At the moment the class is almost a 1 button spec with the occasional eye beam, imolation aura and fel rush.
About 75% of the casts of DH is Chaos strike/Annihilation. The solutions to this problem are.
Making First blood baseline. Without this Blade dance is a useless skill. Not worth the fury cost at all. It is important that each skill should function perform and feel nice on its own. Talents are supposed to add extra stuff not fix baseline spells to make them worth using.
Also demonic should be baseline (for both DH specs in my opinion) as it really completes the fantasy of the spec.
Unbound chaos is a good addition but the way it works right now ( immolation aura) forcing you to go our of ranged in many cases is annoying. Also the demon annimation is so slow and sometimes it misses badly which makes it very disapointing. It would be much betterif Vengefull retreat gave the buff and adjust the damage accordingly due to the higher cd of vengefull retreat.
Also demon hunters need a 2nd AOE ability. A fury burner to choose between chaos strike when you have more than 2-3 targets. Maybe it could be an abilty on a short cd like 10 seconds that costs 40 fury and deals cleave damage.
Yes and a lot of us have voiced our opinions that we want more to do in our rotations.
More buttons to press = \ = difficulty.
None of the classes in WoW are difficult to play unless you’re 7 years old.
Adding some depth and synergy with the skills makes for better gameplay, that’s what it’s about.
It’s just dumb design at play. Like the excuse of a 1 DPS spec because easier to balance and look at it now : 1 DPS & Tank specs nerfed to the ground.
Almost all classes have a baseline rotation that is decent. We don’t because everytime we either need talents or borrowed powers.
Also OP we don’t need more AoE skill, we already have Blade Dance, Eye Beam and a copy of Fury of Illidari on a 20s cd with good damage.
What DH could use is good Single Target abilities that is not Chaos Strike/Blade Dance with FB.
Might aswell level up all the classes if you just go for the FotM specs.
Technically this depends on whats added for example, Utility is something that defintly creates a Skill Ceiling. So do use of Defensives.
Aswell as Burst set up such as Cooldowns and Resource pooling orintated DPSers.
this actually does increase a Skill Cap.
by adding Synergy to Abilities and having Depth to Skills u create the Possibility of doing it Incorrectly, this lends itself into a Raise of the Skill floor. which is something blizzard stated they wont do with said class.
Tbh, your not the only class with only 1 DPS Specc avaliable to you. although yes the lack of a 3rd specc is defintly lazy design.
Yeah. because it reduces the ability to synergize And Rotation to flesh out thus making the class Easier from a PvP and PvE standpoint.
if anyone really beleives Shadow priest will make it into live as the FoTM im laughing they’ll get nerfed xD Shadow Never gets left as a top performer long at all.
this is incorrect largely, theres defintly a Variance of Skill between classes. the problem is most Players dont go far enough into content where it actually matters all that much.
U start messing up your rotation slightly or Waste CDs when you shouldnt and Mismanage Parts of ur kit such as utility and Defensives in a +5 Mythic U’ll forever feel like your not doing anything wrong
however take that Same Mediocre Gameplay into a +21 and u’ll cost your group the key. Simple as.
Classes are Designed to notr have much of a SKill floor you are correct there… and the content is Designed to make alot of your kit irrelevant in which also Makes classes even easier in alot of enviroments.
however to say anyone over thje age of 7 could 99 Percentile Every class in the game Easily against Mythic Raid Content and +25 onwards Keys is a complete lie.
Please dont act. Like
Minmaxing a 1 button rotation and a Feral Druid are remotely on the same page when it considered to level of practice needed.
and Yes. if we’re talking about Class Difficulty the only relevant number here is a 99 percentile. Because if ur saying every class is too easy… you should be reaching a 99 percentile because of that. the moment a player struggles doing that theres clearly somewhere the player is going wrong in the class itself.
to your More buttons =/= Difficulty Heres a Example
if you play a Class with 1 DoT, on One timer on a Instant cast. this is releventively easy to maintain
however
you play a Class with 4 DoTs on Different timers with 2 Self buffs and a Limited Pooling mechanic in their resource.
this is ALOT harder to play comparitively.
so Yes. in Alot of situations unless we’re talking about Fire and forget abilities… more abilities can DEFINTLY introduce a higher Skill floor quite easily.
and if u introduced Fire and forget abilities into DH It wouldnt change the way the class feels, as these would be on a Range of CDs realistically to prevent maintaince of the ability and Wouldnt add anything to the kit itself.
so u’d just be Whacking the Next ability to light up which would create a similar feeling to DHs problems
as i said, i dont agree with this… DH is actually awesome in concept, and i’d of liked to see the class Develope sadly however they dont want to and every MMORPG has this type of class which is insanely flashy and Super easy to play… DH happened to be the class chosen for this.
problem is when people make the arguments against this design 9/10 times they talk to things with a weird narrative attached to them
“more buttons dont add to complexity”. actually they do if they’re added Correctly, abilities that simply dont are Badly designed abilities and theres very obvious reasons to whjy they havent accomplished this.
“Every class is easy” its Factually wrong, To say We as players can simply walk into any class and SImply one shot a Nzoth fight in the most optimal Fashion is a outright lie. the problem is people take class difficulty and Take its Gameplay in the Easiest Content as their Final Score.
I’m not necessarily talking about high end game. Because not everybody plays it and you know it, I talked about the majority of the playerbase where you can play any class no matter the rotation. From dungeons to Norm/Hero raids.
The classes are really not hard to play.
If you take the time to play each classes there’s nothing complex. You just have to understand the basics and get used to play the class.
Defensive skills and burst skills doesn’t suddenly increase your skill, it’s just a matter of how the player reacts. So this works with any class.
However they, as you said, have an impact on skill ceiling and therefore being able to notice good apples from bad ones in regular play. Even more so in high difficulties.
With DH it’s hard to notice because of the barebones rotation that has truly no depth.
Just because the games Easy enough to play a class badly and succeed isnt a indication of the Difficulty to play said class though.
i do agree and i dont like the way DHs have come… i think its bad design to intentionally Create a Specc like they have done to DH… but sadly i dont think they’ll Undo this for a long time
The whole “DH is 123-button brainless spec”-meme has polarized this subject to a absurd state.
People have been ranting on forums since the day wow saw sunlight about “Omg keK ur spec is braindead a monkey cold plei it gIt gud KEK”
Suddently dh gets introduced, a “Hero class”, super mobile, cool class fantasy, viable, pretty strong in some content at times (Tho far from being as op as its rumoured to be)
And every single knucklehead just gather forces and jump on the hate-train, and speak as if their specs are fukin rocket science.
Reminds me of a gang of bullies, some other idiots come in the room, se 5 bully 1, and join the 5.
There is countless threads on this forum, started by people who are buthurt because a demon hunter killed them ingame, and therefore the spec needs to be nerfed, deleted, removed from the very ground of azeroth.
Every thinkable kind of excuse but refusing to see the most likely one: Its a “Git gud”-issue, you lost because that dh simply is a better player then yourself.
From a dps perspective, with the exeption of a few classes, 2-3, the difference in complexity and difficulty is not very high. It also depends if we are talking pve or pvp.
Rated pvp is simply the most difficult content in this game. That is where you have to play your spec flawless if you are going to aim high.
Still there is a reason why some people can achieve gladiator on multiple classes. They know the basic rules of arena, positioning, line of sighting, who to focus and when to switch, what to interrupt and so on. The higher the rating the more difficult these things get, but when you are super drilled in this you are likely to succeed on different classes and specs.
Im by no means a good pvp player, it call myself casual in rated pvp, now sitting just above 2300 on two toons (Ret pala and frost dk) and 2200 on dh (Before prepatch) in 3v3, and getting higher was and is a struggle. Playing a ret in arena id say is a little bit more complex because of as you say, more buttons to press, and many of them utility abilities like freedom, bop, cleanse, offhealing and so on. Now ive played ret for many years and dh i started to play “Seriously” just this summer still ive found my skill-floor in 3v3 for the moment to be the same on all these 3 toons. Now ofc frost dk is also considered an easy spec, and it is.
I laugh when i see fury warriors, assassin rogues, frost dks, firemages, balance druids, paladins, bm hunters, mm hunters, destrolocks and so on all gather on the dh hate train advancing their specs as some freakin nasa science grade specs.
Most people dont even engage in rated pvp - Where id agree, spec complexity and differences in these probably matters more the higher the rating.
But in pve? You got not as many buttons to push, you have predictable mechanics, and no specs should be very hard to master if the player got some time practicing it. Differences in spec complexity are just small in pve.
If you cause your group to fail a +21 its most likely not because you not master the spec. I take for granted that a player in a +21 group knows his/hers way around the game, and have mastered keys up to that point.
More than likely its a failure to mechanics. No one takes “Mediocre worldquest-casual gameplay” into a +21, maybe exept the very few who paid for a rio-boost and took water over their heads.
If lets say that player is a sub rogue or a feral druid, and alone causes the group to fail a +21, he/she most likely would have caused the very same mistake if he/she were a dh, a furywarrior, a frost dk and everything else.
People who are looking at classes and how difficult they are to play optimally.
People who just call the classes percieved to be overpowered Easymode.
DH Rotation is that braindead even its own playerbase want it changed… im NGL but although ALOT of stuff is overexaggerated in reality… there is a Problem in DH Core Design.
well yes, they’re the reason 3/4s of posts on these classes are overexaggerated… but everything does have a Seed of truth it began at realistically.
hm i agree and disagree here… while yes i dont think any class is Over-complex or anything.
From a DPS Perspective. it depends on the content entirely… as i said before, in alot of content in WoW u can playt your class Badly and still succeed. while that exists the Skill floors and ceilings of classes Arent visible to the majority of the playerbase.
No there is a large difference, u can see the differences as you go. the problem is in PvE alot of content is designed to be doable at like a 40 percentile Log which means the content itself doesnt challange anyone enough to actually need to maximise their class.
the problem is, most players cant play their class or specc to a Level a +21 Would demand… and the illusion of being so good at said Class or Specc is Shattered massively.
the game Rewards you for playing badly. but aslong as Players see bosses die they’ll never question if they are or arent maximising the class or specc they’re playing.
this depends on the mistake.
For example i could argue… the rotation for a Sub rogue or Feral Druid adds Pressure to the situation. where you as a Player become too intently focused on playing those classes mechanically to actually focus on the fight itself.
If a Player is out of his depth with the class he plays, hes More likely to mess up in the actual boss mechanics… as they’ll fail to interupt or something such as this or use a defensive or position correctly because they too focused on not messing up the rotation before them.
there are classes and speccs which offer From a Class Point of view a much easier to maintain Rotation to allow the player to reduce the Stress in one part of the gameplay to be able to focus better on the fight itself. this is why a difference in skill levels is a good thing.
the Less buttons, Less Synergizing Abilities and Less Demanding Set up actually Allows the player to become comfortable with the specc much quicker… thus making content itself more managable.
the problem i have are the people who are playing a Feral Druid at a 20 percentile calling a DH Player a noob, because Playing a Feral badly doesnt make u more skilled then a DH Player. and there lays the real reason u see these overexaggerated posts about DH bneing so easymode.
People who read “Popular opinions” about specs on the forum and repeat them because they sound “Smart” and they think it makes their own spec appear more advanced.
Its not so different from the term “Broscience” in the gym/fitness industry. People hear something on the gym, per example “Carbohydrates makes you gain fat” or “You have a anabolic window of 20 minutes to eat some proteins after the gym to stimulate hypertrophy or your workout is wasted”
This gets repeated to the next one and the next one - Even tho the claims are wrong and have scienced has proved this wrong.
Sure the rotation is braindead. So is fury warrior, ret pala (at least in pve), outlaw rogue, frost dk, bm hunter, mm hunter, assa rogue, destrolock, firemage, and some more.
I do agree that dh needs a redesign and if im not mistaken most dh mains also wants this.
In rated pvp its another story. You simply cannot press your “123” rotation an succeed, now that goes for all specs. A good dh needs to use that great mobility optimal, a wasted fel rush / vengeful retreat can lose you the game. A good dh stuns correctly and avoid dr-stunning to manaburn the healer. And so on.
There are more to all specs then just the rotation. Therefore id say the “Braindead spec”-topic is more braindead then the spec they are claiming to be braindead.
You know as well as i that no one only presses their core rotation. Neither in pvp or pve.
Not really because its not a thing unique for dhs. I see these threads about every single spec that has killed some buthurt player ingame. I even see these threads from players being violated because another player with another class/spec outdpsed them in m+ or raid.
Easy solution to anything someone dont like or cant outdps/conquer these days are “Nerf” “Delete”
My claim is: Two players, equally geared, equal terms, better player wins in 8/10 cases (Tho some specs just counter other specific spec and pvp never was balanced around 1v1)
This is ofc true. Tho there is also the balancing subject. Some specs will always be low tier in a patch or even for whole expansions. Ironically enough the two dps-specs i would consider to be the most complex has been low-tier for all of bfa, feral and sub.
And i would agree with you on most of what you say in terms of rated pvp. But in pve, in my opinion, those distance between specs in terms of difficulty just scales down and the distance between “The braindead dh” and sub/feral is smaller, mostly because of all the specs in between those two.
Had a guildie who was sub rogue since forever, he was able to output insane damage in keys up to +20, one of the more complex specs to master no doubt, and being low tier just requires more hard work. So thats admirable.
Would agree that the difference scales up the higher the content it is. But dying in a +21 is most likely not a failing to master the spec issue, simply because even tho +21 is not HIGH HIGH its still pretty decent, and most players who got that far in m+ most likely know their way around their specs.
Everyone has a skill-floor in m+, at some point, mechanics gets to overwhelming, one mistake and you get oneshotted, and yes in +21 playing your spec flawless becomes more important then in a +15 but still id say you have to know your spec pretty well to come that far, i take for granted a player in a +21 can handle a +19 without many issues and also should have completed / timed +20.
There is another factor here aswell. S-Tier / A-Tier etc matters more the higher the key. If a spec is simply bottom tier it will punish you more then in a lower key, and that could also be part of the reason why “You” fail the group.
Community stigma has been a thing since Vanilla. Modern times with world first streamers and guides etc. has worsened this part.
Mediocre player who just does +15 weekly for the chest and gear-cap sees the world first streamer talking about a certain spec being unviable (Allthough the world first streamer talks from the world first player perspective, or some very high m+ like +28 or something)
Mediocre player wants to be like the world first streamer. Player of said certain spec applies to mediocre players +15 group and gets rejected even tho its barely relevant at that level of play.
Mediocre player invites a player with the “Correct spec” cause the world first player said this spec was awesome. (Given itemlevel and rio even tho i dont care about rio myself is the same for both mediocre player, player with “unviable” spec and player with “viable” spec)
But player with “Viable” spec is a bad player, and fuks up mechanics and causes multiple wipes and group disbands.
Happens everyday in wow. But ofc you know this already Just a funny and relevant thing. And i fear community stigma will be even worse with covenants and other SL borrowed power.
Well yes and no, just my opinion but to my experience people playing sub and feral at that level, often are pretty good players, indisputable these specs are more complex then dh or frost dk, im not gonna disagree with that.
But these two, lets call them the two most complex dps specs in bfa (Might be others but these two are the two most difficult i have played atleast) have at the same time been two of the lowest tier dps specs.
Now alot of people look at whats rumoured to be easiest classes, sub and feral are not among them.
And alot of people look at whats top/low tier, sub and feral has not been among them either.
So to my experience, many sub and ferals i have played with during bfa, have been players truly dedicated to their specs. Motivated to just prove everybody wrong, motivated to top that dps in that key above the dh and the outlaw.
And that kind of dedication would be enough to master any spec id say. I dont have that kind of dedication myself, i honestly dont know where id be in arena ratings with sub or feral but probably much lower then on my current active toons.
I didnt play my dh alt high in m+, not that i did on any, but did most dungeons on +19 on pala and dk and two 20s. On my dh i just did 15 weekly for gear, but i wouldnt say it was that much easier doing 15s with dh vs when i did 15s on pala/dk, then again 8.3 was fresh when i did it on pala/dk so who im not gonna be to assertive here.
Played most other melee specs in m+/raid/pvp earlier in bfa and earlier expansions, and the only two with noticeable differences in complexity has been feral and sub. Some say shadowpriest is difficult but i never played it, never really been big on playing ranged.
Thus why I say rotation and not specc, there is plenty in a DHs utility which proves a good player from a bad aswell as most other classes have the same opportunities
I’d say this is more on a sliding scale, there’s alot that goes into a fire mage that non of these other speccs have to deal with.
When your looking at overall rotational difficulty on a class your looking how DPS CD management, identification of when and where are your largest DPS opportunities
The misconception alot of players have is
They look at a rotation on paper and think it’s easy, before they’re tried using said rotation effectively
Fire manages have multiple CDs which need to align at the same time but the fire mage also needs to use some of the CDs in-between larger CDs otherwise it’s wasted DPS
This requires far more cooldown tracking and more, something a class with only 1 CD doesn’t have to worry about as much.
BM hunters position isn’t apart of their rotational restriction yet for fire mage it most definitely is.
The rotation on paper isn’t what your playing by. The rotation on paper is done via a patchwork fight against a dummy to find the highest performers. And judges based on having every CD available permanently.
Frost DK have breathe. Which as a mechanic is far harder then any CD DH has to control and requires far more game knowledge to successfully manage.
DH rotation doesn’t change. As Ur ST abilities by nature do AoE damage, your burst is clumped in a 5 mom CD. And due to the nature of having 1 spammable ability and 3 CDs creates a priority list which u can’t deviate from
Which makes the DH rotation far less circumstantial in a pve enviroment
The thing that makes DH rotations easier is the lack of options within that rotation. It removes the thought process from the player entirely.
Fury warriors have CDs and micro CDs to manage and our abilities only split providing we use whirlwind which due to the consumption of swallowing a GCD every 2 abilities isn’t optimal to use in every circumstance.
It also allows the fury warrior to think between focusing on bursting. 1 target down or using AoE function. as certain affixs will punish you for over aoeing. A DH cannot make the same decision as the game has made the decision for the player.
While yes I don’t think fury warrior is a hard specc to play, it’s definitely a specc with alot more control in it’s kit which is uptoo the player and not the game. It’s wriggle room in its rotation is larger then DH.
And rotationally that creates more openings to play the class wrong.
That’s what needs fixing in DH, DH is sooo theme park based in gameplay that it’s toxic to the player. DH doesn’t need to be made over complicated they need some extra abilities and more ability to control the DPS they do in environments
Without that control. It leaves the player effectively playing a theme park based class, which there’s just a hard yes or no answer to each action. And for aslong as their rotation remains in such a state there’s no way to break from the box cut path.
Im not gonna answer all of what you wrote cause to some degree i agree with most of it - Allthough in my opinion type of content has alot to say (Pve vs pvp) and that you rarely find someone in keys from +20 and up who dont master their specs.
DH has weaknesses tho. High key + bursting can be a problem for / with a dh, when single target rotation = aoe target rotation. That kind of class design is not exclusively positive, but for sure in 9/10 cases it is.
Countering cc is another dh weakness, can remove snares with vengeful retreat but for roots there is none. Can not count how much gold i spent on draenic living action potion for wpvp/random bg and certain mechanics in pve, soloing raids (per example botanist in nighthold mythic) and in rated pvp among the weakest classes when it comes to this.
DH single target dps is also mediocre. The specs big strength is aoe.
Well dh also have cds. as every class and spec do.
About the control part id agree.
Core problem of dh imo is that the class was born when borrowed power became the thing.
Now its pre patch, some borrowed power are still there (i wish they removed traits and essences for the sake of making things more clearly) corruptions are gone and dh have been nerfed and i see little to no reason to play one.
The whole class needs a redesign (Other classes to aswell but not as much as dh)
But i fear that community now wants dh to be bottom tier for like forever not for the sake of balance, but for the sake of “Justice”
If dh gets anything good coming their way, being buffs or redesign, i fear more “Riots” in the community.
Alot because its the newest class. But dks and monks were new at a time aswell, and there will probably sometime come new classes again.
I do agree, it’s more about how long it takes them to get there then the fact they are there however.
Aye I don’t think it’s a positive. But it’s also a deduction in thought process because the DH can’t control it. This is a major thing that needs to be fixed in the class
In current or new state I don’t think they deserve to be bottom, it’s a mmorpg picking a easier specc shouldn’t really be punished regardless.
Playing a harder to play class or a class that requires more management is a choice not a entitlement, all the classes should be balance entirely. Not against a skill curve they’re judged on. It’s important the game offers different skill curves to ensure everyone can join in.
But take a look at current tier lists for shadowlands, for both pve and pvp.
Its not the same old specs, but the same old classes dominating top and bottom tier (DPS)
Sub has been close to bottom, now its top (Could be nerfed as in early bfa but then assa and outlaw got the privilege to shine) but nevertheless rogue.
Now fire has been flavour of the patch, a little bit down but frost and arcane is up there. Same goes for locks.
Classes with 3 dps specs are just more privileged. I react tho when i see those classes have at least 2 and often 3 specs far stronger then specs with 2 and even only 1 dps spec.
No ofc one can say “If you dont want to heal/tank you should play pure dps classes” still whats the point in having a dps spec for a hybrid class and making it lowest tier?
A problem dh will probably have forever, shared with paladin, monk and priest.
Having 2 dps specs helps alot, kind of doubles your chances to be “Viable” or “Top tier”
Community stigma influences me to focus on this subject more then i should. But i do see it as an issue.
Imagine if they turned the list upside down. Putting feral druids on top together with enh shaman. And basically most rogue/mage/lock/hunter on bottom.
they’ll get nerfed xD Shadow Never gets left as a top performer long at all.
Just a funny and relevant thing. And i fear community stigma will be even worse with covenants and other SL borrowed power.
