[Feedback] Havoc

With the lack of class forums currently for Demon Hunters, this thread is intended to be a mega-thread that discusses Havoc mechanics and game play as it evolves through the Alpha. It will draw from multiple sources – MMO-C Demon Hunter Forum, the perspective of Alpha Testers, and logs that provide a way to see the interaction of various abilities. There will be a primary focus on raiding, as that is my background, but input for PvP or solo-play is also welcome.

The main resources drawn on from mmo will be:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1917308-Pre-Beta-Havoc-Discussion
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1948919-Looking-for-Havoc-rotation-video-after-the-update

Additional Feedback threads:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20741884054#1
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20419392970#1

For reference, and to save space:

http://beta.wowdb.com/talent-calculator#x
http://beta.wowdb.com/artifact-calculator#wAAAAAAAAA

BASE ABILITY SYNERGY, PROBLEMS, AND CONCERNS

At the top of this list is Blade Dance. Thematically and visually this ability is solid. It looks cool, it gives that highly mobile impression, and it gives that idea of an agile warrior using the battlefield to his advantage. Sadly, this does not translate very well into the use of the ability. This is a talent turned baseline, and it shows very much. The cost, 50 fury, is higher than any other ability, while the damage at 650% is equal to Chaos Strike for single target and outclassed by Eye Beam at 1530%. While true that the cooldown is a fraction of Eye Beam's cooldown add phases in many fights are very forgiving of less than a minute cooldowns (especially when the ability is present to drop CDs via Feast on the Souls). The only exception to this would be constant add fights, which would be handled better with Throw Glaive for 350% (400% damage to every target with Bloodlet as well), increased by artifacts, at no fury cost.

Which brings us to another problem with Blade Dance – outside of First Blood there are no talents or artifact traits that help this ability out. This is no doubt related to it's birth as a talent, but this makes it even more unappealing to use. Eye Beam gets buffed three times through talents – Blind Fury, Chaos Vision, and the Anguish capstone all make Eye Beam a very desirable button to hit over Blade Dance for AoE

First Blood, however, buffs single target. While this seems to be a good talent that places Blade Dance back in the single target rotation it still falls short of Chaos Strike for a few reasons. First, Blade Dance is purely physical damage. This means it can never scale in the same way that Chaos Strike will outside of 12 seconds with Chaos Blades (meaning it would require two talents for its use). Second, Chaos Strike gets an flat 15% damage increase from Critical Chaos as well as a chance to double it's damage on every use with Inner Demons. Third, and finally, Chaos Strike will also scale with Crit, allowing it to deal a massive amount of damage per fury spent each time it crits in a way that Blade Dance will not be able to match.

Though this has been about Blade Dance, this brings us to a cause for concern with Chaos Strike. With it's double-dipping of crit and mastery, it's buffs through the artifact tree, and the artifact capstone Chaos Strike simply starts to become far too good. More testing will be required to see just how badly it will out scale all other spenders, but a build that focuses only on Demon's Bite (or Demon Blades should it be tuned higher) and Chaos Strike at high levels will get boring. With enough crit it could potentially outclass even Eye Beam for the Fury spent, which would remove all other spenders.

<snip> Our Verus proc has been changed, and these issues are no longer issues. In it's current implementation, Chaos Strikes is still vastly pushed in favor of other abilities, as 1% Chaos damage will scale with our mastery, which requires as close to 100% uptime as possible for single target. This will continue to devalue competitors, such as Fel Eruption and Blade Dance (First Blood talented), that cannot provide this debuff on single target. It also pushes Chaos Cleave very hard, as the dot will be kept up for two targets.

For base abilities, these are the biggest concerns at the moment. Our defenses are very good and work very well with talents (Blur during incoming damage giving a vast increase to Fury generated, for example). The sole gripe in this area would be that our only snare is attached to a GTFO mechanic, though this is much more of a PvP concern.