A lot of the feedback so far seems to come from 2 directions:1. Havoc OP good nerf thx Blizz2. You aren't CE raider your opinion is invalid, havoc broke always needs borrowed powerBoth of these SHOULD come to the same conclusion. Does it feel good to get dumpstered in a BG by a spec doing half as much work as you? No. Does it feel good to see your dps fluctuate 40k because of Infinite Stars rng? Also no. Havoc is absolutely broken for more casual content. The mobility, leech, ease of use etc make it god tier for open world content, Normal/Heroic raids, low m+ unrated BGs and arena. At the high end, Havoc relies completely on borrowed power. Even the best Havoc players in the world will see Twilight Dev, Infinite Stars, Noxious Venom, as their top sources of damage. Without these DH has nothing to offer.The solution to both of these problems isn't to just nerf DH, it's to fix it. Tuning could make a legitimate 2 button spec top dps. No one wants that. No one wants to be outdpsed by someone pressing 2 buttons, and no one wants to play 2 buttons. HAVOC DOES NOT EXIST AS A FULL SPEC. There are no real gameplay loops, no hooks. The closest we have, is just giga haste from Furious Gaze making you proc more infinite stars. The core rotational kit of havoc is as engaging as a level 20 Outlaw Rogue, and that's being generous. Baselining certain talents and playstyles, (ie First Blood, Demonic) and having talents which expand on and add depth to that core, would create an actual skill gap to the spec, on top of making it more enjoyable to play. People wouldn't scream about Havocs dumpstering them in BGs if to properly perform your spec required a modicum of thought, and at the high end, (assuming proper tuning) people wouldn't complain if proper execution and skill was proportionately rewarded.As it stands now, the "skillful" talent option is momentum, but the vast majority of DHs, myself included, think momentum is dog&*!@ to play. Conceptually it's ~okay~ but in practice, if it the talent actually works (fel rush is notoriously buggy) you are gimped in most encounters by being forced to move for damage. Nemesis is the most boring talent imaginable, literally press and forget. Demonic at least provides what could be foundational to an engaging gameplay loop, yet it's been dramatically nerfed. On live, on of the few points of skill expression to havoc is ensuring 3 Death Sweeps in a Demonic window. This will go away in Shadowlands. Furthermore banking souls and not wasting fury is the only other point of "skill" available to the spec, and this too has been nerfed. What we're left with is an even more braindead spec, a buggy spec few enjoy (with momentum) or a meme (nemesis). With current talent options being locked in order to provide a semblence of a rotation DH will not be fixed for either the high end, or the more casual side of players.I don't have a real solution, but I hope maybe those hating on DHs saying thanks for the nerfs Blizz, and those who are CE 4kio+ players can find some common ground. Tuning of course is subject to change, but the class PLAYS like dog*!@#. If overtuned then Havocs will still dumpster you, but this time it could be with even less skill expression.If I had my way, Havoc would fully embrace it's current iteration, as a FOUNDATION for a spec. Demonic, and Demonic appetite are very thematic, and as a core, could provide a complex and rewarding spec with talents on top.Imagine if you will:1. Demonic, First Blood Demonic App baselined2. A new active ability, shear (Fracture perhaps if talented, replacing Insatiable Hunger/Felblade/etc)3. Shear breaks off one soul, consumes fury, low damage, Fracture would breaks of 2, has a cd, maybe fury cost, Chaos Strike breaks of a soul if it refunds fury.4. Shear and Fracture are low damage, but soul generators.5. Souls reduce the CD of Eye Beam, but also grant a stacking haste buff, but they do not extend the buff.6. Death Sweep and Annihlation do more damage, but do not generate souls at all, or only have a chance to with Annihlation a la Chaos Strike.7. Meta is changed to a 2 minute CD like the current PvP talent, generates soul fragments upon landing.This if tuned correctly would create a fast paced play style with choice, and skill expression. You have to balance fury generation, soul generation, and want to maximize you haste, in order to maximise uptime in meta. It has ramp up, but using your CD, Metamorphisis, allows you to get a good chunk of ramp immediately. At any point you have choices to make, optimisations to make etc. This assumes things are tuned properly of course so you can't just get dumpstered by someone who is rolling their face on the keyboard, but you could also do giga damage if you know what you're doing and engaged in the game..
Man, so many here peddling the "hurr durrr dh op nerf good lol" meme.
Hopefully DH gets a few more tweaks to help out before SL goes live. Great write up though!
Have played DH since legion launched, and IMO the talent tree for Havoc is completely in shambles. Here are a few things I think about it:Tier 1: Felblade has always been super fun, and really should be baseline. I don't know if demonic appetite will even be worth it with our severely nerfed haste coming into SL. Blind Fury seems like the choice, no problems with it.Tier 2: How does demon blades even still exist. It was slated to be changed before Tomb of Sargeras and they said they couldn't figure it out and would look at it later. One and a half expansions later and the talent is still completely unchanged (and with less haste doesn't seem viable). Burning Hatred is like half of immolation aura talent that is currently on live, so power wise seems extremely weak. Insatiable Hunger seems like the go to pick, but very boring.Tier 3: Trail of Ruin seems like the only talent even worth considering. Unbound chaos just seems like people gonna be flying around and getting themselves killed by falling of stuff or dashing into fire (Disclaimer that I have always hated the concept of using fel rush as a damaging tool). The damage on it seems ok though and us seemingly having to spec into into momentum for glaive throw legendary, maybe this is the pick. Fel Barrage needs its damage drastically increased to even be considered. Was only picked for mass burst aoe and target capped at 5 without a damage increase is a joke.Tier 4: Honestly I'm ok with all these getting a nerf. DH sustain is definitely too strong compared to other specs.Tier 5 : First Blood just needs to be baseline. The already simple rotation turns to 2 buttons without this talent. Because Trail of Ruin is the auto pick in Tier 3, this talent pretty much becomes required. Them buffing the other 2 talents in this row is just hilarious to me. Essence Break was literally never used at any point in BFA, and adding blade dance to it while simultaneously making it target capped is definitely fail. Cycle of Hatred is at least interesting. But because of Tier 3 Trail of Ruin, doesn't seem viable.Tier 6: Utility row, seems ok. Would love for Fel Eruption to be baseline though.Tier 7: You would think that the last talent row would be exciting, sadly it is not. Demonic getting nerfed is very stupid. People forget that the talent was not used at all in serious content until antorus. And this is because they introduced the set bonus that would later become the Furious Gaze azerite trait (haste after eye beam channel). As this is being removed the talent (at 8 seconds) was already not very good. At 6 seconds it is just gonna be meh. Momentum, I hate you. I personally feel like the momentum gameplay is extremely toxic. Forcing movement to increase damage just seems to encourage really poor decision making and play. Sadly this talent seems like the go to pick because of glaive throw legendary. Nemesis, my nemesis. Absolutely hated this talent when I played with it throughout legion. Instead of a bonus 20% damage, it just seemed like you did considerably less damage when it wasn't up. Especially when combined with the burst nature of Metamorphosis. Also, I doubt the devs take into account mob type when designing dungeons. It was kind of fun using it on a mob that is about to die, and then slaughtering the next pack that was the same type. But sadly a lot of encounters would have adds spawn of a different type, or just inconsistent mob types throughout a dungeon.I have some problems with the base kit as well, but a lot of that has already been covered.
I’d like to see something like this replacing the current mastery Demonic Mastery (mastery):Your Demon empowered abilities are increased by x while in demon formWhen you use Eye beam you enter demon form for 6 seconds. Critical strikes (BD/CS) extend demonic by .5 seconds Chaos Strike: Hits two times for X damage, has (mastery%) chance to refund fury Eye beam stays the same, chaos strike refunds reduce the cooldown of eyebeam by 2 secondsTying the rest of the kit together with the talents but at least having a core kit to build around. First blood obviously needing to be baseline. I would like felblade to be baseline as well, and I’d blizz decides to tie any damage to mobility it should be to that. But this is a full rework obviously
What a joke this poor class got turned into. So everyone gets unpruned and buffed, meanwhile DHs get nerfed on almost every level.- The lack of Blade Dance/Leech will make us incredibly squishy against cleaves- We already had 0 healing while rooted/while the enemy wasn't taking damage but now even when not rooted we heal for peanuts- They not only nerf Meta, they nerf Demonic as wellWhy? Why are those changes done? DH was middle of the pack as a DPS ( check Nya logs ) and Tank spec doesn't exist. We're a class with 2 specs, 1 unplayable, 1 bang on average.In PvP we're one of the least represented classes in 3v3 ( bottom 4 above 2.2K rating )Those nerfs just don't make any sense and it seems like they were only done to appease people who whined. I really hope every other DH main unsubs.
From my perspective the problem is this:Single target rotation without talentsDH:
Removed
Playing a Havoc Demon Hunter is easy, but mastering it is another thing entirely.Yes, we were perhaps are too powerful than we should have been in BFA, in fact Azerites were great but Corruption just took the cake.Azerites gave a glimpse of the classes true power it should have had before corruption even became a thing. There was nothing wrong with it.What people seem to be forgetting here is that Blizzard wanted to create an "elite" class, one that is supposed to have more power than the others and introduce a stronger solo play. Perhaps their mistake was making Death Knights and Demon Hunters elite classes. But people who just want to &*!@ on Demon Hunter players because they're salty over getting their asses kicked in BFA? Direct your hate to Blizzard, not us.Great article Kib, I agree with a lot of what you've said and in fact reversed my feedback post on Shadowlands forums after taking a good second take of Havoc. I'm disgusted and saddened because it was my main.
Sad to see so many people rejoicing over a class getting destroyed. Your hate is making you weak and lesser as men
Negative! There were terrible changes made and that because of crying players just like you do not accept a class to be fun like him.
You must get a lot of dh, that's why all the crying.
I’ve played a demon hunter since legion launched and it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the fast paced gameplay and the amount of mobility that it provided. I had tried other classes in the past but nothing ever really fit me quite like a demon hunter did. Nothing quite felt right and that is even despite the numerous problems with the spec as outlined in the main post. Havoc and Vengeance are fun specs to me despite their problems but what is especially frustrating is Blizzard’s downright misunderstanding of both of the specs problems and not to mention the sheer audacity of the devs to write these changes down on paper and think that it really does a proper service to havoc as a spec. Not only are the devs to blame for giving us a rather shallow spec when it comes down to its baseline state but I think part of the blame for these changes can be justifiably thrust upon the WoW community in general. The reason why I say this is because I have encountered countless players in my time as a DH and they seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding in terms of where it’s power comes from and it’s rather frustrating. It’s also quite ironic when players jab at the simplicity of havoc (which is fair) yet there seems to be a perception among a large portion of the community that the havoc DH itself at baseline is overpowered. There are very strong elements to havoc, well there were strong elements but, as Kyb has outlined if you strip down the borrowed power it’s a sad excuse for a spec. At this point my comment has just become a larger ramble than intended, but the thing that I most wanted to say is that all I want out of havoc and vengeance is a fun spec that can stand on its own two feet. I want something fun and, I think even more so than just the fun factor, I want something engaging out of DH that has depth and complexity. There are other classes that have that in spades but DH is severely lacking on all fronts. All I want is for every spec and class to feel good and appeal to different types of players.