Devourer DH Moving in the Right Direction - Review of Patch 12.1.5 Changes

Devourer 12.1.5 Changes

Devourer Demon Hunter is the newest specialization in World of Warcraft, joining the roster with 12.0 and the launch of Midnight. Despite being so new, Devourer has already received multiple rounds of large changes, and this trend continues in 12.1.5, featuring even more sweeping changes to Devourer. In this article, I aim to dive into what the problems facing Devourer are, the changes coming in, and the impact of these changes.

How Did We Get Here?

Coming into 12.1, targeted changes were made to reduce the power of Void Metamorphosis, reducing the scaling of Collapsing Star through a targeted nerf to Impending Apocalypse, and a reduction to the inside Void Meta component of our Mastery, Mastery: Monster Within. Coupled with the loss of our S1 tier set, Demon Hunter Devourer 12.0 Class Set 4pc, this amounted to a large loss of damage from inside Void Metamorphosis, and a large hit to Annihilator. These changes, plus our Reap empowering tier set in season 2 (Demon Hunter Devourer 12.1 Class Set 4pc), pushed us into playing Void-Scarred, although last-minute buffs to Collapsing Star and small nerfs to Reap and Eradicate maintained Annihilator's viability in keys, especially in higher, more coordinated groups.

This shift to Void-Scarred led to us focusing more on the melee-oriented playstyle, focusing our damage around abilities such as Hungering Slash, The Hunt, Voidsurge, and Reap. This playstyle saw us aim to jump into and out of melee often, rapidly cycling our Void Metamorphosis to leverage more resets of abilities. This offered an entirely new playstyle, although one which was divisive in the player base. It also highlighted many issues with Devourer, separate from those that Annihilator already had. So what are those?

AFKing: Due to the power of Rolling Torment and the strength gained from entering Void Metamorphosis, it's correct for Void-Scarred to AFK when fighting 2 or more targets once you've gotten to your second Eradicate. This allows you to cycle quicker, trading fairly weak damage at the end of your Void Metamorphosis for more entrances of Void Metamorphosis. This behavior is something that most players, and Blizzard themselves, do not like.
Ignoring Collapsing Star: Collapsing Star is billed as the core button for Devourer, building up to it in your Void Metamorphosis, and having it be a satisfying and powerful component of your rotation. Our entire apex talents (Midnight, Midnight, and Midnight) are even built around empowering it! However, Collapsing Star was weakened significantly going into 12.1, and has anti-synergy with Void-Scarred. Rolling Torment converts souls you consume in Void Metamorphosis into its powerful buff, but Collapsing Star uses those collected souls, reducing the overall buff gained from Rolling Torment. This loss in buff does not make up for how weak Collapsing Star is, especially since Void-Scarred plays with Soul Glutton, meaning they get one Collapsing Star at most. Collapsing Star being so weak also means that Void-Scarred builds do not take our Apex talents.
180 Playstyle Difference: Devourer's two hero talent options, Void-Scarred and Annihilator, feature incredibly different playstyles, to the point where they are essentially different specs. This leads to almost whiplash in playstyle, where players who are playing Devourer, and who seek to play the best options, can be playing different specs from patch to patch, or even boss to boss, even though they are still a Devourer. While many enjoy the current playstyle, Blizzard has communicated to us that the large changes between the two trees are not something they like.
Bottom Gate Points: Devourer's bottom gate is incredibly rich with points that are needed for the spec to function: Eradicate is needed whenever fighting 2 or more targets, the entire left side leading to The Hunt is needed for Void-Scarred to function, Calamitous is needed for all builds, Devourer's Bite is needed for any builds using the melee talents, and the Apex, Midnight, is needed for all Collapsing Star builds. This puts a large amount of pressure on our talent choices and cost, needing to give up large parts of playstyle or identity to make builds function.
Collapsing Star QOL: While Collapsing Star is our large flashy button, it also comes with annoyances. It's designed with a long cast time to amplify the weight of this cast. To offset the downside of casting this during our cooldowns, where our resources are constantly drained, the cast of Collapsing Star incurs a short window where the constant drain is slowed considerably. To get in front of the edge cases where someone would look to constantly cast and cancel Collapsing Star to take advantage of this slow, Blizzard implemented a 5s lockout on Collapsing Star as soon as you have started the cast. This means that if your cast were to fail due to your target dying, if your target were to move out of your 25 yard range, if you had to cancel it due to a mechanic occurring, or even if you collected enough souls to cast 2 back to back, you would not be able to. It would incur a hard 5s cooldown no matter what, and constantly lead to over-capping of souls. This behavior is incredibly frustrating for many players, and has been a constant source of friction.

Knowing what issues players have been facing, what changes are coming down the pipeline?

What's Changing?

The changes for Devourer came mostly in two sections, with the first bringing us the largest portion:

DEMON HUNTER

Devourer

Developers' notes: Cancelled casts of Collapsing Star have been a noted pain point since Devourer's introduction, and the changes in this update are aimed at alleviating some of that frustration.

Until now, there has been a cooldown enforced on Collapsing Star after it was interrupted or cancelled; this was in place to discourage gameplay that would capitalize on the slowed Fury drain during its cast to extend Void Metamorphosis and land a Collapsing Star at the 'right' time. While it was effective at that primary goal, the cooldown was also jarring for players when a cast was interrupted or manually cancelled for very normal gameplay reasons. We hope the changes to Collapsing Star in this update will be able to find a middle ground where normal gameplay will not be punished and rarely notice the new underlying restriction, while still minimizing the opportunity and incentive to manipulate its slowed Fury drain mechanic.

Second, because of Collapsing Star's long cast time combined with its medium range, the circumstances where Collapsing Star would be cancelled by its target moving out of range were too common. We're giving Collapsing Star more wiggle room to finish its cast by giving it extra range after its cast begins.

Collapsing Star now has increased range after it starts casting, reducing the circumstances where it will fail from the target moving out of range.
Collapsing Star no longer goes on cooldown for 5 seconds when its cast is cancelled.
Collapsing Star will now only slow Fury drain during its cast for a limited time.
- If Collapsing Star's cast is cancelled then cast again, it will only be able to slow Fury drain for a total time of approximately 1.5 full casts.
- After that time limit has been reached, Fury drain will resume in full regardless of whether or not a cast is interrupted or starts again.

Void-Scarred

Developers' notes: The Void-Scarred talent tree had multiple powerful bonuses that all centered around entering Void Metamorphosis, which was discouraging players from casting Collapsing Star because doing so would delay how long it would be until entering Void Metamorphosis and benefiting from those bonuses again. Collapsing Star is intended to be a feature ability of Devourer's rotation regardless of which Hero Talents are selected, so some of Void-Scarred's bonuses will now be granted by casting Collapsing Star instead of only being granted by entering Void Metamorphosis.

Demonic Intensity now causes Collapsing Star to reset the cooldown of The Hunt.
Demonic Intensity's empower effect for The Hunt now increases its damage by 30%.
Violent Transformation now resets the cooldown of Soul Immolation.
Violent Transformation no longer resets the cooldown of The Hunt.
Violent Transformation no longer increases the damage of The Hunt (was 25%) or causes it to reset the cooldown of Soul Immolation.
Monster Rising now increases Intellect by 10% while not in demon form (was 15%).
Monster Rising now increases Collapsing Star damage by 20% (was 15%).

These changes were broadly targeted at Void-Scarred and Collapsing Star, and aimed to address a few of the concerns raised in the first section. The Collapsing Star changes are huge QOL improvements and make the ability function and feel incredibly good. It's much less punishing with the range increase and the removal of its cooldown, allowing you to quickly cancel a cast if something were to interrupt you. The changes to fury drain ensure that no small edge cases can occur where it's correct to repeatedly cast and then cancel Collapsing Star, while still maintaining the fury drain should you need to cancel to reposition.

The Void-Scarred changes are much more wide reaching, aiming to break the quick melee cycle playstyle and reintroduce casting Collapsing Star. On live, The Hunt is currently reset upon entering Void Metamorphosis, allowing you to use your empowers at the start of your window. This is being changed to be reset by casting Collapsing Star, all but ensuring the ability will be used in our rotation. This does mean that long Void Metamorphosis windows, using Emptiness, would get significantly more casts of The Hunt, and as such it was nerfed to compensate (Demonic Intensity went from 25% to 30%, but the 25% from Violent Transformation was removed fully). Additionally, they aimed to reduce the frequency of Soul Immolation resets that would happen from casting The Hunt this often, moving its reset to entering Void Metamorphosis. The idea behind these changes is to unify the playstyles of Annihilator and Void-Scarred, giving Void-Scarred a reason to press Collapsing Star, and no reason to AFK due to this increased power behind it. These changes did accomplish this, as Void-Scarred loves to cast Collapsing Star, but further increased the friction in the bottom gate, leaving it impossible for Void-Scarred to take all the points needed to fill out its various packages. Thankfully, Blizzard came through with additional notes the week after.

DEMON HUNTER

Devourer

Soulforged Blades now increases the critical strike chance of Hungering Slash and Voidblade by 18% (was 15%).
Voidpurge now reduces the cooldown of Void Ray during Void Metamorphosis by 2.5 seconds (was 2 seconds).

Developers' notes: In addition to the Void-Scarred changes, we are shuffling some talents around to make it a little easier for builds to access core functional effects. The final gate was very dense and two of its talents are moving to the middle gate. The final gate's capstone talents also notably included effects that are core building blocks: The Hunt is featured for Void-Scarred builds, and Eradicate is a key component of any build's AoE damage. Those two talents are moving to more accessible locations in the middle gate of the tree, with other talents moving into their capstone positions.

Many talents have changed positions.
Demonic Instinct now connects to the talent one row down and one column to the left.
Devourer's Edge now connects to the talent one row down and one column to the right.

The changes to the talent tree are actually quite significant, and address the bottom gate pressure that was highlighted as a major concern. Moving The Hunt and Eradicate to the middle gate makes them far more accessible for all builds, reducing the number of forced picks in the final gate and giving players more flexibility in how they construct their Devourer builds going into 12.1.5.