It’s no secret that at the moment dh is quite bad, the gameplay also doesn’t feel great.
I will never stop saying that removing artifacts was a bad idea, instead they should have improved subsequently upon it each expansion, instead of playing this game of give and take.
For how i would have improved it, i would have made demonic and demonic appetite baseline, if you remember in legion soul fragments reduced the cd of eye beams, that’s the general idea, also demonic appetite should be extended to blade dance. This way we would have the rotation focused on trying to extend meta uptime as much as possible which i find enjoyable.
Also, increase secondary stat lvl again to legion levels, and return the crit mechanic on chaos strike.
We don’t really have a lot to work with since dh was introduced in legion, but i know one thing for sure, legion dh was more enjoyable than bfa and especially shadowlands.
Your ideas are good but the artifacts being removed doesn’t mean they couldn’t have added the relevant traits from artifacts into the spellbook as passives. Demonic appetite reduced the cd of eyebeam AND chaos nova iirc, which could also be really nice. Furious gaze haste levels from bfa should’ve been preserved. Tbh, the secondary stat lvls from bfa should’ve been preserved for all classes and specs (minus corruptions boosts ofc, that would be unreasonable). Furious gaze haste buff should still stack like it did in bfa, not be capped at 12 secs. Blade dance 1 sec dodge should return, base leech should return, blur and netherwalk nerfs should be reverted. Aoe cap needs to go from all specs (including mm hunter and fury warr which were previously aoe capped for no reason).
If these changes would be implemented, anythin else over this would be just light touches if need be.
I know, i meant to say that there were a lot of better ways to deal with artifacts, than what they did.
For example, if they didn’t wanna keep the weapon they could have done 1 of these 2 options:
1: remove the weapon and system keep the bonuses
2: the weapon was “absorbed” by the champion and basically became an extension of him/her and every expansion/patch they would add something to the system to slowly build up the character.
They went with option 3: remove everything new system, get rekt. Like wtf.
One last thing, secondary stat diminishing returns makes me think the devs really don;t want the game to be fun, like you decrease the only stats that can have an actual beneficial effect on the flow of the rotation? Like are you out of your mind? I understand the reason why it was done, i just think the problem does not justify the solution, it really is not a big deal if secondary stats scale higher, it makes total sense as the secondary stats are % based as opposed to flat values.
And yea, aoe caps are really bad, although i think the dodge on blade dance was a bit too much, i am fine with leech more than the dodge.
True, excellent options all around. Also it goes without saying that meta should be 3 mins or alternatively fury spending should reduce meta cd by 1, 2 or 3 seconds (naturally this can be tested so it’s not insane but if you stay in melee and do dmg, you get rewarded with lower meta cd)
I think 1 second would be enough, or maybe even too much if we already have demonic and appetite baseline.
But yea, i would rather take more frequent cds than 1 big cd that lasts so long.
My general approach is this, id rather everyone be gods than everyone having strength and weaknesses, why? Very easy if everyone is a good no one is, but the gameplay resulting from that is usually far superior. More choices, more interactions, more fun.
Overpowered afterall is only a matter of comparison, something is overpowered compared to something else, it doesn’t exist in a bubble, you cannot be op if everyone is at your level, and everyone is overall very strong.
Having secondary stats to make your rotation flow smoothly was amazing in bfa (if you reached 146% haste with fg buff you could fit 3 deathsweeps into a demonic window, that just felt really good). Another thing that needs to be reversed: demonic duration back to 8 secs instead of the current 6 seconds.