Do GIGA DAMAGE with Devourer in 12.0.5

[00:06] how is your damage so much bigger? What what do you mean, dude? I mean we're PLAYING THE SAME CLASS, THE SAME SPEC, AND IT'S NOT EVEN CLOSE. WELL, do you have the right gear and the right stats? I guess I equip my war glaves and

[00:23] I don't know, I just start blasting. Are those your war glaves? They're They're good good war glaves, but

[00:38] they're just um um They're what? I think you just need to make them a little bit bigger. Make them bigger. Not like that, man. Through science.

[00:58] >> [clears throat] >> have these sweet babies.

[01:10] the spec and realize what the rotation entails, it's hard not to think the spec is really easy to play. And as any spec and class in the game, whether it is easy or hard to grasp, to master it, you have to put in a lot of work. I will

[01:24] avoid my own cope of trying to convince people Devourer actually has some of the highest skill expression in the game, and instead lay it all out in front of you, and then you can make the call if it's easy or not. And really,

[01:40] does it even matter as far as you can do giga damage? I did a plus 17 recently with another Devourer, and our item levels were almost the same, yet our levels were almost the same, yet our damage was worlds apart. What happened?

[01:53] Why did I suck? What can you do to make sure, despite something looking easy that you end up pumping big damage. Let's just get the super simple out of the way. Devourer is a builder spender spec that uses consume to generate

[02:07] spec that uses consume to generate souls. Souls fuel your metamorphosis and your collapsing star casts, which is what metamorphosis transforms into once you have activated it. Consume can also be cast while moving, falling, or simply

[02:21] dodging anything and everything. You can collect souls by using reap or simply walking over them. As it stands, with the current tuning, using reap is not recommended. Spending a global cool down on reap is less damage than just using

[02:35] more consumes to further accelerate your upcoming metamorphosis. This is fine because in the current season you have void ray with the eradicate talent. The void ray with the eradicate talent. The souls you have exist in two states.

[02:49] On the ground and as your resource bar. The souls on the ground are not yet consumed, for lack of a better term. You have to use reap or walk over them for that to happen and once you do they will start counting towards your meta and you

[03:03] can see that as your souls bars filling up. This way you can think of the souls you haven't collected as your savings account, ready to be cashed in. Now, void ray eats up your demon hunter fury resource that consume also generates

[03:18] >> As it drains your fury, it also generates even more souls. The cool part reap will turn into eradicate, which you 100% want to press as soon as possible,

[03:31] unless your meta or collapsing star is already available. You do that because byproduct, collects the souls on the floor and puts them into your meta bank. And you don't want to do that if you are already at 50 souls, meaning meta or

[03:45] star is ready since those souls would be lost. Also, two tips here. One, void ray is not a spell that can be interrupted, meaning in dungeons where there are mobs that cast an AoE interrupt, like the Hawkstriders in Windrunner Spire or the

[04:00] >> [music] >> use that wisely. And second, you can double jump while casting Voidray if you're just outside of the range or if double jumping will actually save you from getting out of a pull without

[04:14] having to cancel your Voidray. Once you have the 50 required souls, you pop your meta and you can use Collapsing Star. There are a few ways to optimize this, but to start off, I recommend you fire it right away. One thing to understand

[04:28] is that Collapsing Star is a long cast and if the cast fails for whatever reason, it goes on a 5-second cooldown. All this time, your fury bar keeps your Metamorphosis up and it drains every second. And if it reaches zero, you lose

[04:43] your meta and the ability to cast Collapsing Stars. Because of this, two things are important. Voidray will no longer consume fury while you are in meta and instead pauses its decay. And wasting time on bad

[04:56] globals or canceling casts in your meta can make or break your damage. Casting Collapsing Star also pauses your fury decay, giving time for your Voidray to come off cooldown, making both of these abilities indirectly extend the uptime

[05:11] of your Metamorphosis. How you use these in combat without having to cancel them or being hit by mechanics will make the difference between this damage and this damage. One extra thing that

[05:25] was a change in the Soul Immolation spell, which is basically Immolation Aura, but blue. It doesn't do damage, but instead heals you for a lot of HP and generates fury and souls. This is

[05:39] the talent build that you will be playing until further notice. What this build does is to give you access to Eradicate, as we talked about earlier, but also two charges of soul immolation. You want to use these charges to get

[05:52] inside of your meta faster. So, what do you think? Easy or hard? And how did I end up doing so much less damage than my friend over there despite damage than my friend over there despite us being one item level apart?

[06:13] bunch of times. That is enough to tank anyone's damage and explain the biggest anyone's damage and explain the biggest differences between me and him. Oh, and differences between me and him. Oh, and doing [ __ ] like this. I mean,

[06:25] just look at that. What in the actual That aside, even when we started a boss fight or a pack on equal footing, I still lost in damage. And here is why. Gear. This is usually everyone's first

[06:39] fixing their rotation. >> I got the wrong stats, bro. >> My trinkets are not bis. >> Gear indeed makes a difference, but usually not by too much. Gear is not a big factor if you do everything else

[06:55] correctly. But, if you don't, then it starts to add up. You might already know you want haste and mastery as stats for your devourer. I for one definitely know that. However, I have been pretty unlucky at hitting the same level of

[07:09] haste as my friend over there. I have about 850 haste rating while he has about 850 haste rating while he has 1,100 more, and we are 282 and 283 item levels, respectively. That is enough to fit in an extra consume or two before

[07:23] your meta drops, which means just the last one or two souls needed for an extra collapsing star. And during this dungeon, I have had a bunch of situations where my meta dropped a second before I could cast my collapsing

[07:36] star again. One or two extra casts of consume would have prevented that. Obviously, more haste means faster casts, and faster casts means I can finish my star before I have to move out of a big puddle on the ground,

[07:50] preventing a canceled star and massive damage loss or my death and an even bigger damage loss. Big note here, coming from a DPS hole, do not be greedy. Devourer is deceptively squishy, and if

[08:06] you are gambling with finishing a cast and not moving, chances are you'll die, losing more than just canceling a collapsing star. If you have played probably know that canceling your collapsing star is like having that nice

[08:21] dream where you are dead hungry and are about to take a huge bite out of that juicy burger. The patty is roasted just the right amount with the meat juice seeping into the warm, fresh buns. The ketchup

[08:35] [music] adding a slight sweetness to the saltiness of the pickles. The cheese coating the inside of your And you wake up. In this dungeon, I got so frustrated that I kept losing out on DPS. I gave up at some point and said,

[08:49] cast no matter what, and it is what it is." Well, what it is was in fact me dying again and again. The last bit on your gear is your actual trinkets. Devourer's damage is like if burst DPS took steroids with Red Bull and coffee

[09:06] while jumping out of a plane with no parachute for maximum adrenaline rush. The spikes are so high, it actually fooled every single wild player and developer that Devourer is an actual top-tier DPS. All of your damage is in

[09:19] three or four collapsing stars that you get out in a 20-second something meta window, more or less. If you have your best trinkets or trinkets that infuse mastery, you'll want to make sure you have them for your damage spikes. My

[09:34] meta is slightly faster than the cool down of my Val'kyr stir, making my first and sometimes second collapsing star happen just before I can use the trinket. This makes it difficult to remember to always have it ready and

[09:47] maybe use it halfway through meta, which is wrong. Your trinket, as well as your DPS potion, are like your poker hand, and the only way that you will ever win at this table is by going all in. You want to use these with a full meta

[10:02] window at all times instead of just going for as many uses as possible. Because your meta uptime depends a lot on whether you are in AoE or single target, whether you have bloodlust or other haste procs, or none of that.

[10:15] It's hard to always sync it properly. Using your trinket after one or two thing in the world, but if it's the start of a bad habit builds where you're just firing your trinkets whenever they are available, you're probably better

[10:28] off just using them with a fresh new meta window. meta window. >> [music] how it deals damage, it's definitely an extreme case of what you can find in

[10:41] specs like arcane or fire mage, where you want to put all of your eggs in one basket. Let's look at it like this. This is what a devourer's damage profile kind of looks like. It spikes during your meta collapsing star [music] cast. You

[10:56] can pray to Xal'atath all you want, you will not do almost any damage outside of >> [music] >> As with any DPS spec, your damage can be further spiked with DPS potions, trinkets, bloodlust, and other external

[11:09] buffs. Once you align these with your meta casts, your DPS spikes will be even higher, which may sound very obvious, but it is so important that it needs to be mentioned twice, even thrice. Lastly, combat can offer spikes in

[11:24] damage output as well. Think of the second boss of Nexus Point or last boss in Seat of the Triumvirate. Both have a phase where they take more damage. That's your cue to go, go, go. And more importantly, is AoE. Your highest damage

[11:39] Star. Your highest damage source in AoE is Collapsing Star. And since you are using the same build for all of the content, you basically always have both your best single target and your best AoE available. Obviously, adds add more

[11:55] damage to your overall. And no matter what people say, Devourer is an AoE burst machine. That's why you are there. That's why people invited you into the group. So, take all of these combat spikes that can increase your damage,

[12:08] align them together with your potions and trinkets, add them on your meta windows, and then you have broken damage outputs like this where it looks like Devourer is an actually over power spec playing a totally different expansion.

[12:24] I'm not saying Devourer doesn't do a lot of damage, but you have to align all of these stars to make the magic happen. A lot more than what your average Ret paladins have to do. If one of these pieces fall, you don't just lose a bit

[12:38] of damage. You lose a lot. You lose about this much. And do this enough time and you turn into everyone's little scapegoat for their toxicity. I'm sure you have played with or seen Devourers that have done

[12:52] very poor damage. Hell, that might have just been me. Devourer will 100% change going forward. For one thing, Void Scourge is very

[13:06] behind Annihilator, and Annihilator is played with a cookie cutter build for both raids and dungeons. This style of design doesn't last for any spec based >> class design history. Enjoy it now while it's fresh and people still are figuring

[13:20] it's fresh and people still are figuring stuff out. Or don't. And instead, check the other side of the meta caster coin, demonology. And I play both because who cares? It's fun and I like to do big damage, okay? And this video goes over

[13:35] everything and why I ended up meaning both of them at the same time.