New Retri Pala plays like the old Havoc DH and why it's good

Community General Discussion
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TL;DR: new retri pala plays like the old DH (from BFA), and people love it - 30 sec big burst, simple rotation in both ST and AOE, no “colossus smash” mechanics or needing several WAs to track numerous small and/or short dmg amp buffs.

Don’t know if it’s been discussed, but lately I’ve been thinking more and more about how “uneven” the dps spec designs are across the board. Not necessarily talking about balance although it is very important too, but what feels fun and fluid, and what feels like a torture. People like playing easier and more fluid specs, noone wants to play as a pianist.

I was maining a DH for quite a lot, it was an aboslute blast to play as one during BFA. SL is where things started going downhill, DF was very bad, and now in TWW I’d prefer to work overtime than play as a DH. IIRC even during BFA the “move build” (fel rush) was theoretically a little bit better, but it was so negligible that seemingly everyone ignored it when they managed to get almost the same (theoretical) DPS playing demonic while actually having fun.
Now that mover builds are all you realistically have, DH is so far behind that it really should make the dev resposnible for it wonder what went wrong.

If we look at warcraftlogs, we can see a great many players seemingly think like me - it was the top 1 or 2 most popular (=number of parses) DPS specs and the most popular melee spec by far in raids throughout the whole expansion, and it completely dominated in the M+ scene, going as much as x2 more popularity of the next melee dps spec. For example take S4 in BFA - 217k BM Hunter parses (top spec), 199k HDH, 108k retri pala. This is almost twice as more than the next melee spec.

Fast forward to TWW - DH in raid is less than half of the most popular spec - retri pala. In M+ H DH is about 1/3 (!) of the most popular spec - again retri pala. In fact it is about 2.5 times less popular than a TANK spec.

On the other hand, after its rework, retri pala has seen an explosive increase in popularity and keeps this popularity. Even I switched, although I love the QoL DH brings both in the world and in raids/M+.
And when we look how the new retri pala plays, we can see a lot of similarities with the old no-move DH from BFA - one big burst on a 30 sec cd which also automatically buffs you, very simple rotation in both ST and AOE. While modern DH needs to track… how many little 5-sec buffs - 4, 5, more?

I’m not going to comment on all of the other specs, I lack experience on a lot of them. But looking at those 2- retri and havoc, which share a lot of similarities IMO (old havoc and new retri), and with the decline of fun I’m having while playing havoc, it really irks me.
Why is demonic window so short now? Why is leech so low? Why do we need a “colossus smash” type skill when it is quite hated by warriors too? Why does its CD misalign with demonic when you take cycle of hatred? Why does initiative feel mandatory even for no-mover builds? Why do I have to spend 10 (ten!) talent points in the spec tree to fully develop DH’s most iconic spell - Eye Beam? Why is Immolation Aura, which does close to no dmg at all, need 5 points to fully develop? Compare that to Frost DK’s Remorseless Winter, which needs 4 points to fully develop, but does noticable dmg even in ST, and is incredibly powerful in AOE. Why do I need a versatility and threat-reducing talent + another dmg mitigating talent in the spec tree? Why is one hero talent tree is so counter-intuitive to your demonic windows (fel-scarred), and the other is completely useless for it?

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I played it since Legion.It was amazing…AMAZING, then.

I liked in Bfa too,the damage was still great,and still fun to play.

And SL came,when they decided to start the nerfs and changes.
But even nerfed, it was somehow still playable in it’s own way,I never took momentum and it was fine,D tier for a while but fine.

After they decided to make momentum mandatory it really became bad.
I am still not using momentum or any of the fel rush builds because I loathe it,but it feels bad now ,not taking it.

The hero builds are very bleak. Especially Aldrachi,who wants so much throw glaive gameplay?DH s staple is Eye beam ,always was.
And also now they took AMN away and try to make Aldrachi mandatory,more wrong choices.

I don’t understand why they try to complicate the game so much.

Taking into account how fun Ret is and how many people play it,is it not answer enough that most people want easy builds and play?Not a ton of buttons and combos?

DH was friendly and it should’ve stayed that way.

And being a hero class its a tragedy to be C tier now probably moving to B with the latest changes.

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Never played Havoc… but love your set !

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Glue eaters like glue eater specs. More news at 5.

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I am not sure I follow…

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I used to love playing DH but now it just feels so bad. Like BFA enjoyed it a lot, never main’d it but was one of my fave alts but now I just can’t get into it anymore.

This I really dislike! I just can’t do it without it feeling just off, its not how I liked to play it.

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You really don’t need to track that much. It’s not useful for anything, you just won’t gain anything from this information. There are some buffs that you will always try to line up and use for ramping one after another in the same order with no exception. And then there are some that you have no power over and, hence, there’s no point to wait for. Little reason to keep any of them on your screen and exactly no reasons to commit any of them to your memory…

What you’re “tracking” is your CDs, not buffs. If you play Inertia & AR, you’re just aligning your Rush with Beam, Break, and Glaive together before sending it like that every single time. And if you’re playing FS, you’re simply sending it whenever. You’ve been really overthinking it all.

But hey, I’m not against a rework! Wouldn’t say no if they’ll also throw a third spec to top it off while they’re at it.

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I would like a 3rd spec especially since we are the only ones that have only 2.

They need to keep things simple though.Not distroy it as they do with havoc atm.
I am not against a viable momentum/inertia,but not a mandatory one.

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I would prefer if all specs were dumbed down because the difficulty often comes from the content you do and the people you play with. Having a mechanic like Colossus Smash in your toolkit or having to track multiple buffs and procs isn’t always ideal. I enjoyed playing Paladin in every expansion, even in BFA when it wasn’t that popular, and I had a lot of fun with it. For example, when I compare the Brewmaster Monk in BFA,Shadowlands to the Brewmaster Monk in DF or TWW, it feels so bad to play. In Shadowlands, it was so simple with not many buttons to press.

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Power creep got a bit too much, I agree. Havoc got the blunt end of it but many current days specs suffer as well. Ramping is way too long and the benefits are way too little for all the hassle.

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Ret Pala is so easy to play to pull off consistent big numbers…

Reason why my Alt is one when Shadow Priests blow at trash pack AoE. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I think they wanted to make it complex so ppl would stop calling it a 2 buttons spec(it never was,it was just easy and approachable).
And this abomination is the result.

The joke is on us though,cause ppl still call it a 2 button spec.Its not even fun anymore.

Some changes are unnecessary sometimes.
They fixed something that was not broken,and broke it in the process.

2 Likes
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It would never happen on a meta level. Sure some specs might be like that but you need some complicated specs for those who love that. And then a lot of specs have suboptimal simpler builds, so you have to choose to be a meta slave or play the way you like and accept the performance loss.

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Exactly my thoughts! Right now I love playing retri, but I miss double jump, glide, and general movement speed. I remember in BFA I sometimes jumped down from the cliffs which were separating northern from southern Drustvar just for fun while questing, or using it for shortcuts. Also I don’t really like paladin’s transmogs - right now I can’t remember even 1 paladin-specific set that I really like.

Anyway, all classes should be easy to do competitive damage if played “ok”. Knowing to wait a few seconds for the tank to gather all mobs so you can Eye Beam them all, waiting for a couple of seconds to have your Blade Dance off the cd before Eye Beam - this type of things should separate the average from the good players. Or my absolute favourite - skillfully using Blade Dance’s 1 sec invulnerability period to soak dangerous shots like Tol Dagor’s last boss, but this thing died in SL IIRC. This was the pinnacle of smart use of class mechanics to help your team.

Yes, a complete rework of Havoc + 3rd spec! Leave Havoc’s main mechanic be Eye Beam + Demonic, and move all the human/elf-form movement abilities to the 3rd spec. Wouldn’t mind allowing 2-handers for Havoc, making it the slower heavy hitter, while the movement-based 3rd spec be the rapid attacker, but maybe I’m dreaming too much.

And you saying one does not need to track that many buffs. Well, maybe you are right, as I said I just can’t bring myself to play DH again, it’s too unfun. But even then, at the absolute minimum you need to align Eye Beam with Essence Break, and you either can’t do it or you must not take Cycle of Hatred, both of which sucks. And reading about how they plan to change CoH, they’re just making the spec feel worse and worse with every new patch.

1 Like
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Exactly this.
I also have a Retribution Pala.
But even though its easier to play,has better defensives and better damage ,I can’t enjoy it as much as HDH.
I keep hitting space to glide lol.
I like the feeling of my HDH and this is why its so annoying that they keep making it worse.
When it rises to Eye beam and dashes to Blade dance…that is the HDH’s essence.

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Shadowlands DH, was great, now not so much unless all the few seconds buffs are just ignored. Not sure why they thought turning the spec into rocket science, was a good idea.

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But it’s also unfortunately the only class that could do this back then so we had a massive advantage for the great players in an incredible amount of situations that also just worked really well passively and potentially broke things in pvp. I know it feels worse but the 15% shield is just healthier right now. Far as I remember it’s also a choice node with the one that lowers healing on enemy targets so it makes you choose between defensive options and offensive ones in PvP and to lose some defensive capabilities to get some great help in Waycrest Manor’s duo boss fight. (And other such situations!)

Otherwise I agree. It feels bad to play a DH and even I swapped off after two expansions of almost exclusively playing her. I’ve done some fun builds but they can sacrifice like 10-15% overall damage which in the content I was doing with her was very acceptable but in the high end none of it feels good. Not these builds of mine and not risking to get jumped by a patrol because we skipped something. It just feels like the game wasn’t designed with this in mind and the designers are in a pickle. I was sort of hoping that with the hero talents one group would get their more technical class where they can jump around, throw glaive, etc and the other one with the big passive dot and burst explosions would be for the classic DH fantasy. I mean, it works for that in raids I suppose.

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I agree,I for one wish they would’ve made at least 2 builds completly viable.

One mover since they really want that apparently and one more akin to the old HDH,Eye beam oriented,not glaives,not immo,no movement for damage.

As for hero builds, not even Fel scared feels like Hdh.It has sigils incorporated,which we did not use prior.

For me the only good changes since Legion I feel are the hunt and colective Anguish.But those are DH not Hdh specific.

Comparing how much we lost since then its not even a draw.

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Havoc is not a complicated spec by any means.

If casting immo aura on cooldown with vengeful retreat and fel rush to land ur burst which is straightforward is complicated gameplay then lol.

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Did you take into account the mechanics of the game too?If you need to move?If you can’t execute the sequences?
Also falling of an edge cause you VR or fel rush too close?
I am not playing that circus ,but you know these are some of the issues with that build right?