Demon Hunters Necrolord ability “Fodder to Flame” is the worst designed covenant ability in the game.
When it procs, it heals you for like 70% of your hp, and buffs your damage with 20% for up to 28 seconds with covenant and leggo. Something this powerful and gamechanging should never be completely random.
Sometimes i win arena or duels, just because the timing on the demon is good, which is so unrewarding, other times it doesnt proc for minutes or entire duels, and the outcome is so different.
Demon hunters is already one of the classes with the least buttons, why not make Fodder to Flame a 1min usable cooldown? This would also raise the skillcap on Demonhunters by alot, since you can pre Fodder to Flame a blind, a polymorph, use it to emergency heal or during a big go. Right now it feels so unrewarding to play a DH, since my performance is based on pure luck and rng procs.
I find it interesting, actually. More interesting than the other covenants which are just ‘push a button’ when you want the ability. I can’t control when the demon spawns, but I can control when and where I kill it, which seems to increase the amount of skill required rather than decrease it.
I’m speaking of pve, though, not pvp. I’ve only played NF in pvp.
It’s lame for sure, i couldn’t believe my eyes when i saw passive covenant ability, didn’t know they exist. DH really needs more buttons, not less… and there is no skill in random procs, it’s no better than hunter’s kill shot procs.
So you think imprisoning it outside the pack so that it doesn’t get cleaved down too soon, releasing it in time for it to die in the pack, keeping track of how long the soul is up for so you can consume it before it expires, but not so soon that the damage buff is gone before the next pull, requires less skill than pressing ‘eyebeam → hunt’? Okay…
Fair enough. I haven’t done much pvp, and the little I’ve done has been as NF. I wouldn’t want to rely on a random proc. I suppose you could technically imprison it for a while until you need it, but that would mean putting imprison on CD so… nah.
You can’t? I’ve never tried, tbh. I’ve never found myself in a situation where it would have been useful. I just saw people talking about imprisoning it on the fel hammer discord.
However, that doesn’t change the fact that playing around a random proc to get the benefit from it when it’s actually needed requires more skill than just pressing a button during the burst window. It isn’t actually bad for pve (my dps when I go necro from maldraxxus dungeons isn’t noticeably lower), but it is more difficult to play around.
Well, it used to be. But then people complained that it was “bad” and they reworked it.
When I tried it in 9.0 (yes actually went through all the covenants throughout the weeks and tried Fodder to Flame in both M+ and raiding), it was an interesting cooldown that could be very powerful as well.
I think not enough people gave it a try because The Hunt was simply easier to use and arguably more fun (which is why I also went back to NF myself).
It’s a shame because I think it could’ve been a very fun cooldown if it could coexist together with The Hunt.
Its the most fun covenant ability overall in my opinion, simply because of how much it plays into our class fantasy, something that we sorta really lost with Legion.
Its random yeah, but it honestly should be due to the nature of the ability. The demon senses you and seizes the opportunity to get the upper hand of us, only for us to turn the tables on it and consume its soul to temporarily fuel our own strength.
There is a bit of micromanagement with keeping the Demon around till the perfect moment to slice it in half, and I enjoy it immensley.
I know full well that it is largely the least popular covenant choice for DH, but damn am I glad that its an option, because Fodder to the Flame is so darn fun!
