I have played Demon Hunter at a high end basis since it was first released in Legion, and I can say this is the expansion where it feels the worst to play it.
All the interesting mechanics that came with Demon Hunter has been completely removed from their kit. I realize they had been dominant in PvP throughout BFA, but I see a lot of people complain about DH’s being OP every tier, which is straight up a lie. I checked analytics for Demon Hunters and they have been top of the pack, sure, that’s how it oughta be with a 2-spec class, but it has not been THE best spec.
I don’t mind being closer to the middle of the pack, but right now Demon Hunters are lacking behind on both Single Target and Heavy AoE, due to DRs on basically all of our AoE spells. So here is my thoughts to what could be changed, which would include multiple of different ways to play the spec, instead of the two cookie-cutter talent choices that are currently run.
Absent Chaos Damage
So, our mastery buffs our Chaos damage. This seemed okay back when it also impacted Chaos Blades, but w/o the Chaos Blades talents the stat has become rather useless, and to be fair, dull.
Now, currently we’re in the same situation, where the stat doesn’t really provide us with much, and looking at our abilities I find it weird that “Immolation Aura”, which is green, is not chaos dmg, but fire. Same goes for “Fel Devastation”, and “Felblade”, both are fire, while “Fel Rush” is allowed to be chaos, with all of these having “Fel” in their names. Demon blades deals shadow damage, so awkward.
I find that changing the above mentioned spell category into chaos, would make a lot of sense given not only the “class fantasy”, but also looking from a class tuning perspective.
To Become Baseline
- First Blood - Makes Blade Dance a button in any situation. A lot of other players has already been through why this change is good.
- Dodge to return to Blade Dance - This is a mechanic that really showed if a DH was skilled or not, in PvE knowing what you can dodge, also added survivability in PvP which is very lackluster atm.
- Throw Glaive slow baseline - Having to spec into almost any utility to get it, to be on par with most other melee, like healing reduction, slow, fury reduction on AOE stun (which monks do for free), feels terrible. This would be a nice QoL change.
- Demonic - Demonic feels like it really should be baseline. Currently it is THE only option in the talent row, and has been for quite a while. Even with the 25% nerf to its duration, which was probably made to reduce its power compared to the other talents in the row, it still outperforms any other talent, since momentum is unplayable in any high end PvE content where position is key.
Talents
- First Two Rows - Currently there are no need for two consecutive rows of talents that change our fury generation, but I feel like a bigger overhaul to the tree and the Demon Hunter class itself is needed, and I think that is for a future expansion to fix, thus leaving these two rows as they are.
- Unbound Chaos - Replace this talent with the Bloodlet talent from legion. This talent brought some very nice variety to the spec. Would par very nice with the new throw glaive legendary, and after making the throw glaive slow baseline, it would make a good combo with the Master Glaive talent, which could gain the additional effects of Mo’arg Bionic Stabilizers.
- Essence Break - Time to face it, this talent is a mistake. Remove it, but add in either the Anguish of the Deceiver effect from our Legion Artifact, or perhaps the Inner Demons effect. Both of these would fix the problem that DHs have with AoE performance on heavy AoE (think 8+ mobs), where all of our AoE caps are holding us back.
- First Blood - Since this is now baseline, there’s an open spot here. This would be filled with Fel Barrage. The row would then contain some AoE choices.
- Demonic - Another talent gone baseline. Give us back Chaos Blades. A 2 min cooldown, either 35% damage increase, or have it scale off of mastery like it used to (but at 50% effect, since this scaling was too powerful back in Legion), 150% auto attack damage increase, and added Chaos Damage to melee swings. A cooldown like this would bring Demon Hunters back on single target damage. We currently only have Meta as our cooldown (not taking into account borrowed power), and we can’t even reduce the cooldown of meta anymore. The cooldown itself isn’t very interesting, gives us a bunch of haste which feels nice, but the change to our abilities doesn’t feel like it is adding much power.
- Fel Barrage - Since this talent was moved up a row, there’s a spot open. I suggest a talent that works like the Raddon’s Cascading Eyes, every time Eye Beam deals damage, it lowers its cooldown. Something like this might work better than Chaos Blades for M+ especially on Fortified weeks, pairing very nicely with Collective Anguish as well.
I realize not everyone agrees with me, and some of these changed might seem “overpowered” but that is all a matter of balancing the individual numbers of the talents.
These changes are something that could be done fairly easy by the Dev team, and wouldn’t require a total overhaul of the Demon Hunter class, but would spice it up, leaving us at a better spot in the current expansion.
