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There was a change pushed to the PTR a couple weeks back that I feel may have been glossed over by some. It wasn’t a talent change, or a change to one of our abilities and It wasn’t covenant ability tuning. It was a minor tweak to a conduit that could make ALL the difference for you as a Havoc demon hunter.
So, the conduit that was changed was Unnatural Malice. This is the conduit which is specific to The Hunt, you’re able to get this only if you’re a Night Fae. Each covenant has a conduit specific to that covenant’s ability.
What this conduit USED to do, was increase the upfront hit damage of The Hunt by 35% (of course scaling up with conduit levels). This was pretty powerful in this state and was used to do some of those crazy one-shot tricks you’ve probably seen in PvP. In an attempt to scale that back, Blizzard did previously reduce the effectiveness of the conduit by HALF in PvP but now, they flipped the portion of The Hunt that the conduit affects.
Now the conduit increases the DoT damage by 35%. This is HUGE. If you’re not sure why this is so impactful – let me explain.
First we have to remember that DoT’s scale with Haste. With enough haste you can potentially get more ticks from your DoT, increasing the overall damage it does. DoT’s can also Crit.
While the DoT portion of The Hunt can be affected by both Haste AND Crit, the initial hit of The Hunt can only crit.
With that in mind, most of the time, the DoT portion of The Hunt will in most cases, out damage the initial hit, unless of course you get a crit on the initial hit and not on the DoT.
This is why you generally always want to cast The Hunt AFTER an Eye Beam. The additional haste from the Eye Beam really empowers the DoT portion of The Hunt. Most people just look for the big initial number that pops up from The Hunt when you cast it but there’s more going on behind the scenes that you can’t forget about.
So, in most cases the DoT portion of The Hunt will out-perform the initial hit, and that’s WITHOUT the newly changed conduit. What happens when we use the new conduit, increasing The Hunt’s DoT damage by a BASELINE 35%?
Well, it just does a ton more damage. Plain and simple.
Something that people often overlook is the fact that the DoT can also spread to an additional five targets.
A common misconception is that the trajectory of The Hunt needs to pass THROUGH enemies to spread the DoT. This is not true. If you do a bit of a shuffle right after you land the initial hit, you’ll be able to spread the DoT to whatever mobs are around.
Adversely, sometimes the DoT has a complete mind of its own and can jump halfway across the room, pulling a mob you had no intention of fighting…I speak from personal experience.
In conclusion, I think this is a slight nerf to havoc in PvP (though really only slightly because the effectiveness of the conduit had already been reduced) and we’ve also recently received some new PvP talents to play with so.. We can call it even. I’m interested to see if they perhaps revert that previous change now that they’ve changed how the conduit works all together.
On the flip side, I think this is a HUGE buff for havoc in M+ and AoE/Cleave fights in Raid. We already weren’t using this conduit, so our initial hit damage won’t be going down. I.e. our single target dmg output won’t change but now we have a highly effective aoe conduit to use.
With the new soulbind trees giving us access to another potency conduit slot, there’s some more combinations we can play with.
My prediction will be that our Soulbind choices won’t necessarily change. We’ll still use Niya for single target and occupy that new Potency slot with Relentless Onslaught, since Chaos Strike and Annihilation were buffed.
When it comes to M+ and certain AoE fights, Korayn is still the undisputed best choice for that situation and we’ll likely slot in Unnatural Malice to heavily buff our damage from The Hunt.
Now I’m not telling you to switch to Night Fae yet.. There’s still time for changes to happen. But if you’ve been thinking about swapping off Venthyr or if you’re one of the poor souls who has been playing Havoc as Kyrian or Necrolord…This would be enough reason to make ME switch…If you didn’t have enough reasons before.
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nice thx for the infos..:)
Great video,im hyped 😛 right now im bored,waiting for 9.1 !
Danmit I’m so lazy to switch , poor lazy soul
Switched from Kyrian to Venthyr to Fae, no regrets so far. now I have started gearing new alts I can firmly say that Havoc still needs more love from blizzard. I hope this is the first step toward that, one day you will change your name from "Debuff W/ Legs" to "AoE Vending Machine".
I thought that DOT stacked with Mastery…
oh that fucking bat. i pulled it multiple times too while i was not even close to it
Been fighting the change to NF from Venth primarily because I don't like the look and story for NF, and I'm pretty maxed up on Venth. Does it look like the damage for pve (raid primary, 5 man secondary) are worth the swap? Or hold off to see if Venth gets any love?
Great video! BUFFS that's what we like and need 😀 I love your Tmog btw
That's great 💪
i was already doing around 10% of dps from the hunt (5,5-6,5k dps in m+) so i didnt expect that
I really don’t want to switch from Kyrian. My Druid, Warlock and Mage are already NF. I can’t have everything in just one covenant.
Love the video's – you are a big reason I will be rolling Havoc in 9.1 😀 keep it up!
ok now i see it more clearly, why: "hunt after eyebeam" 😉
I swapped to nightfae havoc like a week ago, until then I played kyrian.
Gotta say I'm not sure why kyrian seems to be so disliked, the aoe does a lot of damage, pots give survivability, and in general kyrian felt really strong.
But I'm also having fun with nightfae so far, thanks for the video!
Yo Jed, have u tried playing momentum? I've been having great times with it topping dps in keys and close to it in heroic raids whether it is with chaos theory, burning wound or collective anguish
Necro 4 life!….since this week actually.
Ty for the NF update Jedith
Hey,
i tested the the Hunt dot haste thing. If your haste is lower than 15.6% it doesnt matter if you use Eye Beam before or After, you will only make 6 ticks. I tested it with 15.6 % and 16.12%, with 16.12% Haste you make 7 Ticks if you cast Eye beam before the Hunt. So with 16.12% haste or above = always 1. eye beam 2. the hunt and below 15.6% with Niya skill tree = 1. the hunt and 2. Eyebeam (without Niya the order doesn´t matter). Make sure you always use the second ability immediately after the first one.
At 2:41 you actually failed it, you have enough haste to get the 7 tick of the Dot but you made The hunt to late that your Methamorph ran out before the dot, so you made only 6.
Thx for the video and the info. Btw I had the 69th like on this vid… NICE 🙂
This change afaik fucked havoc in pvp (where we relied on hunt burst) and is a slight buff in pve (where dot is the main part of the dmg)
I had a conversation about a guy on a forum about this – he was stating that our biggest strength in PVP is the hunt and that this is a "massive nerf", but i concur. I know this'll really bring out the pve viability of DH,especially with our double potency slots, but in pvp I think it'll have just as much viability. I see this as extremely powerful against turbo specs where you can hit both melee's at once and tick both away heavily. This buff in addition to our ST buff will make us an absolute cannon!
Oooof…
This is going to make topping the dps meters even sweeter
I love being able to get notifications immediately for this channel!! Always solid content Jedith!! Thank you for being on top of things for us!!
Damn it. I don’t want to switch from Venthyr but blizzard is trying their hardest to make me switch. Hoping sinful legendary is good enough to make up for this
bm are so happy about that buff:)
Fel Hammer was pretty active in discussing this a few weeks ago. The buff to the DoT is nice
Great video once more Jedith and thanks for this important info. Tbf, even if you lose that 17.5% bonus in pvp (for 200ilvl Conduits) the dot buff is HUGE. I think the Hunt's burst, it all depends on whether it crits or not anyway.
Eye beam before Hunt? This is why I follow you, Jed. I'm noob and always learn something from your videos.
i switched from night fea to necrolord with no regrets. Freed up a button to actually use darkness and put glide on my hot bar and gave me a bit extra healing . 🙂
What do you think the odds are of Blizz nerfing the dot once more DH's start utilizing this change?
FINALLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
Oh rly ? 🙁 so in PVP Havoc will get nerf ? he is weak and this is make him weaknes.. 🙁 a cannot reach 1600 😀
As cool as this is,I have way too many toons on NF. Also My DH has been on Venthyr since a little bit after launch. Hopefully Sinful brand can get a bit of a boost similar to The Hunt's.
I main veng DH (kyrian) but have started liking Havoc and am playing 50/50 right now and considering switching to havoc for 9.1. I’ve invested SO much time into my covenant and switching to night fae would be a very hard decision. Is switching from kyrian to night fae a significant enough damage increase to justify re-farming ~75,000 anima and re-leveling my mission table?
Hey, is it not better for pulls to use the hunt asap for the 25%crit buff in the 5 second window? I do this and after insta felrush and eyebeam for haste buff