Hi guys!
I posted talent feedback and some general feedback on Chaos Strike on the Alpha forums. The post is below. I didn't get time to write about Artifact traits yet due to having to go to a Seminar, but will post it in a reply to the same post when I get home.
Copy Pasta:
Havoc has been through a lot of changes since the first build I was able to attend. It has gone from a 2 button class to a fully fledged rotation that can change significantly, depending on your talent choices.
That being said, there are still issues that needs to be addressed. I will focus on what is not working, or need tweaks instead of breaking down the entire class in this post.
Do note this is all from my subjective point of view and not everyone will agree with me.
Talents and Artifact traits:
Blind Fury is a good talent on paper that synergizes well with Anguish of the Deciever, but it still has a major problem regarding raiding at that is the fact that you are rooted when casting it. Adding 50% more cast time, obviusly increases the damage, but it also makes you a sitting duck for 50% longer. Haste alleviates this problem somewhat, but it still requires planning ahead. On bosses like Spellblade Alluriel, not being able to move for that long can mean you get pushed out and frozen during the Frost phase. With Eye Beam being one of our best aoe abilities, it feels very counterintuitive to not cast it during this phase, since AOE is very much needed to get the adds down fast.
Demon Blades was datamined to just add shadow damage to our auto attacks and a chance of generating Fury. THis has not been confrimed yet, but it is clear that the current itiration of the talent does note work. The class slows down immensivly with this auto attack based gameplay, and it reminscent of the Vanilla warrior where you sat and swirled your thumbs til you got rage.
Proposed change is to add shadow damage to autoattacks and have a chance to generate 3-5 Fury on auto attack.
Demon Reborn is so inferior to the other 2 talents after First Blood got changed into a good talent choice. There is no reason to take this talent at all in its current form. There are some very situational uses to get double blur, or maybe a double Eye Beam, but the activation time of Metamorphis makes soemthing that could have been a cool burst combo in certain situations, not work at all.
Proposed changes that was discussed on the class forums on MMO-Champion was that it could reduce the cooldown on Metamorphis slighly per use of X ability or per fury spent, meaning it could be a way to increase your dps. The other 2 talents have clear uses and are flat dps increases, leaving Demon Reborn with no incentive to take.
Netherwalk and Desperate Instincts seems bugged in the current build for me personally. I still take damage during Netherwalk and Desperate Instincts does not seem to proc. That said Soul Rending with 100% leach in Metamorphis is such a strong talent, both for survivability as well as its synergy with Demonic in the 110 row.
Nemesis was not the best talent in its previous iteration where it could be kept up on 1 type of mob the entire time, and after it got nerfed, it got even worse. There were some uses of the talent in dungeons before the nerf, but right now it is by far the worst of the 3 talents. Momentum gives you high rewards if you play correctly and Bloodlet is safe and constant damage and the only type of dot we have, meaning it is very strong as a dps talent from a raiding AND pvp point of view since there is no garuantee you can stick to your target 100% of the time.
Chaos Cleave only Cleaves on the first Chaos Strike hit still, meaning it buffs Chaos Strike dmg by 50%. Chaos Strike in itsself is our best ability damage wise still, but would still like the talent to work as intended!
Master of the Glaive has clear situational uses.
Unleashed power is the strongest of the 3 due to the Synergy with Demonic.
Fel Barrage is still not working in building charges, but the ability itslef when you do have charges seem to work. Looking forward to trying this out when it works as intended.
Last I will discuss Chaos Strike.
This ability is so strong and has so much synergy, it is almost always the best ability to cast apart from AoE situations. It also triggers Inner Demons, which is arguably our best Artifact trait. It also makes Critical Strike our best secondary stat by such a degree that we are almost at a level where it's on par with Agility. It also gets buffed by our Mastery which makes it hit even harder.
That being said, it is the only ability we have that makes us able to compete with other dps specs at the moment.
Possible change is to nerf the Chaos Strike damage somewhat and bake it in to other skills, or make more of our abilities be Chaos damage, which indirectly buffs the damage they do.
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Artifact!
Artifact feedback as of build 21414
A few changes were made to the artifact tree in this build, although it was not noted in the patch notes. I will discuss the traits from the current build though, as the post is written after it was deployed.
As with most Artifact trees, the Twinblades of the Deciever have 3 keystones and the rest are passives to existing skills. Rage of the illidari is a passive effect, added on to out initial trait which is an active.
With the removal of the link between Feast on the Souls and Chaos vision, Anguish is 11 points in. (I do not count the initial trait as we get that with the weapon.)
Inner Demons is also 11 points
Rage of the Illidari is 8 points in.
With the Artifact layout as it is in the current build it is pretty clear that the path that gives the most damage output is the left side of the tree. Feast on the Souls reduce the cooldown of Chaos Nova and Eye Beam, which again gives more uptime on the Demonic Talent (if that is your choice), and Critical Chaos gives even more damage to one of our best, if not THE best, ability damage wise.
There are also traits that give better fury regen through the chance of spawning soul fragments using Chaos Nova, which again benefits the Demonic Talent, andDeciever's Fury which gives a handy amount of fury while soloing and espescially leveling.
The other side of the tree is more tailored to raiding. Unleashed Demons gives a full minute off the cooldown of Metamorphis,, as well as reduced damage from Magic attacks, and a higher maximum fury bar.
With that being said, I will go over the few problems I have with the Artifact tree as it stands.
Keystones
Fury of the Illidari is a pretty annoying spell to use in its current iteration. On top of that, its animation isn't very good either. Its current iteration is a bad version of Ravager. Its rooted to the place where you stood when you cast the ability, meaning if movement is required, the spell is wasted. It is in the same problem zone as Defile for Death Knights in WoD.
Proposed changes is to change the animation to reflect the chaos damage it deals, or depending on the change that might be implemented, it might look even different. Proposed changes are either:
A: Make it place-able and upgrade the graphics with fel flames, making it on par with Ravager.
B: Make it follow you around and/or turning it into the Chakram shield the DH has in D3, without the defensive bonuses.
C: Change it completely.
Inner Demons being tied to Chaos Strike furthers the emphasis on Chaos Strike (and Critical strike as our undisputed best secondary stat) being our best ability for Single targer. Although that might be the design, it creates a very narrow playstyle, and although (talent dependant) we can change the talent tree around to weave in more abilities into your rotation, it is still a part of an underlying problem in spell selection.
Rage of the Illidari suffers due to how Fury of the Illidari works. If you for some reason have to move, the damage is lost, or very small due to being tied to the damage the FotI did. This keystone will be the worst out of all 3 without a change to FotI.
Anguish of the Deciever is our strongest Keystone in terms of the damage it adds. This being if you set the keystones as stand alone up against each other. (RotI can do more damage, but it is dependant on amount of mobs, and explosion + no movement)
It also synergies well with Blind Fury, giving it even more stacks.
The problem it does have, is that you want Blind Fury to get the most out of the ability, but that roots you for a longer period of time. Artifact Trait alone is strong, but to tget the maximized effect out of it, you need to pick a talent that makes you vulnerable.
Conclusion
As a conclusion I believe that in relative strength the Keystones are: ID > Anguish > RotI. This is mostly based on the QoL issues that the other talents have.
This also means that in terms of building your artifact power, you are most likely served (in the current build, to go to Inner Demons, Swing up to Anguish and then finish off towards RotI in the end.
Last but not least:
Looking at how the Alpha is going, it seems we will be able to finish up our artifact tree before the first tier is finished. Apart from the Artifact slots, how is the plan to increase the power of the Artifact?
Had some feedback regarding Demon Blades and my porblems with it on the Alpha forums. Posting it here for context
Posted by user Piwi:
I don't aggree here.
Demon Blades is a choice, not a must. A change in gameplay if you prefer a slower not that spammy gameplay and thus it deffinately has its place.
You might not like it, fine take another talent, but talens should offer options and this one does.
I tried Demon blades and I really like it.
If you couple it with Fel Blade you have a really nice gameplay that doesn't require you to spam every global cooldown.
Edit:
More from Piwi:
Of course I understand your point of not having complete control but as long as it is a choice it has its place.
My setup was Demon Blade, Fel Blade, Bloodlet and Master of Glaives.
This gave me Fel Blade for a proc and Throw Glaives for times where I can't use Chaos Strike or Fel Blade.
Worked really nice for me and one bonus was that it didn't feel punishing to not use either demon bite for fury or chaos strike for damage.
My rotation was a rather easy priority system (Not counting eyebeam, meta and other talents or procs):
Fel Blade > Chaos strike > Throw Glaives
Sangomah:
How much downtime do you have? As in not having fury for abilities? Did you use the fel Rush talent for extra fury gen?
Whenever i tried demon blades i sit and wait for something to do all the time
The downtimes depend alot on RNG of course, if you get a lot of procs you won't have any.
But the idea behind it is to not fill every global cooldown and sometimes have phases where you pool "rage", which you can use on alot of chaos strikes then.
I'd say just try it out.