Humble Suggestions for Vengeance

Classes Demon Hunter
1

TLDR: I recommend that Fracture no longer replace shear. Ideally, becoming baseline and costing pain once more.

Overall, I wish to see Vengeance return to any of its Legion iterations. Accordingly, I have listed gameplay altering elements I wish to see unpruned, followed by personal talent suggestions. All but one suggestion has already been implemented in consideration of development time. I am pleased with Blizzard’s direction with the new Demonic talent, but remain concerned with Throw Glaive remaining filler. I am grateful to anyone who reads this, I simply wish to give my opinion on the spec I play everyday.

To be Unpruned:

  • Taking damage generates pain.
  • Metamorphosis: Generates 7 pain every second. Empowers Shear to deal additional damage, shatter a Lesser Soul Fragment, and generate 10 additional pain.
  • Fracture (made baseline): Consumes 20 pain, shatters two Lesser Soul Fragments.
  • Fiery Demise: Fiery Brand also increases Fire damage you deal to the target by x%.
  • Charred Warblades: You heal for x% of all Fire damage you deal.
  • Soul Cleave: Viciously strike all enemies in front of you for x Physical damage and heal yourself for x. Consumes all Soul Fragments within 25 yards.
  • Shear: Shears an enemy for x Physical damage, and has a small chance to shatter a Lesser Soul Fragment from your target that heals you for x health when consumed.
  • Shattered Souls: Consuming a Lesser Soul Fragment heals you for x% of your maximum health.
  • Fiery Brand (removed from Global Cooldown).

Talents:

15:

  • Razor Spikes: While Demon Spikes is active, you deal x% increased Physical damage and your melee attacks snare targets by x% for x seconds. Demon Spikes now costs 25 pain.
  • Siphon Power: 45 second cooldown. Increases your Agility by up to 15% for 10 sec, based on magic damage you take while Siphon Power is active.
  • Felblade: Charge to your target and deal x Fire damage. Felblade has a chance to make your next Fracture cost no pain. Generates x Pain.

25:

  • Erupting Souls: Soul Cleave deals x additional damage for each Soul Fragment it consumes.
  • Void Reaver: Enemies struck by Soul Cleave are afflicted with Frailty for x seconds. You heal for x% of all damage you deal to enemies with Frailty.
  • Quickened Sigils: Soul Cleave reduces the remaining cooldown on a random Sigil by x seconds.

30:

  • Flaming Soul: Damage from Immolation Aura extends the duration of your Fiery Brand by 0.5 seconds.
  • Flame Crash: Infernal Strike creates a Sigil of Flame when you land.
  • Fallout: Immolation Aura’s initial burst has a chance to shatter Lesser Soul Fragments from enemies.

35:

  • Nether Bond: 2 minute cooldown. Bind yourself to a friendly player for 10 sec. Every 1 sec, the health of you and your target is redistributed such that you are at the same percentage of maximum health.
  • Feed the Demon: Consuming a Soul Fragment reduces the remaining cooldown of Demon Spikes by 0.5 sec.
  • Painbringer: Each Soul Fragment you consume reduces all damage you take by 2% for 4 secs. (Up to x%)

40:

  • Sigil of Chains: 1.5 minute cooldown. Place a Sigil of Chains at the target location that activates after 2 sec. All enemies affected by the sigil are pulled to its center and are snared, reducing movement speed by 70% for 8 sec.
  • Cycle of Binding: Afflicting an enemy with a Sigil grants you x Agility for 6 seconds.
  • Concentrated Sigils: Sigil of Flame, Silence, and Misery now have 2 stacks. Their cooldowns are increased by x%.

45:

  • Spirit Bomb: 1 minute cooldown. Afflict an enemy with a Spirit Bomb for 6 seconds. While active, the Spirit Bomb automatically consumes all Soul Fragments you generate, empowering it. Detonates after 6 seconds or when reactivated to deal (x * Fragments consumed) Fire damage.
  • Ruinous Bulwark: Fel Devastation damages and heals for an additional x%, and x% of its overhealing is converted into an absorb shield for 10 sec.
  • Bulk Extraction: 1.5 minute cooldown. Demolish the spirit of all those around you, dealing x Fire damage to nearby enemies and extracting up to 5 Lesser Soul Fragments.

50:

  • Last Resort: Sustaining fatal damage instead transforms you to Metamorphosis form. This may occur once every x min.
  • Demonic: Fel Devastation causes you to enter demon form for 8 sec after it finishes dealing damage.
  • Soul Barrier: While in Metamorphosis all over-healing done by your abilities adds to a shield absorbing x damage. Also gain x% leech while Metamorphosis is active.

Thank you for reading, please constructively let me know if my ideas are poorly founded.

2 Likes
2

I mean, we ain’t gunna see this level of revamp. Blizzard has already said they aren’t going to do things like that.

In addition, a number of your tiers have DPS talents up against defensive talents, which is really bad. That’s half the issue with Spirit Bomb.

You’re also abandoning some of the improvements that VDH has gotten over time, like the cost removal on Demon Spikes.

1 Like
3

Gottta be honest, doesnt look that appealing to me.

Meta could use some legion love but with the new demonic talent that may be a little too generous.

Going off the current tree simulator on Wowhead i can make a few suggestions but alot of changes are hard to say because solving the base issues with VDH needs to happen first.

However.

Burning Alive is a trap , it has been borderline useless forever and should be replaced with Painbringer, giving us a choice between a heal or mitigation that we can control( soul cleave might need a buff). Rather than choosing between DPS/Defense give us a meaningful choice between healing and mitigation.

Im not sure what to do with the 30 row, they say they made this new tree to give us more options but there is next to no case i can see where we pick anything but spirit bomb, at this point i really dont know why it isnt just a baseline ability, i guess my personal preference is make it baseline and put fracture there, this gives us a choice between some armour, some damage or less carpel tunnel.

The 35 row i really dont know, Soul Rending has only ever had 1 use for me which was necrotic weeks, combined with other sources of leech and decent meta uptime you could tank well over 100 stacks and be totally fine but outside this one M+ affix it is basically worthless.
FTD is ok, i would personally have liked Soul Barrier put here instead of fracture, again giving us a choice between leech, more DS or a reliable shield.

THe 40 row… Sigil of chains should be baseline.

If you want to force a sigil talent row on us make it interesting, like disable sigil X to buff Sigil Y or change how they function in some way. Its been 2 whole expacs and we still have a talent that is basically a macro… with a whole 2 extra seconds of sigil time. LIke reall blizz …

45 and 50 row i dont have much to say, there are talents there that are too strong to make others really a thought, demonic for instance and really last resort.

I mean bulk extraction is an on demand heal with some potenially bursty dps but for most content we will still pick last resort and as for ruinous destruction… im really confused who thought this is a good idea, like for it to have even a remote chance at value you need the mobs to be CCed and not hitting you or be fully healed for the whole channel to get anything out of the shield, so basically its a dud.

Bulk extraction to me is one of the things our kit is missing, an on demand form of survival outside Meta’s 3 min cd our oh s#$% button at that point is to leap the f#$% away , as a tank we should have something like this as a baseline ability, which we havent had ever.

2 Likes
4

Soul Rending has the same problem as our mastery, it’s specifically buffing us when we need it least, when we already have a massive bonus to HP and armor.

5

Yep, plus it’s competing against Fracture, which is simply too good to pass up in 99.9% of scenarios.

6

It’s not even about being too good, it’s that Fracture is the only thing that makes our rotation reasonable. Like, even with the Shadowlands changes, the FtD build rotation is still just spamming Shear ad nauseum. Spammable generators, especially with overcap protection, do not work on tanks. We literally cannot cast anything else, because that something else would have to justify the loss of using that GCD on the generator. With Fracture, we’re guaranteed that 2/3rds of our GCDs cannot be spent on generators, opening up room for consumers, sigils, etc.

2 Likes
7

So I tanked M+ mostly in Legion and no tanking experience in BFA.

That being said, I got some ideas that I’d like to share.
Note: Numbers/row placement is not taken into account. These are just ideas for now.

Baseline Abilities.

  1. Shear is baseline while not in demon form. Shear is changed to Demon Claws when entering demon form.
    So this acts like Chaos Strike/Annihilation in Havoc when its the same ability, only that it gains an additional effect.
  • Demon Claws
    You have a 50% chance to spawn a lesser soul fragment when attacking an enemy.
    The idea here is that since we don't see a weapon in Vengeance Demon Form. Then lets embrace that idea and have your weapon be your claws and your shredding bits of soul from your enemies.

Talents

  1. Soul Generation (Shear/Fracture debacle).
    Seems to me that the only reason fracture was always the go to was to get souls.
    Here are some idea to fix that. Firstly, remove fracture entirely.
  • Fel infused Spikes
    A lesser soul fragment has a 30% chance to spawn when being hit by an enemy while Demon Spikes is active.
    Basically the idea is that they are impaling themselves on your spikes and shredding bits of there soul.
  • Abyssal Crush
    Infernal Strike smashes a lesser soul fragment off of each enemy hit. (Max 5)
    A guaranteed method to acquire souls but its limited by your Infernal Strike charges.
  • Aura of Pain
    Immolation Aura causes a lesser soul fragment to be seared away from each enemy hit. (Max 5)
    We had/have this before I just forgot what form it was in. So I don't feel the need to explain more.
  1. Fury Generation
    These are just ideas that can modify how our defensive CD’s interact.
  • Feed the Demon (Redesign)
    Gain 15 Fury for each soul consumed by Soul Cleave. (Max 5)
    So this would basically work like Demonic Appetite from Havoc but only when used with Soul Cleave.
  1. Defensive Cool downs
    These are just ideas that can modify how our defensive CD’s interact.
  • Demon Scales
    Demon Spikes no longer has a cool down. Instead cost 40 fury.
    Not sure how practical this one is, but if we have low fury generation and forced to use more defensive vs offensive abilities, we can choose how we want to play between more aggressive or defensive situations.
  • Gluttony (Redesign)
    Metamorphosis duration is increased by 2 second for each soul consumed.
    With the addition of the Demonic type play style for vengeance in SL, I think its a neat play style to weave in and out of Demonic. Having said that, maybe a talent like this could compete or compliment Demonic via extending the duration with souls as your consuming them as a power source to keep metamorphosis going.

If this leads to an abundant amount of soul generation, I don’t know if that’s a bad thing if we just add on more soul cost of abilities like the baseline Fel Devastation as that costs only 50 Fury now. Maybe instead, make that cost Fury + souls or just souls etc.

So maybe something like this.

Fury Cost abilities
Demon Spikes (If talented with Demon Scales)
Fiery Brand
Soul Cost abilities
Soul Cleave
Fury & Soul cost abilities
Spirit Bomb
Fel Devastation

8

Frankly, if they returned generating/absorbing 5 soul frags instead of the 2 they nerfed us down to, and they gave us back that 3rd demon spike charge … simple stuff … I’d be happy enough.

9

So, couple key problems. As I’ve noted before, Fracture is critical to our rotation, simply because it cannot be spammed. It’s the only thing that lets us cast other abilities. The fact that the FtD “rotation” is literally just spamming Shear non-stop is ample evidence of this. When you have a spammable generator, anything that would replace it has to justify not using that GCD on the generator. When your generator has a recharge time, you can cast other stuff in between. And when your resource (fragments, in this case) has overcap protection, even the consumers tend to fall by the wayside.

Shield Slam and Thunderclap have CDs. Thrash and Mangle have CDs. Keg Smash has a CD, and Tiger Palm is metered by energy. Judgment has a CD. Runes have a CD. All of these things have CDs specifically to permit other things to be cast during the rotation. Without them, Revenge, Devastate, Swipe, Moonfire, Rushing Jade Wind, Blackout Strike, Hammer of the Righteous, Avenger’s Shield, Blood Boil, Death and Decay, and most talent-based abilities would be pushed entirely out of the rotation, because they wouldn’t be able to justify replacing the generator on a GCD.

Our baseline rotation is identical to what a warrior’s would be if Shield Slam had no CD and Ignore Pain was automatically cast off-the-GCD if the warrior hit 100 rage. They’d just be spamming Shield Slam non-stop, just like the FtD build spams Shear non-stop.

That’s the fundamental problem with our rotation. We must have Fracture to fix that.

Second, your list of talents and baseline effects does not address the most critical resource issue with VDH: pain and soul fragments overlap. Our generator generates both, and our consumers consume both. When you have such, whichever resource is more limiting or less relevant will inevitably become irrelevant.

In our case, fragments are actually slightly more prevalent, but Pain only feeds AP-based healing, while souls provide damage-scaling healing, meaning pain is far less rewarding. As a result, our entire rotation is governed not by pain but by fragments. In fact, our ability to turn pain into healing via 0-fragment Soul Cleaves is so weak that it is commonly sacrificed in favor of more damage (ex. Sigil of Flame) in a Spirit Bomb build, and is often simply ignored in a Shear-based build.

In Legion, we at least had the ability to make the two complimentary via the Legion version of Fracture consuming pain to generate souls. In addition, fragments back then healed for a fixed percentage of our max HP (which largely scaled at the same rate as our AP), meaning they didn’t become as dominant. They need to restore that style of play.

That, or they need to backseat fragments as a whole, and make pain (well, now fury) actually our primary resource. Consider the following:

  • Shear replaced by Fracture.
    • Fracture now generates pain and has a chance to generate a soul fragment.
    • Fracture retains its existing charge system
  • Soul Cleave now heals for %AP, increased by missing HP (similar to Light/Hand of the Protector), and consumes up to 2 fragments. Soul Cleave deals %AP damage, increased by 33% per fragment consumed.
  • Soul Fragments now heal for either %HP or %AP, rather than % damage taken.
    • Lesser Soul Fragments also cannot be proximity-consumed by a VDH.
  • Fallout now amplifies the pain generation of Immo Aura, and has a chance (a true chance) to shatter a fragment per target (currently, it’s guaranteed against the first target, then has a chance per target thereafter).
  • Spirit Bomb redesigned. Now consumes a single soul fragment, causing it to fly at the target and explode for %AP damage.
    • The DH is not healed by the soul fragment, and Spirit Bomb no longer has Frailty.
    • This talent would compete against Flame Crash and another DPS-increasing talent (preferably passive, maybe amplifying Soul Cleave’s damage bonus from souls).
    • The purpose of this talent is a way of turning fragments from a purely defensive resource into a mostly offensive one, similar to Seraphim for Prot (well, BfA version of it), Maul for Guardian, and Revenge for Protection.

The net is that pain becomes our primary resource. It fuels our primary heals, which scale with damage based on missing HP rather than recent damage taken. Fragments, lacking a reliable means to generate them on-demand, become a secondary perk. They provide a bit of extra healing, and amplify the damage of Soul Cleave, but are simply an RNG proc rather than a central piece of our rotation. Spirit Bomb turns into a way of leveraging those souls for damage at the expense of their healing.

2 Likes
10

I’m genuinely, honestly, baffled that Fracture and Spirit Bomb aren’t baseline yet. The rotation flat-out doesn’t work without Fracture and feels absolutely terrible without Spirit Bomb.

I wonder what’s the reasoning behind keeping Shear as our baseline generator and Soul Cleave as our spender. It just sucks! Talents shouldn’t be responsible to make rotations work, they should just make them better.

I also think Fel Devastation should have a 30s cooldown, just like Eye Beam. And let’s all be honest here, Demonic is going to dominate Vengeance’s playstyle. Even with a 45s cooldown I find it hard for Soul Barrier and Void Reaver to compete.

11

Would take me way too long to find it, but I think I remember you suggesting a different fix a while back Xaedys, where Fracture was baseline, Soul Cleave used pain to generate fragments, and then Spirit Bomb (also baseline) used fragments.

I really like that concept, where you have a builder, a builder/spender, and a spender. The fact that we have two unique resources, and both of our main spenders use both feels really bad to me.

12

I did, and that’s another valid way of doing it. However, the more I’ve thought about it, the more I dislike the notion of a dual resource system where both resources are actively generated. On all of the other classes/specs with a dual resource system (DKs, WW and BM monks, Arcane Mages, rogues, feral druids), one of those two resources is passively generated, and the other is actively generated by consuming the first. Having two actively generated resources just adds clunk to the rotation, imo. It’s a multi-step process to generate the resource you care about, requiring one ability to generate resource 1, and then another ability to convert resource 1 into resource 2 for actual use.

It’s overengineered, in my opinion. Removing fragments as a managed resource entirely is, imo, a better design. Spirit Bomb, with this setup, would still permit some active management of them, or at least reacting to them, but we wouldn’t be managing them like we do now.

And honestly, that was our original design. Souls were an RNG proc from Shear. It was the addition of guaranteed spawns via Fracture that really through it through a loop. Blizzard leaned into that in BfA, and we ended up with two overlapping resource systems, which has caused all sorts of issues. We’d be better off going back to the original concept of a single actively-generated resource system, but an RNG-generated secondary resource that we can’t really actively manage, but that simply provides us with occasional perks instead.

13

That’s not really a new concept though. Combo points have worked like that since ever. Soul Shards are pretty much combo points, except they only interact properly with Spirit Bomb. Soul Cleave has a limit of consuming 2 at a time with no increase in damage and (I believe it’s this part is only changing in Shadowlands) healing per soul consumed.

I’d rather just have Spirit Bomb and Fracture baseline honestly. The rotation runs a lot more smoothly and the damage suffers a lot if Spirit Bomb is not picked. Also spamming a generator (Shear) as a tank feels sooooooooooo clunky and underwhelming. Fracture having a cooldown, but generating a lot more Pain and 2 shards instead of 1 feels a lot better and should’ve been how the spec worked from the beginning.

I’m not really a fan of RNG secondary resource generation as a tank. It puts us back at the problem of RNG mitigation that’s kinda plagued us with VoP and Gluttony, even if less impactful.

14

As I pointed out above, combo points work because energy passively regens. Having to actively generated energy, and then do something else active to turn it into CPs before you can actually use it, is just clunky and unfun.

That’s not a fix, that’s a band-aid that entrenches the current problems. Soul Cleave becomes irrelevant (or gone entirely), and we still have two overlapping resource systems, meaning pain continues to be completely irrelevant. That’s why my goal was to remove one of those resource systems entirely.

Not if the healing from fragments is not a significant source of our self-healing. The concept here would be that souls are an occasional perk, and that the vast majority of our self-healing would come from Soul Cleave, since it would scale with missing HP (a form of scaling with damage). This is somewhat akin to the healing from Celestial Fortune (RNG bonus healing received) or orbs (RNG spawn, active consumed) for Brewmaster. Neither of those is their primary source of mitigation or sustain, so it’s just a secondary benefit rather than a core mechanic. Same thing for the RNG reset on Avenger’s Shield combined with the absorb mechanic (currently a trait, baseline in Shadowlands). It provides mitigation on an RNG basis, but isn’t their primary sustain, so it’s just a secondary perk. Bears have RNG rage generation from Gore procs, and if talented for it, Galactic Guardian procs. Prot has RNG mitigation from their Critical Block mechanic, which applies doubly so when they have Shield Block up. Blood has RNG sustain from Bloodworm spawns, given that it’s taken by nearly 100% of BDKs.

None of these are primary sources of sustain, they are simply perks that increase their average sustain, but are not worth gaming or playing around. That’s my goal with soul fragments as well, something that increases our average sustain without being a primary mechanic we play around. Pain is where our primary sustain comes from, just like Runic Power is for DKs.

15

I’m actually fine with the Pain and shards system and I don’t really mind them. And yeah, that would mean Soul Cleave is gone for good. Good riddance.

Even then, I’m just not a fan of RNG on tanks. I like tanking as Vengeance, but really hate the random Meta procs simply because I have no control over them, granted this is a loooooooooooot more impactful than the proposed changes.

I guess this just ultimately comes as a matter of taste, just like how we discussed Demonic baseline. I’m all in if a better system takes the place of the current one (Pain (Fury in Shadowlands) and Soul Shards), but I don’t really mind if it doesn’t.

16

And that’s my point. The issue with RNG procs as a tank scales exponentially with their impact. Gluttony procs are a critical issue, because Meta compared to no Meta is the difference between being quite squishy and being functionally immortal.

Take, for example, if fragments healed you for only, say, 2% of your max HP, while Soul Cleave healed for, say, 20% of your max HP if you’re at 50% HP. The addition of a soul fragment to that Soul Cleave would be a 10% gain to one Cleave (and you’d likely be popping a couple back to back to heal back up). It’s not a significant impact, so it matter way way less.

17

Crikey!

Just going by the TL:DR:
As a gameplay perspective, Fracture allows the player some amount of breathing in GCDs! Much like how Rockbiter was an option for early Legion, then swapped to become baseline, while the spam option was available as a talent.

If we combine it with Shear, it defeats a design purpose of avoiding the GCD cap. Likewise, if we remove it as a talent, there would be no such option.

If Fracture was to become baseline, would replace Shear, as it’s role is very different now, to what it was in Legion.

18

You know what? I think they totally should make at least Fracture baseline and replace it with the Soulmonger trait. This way we would have choice between more leech, absorb shields per soul consumed and more uptime on Demon Spikes.

The other two just cannot compete with Fracture, it’s impossible. Plus Fracture is so core to the spec at this point it really should be made baseline already.

I don’t think they’d want to rework the resources on any spec in the game anymore as they’ve already stated, so I think this is the most logical solution to go forward.

19

I’m a fan. Though to be honest, I’d prefer the third option on that tier be either an active effect, or something that requires active actions. Like soul consumption reducing Meta CD or something.

20

Then just replace Feed the Demon’s cooldown reduction on Demon Spikes with Metamorphosis. I find that talent pretty bad anyway, so I wouldn’t mind it being replaced.

This way we have some competition between talents and Soul Rending actually synergizes with Spirit Bomb and Demonic, while the other two can stand as solid options on their own. Plus all of them would scale extremely well into later stages of the expansion.