Hello everyone, hope you’re all enjoying prepatch so far.
I’ve been maining DH since legion prepatch and have done everything with DH from arena to mythic raiding, I should say that I play DH very much for the aesthetics, class fantasy and feeling of playing the class even though it is very easy over playing a more complex class that does not “feel” as smooth or fun to play.
BUT, this new unbound chaos talent is just awful, it does not feel good, is super unreliable and does not make sense with the other movement abilities DH’s have.
To be completely clear, I do fully agree that Demonhunter is one of the easiest classes to play and that it should have more buttons for their rotation or at the very least viable talent choices that add more buttons for the players that want more of a challenge but also be optimal in the current/shadowlands meta and feel good to play with
These are my main issues with it:
It encourages a very dumb playstyle, especially in cramped dungeons, With fel rush’s range being so inconsistent due to many factors, like lag and even framerate drops, often it simply will not do anything, however you can just fel rush into a wall and it will work pretty much every time(Think of WM, ToS, TD) this is just so dumb that it becomes a positive dps effect to just fel rush into a wall/other scenery instead of risking unbound chaos missing, Yes you can vengeful retreat and fel rush back but this does not work all the time either and very rarely works at all on sloped surfaces like stairs.
I have had it still overshoot and undershoot regularly not to mention it is very jarring and clunky, it does not feel good to use not to mention that unnecessary movement could also be a liability in certain encounters (looking at you last boss of Tol Dagor). Also if you are holding a charge of unbound chaos then have to felrush out of fire etc it is completely wasted, its just bad game design having one of our highest damage output abilities on a spell that has been used almost exclusively for movement since the class was created.
Its SOOO unbalanced, now yes, there is probably something funky going on with azerite traits etc but at the end of the day even just looking at the base numbers it is just too powerful and synergies too well with other talents, at this point unbound chaos is too good not to take for a number of reasons but then that also means that First blood is less useful in almost any situation apart from purely single target because it isn’t compounding with trial of ruin, on top of that Blade dance is target capped and Unbound chaos is not. Either this whole talent row or none of the row should be target capped, Glaive tempest is far more reliable and imo more fun(though still not great) but simply does not stack up against unbound chaos, especially in mythic+ with 6+ targets. to be clear I think trial of ruin and first blood are quite boring as it is and we should have a viable alternate talent path for the players that want more buttons (OR you know, another spec thats a bit harder),
Forced Momentum gameplay, So this is a biggie for me, obviously Momentum has great synergy with Unbound chaos, (cmon a 15% damage increase to a massive uncapped AOE that is also viable in single target, how can that be bad), However imo momentum is just bad and unfun gameplay, I absolutely hate momentum and will never play it even if it means I am not optimal, yes it makes DH more challenging and adds a couple more buttons to the rotation, that is fine, the problem is that more buttons and artificial difficulty do not = fun (the best example I can think of this is Wind walker mastery, that is fun you actually have to think in advance and pay attention, its not just a “press this every x seconds to do more damage and it does not add a single button” right now momentum just turns felrush and vengeful retreat into minor damage cooldowns that are on the gcd and interrupt the pace of combat). To me DH is about moving fast, doing big AOE, turning into a massive demon and looking like a badass while doing it, its not about darting around the room every 6 seconds for no reason other than to keep your buff up, for me that’s not fun even though its an extra button, it feels clunky and does not feel rewarding not to mention it turns movement utility into a damage increase meaning the movement abilities we have are no longer for movement and from what I can see Momentum is only going to get better in shadowlands once we lose essences and azerite traits.
General clunkyness, OK lets assume that the best way to use unbound chaos is vengeful retreat, that means to do the ability Unbound chaos you first need to cast Immolation Aura, then cast vengeful retreat, then cast felrush, then possibly reposition again because felrush is so inconsistent, thats 3 CDs to do one damaging ability and for 2 of those you are not even within melee range of the boss, thats not fun, it feels slow, jarring and the pace is not even in the same universe as the rest for bfa or even Legion which has been all about empowering your self in a demonic form to burst damage, attack faster, hit harder and do big aoe.
Overall I think that this talent should be replaced all together because of how clunky it feels, nothing about the ability outside of the animation is fun, yeah it looks decent (depending on the camera zoom you play on you might not even see it as felrush sometimes goes further than where unbound chaos drops) but it is completely negated by the massive shift in pace and complete unreliability.
If it is absolutely staying in game it needs to be target capped, should drop on the first target from felrush and should have its power brought inline with glaive tempest (and maybe trial of ruin, I think having to use an extra button should make you do a little more dps than passive trial of ruin) because right now they don’t compete.
I do think this change will not feel as bad to players new to DH who are not used to how the class has played for the last 2 expansions but overall I still don’t think the vast majority of players will consider this a fun and interesting class mechanic, Would love to hear what others have to say about it.
Also with 25s cd its far less punishing than momentum.
