Let me just start by saying yes this boss can/has/will be tanked by demon hunters and she will die, but that is not the point I want to get by here. Just cause 1 person got lucky and won the lottery does not mean the other thousands will.
This LADY hits like a truck filled with grenades…Specifically frost-bolts as you begin to gain stacks. Now lets be clear when I say as you gain stacks I dont mean 20 stacks, or 15, or even 10. I am talking about 3-4 stacks and I am being welcomed to the door with 215k frost-bolts.
Now stacks in phase 1 can be managed very well but during the rest of the phases we are lucky to stay below 10 stacks. I am not gonna say I handle my cds perfectly and that some of this is my play style, but I am watching our Monk, DK tanks on other weeks walk off 10/15/ and even sometimes 20 stacks for the hell of it.
Why o why I ask have we not been given anything to handle this type of damage. Not one change or even mention of tuning V DH has hit the board and it is getting to be ridiculous.
Well, magic damage is supposed to be hazardous for tanks. Few tanks have much in the way of resources to deal with it. DKs arguably are one of the better ones, since their spec is tuned around having inferior physical mitigation made up for by superior self-healing (that scales with incoming damage). Thus when faced with magic damage, which all tanks lack good mitigation against, DKs excel. VDH self-healing also scales with incoming damage, but while we have inferior physical mitigation baseline, our self-healing is barely middle of the pack.
That all said, we do have a higher stamina multiplier (+65%) than either DKs (+10%) or BM (+0%), plus a passive 10% damage reduction (neither DK or BM have a passive mitigation against magic), meaning we’re actually stronger, baseline and before CDs, at eating those effects to our face. The issue is mostly on the healing front. DKs are balanced around much stronger self-healing (~40-50% stronger), and BM innately takes around 12-18% additional healing from all sources due to Celestial Fortune.
Still, the intent for all tanks is to cycle CDs while tanking her. You should be able to have Soul Barrier up every time you go to tank her (though Last Resort is actually a much more common talent on this fight), and Fiery Brand should be up every other time. You can also pretty reliable have a Soul-Cleave-spawned Soul Barrier (via Hour of Reaping) available every time you tank her, provided you’re disciplined about not using Soul Cleave after hitting max stacks until you start tanking her. Short healer externals like Ironbark are good options for filling those times you don’t have Fiery Brand available. And when it is available, remember to save it until you already have some stacks. Fiery Brand will effectively undo the first 7 stacks of the increase with its DR effect.
Other than that, there’s no real harm in swapping more often. As long as you can tank her for at least 15 seconds every other time, you won’t run into taunt DR issues, and it certainly makes it easier on the healers. Just remember that if the other tank is taunting off of you sooner, you should be taunting off of them sooner as well, so you two gain Chilling Touch stacks at roughly the same rate (except in P3 when you can’t clear stacks, at which point the goal is to, at a certain point, get stacks until you’re frozen, get taunted off, and DPS break you out, and make sure the other tank won’t also get frozen during that period).
I stand corrected, it is in fact physical (which is weeeeeeeeird):
Ok, so, scratch the magicky stuff above. Just means rotate your Demon Spikes and Fiery Brand. And if it’s a really big deal, spec into Gluttony and Feast on the Souls (>.>).
with demon spikes up with 5 stacks I typically am being hit for around 210k an ice shard. anything past that I tend to need externals, shield up, etc to handle the hits.
You don’t want gluttony (too rng) and feast of souls is such little healing (I’ve tried it), it’s just not worth the tradeoff for being able to shatter souls on immolate, even with one target.
However if you’re really having problems I guess you could try feed the demon. It will improve your demon spikes uptime, and as long as you have DS up you shouldn’t be dying to frost bolt, as it’s ironically physical damage.
Truth be told I have never had to run FTD this tier, as I much prefer the fracture. Even on heroic Jaina, as long as your aren’t massively undergeared, and your offtank is swapping correctly, you should be okay.
We get through the fight and really tank damage is the main thing going out anyways but the massive chunk hits urk the hell out of me when other classes dont seem to be bothered as much. I manage healer externals and thing like that very well so I can definitely manage on the fight it just seems like a lot of extra effort others dont have to put in.
Sorry, meant Feed the Demon, not Feast of Souls. The latter is, in fact, pretty garbage. The former is arguably the only notable defensive-improving deviation available over the “traditional” build.
Gluttony is very polarizing. It is RNG, but it’s also a decent DR increase for the duration (~25% if Demon Spikes isn’t up, ~15% if it is). The healing from Spirit Bomb is absolutely negligible, so the only real benefit of Spirit Bomb is the improved DPS, and it’s not that much of a DPS increase on a single-target fight like Jaina. Gluttony, RNG or not, is really the only talent on that tier that has any impact at all on our toughness.
On that note, there’s essentially zilch for information about Gluttony’s actual mechanics. They’ve largely done away with RPPM, and PPM doesn’t make sense for something that doesn’t proc from weapon swings (since PPM translates to a static proc chance based on weapon base speed). They also removed the 1 PPM part of the spell data in build 26926 in June, fairly early in the beta. I need to sit down with a target dummy and see if I can’t find a solid mechanism of action on it.
I don’t really think heroic Jaina hits hard, granted I’m prob overgeared for it. She hits hard but I’ll be on her on mythic soon and I hear she’s on steroids compared to heroic.
More versatility and haste is probably needed by you.
Roll 2x Rigid Carapace 2x revel in pain and 1x infernal armor if possible or 3x infernal armor and 2x revel.
Although last resort is used more I prefer soul barrier.
Get a diamond refracting prism and the alchemy trinket… if you can’t get the alchemy trinket then get the plumage off KR at 400 ilvl and use it when you feel you’re getting trucked.
You’re a VDH, you have to min/max every item slot to be just as good as other tanks. It’s the state of the game for VDH. Is it an oversight by blizzard? Yeah but don’t expect any changes.
That makes more sense about FTD. Feast of souls gives you a 9k heal, and at 400+ ilvl you should have over 400k hp. 9k is just meaningless at that level.
To be honest I haven’t tested Gluttony since 8.0 and there may have been stealth changes. The unreliability of the proc is my major gripe. The leech from spirit bomb may not be significant but it’s more about the damage and threat imo, because soul cleave is so worthless for both damage and threat.
Also, I checked the OPs gear and the things that he could work on, I would suggest the following:
weapon enchants. Get 1 versatile nav and 1 quick nav, or alternatively stalwart nav if you need more survivability. Currently he has 2 deadly navs. I don’t think having two of the same chant stacks, and you definitely don’t want deadly nav. Pick 2 of the above 3 I listed.
trinkets. It may be the best you have but the trinkets buff your crit and mastery, the two worst stats for Veng. Try to find trinkets that have static agi and give you vers (like plumage), or haste (like gale callers) or even the dice. The sporepod trinket is also actually a decent source of self healing if you get that. Of course the best tank trinket currently is diamond from opulence. But that’s mostly a myth, or so I hear.
-Azerite traits. I noticed you have 3 revel in pain traits. This trait isn’t really great to stack if you have another choice. See if you can get more rigid carapace or infernal armor traits.
They sorta stack, insofar as they have independent proc chances. However, they apply to the same stack of the buff and don’t change the cap, the amount per stack, or the magnitude of the 5-stack effect, so all it really means is that you get to 5 stacks faster, and since the majority of the benefit is the 5-stack (which has the same benefit and duration regardless), it’s uniformly worse to have two of the same than two different ones.
I would never advise someone to get the stalwart navigation because the more haste you have you can proc more demon spikes to use. Stalwart Navigation is not an optimal choice.
On a pure Physical fight, at lower ilevels I mathed out Stalwart to provide more mitigation than the versatile or quick nav. However this is variable based on your current levels of haste/vers and baseline armor, and may not always be the case.
There is also, of course no offensive benefit to stalwart. But it’s sort of similar to feed the demon versus fracture. Currently he is running double deadly nav. Almost any other enchant would be better defensively than this.
Lol. My point is you should do the math for your own character, because the numbers can vary greatly based on your armor, stats, and the specific damage types of the fight.
Also, pick versatile and quick nav if you want. Even masterful nav would be better than double deadly. There’s no debate on that one.
I’ve tanked her on heroic, wasn’t the worst thing in the world as long as the other tank taunted within a reasonable amount of stacks. I took last resort and have Bwonsamdi’s Bargain too so I had an advantage for staying upright during the fight. Fully buffed I have 420k health so that helps too. She is also one of my worst bosses for performance hopefully due to a lack time spent on her and not me being awful, but I won’t discount that possibility.
I was finally able to get her down on Tuesday of course this is without flying colors. I just had to rotate multiple healer cds. Mainly only have issues in the last phase when you cant reset stacks, but any other round I could keep at around 8 or less. at 8 stacks I was being hit for 320k with demon spikes up which is a bit ridiculous I think but o well she is dead…well not really
