Weird expansion for DH PvP?

Classes Demon Hunter
1

I just got back on my DH after the leech nerfs, not having played it since Shadowlands and honestly I’m a bit confused. The class seems to be all offense and nothing else. It was always simplistic, but at least you could stay in the fight. Now I’m not sure how to do much as this class anymore except for dealing damage.

What DF Brought (and took away)

We got sigils from Vengeance now which is really exciting, but their charge timer makes them subject to be evaded entirely and you don’t even have to try much - Kind of like the days where Elemental only had their totem for a stun - Watching people just… walk out of your 1.5 cooldown CD is about as painful as it gets for this game. Not ideal to spend a stun to ensure it lands either and snares? Snares in 2023 WoW to ensure landing CC? Good luck :smiley:

The Hunt, Fodder to the Flame are both available, but!

The hunt had its leech ability nerfed a lot, making it difficult to benefit from it defensively.

FttF is so random that I go entire games without a proc (mind you the games are typically short, but still!) and even when it procs you can’t exactly benefit a ton from the health boost since that too was nerfed to a tiny 25 %. Considering it’s an RNG-based proc, this simply makes it very unreliable. I do appreciate that it can break poly, but that’s a very niche application of it and if we’re being honest, probably more of a happy accident than a calculated move.

Topple that with the leech nerfs being set back to Shadowlands days (almost immediately after the DF leech buff came in lmao) and the class is now squishier than it’s ever been.

Blur is a great defensive with omni-directional effect, but 20 % damage reduction is just… Well, it’s like a sweet nothing: Effectively making it a very weak defensive against ranged.

Darkness is another great defensive, but 20 % chance to avoid damage ? Didn’t it used to give us way more or am I remembering things wrong? Also, even with the added choice node reducing its CD to 3 minutes, that’s a 3 minute CD with a measly 20 % chance at not taking a hit, ok! Well, there’s a ton of stuff coming at us in this era of WoW nowadays, so that’s kind of weak is it not?

Then there’s Netherwalk - I’m not sure if it really compliments Demon Hunter’s playstyle much. It’s a panic button at best, sitting at 3 minutes CD and feels more like something of a necessary evil for a class that is desperately lacking an identity in terms of gameplay.

A lot of nodes in the havoc tree are devoted to Eye Beam, but they’re all effectively useless for PvP because most people realize that Blizzard decided to mount advantages to finishing the cast fully - Also it REALLY hurts to get locked out of Chaos.
Making it a longer cast and generally mounting it with additional effects in exchange for so much other stuff that is just flat out better for PvP.

I don’t know if bringing Leech back as a vital identity marker for DH’s kit is or isn’t the right choice, but I kind of fail to see what the class got in exchange for all those leech nerfs.

Several of the honor talents are dead in the water as well.
Unending Hatred - Why would anyone pick this? In between dealing damage, CC and staying alive, you don’t have the uptime to run yourself dry on fury - Or if you favor the “glass half full” expression - We have enough ways to generate fury for this talent to be too expensive a choice in exchange for other things.

  • Rain from above - “Dead in the water” fits this talent in more ways than one.
  • Sigil Mastery - 25 % CD reduction to sigils? Are we playing Vengeance?
  • Blood Moon - Kind of cool, kind of getting there, but not near good enough to replace alternatives
  • Cover of Darkness - Why isn’t this a “25 % increased radius and effect” ? As it stands it’s way too weak
  • Cleansed by Flame - Some niche applications, but why does it not extend to removing bleeds and poisons? Of course it’d be too strong if it remained true for every immolation, but it could be given a buffer to only have this work every 1 minute and a half or so. In its current iteration it’s too weak and unreasonably so. It’s not like you can double this effect by playing a dwarf demon hunter.

The stuff we actually use on the regular:

Chaotic Imprint - mandatory in this day and eras’ Mastery/Throw Glaive min-maxing
Glimpse - On top of being a high skill-cap type ability, it’s also borderline necessary given our extremely limited survivability

Then it comes down to choosing between Detainment and Reverse Magic - Which are the ones I find myself swapping in and out the most often.

Am I missing something? Why would you play this class unless you are single-track “damage dealing is all that matters”. So little room for actual player skill integration outside of Meta’s i-frames and Vengeful Retreat CC evasion. The former status quo of being a relentless hunter is also gone since we simply lack the input to survive. With Throw Glaive becoming such a massive thing it also just feels as though the class is reaching for this weird Survival Hunter vibe, but without all the fun complexity of that spec.

Even Fury Warriors look kind of intellectual relative to Havoc.
I dunno man, what are your observations? Do you like the spec for DF as it stands?

2

For the most part, I like it.

Having started playing pre-patch I’d love to see them bring us back to meta but that’s a pipedream and would get boring being that powerful all the time.

I’m noticing how gear dependent we are, now I’m getting towards the higher iLvls things are certainly smoother, maybe I’m just better now.

Damage output is fine, I do have a hard time finding the best value with PvP talents but also do ok without depending on then too much, I just need to remember I’m not vengeance and stop charging into mass groups.

I find our survivability lacking, here the nerfs went too far IMO, and we need some fixes

  1. Eye beam cast is too long, let’s reduce that.
  2. FoTF can spawn too far away, and the souls drop randomly in a circle around the demon. They should spawn closer and the souls fall towards the DH.
  3. Blue/Darkness need looking at, they’re not great as defensive abilities, especially with the CDs, I think this was a panic nerf because of how powerful we were.
  4. Address ST damage.

All in all I’m enjoying it, though having started pre patch and not having played since classic I don’t have much to compare on.

3

This is being fixed. Patch notes are up.

100 % agree

Do you mean in the sense that it’s too strong or too weak?

Also

Probably a bit of both I’d wager.

4

Oh sweet, I’ll go check the patch notes, I tend not to keep an eye on those.

For ST I mean I find it lacking compare to my AoE damage, it’s really noticeable across the board, less so in PvP though to be fair, but I’m not doing rated (my one experience was solo shuffle early on without PvP gear where they played target the DH - I’ll likely go back to this soon).

Im often near the top of counters in dungeons but notice the drop offs on STs.

All in I love the class across the board, wouldn’t consider changing, and I’d prefer a small DPS boost over improving blur and darkness to truly go glass cannon!

5

Wait what? Aren’t they meta in PvP extremely in Solo Shufles? I mean my main is Lock and facing DH / Warr / rogue combo is game over. I mean in Arenas in general DH is strong and have best burst I ever seen?

6

I really like the DF DH, to me it’s exactly the same as SL but way more powerful. Mostly because during SL we had all good talents on the same line but now we can take all of them.

I don’t feel that squishy, with the new Vengeful Retreat mechanic and the fact that before all our defensive options where on the same talent choice, now you can combine Demonic Appetite, Leech and Neitherwalk, and FotF+The Hunt if you want to.

Sure the leech has been nerfed, but we have way more damage, the leech was overturned because of that, I prefer a meta where no damage dealer can self sustain.

Since we are speaking about PvP, we may have less pure single target damage as other classes but the current meta is oriented on cleave+burst damage, exactly what is our class capable off. But I have tested some single target build (essence break+shattered destiny) and it’s performing well you can totally play it if it suits you more.

Blur is one of the best defensive in the game: 10sec duration for 60sec cd, who can claim to have that ? You can litteraly have a defensive for every enemy “go”. And enemy cannot really target you since at any time you can have a full regen coming from out of nowhere with Fodder of the flames, no need defensive cd if you are not the target.

Darkness has a modifier in PvP and is 50% chance instead of 20%, use Details addon to show how much damage it prevents you would be amazed. Of course it’s 1 chance out of 2 for every hit but I really feels like it’s an immune some times.

Our kit has never been that much powerful and that is why there is so many DH in the ladder.

7

Yes, they are. I just wish the class was a little more complex than “deal lots of damage”, to summarize my post.

8

The defense is strong, idk what ur even talking about. The class is a joke, needs to be nerfed to the ground even more. When people start stacking the class in 3v3 you know you have a problem. It’s a PvE spec in pvp, just do damage and inevitably you will win.

9

lmao you got dunked on.

10

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.