DH - BfA

[Chaelexi]

Been testing various build on beta.

good stuff: there are many potential builds that will shine depending on azerite armor bonuses and final blizzard number pass.
good stuff: we have more buttons to press!!!!!!!
good stuff: we got taunt now on havoc. we can peel>kite>immune :-)


bad stuff: we lost our stun :-/
bad stuff: our interrupt is now 10 yards.

So on paper, havoc might be potentially a good spec, it will all depend on blizzard and their number pass that will hopefully make the 4/5 potential specs all playable.

The important thing is that for havoc the transition with / without artefact weapon will not translate into a loss of abilities to use.

The biggest loss for some will be the EB/Nova resets from souls that is lost, this only really effects those who want to play demonic significantly. Other than that all of the artifact bonuses that matter are just that bonus damage to our 4 damage abilities that are not talents(EB, BD, CS and DB).

[Skayth]

Our biggest loss is gaining Dark slash. Seriously. Fuck this ability. Its beyond a doubt the worst decision made by them. If i wanted to play colossus smash war, i would. As it is, this is fucking garbage of an ability that is miles ahead of the other two abilities.

[Fuger]

Our biggest loss is gaining Dark slash. Seriously. Fuck this ability. Its beyond a doubt the worst decision made by them. If i wanted to play colossus smash war, i would. As it is, this is fucking garbage of an ability that is miles ahead of the other two abilities.

How is the ability miles ahead in Alpha? We don't know if it will be nerfed into the abyss and to be honest, I'd rather use it than Cycle of Hatred. At least DoG were based on fury spent not this 40% static CS refund proc shit.

Plus, let's be honest, Demonic in T21 works like a colossus smash window on steroids due to abilities becoming more powerful in meta and the 50% haste. In my opinion, a window is a window is a window.

[Deleted]

How is the ability miles ahead in Alpha? We don't know if it will be nerfed into the abyss and to be honest, I'd rather use it than Cycle of Hatred. At least DoG were based on fury spent not this 40% static CS refund proc shit.

Plus, let's be honest, Demonic in T21 works like a colossus smash window on steroids due to abilities becoming more powerful in meta and the 50% haste. In my opinion, a window is a window is a window.

Eyebeam > Dark Slash > CS spam incoming with pre patch.
Colossal inception smash :/

[Fuger]

Eyebeam > Dark Slash > CS spam incoming with pre patch.
Colossal inception smash :/

Considering that's basically every 30 sec, it's significantly better than T21 and live.

[Skayth]

How is the ability miles ahead in Alpha? We don't know if it will be nerfed into the abyss and to be honest, I'd rather use it than Cycle of Hatred. At least DoG were based on fury spent not this 40% static CS refund proc shit.

Plus, let's be honest, Demonic in T21 works like a colossus smash window on steroids due to abilities becoming more powerful in meta and the 50% haste. In my opinion, a window is a window is a window.

Because first blood doesnt do jack damage next to it. And the Meta uptime doesnt compete with the ability to stack eyebeam (demonic)> dark slash >cs spam

Ive been playing the build for a while, i do more far more damage with ds than first blood. And the Cylce of Hatred is consistently bringing meta down to a nice cd, but, in terms of damage over an entire raid fight? Your best bet here is dark slash. I can get one deaths dances inside of that 8 second window, currently with haste levels fo the gear, and 2 blade dances outside of meta in that uptime. (7.5? sec cd with current haste limits.) With the haste after eyebeam that we get, like our current tier, and if haste levels allow us, I expect us to be able to pull out maybe a third deaths dance, like our current position with all our haste buffs stacked (with lust). That means about 3-4 blade dances between eye beams, and thats if they dont add some heart of azeroth key to make either Eyebeam decrease the cdr or souls to decrease the cd on eyebeam (which are abundant with demonic appetite)

So tell me, why should i do more damage with saving a cd simply to press immediately after eyebeam finishes to give me more dps than trying to meet thresholds and item requirements while also properly using fury, since we now only cap at 100, which is a big thing to get over when youve been playing legion? The answer is, it shouldnt. Dark Slash is a garbage ability, that lets balance team have an easy way of balancing DHs in raids. Want to know how? Make DS the "best ability" on that tier with demonic and nemesis, and balance the class around dark slash uptimes with proc chance on trinkets and such. Its not very hard to see. Its why colossus smash sucks, as that is when Warriors are able to put out their damage. Why the hell would I want that?

So if First blood cannot compete with Dark slash, even with all those thresholds met, then there is something fucking wrong here. I know the game is not balanced around around what i am playing at, but the game will not be balanced either, when it launches. We already know this, and look at every patch. I just dont wish to have the same drama as before, post emerald nightmare, forcing us down a single talent path, no matter what, with the nerfs to momentum and then bloodlet. I even said it in the legion beta that felblade should have never competed with the other three in that tier (hell, i said it should be baseline, and still think so for both specs)... low and behold, they launched and saw felblade never being used, and first blood only being used in arena to use as juke for that 1 second dodge. Hell, noone uses fel eruption right now, between that and momo, and nemesis. Noone has touched that, hence why it got moved on bfa.

Demonic t21 is more about rng, than a colossus smash window. Its asking you, how many souls you picked up that reduced eyebeams cdr while still under nemesis through the course of a long fight. How many chaos strikes you get in that window of haste with eyebeam is all dependent on the amount of fury and souls you had gained and the amount of time chaos strike had refunded fury. Its playing Rng with Rng with Rng with Rng. If colossus smash was like this, then warriors would have said fucked that long ago. What we are getting in BfA is colossus smash. There isnt much rng anymore and you can get in quite a few Annihilations in that 8 seconds, rather going for broke or for rich currently. It feels smooth and far more polished than currently. But it feels like a damn warrior.

My argument is that they will force us down a single path, again, rather than having people whom wish to push out the absolute limits, such as haste breakpoints for blade dance, or enough damage out of momentum (as it doesnt proc off of vengeful retreat), but rather we see all the demon hunters do the same damn thing. Felblade or Demonic appetite (if it continues to proc as many souls as it does, then this may become dominate), into demons blades, into felbarrage, into soul rending or netherwalk, into dark slash into fel eruption, into either demonic or nemesis depending on the fight.

[Measure]

For the love of god if they make us have a pseudo colossus smash rotation I am going to be pissed. Surely they can think of something better or are they all out of ideas? So that means arms, marksman, and havoc will all have a colossus smash effect in their rotation. Blizzard for real yo wtf.

[Chaelexi]

Because first blood doesnt do jack damage next to it. And the Meta uptime doesnt compete with the ability to stack eyebeam (demonic)> dark slash >cs spam

Ive been playing the build for a while, i do more far more damage with ds than first blood. And the Cylce of Hatred is consistently bringing meta down to a nice cd, but, in terms of damage over an entire raid fight? Your best bet here is dark slash. I can get one deaths dances inside of that 8 second window, currently with haste levels fo the gear, and 2 blade dances outside of meta in that uptime. (7.5? sec cd with current haste limits.) With the haste after eyebeam that we get, like our current tier, and if haste levels allow us, I expect us to be able to pull out maybe a third deaths dance, like our current position with all our haste buffs stacked (with lust). That means about 3-4 blade dances between eye beams, and thats if they dont add some heart of azeroth key to make either Eyebeam decrease the cdr or souls to decrease the cd on eyebeam (which are abundant with demonic appetite)

So tell me, why should i do more damage with saving a cd simply to press immediately after eyebeam finishes to give me more dps than trying to meet thresholds and item requirements while also properly using fury, since we now only cap at 100, which is a big thing to get over when youve been playing legion? The answer is, it shouldnt. Dark Slash is a garbage ability, that lets balance team have an easy way of balancing DHs in raids. Want to know how? Make DS the "best ability" on that tier with demonic and nemesis, and balance the class around dark slash uptimes with proc chance on trinkets and such. Its not very hard to see. Its why colossus smash sucks, as that is when Warriors are able to put out their damage. Why the hell would I want that?

So if First blood cannot compete with Dark slash, even with all those thresholds met, then there is something fucking wrong here. I know the game is not balanced around around what i am playing at, but the game will not be balanced either, when it launches. We already know this, and look at every patch. I just dont wish to have the same drama as before, post emerald nightmare, forcing us down a single talent path, no matter what, with the nerfs to momentum and then bloodlet. I even said it in the legion beta that felblade should have never competed with the other three in that tier (hell, i said it should be baseline, and still think so for both specs)... low and behold, they launched and saw felblade never being used, and first blood only being used in arena to use as juke for that 1 second dodge. Hell, noone uses fel eruption right now, between that and momo, and nemesis. Noone has touched that, hence why it got moved on bfa.

Demonic t21 is more about rng, than a colossus smash window. Its asking you, how many souls you picked up that reduced eyebeams cdr while still under nemesis through the course of a long fight. How many chaos strikes you get in that window of haste with eyebeam is all dependent on the amount of fury and souls you had gained and the amount of time chaos strike had refunded fury. Its playing Rng with Rng with Rng with Rng. If colossus smash was like this, then warriors would have said fucked that long ago. What we are getting in BfA is colossus smash. There isnt much rng anymore and you can get in quite a few Annihilations in that 8 seconds, rather going for broke or for rich currently. It feels smooth and far more polished than currently. But it feels like a damn warrior.

My argument is that they will force us down a single path, again, rather than having people whom wish to push out the absolute limits, such as haste breakpoints for blade dance, or enough damage out of momentum (as it doesnt proc off of vengeful retreat), but rather we see all the demon hunters do the same damn thing. Felblade or Demonic appetite (if it continues to proc as many souls as it does, then this may become dominate), into demons blades, into felbarrage, into soul rending or netherwalk, into dark slash into fel eruption, into either demonic or nemesis depending on the fight.

I did some math on this earlier, you will need an average of 100 CS's in a 2 min window to lower the cooldown of Meta to match the cooldown of Nem(which is by far the best raiding talent in that tier), this means you need a 1.2 second GCD if Demon Blades can keep you going with enough fury to hit CS on every GCD. This means at minimum you will need at least 20% haste to get that perfectly and if you need to add other fury builders, EB or anything else into the rotation it is likely going to be closer to 30% to get it where it needs to be. And this is going to be the point where Dark Slash is.

As for your complaints about Momo and the nerfs to in current xpac. It was a needed nerf as they were running into issues where giving up your mobility and defensive cooldown for a number 1 parse and not being able to design mechanics that played well with it was going to severely limit their ability to make fights more difficult and include person responsibility. Momo is all class fantasy ability but really poor in execution because in it's initial design due to the sacrifices it required to play properly. Not saying Nemesis is amazing but in design it is significantly better than Momo. If Momo was the best damage ability the complaints from DH's in the last 2 raid tiers would have been monumental as there are maybe 5 fights in the last 2 instances where it would have been a viable choice all the rest it would have been terrible.

Colossal Smash is about RNG and getting reset procs just like T21 EB and getting soul procs...... and not exactly what DS is because currently it is on a rigid cooldown with no RNG. Yes it you will be forced to get as many CS in that window and it will likely endup playing Immo Aura, DS, spam until you run out of CS's.

As for your argument about being pigeon holed down a single path.....this has existed since vanilla for most specs. Warlocks had to go some form of SM Ruin for 2 whole xpac's. And will still always exist due to theory crafting and people figuring out the best spec for certain situations.

[Khiyone]

I did some math on this earlier, you will need an average of 100 CS's in a 2 min window to lower the cooldown of Meta to match the cooldown of Nem(which is by far the best raiding talent in that tier)

No. Preliminary sims indicate that Momentum is the strongest talent in that tier for pure single target. Of course, it's very likely that things will change when tuning happens, but Nemesis is generally the worst talent in that row right now.

If Momo was the best damage ability the complaints from DH's in the last 2 raid tiers would have been monumental as there are maybe 5 fights in the last 2 instances where it would have been a viable choice all the rest it would have been terrible.

The only fights where you'd need to animation cancel in order to play Momentum are Star Augur/Maiden/Argus mythic.

[Fuger]

It's not a single path, you're just making assumptions off alpha numbers which is inherently idiotic.

[Chaelexi]

No. Preliminary sims indicate that Momentum is the strongest talent in that tier for pure single target. Of course, it's very likely that things will change when tuning happens, but Nemesis is generally the worst talent in that row right now.



The only fights where you'd need to animation cancel in order to play Momentum are Star Augur/Maiden/Argus mythic.

First of all where are these sims, simcraft or raidbots do not have alpha on them yet, and there is nothing on either of the discords(I am calling BS)? By doing some easy napkin math Nem still beats out Momo anyways
Nem 25% damage to your target over 1 minute of every 2. or an average of 12.5% more damage
Momo 15% more damage available 60% of the time(if you are perfect on timings and do not lose a FR to needing to move somewhere) = 9% damage over the time period and since VR/FR is on the GCD now and the extra fury from VR is a minimal gain since you lose a GCD of damage.(for leveling or PVP that is a different story)

Now for your"the only fights..........." part. All of Antorus Mythic except Portal keeper, Eonar and Fel Hounds I would consider using mom if it was at all competitive.
Varimathras - Hard no as you have to stand with the group for the whole fight and FR = alone in the darkness
Aggramar - I want my FR's to move out of Slashes and Getting a couple extra hits in during searing tempest and last phase where you need a spread and do not want to be moving around a tonne other than chasing the boss.
High Command - the amount of mines will end up being an issue for FR, causing wipes
Garothi - Want my movement abilities to soak/double soak thing, giving up movement abilities on this fight is extremely short sighted
Coven - Having to FR in melee during lightning adds will cause wipes
Kin'garoth - Nemesis will be better since killing adds is priority and you end up going chaos blades for it
Imonar - Mines, stacking in phase 2 and 3 to bait stuff and having movement for the bridge is more desired
Argus - enough said,

And cancel animation is cheating.

[Deleted]

Garothi: Most patches spawn in melee range and could therefore be reached with FR while maintaining Momentum
Felhounds: Watching DBM for the firepatches where your camp has to move is the only thing you might have to do with momentum, everything else does not concern you with it except ofc waiting for the stacking stuff to end, but that is not that much of an issue.
High Command: Requires a lot of attention if using momentum here because of the mines and perhaps boss cleave. It could be possible but on the other hand, just nemesis an add and forget about it.
Portalkeeper: I'd say Nemesis for the adds is far more valuable here (if you are assigned to portals) so it wouldn't be that good to use momentum here.
Eonar: Why not? Perfect fight for a momentum demonic. You do not need your movementskills here that much (if at all). Simply walk out of your raidmembers with whatever you have, then FR back in. You can pretty much use FR 90% of the time here with no drawback.
Imonar: It is quite possible to use momentum here. You actually never have to stack with the other melees. Simply be at the camp when the boss abilitys require you to be there, which is only a small window. Bridge on the other hand, well, yeah. We have WL portals to cover 50% of it, then walk a bit and FR into the boss.
Kingaroth: You can use FR here all the time, nothing requires you to save FR here. At most keep retreat back if the adds are going to spawn and then FR to them.
Varimathras: Yeah, well, nope.
Coven: Yeah, there is a lot of stuff here that could prevent you from using momentum at its maximum, so i wouldn't go for it here as well.
Aggramar: You can use FR here as well for most of the time. Nothing says "stay here for the rest of the time". Be there when he does his combo and otherwise FR to the left and right. For his AoE you can dump all Fury and then retreat out. Then FR back in.
Argus: In p1 it could be doable IF you do not have the stacking debuff, p2 as well, p3 though would be a nightmare since you can not FR here at all.

I was considering mythic only as well as having Felblade talented which really fits well with momentum, making it even easier to use that to its max.

[Deleted]

First of all where are these sims, simcraft or raidbots do not have alpha on them yet, and there is nothing on either of the discords(I am calling BS)? By doing some easy napkin math Nem still beats out Momo anyways
Nem 25% damage to your target over 1 minute of every 2. or an average of 12.5% more damage
Momo 15% more damage available 60% of the time(if you are perfect on timings and do not lose a FR to needing to move somewhere) = 9% damage over the time period and since VR/FR is on the GCD now and the extra fury from VR is a minimal gain since you lose a GCD of damage.(for leveling or PVP that is a different story)

That is hands down the most plain, take-at-face-value approach you could have taken, and it is wrong.

In a vacuum, where you only compare total numbers, Nemesis wins.

In a real world scenario though...

Momentum requires no AoE setup and increases your damage to all targets, so it works in cleave/aoe scenarios from the get-go.

Momentum has a lot of short windows, so you can generate to full fury, open the window and keep spending until the dps buff fades. Nemesis has one huge window, so you inevitably reach points where you have to generate and end up using low damage attacks. Momentum can safely ignore this issue.

Momentum adds a generating effect to VR, and VR is on a 0.5s GCD. That means 3 VR uses take a single standard GCD, and 3 VRs generate 300 fury. One global cooldown for 3 full resource bars, hands down the best generator in the game.

Momentum is a higher risk, higher reward if you know what you're doing. Plain and simple.

[Dejiko]

Havoc is looking to play really nicely for BfA.
Speccing into Demonic appetite + Insatiable hunger provides a steady income of souls of healing and fury, makes the spec
far better to play as i`m not spamming the primary generator so much of the time like in Legion.
Using talents like Fel barrage + Soul rending + Demonic you can eye beam into demon form and use fel barrage to get tons of health back due to the leech.
Really fun to level with, elites are no problem.

[Chaelexi]

Garothi: Most patches spawn in melee range and could therefore be reached with FR while maintaining Momentum
Felhounds: Watching DBM for the firepatches where your camp has to move is the only thing you might have to do with momentum, everything else does not concern you with it except ofc waiting for the stacking stuff to end, but that is not that much of an issue.
High Command: Requires a lot of attention if using momentum here because of the mines and perhaps boss cleave. It could be possible but on the other hand, just nemesis an add and forget about it.
Portalkeeper: I'd say Nemesis for the adds is far more valuable here (if you are assigned to portals) so it wouldn't be that good to use momentum here.
Eonar: Why not? Perfect fight for a momentum demonic. You do not need your movementskills here that much (if at all). Simply walk out of your raidmembers with whatever you have, then FR back in. You can pretty much use FR 90% of the time here with no drawback.
Imonar: It is quite possible to use momentum here. You actually never have to stack with the other melees. Simply be at the camp when the boss abilitys require you to be there, which is only a small window. Bridge on the other hand, well, yeah. We have WL portals to cover 50% of it, then walk a bit and FR into the boss.
Kingaroth: You can use FR here all the time, nothing requires you to save FR here. At most keep retreat back if the adds are going to spawn and then FR to them.
Varimathras: Yeah, well, nope.
Coven: Yeah, there is a lot of stuff here that could prevent you from using momentum at its maximum, so i wouldn't go for it here as well.
Aggramar: You can use FR here as well for most of the time. Nothing says "stay here for the rest of the time". Be there when he does his combo and otherwise FR to the left and right. For his AoE you can dump all Fury and then retreat out. Then FR back in.
Argus: In p1 it could be doable IF you do not have the stacking debuff, p2 as well, p3 though would be a nightmare since you can not FR here at all.

I was considering mythic only as well as having Felblade talented which really fits well with momentum, making it even easier to use that to its max.

Kingaroth - you could use it but 25% bonus damage on the add, especially since DH's usually go on the solo one is better than 15% damage 60% of the time. (same as portal keeper)
Imonar - Depends on your strat, we use stack method for the raid in phase 2 for the mines and having felrush available to you to dodge giant laser beams that people can not aim is very nice. Remember every felrush you use for mobility is one less(currently 4 second) 6 second period in BFA that you are losing out on. Each 6 second period you lose on Momo is losing 5% uptime or .45% overall total damage in a fight. This penalty adds up quick.
Garothi - In my guild DH's get assigned to the far front left patches that are out of range of everything and being able to interrupt the knockback with VR or FR is a huge bonus. As we are one of the most mobile classes.


Currently having felblade gimps you cause you are not getting EB resets, who knows once BFA hits as there are no more EB resets.

- - - Updated - - -

That is hands down the most plain, take-at-face-value approach you could have taken, and it is wrong.

In a vacuum, where you only compare total numbers, Nemesis wins.

In a real world scenario though...

Momentum requires no AoE setup and increases your damage to all targets, so it works in cleave/aoe scenarios from the get-go.

Momentum has a lot of short windows, so you can generate to full fury, open the window and keep spending until the dps buff fades. Nemesis has one huge window, so you inevitably reach points where you have to generate and end up using low damage attacks. Momentum can safely ignore this issue.

Momentum adds a generating effect to VR, and VR is on a 0.5s GCD. That means 3 VR uses take a single standard GCD, and 3 VRs generate 300 fury. One global cooldown for 3 full resource bars, hands down the best generator in the game.

Momentum is a higher risk, higher reward if you know what you're doing. Plain and simple.

You say a whole lot with out actual numbers to back it up, I asked where these mythical sims people have talked about are. I gave you raw numbers for a single target mythic fight, which we were talking about and you brought in AOE......guess what 25% over a minute if the adds are the same mob type as the boss is still a huge upgrade over 9% damage over 60%(perfect usage, every miss after the first one drops this by .45%, you get one extra since you start the fight with 2 charges). Also as we get enough haste you will see Demon Blades take over again because you will get enough procs from your auto attacks to keep spamming CS anyways most of the time and this once again favors Nemesis. See right now with 30% haste.

Yes it got a couple buffs but it still will not reach to power of Nemesis in it's current form in raids. I was testing the raids last week and my logs with nemesis did better than ones with momo or demonic. My average uptime on Momo was in the mid to high 50's.

[kran1um]

Playing one on Alpha - giving a small TLDR review: Both specs seem to be missing a button. Survivability as Tank is unmatched until they tune the numbers - they can basically solo a 5 man right now, spirit bomb is putting too much healing and dps, its like the one button macro. Demon Spikes is putting too much armor out - that coupled with the healing makes Vengeance very powerful.

Havoc. Same ole same ole. Depending on what you like to do, momentum, chaos or demonic, its really nothing different. If you used glaive toss in pve you were doing it because you wanted something to push, maybe thats the button I was looking for as it seemed slow.

[Accendor]

Havoc is looking to play really nicely for BfA.
Speccing into Demonic appetite + Insatiable hunger provides a steady income of souls of healing and fury, makes the spec
far better to play as i`m not spamming the primary generator so much of the time like in Legion.
Using talents like Fel barrage + Soul rending + Demonic you can eye beam into demon form and use fel barrage to get tons of health back due to the leech.
Really fun to level with, elites are no problem.

The fact alone that souls no longer reduce the CD of eye beam makes demonic appetite just a chore to me

[Chaelexi]

No. Preliminary sims indicate that Momentum is the strongest talent in that tier for pure single target. Of course, it's very likely that things will change when tuning happens, but Nemesis is generally the worst talent in that row right now.



The only fights where you'd need to animation cancel in order to play Momentum are Star Augur/Maiden/Argus mythic.

Still waiting for a link to these "preliminary" sims......... I checked with both discords, they know nothing of these sims, they are not linked on Simcraft or Raidbots......So where are they or were you just making something up to prove your point because you have no information.

[Khiyone]

Still waiting for a link to these "preliminary" sims......... I checked with both discords, they know nothing of these sims, they are not linked on Simcraft or Raidbots......So where are they or were you just making something up to prove your point because you have no information.

Pretty much all the alpha DH stuff was completed by Kojiyama I believe; the sims referenced were mentioned by kib in the fel hammer discord if you search there.

[kran1um]

Still waiting for a link to these "preliminary" sims......... I checked with both discords, they know nothing of these sims, they are not linked on Simcraft or Raidbots......So where are they or were you just making something up to prove your point because you have no information.

There are no sims. Not in Alpha. Nothing is tuned. Hell we are still falling through the world on the 3rd quest. Opinions are opinions.