too, taking the information posted in the sticky (~67% being the maximum).

Edit: For clarity I didn't mean you press all those GCDs in a momentum, those are the ideal abilities to use.

Also it means fury of the illidari (and therefore rage of the illidari) always benefits from a +20% damage modifier, compared to Nemesis' every other Fury will benefit.

[Deleted]

1. It depends on the nature of the fight. On pure ST, the combo Nemesis / Chaos Blade can actually pull ahead of the Momentum / Prepared build (although only slightly). Where Nemesis really loses ground is where AoE, both bursty and sustained, comes into play. It's to early to talk about scaling, we have yet to see how stats properly scale.

Can you back this up? You can have up to 79% uptime on momentum in a ST fight, and it'll steadily go down to around 73%. Bearing in mind that meta lasts 30 seconds, if it's pure single target, you can have momentum up for almost all of that, and the entirety of chaos blades. So for ST, how would nemesis pull ahead?

[The Archmage]

Can you back this up? You can have up to 79% uptime on momentum in a ST fight, and it'll steadily go down to around 73%. Bearing in mind that meta lasts 30 seconds, if it's pure single target, you can have momentum up for almost all of that, and the entirety of chaos blades. So for ST, how would nemesis pull ahead?

Mathematically, there is no match. My post referred to the nature of the fights. There are a couple of fights where, due to fight mechanics, Momentum's uptime is seriously unreliable, aswell as potentially dangerous for your team mates. On pure ST, the difference between the 2 is simmed to be VERY small, hence there are cases in which Nemesis can pull ahead.

Remember that execution is not taken into account on numbers: if, for example, auto attacks are delayed due to the movement component required by Momentum's playstyle during the 200% buff of Chaos Blades, your dps loses effectiveness. It's very tricky to properly sim it. I have seen so many controversial information that i have come to this conclusion

Vanyali can explain it far better than i can :P

[Deleted]

Mathematically, there is no match. My post referred to the nature of the fights. There are a couple of fights where, due to fight mechanics, Momentum's uptime is seriously unreliable, aswell as potentially dangerous for your team mates. On pure ST, the difference between the 2 is simmed to be VERY small, hence there are cases in which Nemesis can pull ahead.

Remember that execution is not taken into account on numbers: if, for example, auto attacks are delayed due to the movement component required by Momentum's playstyle during the 200% buff of Chaos Blades, your dps loses effectiveness. It's very tricky to properly sim it. I have seen so many controversial information that i have come to this conclusion

Vanyali can explain it far better than i can :P

There is literally 1 fight where you need to watch when you FR&VR and that is Star Augur.

[Schizoide]

Remember that execution is not taken into account on numbers:

Very well said.

Truthfully though, I believe everybody should take Momentum over Nemesis as the "default" choice even if they don't micromanage the Momentum buff beyond never Fel Rushing/Vengeful Retreating back to back, because it works in AE/cleave. If you're super hardcore and respec every boss fight of course you will take Nemesis on bosses with burst periods or where you can't reposition. But the default choice should be Momentum, because whereever possible, repositioning rotationally via Fel Rush is absolutely mandatory.

[Enitzu]

Sat there this morning simming talent differences.

Can not find a single instance where Nemesis will pass Momentum. The only time it would be better to take Nem is if you simply can not get enough space to effectively move. Or if you just do really horribly at keeping the buff rolling. With Nem the best possible uptime you can consider is 66% unless the fights are under a minute long. With momentum you have roughly 70% uptime without the need for long periods of no buff.

Fel Rush works the same in dungeons as raids. Just with smaller targets you have to adjust either out before the rush or in after the rush. Not much else you can really do. With prepared taken, you backflip across the boss as you would with fel rush going side to side.

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On pure ST, the combo Nemesis / Chaos Blade can actually pull ahead of the Momentum / Prepared build (although only slightly).

This is 100% untrue. I ran sims all morning long for talents with varying gear levels. The closest Nem came to Momentum was 6k dps loss. If you have a build that does pull ahead please give me the talent break down because I just can't see it at all.

[Schizoide]

Yeah, I can't make Nemesis pull ahead in sintle-target sims either but like Black Demon said, that assumes perfect execution/uptime which is very easy on Nemesis and not so much on Momentum. On pure single-target, most people would be better off with Nemesis, but given that Momentum has so many more AE/cleave applications I still believe it's a better "default" choice.

[Vanyali]

This is 100% untrue. I ran sims all morning long for talents with varying gear levels. The closest Nem came to Momentum was 6k dps loss. If you have a build that does pull ahead please give me the talent break down because I just can't see it at all.

It's true if the fight is an odd number of minutes and pure ST *only*. Very very niche. And doesn't account for offensive blur useage either, so with that momo can pull ahead.

[Enitzu]

Yeah, I can't make Nemesis pull ahead in sintle-target sims either but like Black Demon said, that assumes perfect execution/uptime which is very easy on Nemesis and not so much on Momentum. On pure single-target, most people would be better off with Nemesis, but given that Momentum has so many more AE/cleave applications I still believe it's a better "default" choice.

Not really. Perfect execution would net you upwards of 75-80% uptime on Momentum. I give 70% because it's the more realistic outlook for it. Nem on the other hand, has at best 66% and that's only if you have an exact 3 minute fight. With an 8 minute fight (probable avg for upcoming raids) that drops to 50% uptime. It still doesn't compare. Add that in with the artifact ability Demon Speed giving you more fel rush charges on demand and momentum pulls even farther ahead since you can literally line up the buff for upwards of 40 seconds when chained together as needed for burst. There really isn't any way imo that Nem should be taken unless they pull a nerf this close to launch, which wouldn't surprise me this is Blizzard after all.

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It's true if the fight is an odd number of minutes and pure ST *only*. Very very niche. And doesn't account for offensive blur useage either, so with that momo can pull ahead.

Hmm. Maybe. I'll go back and change my time frame to 5 and 7 minutes and sim with Nem vs Momentum that way. Will post my findings.

[Schizoide]

Perfect execution would net you upwards of 75-80% uptime on Momentum. I give 70% because it's the more realistic outlook

Obviously that percentage will change based on player skill, attention, and the specific boss being fought. I suspect that when we start seeing mythic raid parses people getting 70%+ uptime on the Momentum buff and performing well for their itemlevel will be fairly rare. Those people will top the charts of course, because it sims as the best playstyle, but it's not trivial to do it.

There's significant micromanagement required to maximize Momentum buff uptime, time your highest-damage skills inside the Momentum buff window, execute a complex raid encounter properly, and not die from Fel Rushing into the fire or a cleave or whatever while also staying in melee range.

[Gradingus]

It's kinda sad how Momentum and Nemesis both seem so important, while Fel Eruption is basically just a trap at this point

I bet it looks cool, too

[Enitzu]

Hmm. Maybe. I'll go back and change my time frame to 5 and 7 minutes and sim with Nem vs Momentum that way. Will post my findings.

Ok so after running sims, Nem did pull ahead at 7 minutes. However, that was with the sim only having a 47% uptime on Momentum and it was only 3k ahead. With a better execution it would still fall behind but be close enough to not matter.

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Obviously that percentage will change based on player skill, attention, and the specific boss being fought. I suspect that when we start seeing mythic raid parses people getting 70%+ uptime on the Momentum buff and performing well for their itemlevel will be fairly rare. Those people will top the charts of course, because it sims as the best playstyle, but it's not trivial to do it.

There's significant micromanagement required to maximize Momentum buff uptime, time your highest-damage skills inside the Momentum buff window, execute a complex raid encounter properly, and not die from Fel Rushing into the fire or a cleave or whatever while also staying in melee range.

That's exactly why i said 70% was a more realistic number. Highly doubt we will be seeing 75%+. The avg mythic raider will sit around 65% more than likely. The momentum window is also not very different from anyone that has played rogue. Assassination plays the same way, stockpile energy for the exsang/kingsbane window. We will be stockpiling fury for the momentum windows to use for chaos strikes and fel barrage. We will also be saving fel rush charges to ensure momentum uptime during chaos blades. These things are what will seperate the decent from the good DHs

[Schizoide]

It's kinda sad how Momentum and Nemesis both seem so important, while Fel Eruption is basically just a trap at this point

I bet it looks cool, too

Havoc has a bunch of trap talents that are highly situational at best.

T1: Chaos Cleave and Blind Fury deal far less damage than Fel Mastery, and Fel Mastery also AEs.

T3: Felblade and First Blood deal far less damage than Bloodlet, and Bloodlet also cleaves.

T4: Both Netherwalk and Desperate Instincts replace Blur. Netherwalk is situational at best while Desperate Instincts... I don't know why anyone would ever take that. Meanwhile Soul Rending has great synergy with Demonic later in the tree for solo/world questing.

T5: Momentum is the best choice because it offers close single-target performance to Nenesis but also works in common AE. Fel Eruption is single-target only and underperforms versus Momentum to boot.

@Enitzu: We completely agreed except on the achievable uptimes. My guess is you're about right at 65% for mythic raiders.

[the boar]

even with nemesis you are gonna be using fel rush a lot, unless they change that first tier of talents. and prepared vs demonblades was pretty even recently, perhaps the dblades adjustment pushed prepared ahead? so you are probably gonna be using VR a lot as well with nemesis.

i like that demon hunter damage revolves around zooming all over the place. i am one of those players that cannot stand still, so this class feels like it was made for me.

there are so many melee classes that you can just sit on the bosses ass and do your thing, i really do hope that demon hunters do not get reduced to that.

[Enitzu]

even with nemesis you are gonna be using fel rush a lot, unless they change that first tier of talents. and prepared vs demonblades was pretty even recently, perhaps the dblades adjustment pushed prepared ahead? so you are probably gonna be using VR a lot as well with nemesis.

i like that demon hunter damage revolves around zooming all over the place. i am one of those players that cannot stand still, so this class feels like it was made for me.

there are so many melee classes that you can just sit on the bosses ass and do your thing, i really do hope that demon hunters do not get reduced to that.

I am completely with you on this one. I love the movement and the fact that you aren't mind numbingly doing a rotation in one spot.

In terms of prepared vs Dblades, last I saw (and my sims from this morning) show them extremely close. It will be complete preference imo. I just can't stand the Dblades playstyle on sitting around waiting while auto attacking so I will stick to prepared. But some people like it and it's close enough to justify both.

[Gradingus]

Havoc has a bunch of trap talents that are highly situational at best.

T3: Felblade and First Blood deal far less damage than Bloodlet, and Bloodlet also cleaves.

T4: Both Netherwalk and Desperate Instincts replace Blur. Netherwalk is situational at best while Desperate Instincts... I don't know why anyone would ever take that. Meanwhile Soul Rending has great synergy with Demonic later in the tree for solo/world questing.

I think I'd only take Felblade if I was doing solo stuff and just rushing down enemies a lot. Otherwise, the sheer damage output of Bloodlet just seems far superior. It also makes Master of the Glaive at T6 seem really good.

Netherwalk seems more like a PvP-thing? But even then, I'm not sure why you'd replace Blur with it. The only upside that I can see with Desperate Instincts is that it reduces the cooldown from 1 minute to 30 seconds, but then, you won't have it on demand.

[Raikh]

In addition to momentum featuring more uptime than nemesis, momentum brings more valuable damage.

You should rarely see yourself using demons bite/waiting with dblades during momentum. The charge system on fel rush gives you a shit load of freedom to time your windows. VR isn't as forgiving but you should be able to plan around a 15sec CD fairly well. So you get every throw glaive (assuming bloodlet), every eye beam, every fury of the illidary, all chaos blades and most of metamorphosis + the vast majority of your fury dump into momentum, while nemesis only aligns with meta (4min cd with arti and without further relics) and chaos blades.
You can also burst priority targets better and unless you can trigger the kill for nemesis and all enemies are of the same creature type nemesis loses hopelessly to momentum even if the uptime was equal.

The only scenario ever where nemesis would be decent would be bosses like butcher in highmaul. Basically bosses which don't allow you to move freely and in some cases situations where you would get a lot of down time due to jumping all over the place which requires very small hitboxes on your targets.

[Vanyali]

even with nemesis you are gonna be using fel rush a lot, unless they change that first tier of talents. and prepared vs demonblades was pretty even recently, perhaps the dblades adjustment pushed prepared ahead? so you are probably gonna be using VR a lot as well with nemesis.

i like that demon hunter damage revolves around zooming all over the place. i am one of those players that cannot stand still, so this class feels like it was made for me.

there are so many melee classes that you can just sit on the bosses ass and do your thing, i really do hope that demon hunters do not get reduced to that.

Nem uses dblades, last I saw.

Prep's appeal for momo is that it allows you to have more momo uptime.