Aldrachi Reaver feedback

[Synthium-kazzak]

Hello,

Inspired by the Farseer feedback post from Shaman forums, and also by the fact there are no blue-posted feedback threads, I will write down my musings on the Aldrachi Reaver hero talent tree.

First an introductory “rant”, just for context:

As someone who mained Havoc since its release, I am fully aware we have a reputation of being an extremely easy to play spec, where you cannot mess your DPS/rotation up unless you got like a disconnect or something. And for the longest time, this has definitely been the case. I however enjoyed it because it allowed me to instead focus on the mechanics of the fight rather than to try and think about both mechanics and how to micromanage like 12 buttons at the same time.

Since Dragonflight rework, Havoc is no longer as easy to play properly as it was before. As a matter of fact, it’s VERY easy to mess up literally everything in your rotation, that includes the opener, the moment to moment rotation mid-fight and your burst windows. AND I LIKE IT. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that now good Havoc player can distinguish themselves from a bad one by something more than just who critted more or procced the passive fury gain (like in Legion for example) is very nice to see. It drives players to actually investigate what they did wrong. However, it caused me to buy an MMO mouse for the first time in ever due to just how many things I have to have keybound. If you don’t believe me:

Look at my keybinds.

However, what I don’t like about it is that our rotation has shifted into the area of short burst windows via arbitrary powerups to our damage (Momentum/Inertia), crit chance (Vengeful Retreat/Initiative) and damage amplifiers in very short windows (Essence Break). Those short burst windows can very easily be messed up just once by even the most skilled of players, due to them having to be mindful of the boss mechanics. Once you mess it up once, your CDs are almost permanently de-synced and you aren’t as effective anymore.

Which ties in to the topic at hand…

The new hero talent tree further exacerbates the issue. It’s focused entirely on the glaive, which IMO should not be a core class fantasy of the DH, tank or dps. To quote one poster from the US forums:

“Having to pick up souls as the main building resource in order to do damage has been tried before and it is not fun having to fight a boss, dodge stuff and intentionally or not pickup resources you cannot control.”

As a capstone talent, we get one that makes us get a 30% buff for the next ability we use, but we can’t really fully control when we are going to proc that buff, and if it does not happen just in time for your big hitting ability, your damage will just suck. Having to design addons or specific WAs to play the spec is a terrible game design.

Now, if you are really that hellbent on making this a thing and instead of something awesome, have a class revolve around glaive throwing abilities (which sucks from both the fantasy and DPS perspective), make it so that the capstone talent increases the next hit by the strongest ability by 30%. Whether it’s The Hunt, Death Sweep or Annihilation is gonna be up to you to decide, and it will depend on tier sets and many more things (the only reason The Hunt is as strong as it is now is because of a 4p).

If you REALLY want to make it awesome, have it rely on an actual class fantasy, which in case of DHs should really be about the unity of the Illidari, us vs the world. That means, you can double down on the “Fel Devastation” effect, where whenever you use a certain ability, you can summon Illidari companions that will copy your abilities or do whatever. Of course, tune it accordingly. You can then make both of the hero talent trees focus on a different aspect of the same thing (ex. one is focused around Eye Beam while another is focused around your core abilities, idk).

I know we haven’t seen the Fel-Scarred one yet, but this first preview of the Aldrachi Reaver does not look promising and doubles down on the unnecessarily complex class mechanics that not only still involve you getting in harm’s way to dps, but now also pushes you go throw glaives and turns them into another vulnerability window that you have to be mindful to exploit properly.

[Nygrael-aszune]

Quote from Synthium
As a capstone talent, we get one that makes us get a 30% buff for the next ability we use, but we can’t really fully control when we are going to proc that buff, and if it does not happen just in time for your big hitting ability, your damage will just suck. Having to design addons or specific WAs to play the spec is a terrible game design.

Technically, you can delay using Reaver’s Throw to just before your most damaging ability becomes available. After all, all the key talent does is change Throw Glaive into Reaver’s Glaive, it doesn’t automatically throw it. That said, I am not a fan of how the Art of the Glaive activates. The main issue I have is that we need resources rework - Soul Fragments need to not be objects in the world and an actual combo point bar on the character. Havoc could have them spawn from Demon’s Bite/Demon Blades, and they would be consumed by Chaos Strike to do more damage/explosion/partially refund Fury/something, in addition to self-healing.

Now, if we won’t have any such rework, then there are still better ideas for Art of the Glaive activation:

• Creating Soul Fragments instead consuming them (removes the need to move around for Havoc)
• Spending X amount of Fury (gives player some agency)
• Using Soul Carver / Essence Break (gives player full control)

Quote from Synthium
(…) make it so that the capstone talent increases the next hit by the strongest ability by 30%. Whether it’s The Hunt, Death Sweep or Annihilation is gonna be up to you to decide, and it will depend on tier sets and many more things.

I would definitely prefer to have a specific ability instead of just “next ability”, probably one that deals glaive damage. I would not mind if it just was Felblade, thought it should be more than just 30%, more like 100-200%.

Synthium
If you REALLY want to make it awesome, have it rely on an actual class fantasy, which in case of DHs should really be about the unity of the Illidari, us vs the world. That means, you can double down on the “Fel Devastation” effect, where whenever you use a certain ability, you can summon Illidari companions that will copy your abilities or do whatever.

I would absolutely hate that, as much as I hate the Collective Anguish talent. I would much rather prefer that the damage comes from my character and the power of demonic souls he consumed.

All that said, apart from how the Art of the Glaive activates, I really do not hate the tree at all. I like the idea of Demon Hunters having two hero specs, one revolving around Warglaives and Soul Fragments and the other around Fel powers (Immolation Aura and Eye Beam/Fel Devastation?).

Below I’ll drop my general feedback - do note that I primarily play as Vengeance and focus on PvE, so my responses might be a bit biased towards them:

Talent Feedback (Ranking)
Tier 1:

• Art of the Glaive (2/5): As noted above, I dislike how the talent activates. Other than that, it creates a somewhat interesting gameplay loop where - thought at this stage it is unclear due to the wording: what pattern? What order of abilities, is it predefined or randomized? Capstone speaks of “both” enhancements, so there are only two? Escalation indicates “successive” - is there more than two? Is it like Boomkin’s Eclipse except we get two buffs with varied stacks and one buffs the ST and the other buffs the AoE ability? Or does it generate an actual pattern where we have to click A-B-B-A-A or B-B-A-A-B? Probably not the latter, since Blade Dance has a CD so it would be hard to benefit fully. It’s just too confusing and unclear at this stage.

Tier 2:

• Keen Engagement (1/5): Unless resources rework is coming, we don’t need a trickle of extra Fury, we have enough of that resource already.

• Preemptive Strike (4/5): Simple, free AoE damage, too bad it’s on a weak ability.

• Evasive Action (2/5): Not sure if this is intended as PvP ability, but DHs aren’t lacking mobilty, so it doesn’t feel better than Unhindered Assault.

• Unhindered Assault (5/5): Great due to synergy with Army Unto Oneself in Tier 3 and generally for Havoc with Demon Blades talent.

• Incisive Blade (5/5): Simple tuning knob, and free damage bonus is free, not gonna complain.

Tier 3:

• Aldrachi Tactics (4/5): Need more information on what the pattern is and how random it is. Could be good, but then again Soul Fragments themselves aren’t that important a resource for the time being.

• Army Unto Oneself (6/5): Personally the best talent in the tree for a DH tank. Felblade for me felt useless in DF, but with this talent it will skyrocket in priority list.

• Incorruptible Spirit (2/5): Need more info if it scales with VDH’s Soul Fragment self-healing scaling. Even with it, however, this talent doesn’t beat AUO, and maybe useful for Havoc instead.

• Wounded Quarry (5/5): Simple talent for extra damage, nothing additional to track, and for a VDH a free soul fragment is always nice, as well as to activate Reaver’s Glaive.

Tier 4:

• Intent Pursuit (5/5): The Hunt is a powerful and fun ability, being able to use it more often is always welcome.

• Escalation (3/5): Potentially strong, but again the pattern is unknown so the benefits are difficult to establish.

• Warblade’s Hunger (4/5): Free damage, although VDH don’t really consume single souls, so unless this stacks there will be wasted potential (i.e., Spirit Bomb consuming 5 but dealing as much extra damage from this talent as if you consumed one).

Capstone:

• Thrill of the Fight (3/5): Again, we really need an explanation of what the pattern is. We get extra attack speed, which is nice but not gamebreaking, and the “next ability” might create weird gameplay in which we may benefit a lot or waste a lot of damage potential if we miscalculate. Too complicated and people need WeakAuras, and designing the game around its community-made addon is, well, a bad design. The extra damage should either be a specific ability like Felblade (or even Chaos Strike/Annihilate/Soul Cleave).

[Benico-argent-dawn]

Totally agree. I hate having to track and stack multiple short-duration buffs to be able to do good damage. Havoc is super convoluted in Dragonflight and these hero talents will make it far worse.

I agree that the spec was too easy in BfA, Blizz went way too far with adding complexity.