Hello!
Warning: Long read post.
On behalf of my fellow Illidan fanboys I would like to point out (with solid examples):
- Currently DH is the least played melee class in the entire game in PvP:
https://i.imgur.com/Qe0afxO.png
- Is the squishiest melee in the entire game when trained due to having very clunky and limited defensive options:
https://clips.twitch.tv/StrangeTawdryPonyBabyRage-PtGnLAiFhS2dsE9G
Here we see how MVQ (the top DH in NA) has Blur on cd and literally dies in 3 globals in a single incap on his healer
https://clips.twitch.tv/SneakyDarlingPartridgeYee-OlKsRWAjaz-mlnnf
Here we see how MVQ just gets swapped to outside of enemy offensive CDs and is forced to permanently run because of Blur being on cd and you just have nothing else to press to stay alive
Don’t take my word for it. Trencetate, the #1 DH in EU(probably in the world) played FURY WARRIOR all of the 3 games in AWC yesterday instead of his main class, while theoretically DH is a better dps partner for Moonkin than Fury is. The sole reason is that the class is much squishier than Fury warrior by a huge margin.
Why? because the class is literally made of paper if you focus it down.
- Is the easiest to counter (damage wise) melee in the entire game
Eye beam is supposedly your hardest hitting spell on a medium cooldown.
Okay, here comes the clunky and bad part.
You have a talent where Eye beam does more dmg if hitting 1 target only. That literally almost never happens due to the amount of pets in the game, people stacking etc.
But, how are you going to get your Eye Beam off anyway, if people instantly dash away, micro CC u, or just press kick? It isn’t exactly fun or rewarding to have your main damaging spell as a MELEE be countered by a simple Wind Shear or a random knockback.
Death Sweep(Blade dance in Metamorphosis) is a multi-phase attack. If you are not sitting on top of the target, a random dash / blink / teleport / whatever will cause it to miss, losing out on damage. Compare this to Rising Sun kick and Mortal strike, which deal all their damage instantly.
Most of the times your damage being the highest in the game is solely due to meaningless DoTs you have on people, and when in larger numbers, say against a pet class such as DK or Demo warlock, people check details and see you have a lot more damage than everyone else. What they do NOT see is that you have 40 to 50% damage on players, with the rest being trash dot / cleave dmg on pets.
Honorable mention to The Hunt being incapped / cc-ed / shadowmelded when used from range mid-animation, causing it to go on CD and effectively not do anything.
- Has no tradeoff for the above because the single target damage is just bad
https://clips.twitch.tv/LittleCalmToadDerp-MUAtVESc5TcEpyqY
The Hunt is a 1.5 minute cooldown. Supposedly your biggest damaging CD.
On the clip above, we see MVQ using it on the Windwalker monk, who has NO DEFENSIVES active and the spell did 10-15% of his health bar and was brushed off instantly by a Monk port.
My suggestions:
Yes, we don’t want another completely broken spec in the game. So I will try to keep the suggestions meaningful yet fair.
To buff survivalbility, so you don’t just die randomly for no reason because Blur is on cd or give your healers a heart attack from how squishy you are, some of these changes can help out the class:
- Replace the “Desperate insticts” talent with a talent that provides a 2nd charge of Blur.
At this point, every class has a lot more defensive options than in Shadowlands. DH does not.
If the above cannot be done, then reduce Blur CD baseline by at least 10 seconds (it was 43 seconds in Shadowlands, now its 1 minute) or make it a 30% dmg reduction. There are many instances where you simply die in stuns with Blur up cause you used it preemptively and it didn’t matter at all.
- Another option: The damage reducing effect from Glimpse (PvP) talent which is only during your time in the air (which is no more than 1.5-2 seconds at best) will remain after landing for another 3 seconds. You are already forced to press it to run away to live, so you aren’t effectively doing damage in this time anyway.
To buff single target damage:
There are many ways to approach this.
Essence break is a talent no longer played in PvP due to how clunky it is and how you have such a short window to do damage in. It is effectly the DH equivallent to a Warrior’s Warbreaker / Colossus smash, placing a debuff on the target so you can do more damage to it.
The main problem with this is the duration and availability of the talent. The duration is only 4 seconds, which in PvP means it is EXTREMELY EASY for your “go” to be shut down with anything, ranging from micro CC to a simple knockback to a grip
My suggestion is to make Essence break be much higher in the spec talent tree, and instead put some other talent on the bottom left, and to also make the duration of Essence break at least 8 seconds.
My other suggestion is providing a talent where Blade Dance doesn’t do AoE dmg, but the single target dmg done is higher by a good margin.
The Hunt 20% dmg nerf in PvP can be reverted to being 5% now. It literally hits 3 times less hard than in a previous season lol.
Bonus quality of life change:
Remove Mortal Dance talent altogether. It takes up a talent point for no reason to have an antiheal effect on targets. Other classes like Warrior and Windwalker have this effect baseline in Mortal Strike and Rising Sun Kick. Pets from Demo Warlocks and Hunters also have such an effect baseline
Bring back “First of the Illidari” PvP talent that reduced Meta cd (was in Shadowlands).
Currently, even your Metamorphosis damage is easily brushed off, let alone the non-Meta dmg, where you’re essentially not hitting harder than a Warlock pet.
Many arena games do not reach 3 minutes for you to be able to use Metamorphosis a 2nd time to “burst”. And if you get CC-ed long enough during the first one, then you are kind of just doing irrelevant dot dmg across the board that gets healed.
And finally, make Eye Beam non-interruptable in PvP. Once again, this will not break your game. Fists of Fury on Windwalker does the same if not more damage, and is not interruptable. You can still get micro-cced and stopped on it, but that’s more reasonable than some healer pressing a ranged kick to negate your big burst ability on cd.
