So long story short, I was tanking for my guild until we just found a better option.
I’ve been benched/moved to dps.
Womp; but I’m okay with the idea of buffing my dps/pvp and trying out arena.
Question - other than azerite traits, what is the difference between havoc and vengeance DH gear? Does the latter have more stamina where havoc has more agility?
Can I still tank well in heroic/mythic raids with DH havoc gear?
More or less. Vengeance preferences crit less and haste more than havoc does, but that’s not saying much. Mastery is pretty meh for both specs, and vers seems almost universally good this expansion.
If you are looking to raid tank, you may want to set your loot spec to vengeance for some of the defensive trinks in BfDA, since they cover our many gaps a bit, but you also can do fine with primary or secondary stat proc or on-use trinkets, too. There are no stam trinkets to my knowledge, and you would never want one of those anyway - our stam is boosted by 65% from the Demonic Wards passive, for all the good it does. I try to stay away from strictly damage trinkets to get some more defensive benefit from stats instead, but your mileage may vary. The on use haste trinket from Shrine and the Golden Plume from KR are both really solid. If you’re an alchemist, building the 385/400/415 trinket isn’t a terrible idea either.
Honestly, I use almost the same gear, aside from azerite pieces.
I would strongly advise you to look at the traits you’re using, as we can be VERY squishy when demon spikes isn’t up.
Hour of reaping is amazing, but not very controllable. Increased armor while a couple of different spells are active, absorb shield when fiery demise is up. Also, gem hide, crystal carapace, and ablative shielding are very strong, along with the azerite goo that heals you on conditions.
Without a significant portion of those traits, we are basically mana sponges. My monk with about 20 ilvls less can just about tank the same content.
I think a third charge of demon spikes would go a long way to fix dh tanking, but I haven’t seen any glimmer of changes coming soon.
Forgot to post on my dh…
a 3rd charge only helps on the pull. the overall cd needs to be less in order to effectively get more uptime. the safeguard trinket for pvp I have found to be a godsend thus far. haven’t really done much but 1st boss in heroic and a few low keys. but im not looking to really push my VDH spec too much (having too much fun with havoc). but I would like to actively use it in some progression content just taking it slow due to its spikes (pun intended).
im also used to monk tanking so watching my health gives me fits. I don’t know if its intended or not. like am I supposed to be watching my health pool cut in half every 15 secs? I have a lot that kicks in at low health so it seems to be tough to kill me at lowers then 30% though. I have actually started using soul barrier rather then last resort because of it. it feels more smooth with barrier but that’s just me
I know it’s not ideal, but I’ve actually macrod demon spikes into my spirit bomb, but just honestly because I’m lazy, lol. I have noticed though that my up time on spikes has improved drastically…
Yikes man…That’s way more than “not ideal”.
As far as Boltaction saying it only helps on the pull, I’ll prove you wrong.
Currently, my tank gear has me at 1101 Haste (16.19%). This puts DS recharge time at 17 seconds with a fixed 6 second duration. Three stacks would allow for 100% uptime. There is precedence for this via Leg slot legendary in Legion giving a third stack, and monk’s ability to keep their brew up 100%.
At 0 seconds I pop DS #1; cooldown will come back up at 17 seconds. It will expire at exactly 6 seconds, where I can pop DS #2; cooldown will come back up at 23 seconds. At 12 seconds, DS #2 expires, and I pop DS #3; cooldown will come back up at 29 seconds.
At 17 seconds, DS #1 has finished its cooldown while I still have 1 second remaining on DS #3. This would continue with having a ~1 second elapse where you have DS running and a charge available to use.
Also, perfect timing is not required because if you use DS with another charge active, it adds precisely 6 seconds (no pandemic, just full duration) onto the buff. You could, theoretically, spam all your charges and have an 18 second buff (minus time for GCD).
Now, this might be a little bit over tuned at this point. Currently, my DS changes my armor from 3679 (36.87% DR) to 10726 (63.00% DR) and increases my parry from 11% to 26%.
They could pull the Armor gain down 10% or so and maybe the parry down a couple of % to account for 100% uptime. As it is, if DS isn’t up, we’re gonna get thrashed, especially on fortified weeks.
im not sure what you are writing there. but none of what you said really holds any water or changes with an extra charge but the pull. you obv are over thinking it I think. but regardless without lowering the actual CD of the ability you will not in any meaningful way gain more uptime. yea you will gain it on pull and during times when you aren’t actively tanking (and aren’t still being affected by a dot, which is almost never in BOD) you can let it build back to 3 charges. but that only helps add 6 more secs to total uptime. you understand that right? an extra charge would help in mythics yes. but on a boss it really has almost no effect
No, it gives you 100% uptime for the first 24 seconds (your initial 3 uses and the 4th one that recharges 1s before the 3rd falls off), after which you’re back to 35% uptime (6s out of every 17).
That’s not how charges work, broski. Charges recharge sequentially, not concurrently. If you use Demon Spikes at 0s and 6s, your first charge would come back up at 17s and your second charge at 34s (17 * 2). If you had 3 charges, you’d use them at 0, 6, and 12, get a charge back at 17, use it at 18, DS would fall off at 24s, you’d get another charge at 34s, and again at 51s. Adding a charge would do absolutely nothing outside of the first 24s of the fight, unless you had a period where you were not actively tanking/using DS for 35+ seconds in a row.
There’s no difference, aside from Azerite traits, stat priorities, and trinkets. Every single leather item of the same itemlevel and slot will have the exact same amount of agility, stamina, and armor. There’s no such thing as “havoc” gear or “vengeance” gear when it comes to armor slots.
If you’re swapping specs, the primary things you’ll need to change (or keep extra gear on hand for, if you want to be able to do both) are azerite traits, possibly rings (as Brujanna pointed out, Vengeance has a higher priority on haste and a lower priority on crit than Havoc, and rings are one of the strongest slots for secondary stats), and possibly trinkets.
If you want to maximize Havoc damage, you’ll want to pick two of Quick, Versatile, or Deadly Navigation, depending on which two of those stats are your highest. If you want to maximize Vengeance, you’ll want Versatile and Stalwart navigation. If you want a good pair of enchants that work for both specs (so you don’t have to keep extra weapons around), use Versatile and Quick, as versatility and haste are consistently solid for both specs.
Is Stalwart that much more worth taking than Quick or Versatile? Not having to farm a third weapon is a thing.
Also, it’s looking like I shouldn’t have traded those Bonded Soul pieces to the guild. RIP
Stalwart is the strongest of the weapon enchants for survivability, but the difference is fairly minor. Honestly, the difference between them isn’t huge even for Havoc. For example, every single combination of the primary 4 (crit, versa, haste, mastery), excluding those that take the same on each hand, is within ~1% DPS for me atm:
https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/fMhTfTHYJ291C8YVWWeV6j
Stalwart + Versatile is 2.1% behind my current Crit + Vers combo. I don’t have firm numbers for the reverse, the defensive difference between Vers+Stalwart vs. Vers+Haste, but it’s unlikely to be much larger. That’s why I recommend Vers+Haste as the generalized option if you want to do both, because it works well for both (ex. 0.7% behind for me) and the difference is honestly pretty irrelevant.
Ya know…You’re absolutely right. I’m not sure why I thought that. Oh well.