This post is mainly targeted to Havoc .
Demonhunter has 2 specs , vengeance the tank spec and havoc the dps spec. In most cases you are pretty limited to how many tank spots vs dps spots are available , thats why i will mainly focus on Havoc , as its problems vastly overshadow the problems vengeance has.
-------An overdesigned spec that feels bad to pilot-----------
Clunky Rotation
At this moment, the opener and your main source of damage includes pressing 19 buttons in specific order to do any meaningful dps. it is also very very strict since missing a global on your already fleeting damage amp windows is severely punishing , you cannot recover . Moreover , on those 19 buttons , 3 of them are basically your movement abilities . so if for any reason you used them previously or you know you need to position yourself for a mechanic and you press those movement abilities, you can effecticely afk because you lost a big chunck of your damage.
Cooldowns that dont work with how the game is designed
Basically, outside of the 19 button rotation during your main cooldown,Metamorphosis, you have your mini bursts with eye beam and essence break. it is rougly on 40 seconds . this means that you have to hold your cooldowns for your windows , doing no dps inbetween OR wasting any of those rotationary buttons because again you will deal no damage. Every other class has either 1 minute, 30 seconds or 1.5 minute cooldowns that perfectly work with how the game is played , around the 2 minute mark . All classes align their 2 minute cooldown with their smaller cds for a nice and fluid rotation/burst. Demonhunters have to hold because they simply dont line up properly.
Movement as dps increase
this is just plain atrocious. Naturally you would think that having those movement options allows you to carefully and masterfully position/dodge and deal with mechanics while having uptime on enemies. WRONG . you are forced to keep your movement for damage amp windows because thats what they provide also , and to an extent , you press abilities not because they benefit you with how they work ( example vengeful retreat does a nice backflip which theoretically is perfect for escaping dangerous scenarios and repositioning urself , rewarding skill expression with the way you aim it ) but because those said abilities give you a small % buff on crit or damage ,which you are tuned around and it feels TERRIBLE.
Baseline abilities do nothing
Without those overdesigned and awful feeling damage amp windows from your movement abilities , your baseline spells do nothing. most classes can maintain some considerable dps with just their baseline spells , or at least dps that doesnt look like below tank damage. Havoc on the other hand , no matter how much fury you build or spend , YOU WILL NOT be able to match the tank doing his baseline rotation .
Suggested fixes
Make Eye beam 30 second CD . it will line up with everything , from m+ to raid to pvp.
Remove vengeful retreat from Initiative and Tactical Retreat. This is a serious serious design flaw and feels extremely bad to play with. Either bake initiative in Eye beam or another ability , or plain remove it and buff up baseline spells to compensate .
Inertia/momentum gameplay is high risk very low reward. Keep the damage buff to felrush after immolate but remove that overall damage amp part, instead bake it inside eye beam or even Blade dance/felblade . i dont care where , it is NOT fun to play around and NOT rewarding AT all!
Essence break to 30 seconds to line up with eye beam . Ideally your mini bursts would be as simple as immolate into eye beam and go ham afterwards. Fluid, simple, fun .
Rework Aldrachi reaver tree from the start. That tree feels terrible, is not played and doesnt bring anything. its a miss
Skill expression in demonhunter should be how you better utilise your movement abilities to dodge mechanics and have uptime on boss. If you want to provide additional skill expression in demonhunter, rework momentum from the ground up.
Momentum ,instead of using your movement abilities which doesnt make sense to use them if you have to plant and dps, have it be if you manage your fury well , press blade dance when it lights up or immolate uptime or whatever. or add a 3rd rotationary ability and have it , together with felblade , be tempo kinda buff that you maintain if you press your abilities in order or maintain fury by building and spending without capping or emptying completely . If you dont wanna add something new, at least make glave throw play a part in the rotation that gives the buff similar to momentum/inertia .
Lastly i want to mention , that although if you look at it on paper, the whole DH gameplay sounds good, in practice its far from good. This is the standard case of a theoretical idea that on practice is actually bad , feels bad and doesnt reward you at all. I encourage all class devs to spend some time with demon hunter, do some raiding or m+ and come back . You will come to the same conclusions pretty fast , and the fixes will be implemented the same or next working day. Thats how grave the situation is
If you want to have fun in this game, don’t ever play any class that needs to channel anything or make unwanted movements to deal optimal damage. Forget that Demon Hunter exists and play something else. Send a message to Blizzard by lowering the popularity of this neglected class to zero.
Havoc Demon Hunter’s simple 3 button rotation back in BfA was 100x more fun than the convoluted that they have now. Blizzard’s class design team is constantly making things worse because they think they need to add more and more stuff, but everything’s just bloated and overly complex, rather than fun. And half the specs in WoW currently feel half-finished and forgotten.
Anyway, I’m enjoying PoE2 now. Those devs actually understand the game and make changes based on feedback within days, rather than years. Hope Blizz will focus more on class design for next path.
i agree 100 % man. have never seen a game that the playerbase begs for changes , literally begs for years to make the game good and they refuse… imagine how entitled you must be that you believe atm havoc is good designed when the community has either largely abandoned DH and havoc or those that play are die hard sworn that still weather through these bad days ( and btw last time DH was good was actually bfa …)
Fel Rush and Vengeful Retreat are great abilities on their own. However, having to use them as part of a DPS rotation is so against how the game is designed, with all the swirlies and area denial spells.
This is why I always promote not adding more classes to the game when people ask for them as Blizzard can’t manage the amount they have currently.
3 fel Rush- 2 Vengeful Rerreats
and it need more defensive spells.
throw glaive should get removed for havoc .
they should recreate spectral sight.
Normal flying like evokers (THIS IS VERY VERY IMPORTANT)
they don’t do it unless they have to.
one of the reasons that they did it for evokers was because no played that class for reall.
so they gave them more options.
sadly they dont understand what is good for their players.
they only see money
I might be making this up but wasn’t it always planned for Dracthyr? They just didn’t implement it straight away. Plus, they are dragons, so it makes sense.
Druids shapeshift into animals, so makes sense for them too.
Us DHs just have some holey wings. Again, it would be cool if they gave it to us, I just don’t see it happening.
I am probably not going to make friends here but I think momentum is great and a very needed playstyle for Havoc.
The only reason this is low reward is because people like you would literally implode out of anger if it was 100% mandatory to deal decent damage as DH. DH is sitting on a fence right now between people like you and me.
Momentum finally makes DH a class with a high skill ceiling, while having a low skill floor. This is exactly how every class should be designed in my eyes.
DH definitely need an aura buff and their hero talents are pretty poorly designed (although aldrachi can be fun), but I would stop playing my DH altogether if momentum as it is was not part of the rotation.
So you’re free to have your opinion but you have to remember that it’s just that, your opinion.
All this DH movement would only be fun if the content was designed with that movement in mind, but Blizzard seems to have forgotten about that. Havoc’s movement causes nothing but problems these days. Many encounters are designed around precise movement to dodge deadly mechanics.
Vengeance is also in a bad place. Their strongest ability literally roots you in place for a full 2 second duration. That’s just horrible in today’s dungeons and raids.
This is spot on. Most of the encounter design is not viable for demonhunters, it does not favor their damage profile which is burst every 2 mins without any sustain, punish them severely for missing a global in that burst and its extremely likely you will miss a global since mechanics happen and you need to actively do jedi tricks to not fel rush or vengeful retreat somewhere bad.
Havoc is in a state beyond bad. It needs Santa bringing a rework desperately. It is almost unplayable
I recently started playing my DH again, which I dropped way back in SL because the Momentum builds sounded like cancer. Now that I am playing it I have been wondering does someone actually enjoy the Momentum/Inertia builds?
I think there might have been like 5 people that liked that build.
But actually making Dh revolve arround the very build only a handful of players liked was the worst choice.
In Legion you coule easily ignore it and play the other builds.Or even in Bfa.Since Df it became mandatory…
Even so,I still ignore it…I just can’t play it,its too all over the place and not in a fun way ,when there is something you have to dodge everywhere.
The other problem is ,even the other builds…if you have to move and miss something from the combo the dps is abysmal.
DH needs help.
I dont mind momentum, I dont like the risk/reward being non existant.
Other classes have simpler rotation, better dps profiles, rotations that are not desyncing like havoc and they do better.
It is possible to design an engaging and fun rotation without falling into what havoc has become…
I think we need to dial down hard on the complexity of rotation for DH and dial down the need to add “smalll burst rotation” into other small burst window or else "you are hitting like a wet noodle " type design.
Blizzard and the dev working on havoc after shadowland just listened to the top havoc players (on discord) and went into, like you say, “lets make the class high skill ceiling”.
We ended up with a mess, a rotation with spells that have cooldowns that are a nightmare to manage and make desyncing so easy. Added to the rest of movement etc, it is an indigestible mess that is not fun to play.
The result today is that there it seems no one in the dev is working on the spec, a hero talent tree abandoned because blizzard could not listen to feedback during alpha and despite all calls, decided to shove a “throw glaive” design down our throat…
I hope that sooner than later we get a dev with fresh eyes that redesign the mess.
the fun part is that any dev, literally ANY dev if he/she/it spends time with havoc, like 1 dummy session then 1 mythic plus session and 1 raiding session he can identify the core issues really fast. like the next day he will already be working on fixes and the week after we get a full rework.
at this point, even without touching the spec at all , no reworks no nothing , not even looking at hero trees, if they reduce the cd of eyebeam to baseline 30 seconds and essence break to 30 seconds , it will basically be 100% a better functional spec.
this is like the bare minimum , and it requires the bare minimum IQ to think . i would even go further to say that it should be 20 seconds because that rotation is already hit or miss( most of the time miss because mechanics will happen and you will delay it because even fel rushing or vengeful retreating into mechanics is anti fun )
i dont know how and why they chose to abandon completely the spec and leave it to rot . not even the hardcore sworn tryhard demonhunters enjoy it atm .
and we got a felblade buff. okay thx another useless thing to do.
its like buffing fel rush to have 1 more yard of dash…useless
that they have now. Blizzard’s class design team is constantly making things worse because they think they need to add more and more stuff, but everything’s just bloated and overly complex, rather than fun. And half the specs in WoW currently feel half-finished and forgotten.