Voicing concern over DH in Shadowlands

Classes Demon Hunter
1

Hello!

I cannot post in the development forums, so I’ll be posting here.

I main Vengeance spec, and I only use Havoc for world content and things like Visions. So keep this in mind.

I want to pre-text with this: the day Shadowlands and Blizzard’s philosophy for it were announced, for example, the level squish and that DHs will be playable from low levels, and the unprunning of abilities. People were immediately concerned about how will this affect DHs. Because we are the youngest class, and we are the most bare-bone class.

Playable from Low Levels: there is just not enough abilities in our class, for players to get meaningful upgrades as they level up. Even at max level, we are jokingly called a-3-button spec as Havoc. What will we be prior to max level?

Unprunning of Abilities: how do you unprune that which never really has been prunned?

Blizzard, we need new abilities! We need 1-2 baselines, for example FelBlade can become it, and 1 completely new one. And we need a choice of new abilities from talent tree.

FelBlade: It’s currently starting to look like Momentum (havoc) might see more play, but it will be, as it has been, a bit wonky to execute because you can over/undershoot your packs at tank, and miss precious seconds, and worse if latency is at play, the Felrush’s distance changes. But if FelBlade is a baseline, it allows Havoc to fluidly execute that combo: you FelRush through the enemies, turn around, use FelBlade and you are right back into slashing their faces. It’s fast, and it feels cool. Fast & Cool is literally the theme of Havoc.

Blizzard… Immolation Aura… Absolutely not. For both Veng and Havoc, the fury/pain generation IS THE REASON people like Immolation Aura. The damage from it never does enough damage on the meters to be a spell in our rotation for damage output alone. Yes, that AOE helps Veng with aggro management, but we have Sigils, Soul Cleave, 2x charges of Fracture, Glaive, and Spirit Bomb for that which has far more drastic effect on aggro management. Don’t make us waste a talent on it to make it viable. Give it back the resource generation.

Spirit Bomb. Make it baseline. It fits into Veng’s theme with hurting enemies to be healed. It is fun to use. Gives us something to manage. Helps with AOE aggro management. It’s going to be a default pick again, as it has been for a long time.

Blizz, thank you for Fel Devastation becoming baseline. It is an awesome, useful spell. But, you have put Demonic on the same row of talents as Soul Barrier. And Demonic is going to become another staple choice. I would love to see the Azerite Trait Reaping Hour (from consuming 40 fragments and upon using Soul Cleave grants a shield) to become baseline. It gives another thing to manage, and requires tank to understand the enemies he faces. The tank can trigger this shield to help absorb an otherwise large hit. That’s skill, and we need more of this. And instead Soul Barrier, something new for us to use. We NEED NEW abilities! Have I mentioned that before?

Tier 1 Talents: Nothing will be picked over Abysal Strike. Make other talents more appealing, and or yet again, we have the same staple choice.

Tier 2 Talents: Fallout, yet again, will be picked 90% of the time because…

Tier 3 Talents: …because Spirit Bomb is still gonna be a default choice. They work really well together. Make Spirit Bomb baseline and in its stead gives us a new and interesting choice.

Tier 4 Talents: Fracture. Fracture. Fracture. Do Veng DHs even pick anything over Fracture? Ever?

Tier 5 Talents: Default choice is Sigil of Chains… And Concentrated Sigils just make me laugh. You can make a macro and it will work the same. Minus the 2 second increase, but our CC Sigils are already powerful. That 2 second doesn’t really offer much. Quickened Sigil would see actual play if Sigil of Chains became baseline.

Tier 6 Talents: Demonic will be a staple choice. It’s powerful, and it’s cool.

Tier 7 Talents: Oh wait, an actual choice. I’m stumped. Sort of… For once you kind of achieved what you have intended for the current Talent System: a situational choice. But I think Ruinous Bulwak will be picked more than half of the time.

UPDATE: Remembered a Quality-of-Life I would love to see for Veng: a glyph, that makes our fragments revolve around our body, or be stored as charges, and be used only when Soul Cleaving, Spirit Bombing, or using Soul Barrier.

Right now, whenever I have Fragments around me, and I wanna use them on a 5 charge Spirit Bomb, I try not to move, because Fragments are quite sensitive on the range, and get sucked in from quite far away.

It’s a glyph, it’s a choice, and doesn’t affect the class unless conscientiously chosen. Please give me this, Blizzard <3

I will be returning to this thread as Alpha progress.

Thank you for reading.

Looking forward to Shadowlands!

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I disagree, i dont want every class to be a mess of buttons, enh shaman used to be like that (duno how it is now) monk WW used to be like that, 20 buttons rotation, feral druid (i love feral druid) but used to be a mess, now its less messy but still messy.

There is plenty of that stuff on other specs. I found out i dont enjoy that at least not for long sessions, or extended periods of time, my hand hurts i spend more times looking at my addons/weak auras then at screen.

I do enjoy more frost DK and DH, ok for someone those may be dumbed down classes, you know what, i dont care because i dont play with them.
DH are very popular have you thought that it may be for different reasons, for example how class plays?

I know i cant dictate what blizzard does, so i just hope they dont change too much. I’m just giving you another point of view, not all want piano classes.

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The reason why DH is popular is because it’s super easy, can do anything with almost same gear and same rotation, they had the most effort put into their animations and finally they take no risks.

There is nothing wrong with a spec having 3 buttons but you can’t expect it to perform same or better than specs that are more complex, take more risks and are punished more by mechanics and also require very specific gear to make to worthwile.

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how does this have anything to do with ability unpruning i dont know.

And i disagree with people who think they know everything, for example why each and every persons plays a certain way, i for one could care less how strong x or y is.

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Unless you want to be top DPS or 3v3 Glad, then you very much take a risk because the class sucks at those 2 things. ( which are pretty much the most important achievable things in the game )

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That’s not what I meant, I mean that no matter what you do while playing DH gameplay wise you can’t take risks. I see DHs in both brackets, this is nowhere near level of being unplayable spec like Shadow in M+.

Anyways, every time there is DH discussion, DH player is usually like a rich person telling others that money don’t bring happiness. They just can’t see perspective of others.

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Sure you can. If you misuse your CC you have no peel for your healers. If you missuse your CC you can’t mana burn.

Every class exists above 2.2K rating. Doesn’t mean they’re all equal.

It’s hard for me to take pity on the Warlock who cries that DH is OP when Warlocks make 13% of players over 2.2K in 3v3 and DHs make up 4%.

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Ok, I appreciate you guys pitching in your 2 cents, I hear you, but did I have to explicitly state this is a PvE thread? I thought that would be rather obvious. Also, you guys are taking about Havoc, I pretexted with saying this is primarily about Veng. I have merely touched on Havoc for the sake of voicing my concern, because Blizzard is heading down the road of making a bare-bone classes even more bare. Again, thank you, but you are in the wrong thread.

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Where is this information coming from? Been looking at wowhead talent calcuator and it is still there, aka not baseline but still talent.

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Huh, you are right. I’m seeing it in talents only now as well. But when I watched Bellular’s video, it said it was baseline.

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Yep, totally agree. Yes DH is fun, but it is just a 1 2 3 class, there is no thought process that has to go into playing it. Im not saying every other class is harder to play, but they have rotations and have to track cool downs. DH just uses Eye Beam and gets their main dps cooldown for a period of time. Im not bothered if its a 1 2 3 class because it is fun to play, but the damage is ridiculous. You’re rewarded with insanely easy damage output for doing next to nothing, and you heal from your damage too… pretty lazy if you ask me. Other classes have to use defensive cool downs to get heals but DH just carries on with 1 2 3. Even if it was adding spells on 30 sec cd, where your leech is increased to heal for 10 seconds, rather than constant leech or meta leech. Give the class something to think about.

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ITT: People not reading that tc writes about VDH, then complaining about Ez havoc rotation and PvP. :man_shrugging: :woman_shrugging:

/facepalm

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we already have quite a lot of classes like that. No need to be another similar to them. The original idea of DH is that this class is simple and flashy. A lot of people that currently play it actively like this simplicity and flashiness. You don’t like it - you don’t play it.

I am more of a mind that classes like ferals and spriest should be easier to play and maintain dps than rewriting the idea of DH into something entirely else. Although we could get fully immo aura baseline and fel barrage baseline.

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No, it’s not. We’re average in raids and dog :poop: in PvP.

Other classes can heal when they have nothing to hit. DH has no self heals if they can’t do dmg.

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Uhm no? Have you seen the Shadowlands threads? DHs are pretty unhappy with how simple the class is.

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I mean there’s a difference between simple and clunky. Sure DH was never super hard to play but now it is at least playable. DH in 8.0 was just really bad to play since we had no gear no azerite traits, etc. I can imagine the same happens with 9.0 again.

What I would wish for is at least an alternative to Demonic, make Momo and Nemesis build viable somehow, let us play different specs within the same talent tree. A class with 2 talent trees and nearly no talent choice gets stale very quickly even if its fun to play.

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lets count ? Im for simple.

If i want hard or carpal tunnel syndrome i’ll play my druid or monk.

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I am all for adding 1-2 more skills while maintaining simplecity of the class. So that those two potential new skills aren’t bound to some needless mechanics/timed synergies (e.g. barbed shot) etc.

anyway, we should focus more on many nerfs we got on our DHs :frowning: high leech is what keeps DHs alive most of the time…

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You’ll actually get carpal tunnel faster as a DH because you’re spamming the same 3 buttons very fast ( due to the insane haste we have ).

DH has one of the highest APMs/least downtime of all classes.

You’re always hitting Bite/Chaos Strike/Blade Dance, 100% of the encounter, and you also sidestep EQ for the DA orbs.

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I understand what u are saying but i get discomfort clicking spells which are further away or on other more hard keybinds, for example shift + r , shift + f, or even ctrl.
On DH i can do fine with 1-5 and some letters without going too much into modifiers. It’s the pinkie which with age i guess gets more discomfort.

In before you say to get a mmo mouse, i tried dont really like those, some buttons are ok but too many like mmo mouses arent very comfortable either. so logitech g502 is fine g600 not so much.

It may be me, or my hand or whatever but clicking/spamming so far is still ok for me, spreading fingers to combination of buttons not very. I mean do play occasionally my druid and i love it, but it tires me a lot faster.

Also i mentioned in another message having to track usually with WA 5 cooldowns 3 debuff’s x buff’s and snapshoot 2 of those may be satisfying but its quite intense.

BUT to each one their own. Hope all find something they enjoy.

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