Third DH Spec - what about a sigil & soul based, melee support class?

Hi there! I’ve put some fun ideas into context with actual WoW tooltips and hopefully engaging ideas for a new DH spec. These forums doesn’t allow pictures, which i really think help contextualize the concept. Visit my original post to see it, or scroll down to get the text-version.

The Felspeaker : r/wow

Text version:

Felspeaker Demon Hunter (Support Specialization)

Spec Fantasy: A demonic battle-ritualist who utilizes the souls of their enemies and sigils of the Fel to strengthen allies or weaken enemies.

Gameplay Style: Aggressive melee support who must maintain combat presence and position their Sigils well to maintain uptime of buffs/debuffs.

Core Gameplay Loop: The Felspeaker revolves around Sigils and Souls. The uptime of sigils are a key metric of the success of a Felspeaker. To do so, soul consumption plays a large role, as our mastery reduces sigil cooldowns per soul consumed. Positioning of you and your team will optimize sigil placements, and optimizing burst windows will allow large soul consumption - these points will be the hallmark of a great Felspeaker.

Here are some sample abelites (tooltips in the reddit post)

Key Abilities and Mechanics

Spec Passives

  • (Mastery) Felspeak
    Each Soul Fragment consumed reduces the cooldown of a random Sigil by 0.5 seconds (+0.1 seconds per Mastery point).
  • Hands of the Scribe (Passive)
    Every 10th Soul Fragment consumed increases the radius and effect of the next Sigil by 10%, stacking up to 3 times.
  • Soul Capacity (Passive)
    Increases maximum Soul Fragments to 15, and fragments persist for 30 seconds. Auto-attacks have a chance to generate Soul Fragments.

New Sigils

  • Sigil of Flame
    Instant, 50-second recharge, 2 charges
    Place a Sigil of Flame at the target location that activates after 2 seconds. Enemies affected take Fire damage, increasing Physical damage taken by 2.5% and are marked with Firebrand for 8 seconds, stacking twice. Allies who damage Firebranded targets gain 2% Haste, stacking up to 6%.
  • Sigil of Foresight
    1-minute cooldown
    Places a Sigil that increases the critical strike chance of allies by 10% for 8 seconds. Critical strikes have a chance to split Soul Fragments from their target.
  • Sigil of Clarity
    2-minute cooldown
    Places a Sigil that attempts to cleanse a harmful magical effect every 2 seconds and increases passive resource generation by 150% for 8 seconds. Consuming Soul Fragments while this Sigil is active extends its duration up to a maximum of 16 sec.
  • Sigil of Defiance
    2-minute cooldown
    Places a Sigil that grants allies 15% reduced damage taken for 8 seconds and reduces their active defensive cooldowns by 20%.
  • Sigil of Eternal Flame
    7-minute cooldown
    Places a massive Sigil of Eternal Flame at the target location that persists for 8 seconds. Allies standing within gain 30% increased critical strike chance and their critical strikes have a 25% chance to not trigger a cooldown. Consuming Soul Fragments while this Sigil is active extends its duration up to a maximum of 16 sec.

Other Core Abilities:

  • Soul Rend
    30 Fury
    Slashes the target, dealing physical damage and generating 1-2 Soul Fragments. Generates an additional fragment if the target is affected by a Sigil.
  • Cleaving Agony
    40 Fury, Instant, 6-second cooldown
    Strike all enemies in front of you for Physical damage. Consumes up to 5 Soul Fragments to apply Magical Vulnerability for 12 seconds, increasing magical damage taken by 1% per Soul Fragment consumed, stacking up to 5 times. Each target hit generates 5 Fury.
  • Fel Stride
    20-second recharge, 2 charges
    Leaps forward with your wings, leaving a minor Sigil of Flame at the departure location and applying Felbrand to allies at the arrival location, enhancing their attacks.
  • Eye Beam
    60 Fury, 3-second Channel, 45-second cooldown
    Channel a beam of fel energy in front of you, dealing Chaos damage to all enemies hit. Allies within the beam’s path gain 25% critical strike chance while you channel. Each critical strike performed by affected allies during Eye Beam has a 35% chance to generate a Soul Fragment.

Flavor and Utility:

  • Torturing Tether
    5-second Channel, 45-second cooldown
    Channel a tether on an enemy, dealing Fire damage and stunning them for 5 seconds, draining them for 1 Soul Fragment per second. Casting Sigils while channeling will place them at your target’s location.
  • Absorption of Whispers
    5-second Channel, 2-minute cooldown
    Pull Soul Fragments within range to you, up to 3 every second. For each Fragment absorbed this way, allies within 15 yards gain a shield for 2% of their maximum health, and enemies take Chaos damage. You can move while channeling.
  • Scribe (Talent)
    Instant, 2 min cooldown
    When activated, the next Sigil will activate instantly with a 50% larger radius. Does not affect Sigil of Eternal Flame.
  • The Hunt (Talent)
    1.5-second Cast, 2-minute cooldown
    Charge to an enemy, dealing Physical damage and marking them with the Mark of the Hunted for 5 seconds. The mark spreads to the nearest enemy and refreshes its duration, up to five times, when the marked enemy takes damage from your allies. Every 5 seconds a mark is active, it generates 1 Soul Fragment. Marked enemies take 6% increased damage from all sources.

Those are some of the abilites I’m envisioning. It could maybe even be a ranged/bow class instead, wouldn’t take too much tinkering. Anyway, it all came off I love the sigils and a good sigil placement/trigger just feels really good, so I built a whole spec around it. - and because I build a WoW Tooltip Designer tool I had to put to use somehow.

Cheers.

2 Likes

Thats greate! But i wanna see an anti-support dh 3d spec, who make many debuffs on enemy =))

yeah no we need to move away from sigils on the ground

3 Likes

No to the no no. I play a DH to play dps, not support. If you bring a support spec to DH, it will get better than havoc, which will make havoc even worse than it is now. Look at devestation spec of evokers, totally abandoned for several seasons.

NO to a third DH spec. Fix havoc instead

  1. This.
  2. Though it all sounds good on paper despite my concerns that the gameplay would be somewhat boring, even moreso than aug, this skill in particular is an absolute non-starter

There is a good reason BL has a 100 yard range and always has, you can not take a cooldown that has that large of of an effect on party DPS and make it positioning dependent without inevitably either a screwing half the party (mostly ranges due to DH range) out of the boost completely, or making the skill bait for trolls to pop when it does the least good. Whichius a “grteat idea” simply because most people don´t already consnder the average DH player to be “somewhat less human and more antisocial than is generally regarded as acceptable”, so lets give them a cd that the trolls among them can use to bury what little faith and trust some people still have in Batmen :wink:

It´s ust a not so great idea in and of itself, but ESPECIALLY on this particular class, coupled with your stereotypical /average “go fast go hard and screw the rest of the grp” DoucheBat becomes basically predestined to make the entire community never ever invite any DHs to anything ever again :wink: :beers:

So, basically an Affliction Warlock standing in melee range, but I assume with even shorter cast times /all spells instant, because melee have to be mobile?

If we get a 3rd spec it should be ranged

2 Likes