DH [Havoc] Feedback Shadowlands (so far)

[Musta]

Hello guys! Thanks in advance for your time reading this!
First, an article from wowhead DH community: https://www.wowhead.com/news=316990/...gendaries-spec

So, Im here to compile everything I've read and everything I feel about the spec and it's direction as well providing some of my experience and make some suggestions to improve our gameplay. I grabbed suggestions in the entire spawn of BFA. And, if Blizzard is willing, I would put the best DHs in one discord room to give feedback. But this is what I collected during Battle for Azeroth.

Highlights: Right now, Havoc is on a delicate position, we have lost our artifact and with it a lot of our core gameplay. The new talent tree appears, looking by its final tier, to try to give us 3 different builds: Demonic - Momentum - Nemesis. While it is a solid idea on paper and a solid final tier, the rest of the spec and talents dont even begin to cover for this choices, because of the many problems the spec currently have. Like the absurd amount of DPS windows overlap, Fury starvation, clunky flow and lackluster mastery. Although our numbers are good, the spec just feels off. Nothing really flows smoothly, only really clunky. I dont mind being tuned if my spec is fun. But we are a shadow of what we were. After BFA its even worse without the 2 traits that were good.

One can argue that most of the problems would be fixed by increasing the Fury cap. Thankfully, our cap was extended to 120, with feels better, but I personally think the cap should be 150, because we fill and spend so fast that a very limited cap would have us pressing Demon's Bite for large amounts of time, overcapping or starved and thats not fun or good gameplay. 150 fury would give us some room to maneuver. So, here’s a couple of ideas to improve the gameplay, and I say gameplay because I'll not talk about numbers, that's not my goal. I'll however try to explain why the spec feels so messed and give a look at the talents, one tier at the time, until I cover everything.

Tier 15: Blind Fury | Demonic Appetite | Felblade

We start with a conflicting tier. Assuming Demonic is going to be a viable build, Blind Fury and Demonic Appetite could not be in the same tier without severely hurt the build. You'll not be able to decrease the cooldown on Eye Beam or get fury from souls to help the build flow. This shouldn't be a choice, both talents make the Demonic build, and making them compete only hurts the spec and prevents Demonic to achieve its potential.

About Felblade, I think we can all agree its time for this basic and kinda of iconic spell to go baseline, or at very least, changed to Chaos Damage, so our mastery gets a little more value. Felblade is a really fun spell that define a lot the spec fantasy. It needs to be reavaliated and made baseline in my view. Otherwise we don't have much on the spec to compensate for our losses in Legion. Not having Felblade feels like the times the Retribution Paladins had to talent Crusader Strike, which is quite frankly, bad. Felblade now its on the same tier, do the same thing, at the same rate, for both specs, so I need to insist: Why this is not baseline yet?

Tier 25: Insatiable Hunger | Demon Blades | Burning Hatred

Another conflicting tier. While the addition of Immolation Aura is great, the main problem with this tier is how the Demon Hunter works. Right now we can "choose" two forms of Fury generation: Demon's Bite or we can talent Demon Blades. This alone is a problem because, should we dare picking Demon Blades, we lose all the backup talents that help smooth out the fury generation. Now with Burning Hatred, you removed the baseline fury gain from Immolation Aura and made a talent of it, basically locking us again with the same problem. Please, reconsider.

This is a big problem, that affect the spec directly and make the flow of the spec mute, because you "choose" Demon Blades. To me, personally, its really frustrating having to press such a stupid button like Demon's Bite forever. Its not fun, it limits me so much and is so against the premisse that we are a fast spec. So, Demon Blades should be how the DHs work and removed from the talent tree. It frees the class from having to chose to be smooth or not. It also frees us from the infamous Demons Bite, that is probably the most unsatisfying button to press in a long, long time. And we have to press it so many times if we dont have Demon Blades. Other reason is if we choose to talent Demon Blades, we cannot talent in fury generation support talents, as they are in the same row. I believe the team can understand why this is underwhelming.

But if the team is keen in keeping the choice, lll then suggest to make DEMON'S BITE a talent in place of Demon Blades. Reason is simple: if you design around Demon Blades, you can balance it so much better than a talent and in the other hand, if someone wants to pick Demons Bite, you will have complete control on how much fury they are generating via a talent that is much easier to balance. This would then eliminate the problems with Demon Blades/Demon's Bite.

I really ask the devs to take a very serious look at this, because its a main issue, something keeping DHs from really evolving. I think its time to rethink some of those decisions. We dont need 2 fury only builders. Its a bit silly that we have that now. By making us choose one, you prevent us from choose a lot of extra talents and this not fun or good design of gameplay. Please, reconsider the mechanics, stop to build resources is really the opposite of a class like DH, thats fast paced and almost with no need to stop.

Tier 30: Trail of Ruin | Fel Mastery | Fel Barrage

Ok, tier 30. The first thing that strikes me is how boring the two first options are. Trail of Ruin makes our Blade Dance leave a bleed/dot. While it does Chaos Damage on the dot, thus helping with the mastery scaling, it is just being downright boring as heck. We are not a dot class. To me it feels like a talent that was just threw there for the sake of it, with no real thought and design. Plus, we already have First Blood for Blade Dance in my personal opinion. So, my suggestion is to merge the two talents into one, making Blade Dance a very important button if you pick it.

Fel Mastery is also a little boring, but it fits the Momentum build by making Fel Rush really dangerous; so I think its ok, but it lacks a little flavour right now. The removal of the fury generator of this talent makes it really not worth taking in any scenario.

Now, Fel Barrage feels like its supposed to give us back some of our lost AoE, but it came with a really weird price. We have to stop everything for 3 seconds to let it channel. I dont understand the limitation and while I think Fel Barrage looks cool, I also feel like this was the perfect spot for Fury of the Illidari to be added instead of it. A instant spell for a class that is very fast. The current version of Fel Barrage just doesnt feel like something we would do. And in many ways disrupts the flow of the combat. We have to stop dpsing for 3 seconds just to aoe something, one time every minute. My suggestion would be to rethink this philosofy, just like the demons bite limiting our actions.

Tier 35: Soul Rending | Desperate Instincs | Netherwalk

I think this row is ok, very good choices of utility and survivability.

Tier 40: Circle of Hatred | First Blood | Essence Break

Without a doubt, the most hated new tier. I'll jump straight to the point, Essence Break its not good, and not fun. It overlaps so much with a spec with already so many DPS windows and its so mandatory that you can't even look at the other two options. I can't imagine myself using this and taking Momentum or Demonic, two other 6-8s windows, its a nightmare. By the time you do get them to be up at the same time, at least half of the duration is gone and you are left with 1 or maybe 2 GDCs to use while buffed. This is particulary true with Momentum, with is only 6 secs long. Ill be very pragmatic here: This talent needs to go or be reworked entirely. Right now, its just bad, mandatory and not working. This mechanic was bad on melees like Arms and Ret, why it should be here now? The feedback was clear that is not a mechanic that makes melees more interesting, its really the opposite of it. Right now, this talent is not only super weak, uninteresting and have no place in any build at all.
Please reconsider Essence Break. I cant stress this enough, its only gotten worse with the GCD changes cause you lose another 1.5 seconds of the buff.

The other two talents are somewhat fine: Blade Dance is a fun button to press and First Blood improves that a lot and makes it really worth your while. That said, Its currently not strong enough and could be merged with Trail of Ruin to create more compeling choices.

Circle of Hatred is a good example of a good mechanic turned into an awful talent, it could be much more interesting to revert it back to reduce CD on Fury use and tuned for that. We already have too much RNG and its a proc inside a proc. Not very interesting per say.

My suggestion for tier 40 its simple: let it be the tier you pick to personalize your Meta style gameplay. Alongside Circle of Hatred, we could grab the PvP Talent "Demon Origins" for a second choice of style and in the third option we could have something like "The Demon Within", a flat reduce to Meta's cooldown. It could be 30/45/ or even 60 seconds (for 3m CD) depending on tuning and would make some compeling and interesting tier.

Tier 45: Unleashed Power | Master of the Glaive | Fel Eruption

Good CC/Snare tier. Ill miss the Fel Eruption mechanic, it was one of the most fun buttons I ever had to press with the double damage on stun immune targets. It was really satisfying. Im really sad to see it go... Otherwise, im fine with this tier.

Tier 50: Demonic | Momentum | Nemesis

Finally the last tier, and we got a pretty good deal here. Every single one of the options changes our gameplay on its own. The problem is, without the support of the rest of tree, I would say you dont have much choice. Demonic is locked behind two talents in first row, Momentum is really suffering from Essence Break and Nemesis is just a fire and forget spell. The potential is here, but for this options to be avaliable some changes are needed in the rest of the talents and some mechanics reconsidered.

If changes come, we will have some of the best 50 tiers. But that if changes indeed come.

Suggestion of a Better Talent Tree: v.2.0

All things considered, I believe I can suggest a less conflicting talent tree, considering a worst case scenario. Ill mark the changes in upper case:

Tier 15: Blind Fury | DEMON'S BITE | Felblade (assuming Felblade cannot be made baseline)
Tier 25: Insatiable Hunger| DEMONIC APPETITE | Burning Hatred (assuming it cannot be made baseline)
Tier 30: FIRST BLOOD+TRAIL OF RUIN | Fel Mastery | Fel Barrage or Fury of the Illidari
Tier 35: No changes.
Tier 40: Circle of Hatred | DEMONIC ORIGINS | THE DEMON WITHIN: Talent that reduces Meta CD in 60s (making it 3m) See Tier 40 for more info.
Tier 45: No changes.
Tier 50: No changes.

Note: The merge of FIRST BLOOD + TRAIL OF RUIN could be in tier 40 if thats a better position for it. Im just making suggestions.

So, just switching some positions to have no build conflict and removing Essence Break from the table. This configuration would make viable the 3 builds that apparently are proposed for us. And having a talent that reduces CD on Meta by a flat amount is a choice vs the RNG version for people with less interest in RNG, making the 40 tier the place of interaction with our main cooldown, something we just never had before. So, you see that with very little changes, you can improve this talent tree significantly.

Conclusions and Considerations:

I would say here to look ahead, not behind. Its time for DHs to evolve now that we dont have our artifact. Some mechanics needs to change and some talents need to go or be completely reworked asap. The flow and fun of the spec is completely compromised and Demon's Bite must be the most unfun, boring and unsatisfying button that ever came to be.

We need to change, Developers; we need to change, but its not hard! Some of the tweaks I suggested may really make the class shine again and after maining it since Legion alpha, its on my best interest to see that happening. Specially because WE are the class that were designed around the Artifact Weapons. We need something. I ask the class design to not have the fear of giving us something cool (or any other class) just because they are afraid. Make the interactions fun again, then tune it around it. Not the other way around.

With so few changes in shadowlands, it almost feels like you dont need to touch us or give us any love. I know thats not true, but it feels like. At least tell us whats happening, or why you think we dont need changes.


Thanks for everyone's time.
Also, English is not my mother language so, I apologize for any inconvenients while reading.

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Please lemme know what you guys think. No need to flame, this is just suggestions, if we can band together to give blizzard better feedback, maybe something can change

[Musta]

Wow... i expected many things... but not nothing. People dont even wanna fight over this one?

[Saltysquidoon]

Speaking as someone who only plays a DH as a muckaround alt.

Felblade
Needs to be baseline, DH simple needs to have an element of interactivity in it imo otherwise it's just the most basic Builder/spender with nothing else going on.

Immo Aura
Should generate fury baseline, on the alpha it's just a button you press on CD that does nothing, make the talent a dot or something.

Demonblades
I appreciate it can make the spec feel smoother (especially with gear), but let's be real a talent that takes away buttons is a terrible prescient. Maybe make it interact with demons bite to make it more than the most basic boring builder (maybe st focused and push the immo talent to be more aoe focused)

ToR and FB
(This is really a product of DH being born 'over pruned' and using aoe spells in ST) These should just be baseline, they've both basically been mandatory since the dawn of time and if Death sweep is intended to be used ST just make it worth it to be used ST and put an interesting talent there.

Demonic
This needs to be baseline period. The DH dream is meta and right now 'getting back to meta' is as close as a mechanic as havoc actually has.

That's my quick thoughts at least, sorry there are less solutions than problems.

[Musta]

Speaking as someone who only plays a DH as a muckaround alt.

Felblade
Needs to be baseline, DH simple needs to have an element of interactivity in it imo otherwise it's just the most basic Builder/spender with nothing else going on.

Immo Aura
Should generate fury baseline, on the alpha it's just a button you press on CD that does nothing, make the talent a dot or something.

Demonblades
I appreciate it can make the spec feel smoother (especially with gear), but let's be real a talent that takes away buttons is a terrible prescient. Maybe make it interact with demons bite to make it more than the most basic boring builder (maybe st focused and push the immo talent to be more aoe focused)

ToR and FB
(This is really a product of DH being born 'over pruned' and using aoe spells in ST) These should just be baseline, they've both basically been mandatory since the dawn of time and if Death sweep is intended to be used ST just make it worth it to be used ST and put an interesting talent there.

Demonic
This needs to be baseline period. The DH dream is meta and right now 'getting back to meta' is as close as a mechanic as havoc actually has.

That's my quick thoughts at least, sorry there are less solutions than problems.

I agree with pretty mych everything, i just hate demons bite so much, i rather gain fury using meaningful buttons or to be just passive

[Morae]

I find felblade annoying as it is now. I always liked the idea and what it does, but the problem is how it works.

I tried playing with it once to get a feel of it. Its hellish to attempt staying at some position. Felblade makes you leap to the target and unless it is changed by now, it makes you move closer than melee range. I mean, you can attack enemy with rest of your abilities and not move, but felblade makes you still bounce closer when you use it. Take a few steps and next time you use felblade it will move you again slightly, to a different spot.

Think of some fights with large boss and stuff to avoid on the ground. It doesnt happen always, but very often. If felblade is to become baseline, perhaps the movement part of it should be made talent possible with some extra fluff. People are already screaming DH's have too much movement abilties anyway. I just personally detest that my character does things unexpectedly. Its liability.

[Musta]

I find felblade annoying as it is now. I always liked the idea and what it does, but the problem is how it works.

I tried playing with it once to get a feel of it. Its hellish to attempt staying at some position. Felblade makes you leap to the target and unless it is changed by now, it makes you move closer than melee range. I mean, you can attack enemy with rest of your abilities and not move, but felblade makes you still bounce closer when you use it. Take a few steps and next time you use felblade it will move you again slightly, to a different spot.

Think of some fights with large boss and stuff to avoid on the ground. It doesnt happen always, but very often. If felblade is to become baseline, perhaps the movement part of it should be made talent possible with some extra fluff. People are already screaming DH's have too much movement abilties anyway. I just personally detest that my character does things unexpectedly. Its liability.

Never had that problem you described. sometimes i even need to walk after felblade.

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But we need more meat on our bones...

[Nefarious Tea]

Wow... i expected many things... but not nothing. People dont even wanna fight over this one?

The bump is uncouth, and there's already a thread of people arguing over Shadowlands Havoc

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I find felblade annoying as it is now. I always liked the idea and what it does, but the problem is how it works.

I tried playing with it once to get a feel of it. Its hellish to attempt staying at some position. Felblade makes you leap to the target and unless it is changed by now, it makes you move closer than melee range. I mean, you can attack enemy with rest of your abilities and not move, but felblade makes you still bounce closer when you use it. Take a few steps and next time you use felblade it will move you again slightly, to a different spot.

Think of some fights with large boss and stuff to avoid on the ground. It doesnt happen always, but very often. If felblade is to become baseline, perhaps the movement part of it should be made talent possible with some extra fluff. People are already screaming DH's have too much movement abilties anyway. I just personally detest that my character does things unexpectedly. Its liability.

If it's any consolation, blade dance doesn't actually move your character even if it appears that way.

[Morae]

Uh... were talking about felblade, not blade dance. At least I believe so.

I think everyone who has played dh at least for a while would know blade dance wont make you move. I have known this since start of legion so I dont really know why you brought that up.

[naeblis495]

demon blades , in it's current state, is my most hated ability for DH . Why should i spend multiple seconds doing nothing but auto attack , i'm not a rogue or druid waiting for their energy bar to fill up. It's infuriating in raids but in world content it's even worse . I'm a DH , i should always be pressing buttons and have no holes in my rotation just sitting there waiting for demon blade to proc.

imo, it shouldn't replace demon's bite and just add smaller fury gain for EACH auto attack , instead of being rng and require tons of haste.

Blind fury and demonic appetite being on the same row isn't that much of a problem , current demonic build doesn't choose blind fury anyway. It would be nice to have both ,but not "build breaking"

[Musta]

demon blades , in it's current state, is my most hated ability for DH . Why should i spend multiple seconds doing nothing but auto attack , i'm not a rogue or druid waiting for their energy bar to fill up. It's infuriating in raids but in world content it's even worse . I'm a DH , i should always be pressing buttons and have no holes in my rotation just sitting there waiting for demon blade to proc.

imo, it shouldn't replace demon's bite and just add smaller fury gain for EACH auto attack , instead of being rng and require tons of haste.

Blind fury and demonic appetite being on the same row isn't that much of a problem , current demonic build doesn't choose blind fury anyway. It would be nice to have both ,but not "build breaking"

Demons bite is the most unsatisfying button i ever pressed.

[naeblis495]

Demons bite is the most unsatisfying button i ever pressed.

how so ? it's a builder , it does it's job well .

waiting around for demon blade procs is the worst feeling in DH . having empty gcd is awfull in all classes but especially in DH .

[Musta]

how so ? it's a builder , it does it's job well .

waiting around for demon blade procs is the worst feeling in DH . having empty gcd is awfull in all classes but especially in DH .

Demon blades should be 100%, not a proc.

[Orloth]

I'd rather see Demon Blades changed to something like Fracture. Where it's a better generator on a short cooldown. Offers more flexibility and Control without completely removing a button from our bars. Or just making Demon Blades less random would be nice.

[naeblis495]

i can agree with that , a fracture like replacement for demon's bite would be nice. Have a cooldown (reduced by haste) but give a lot more fury per button press

[Aphrel]

i miss using glaives in singletarget rotations.

and yes. make felblade baseline.

Tbh what i feel dh is missing is some kind of interaction between abilitys.
Some kind of proc that either resets the cd on something or increases the effect of anther ability.

[Musta]

felblade baseline for holy sake

[DeannL]

DOn't know the exact answer to your problem, need to clarify

[Shakana]

HOLY, that's a lot to read. Ok i need to read this later, but i wanted to tell something before i read, before i forget: I just don't like felrush and vengeful retreat as one build to go. I really like to how dhs are. But i know and recognize the dodging we provide in arenas is too much, and somewhat dumb. I understand why people want to #RemoveDh, but it's like, one of my favorite classes and thankfully for me and others it has been overpowered for 2 expansions, unfortunately, it has to take somewhat a nerf, but whatever they do, please don't go too low. It's cause, in the end of the day, it's still one of my favorite classes and i would still be liking to play it.

I have faith in DH players to know what we need on the class, and when i read this, i will tell what i think (even tho it's just my opinion and my own personal desire for the class ofc.) As a DH community i hope we can get some nice advice for blizzard and gameplay in the future.

[Norianlol]

Did someone already say to make Felblade baseline? If not then make it so!

[Minikin]

felblade baseline for holy sake

Also for style points.

It looks cool as heck hitting vengeful retreat and then while u are mid air upside down u hit felblade and u zoom back in.