Sinful Brand is underwhelming next to The Hunt

Covenants should be a topic brought up as we move into the coming patches. This is a topic of the performance of sinful brand in relation to the hunt spell so let’s lay out some context surrounding them. I would first like to talk PVE and then shift to pvp.

While kyrian was the clear outlier for vengeance since the dawn of the expansion, many dh’s were led to believe venthyr was the same for havoc. This is very much not the case. Due to last minute nerfs to venthyr and buffs/rework to the hunt, sinful brand has immensely fallen out of flavor. From data at warcraft logs we can see venthyr trails behind night fae in almost every single situation(the exception being sludgefist which has 1 min burst profiles for the fight.) This is also true in mythic plus where venthyr lags behind night fae significantly.

PVE:

While venthyr might SIM well, which is what many sites pre expansion would make their tier lists off of, it does not perform well next to the hunt. The hunt is INCREDIBLY easy to use and fit into normal play. It does huge upfront single target and leaves a sizable dot on 5 mobs which is about 66% of the strength of the sinful brand. Sinful brand use cant compete with this at all when simply talking about the single target dot even if the cd is 1 min vs 1.5.

In order to make sinful brand do well you need to make incredibly good use of the meta application on a 4 minute cool down. This means you have to choose between where is best to use meta for the 30 seconds of demon form or best to use meta for the dot application. Compared to a simple 1.5 min cd that just does great damage to both a boss and a trash pack(because of the huge dot that hits 5 targets) sinful brand requires immensely good set ups to even come close. The likely hood of most players to find the situation where sinful will out do the easy to use hunt is close to 0. Where sinful brand shines is when you pull a silly amount of mobs in a dungeon and you meta on top of them. Honestly it would be better to just cap the targets hit by the dot on meta and just up the damage since hitting the amount of targets required to out do the hunt’s 3 uses in the amount of time would be very difficult.

PVP:

The situation in pvp is even worse than pvp. Not only does night fae have VASTLY better soulbinds and soulshape but burst damage is incredibly important in pvp. I would honest go so far as to say night fae’s Hunt is the only reason dh is actually playable in pvp at a high level. The hunt provides immense 1 hit burst AND gives you a 25% leech buff against the target, something that was ripped away from dh before shadowlands.

Sinful brand on the other hand gives you a large dot, the damage is good but unfortunately it can easily be dispelled and even if it isnt dispelled since it isnt instant damage like the hunt, it can be healed through quite easily. If you look at pvp representation you can see it is abysmal but you can also see that all of them are night fae if above even 2k cr.

Other than aesthetic, which I think venthyr is awesome for, I could never recommend any demon hunter player to EVER go venthyr, there is 0 reason when kyrian is so busted for vengeance and night fae is not only more fun but also better in almost every scenario conceivable for havoc.

TLDR: Sinful brand is balanced around the meta application but tuned too low compared to the hunt while being much harder to use effectively. It performs incredibly poorly compared to night fae in all recorded locations, and is even worse in pvp than pve comparatively.

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You aren’t wrong…Sinful Brand and Venthyr are underwhelming compared to NF. Except from the Aesthetic side of things, Venthyr wins that hands down. Did you swap or always NF? I’m on the Venthyr shortbus, waiting hoping for a buff/change. I don’t want to swap and loose everything at this point.

Brand is also just a boring click and forget spell. Only thing its got going for it is its instant.

I swapped very early on because regardless of what icy veins says the hunt does very well dps wise especially in mythic + and is the only viable pvp covenant.

Great write up! I’m hoping the covenants get “fixed” by 9.1. If not I’ll end up going Night Fae.

Venthyr was in it’s original iteration on beta hands down best in all situations holy crap awesome and then got nerfed into the ground since nobody took anything else. so it definitely needs some help in it’s current form. they way over nerfed it in beta and haven’t bothered to adjust since

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I did swap yes, it’s unquestionable how much better it feels in pretty much all content. You dont lose the venthyr progress, if you ever swap back you have the exact same anima count, renown, upgrades etc. The catch up is very very fast on renown if you have callings unfinished as well since those often give one.

In order to be good in pvp, venthyr needs a mechanical change rather than just tuning, something in order of magnitude like a unstable affliction dispel backlash on sinful brand (fits because venthyr are big on punishment) or just undispellable. PVE is easier to fix with just tuning.

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in pve with bosses they dont get slow attacks 30% =( so you only get the dot of damage, while hunt gets the damage and your heals

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Yeah the hunt feels very overloaded to be honest. I don’t think it should be brought down though as much as others brought up.

No, its just that the rest of them are under powered compared to most options.

I mean I agree, but my goal is to highlight how Sinful Brand’s optimal use is way harder to achieve than the hunt comparatively due to it being tied to meta, a 4 min cd. It needs something extra especially in the pvp department like a UA dispel backlash. The hunt feels very impactful and good in all content, the same can’t be said for SB.

Edit: hopefully with more covenant stuff along the way in 9.1 they can help out non night fae dh’s feel better by making their improvements strong.

i would say in blizz mind, sinful brand is not caped to 5 targets so you could more damage the more mobs, but in reality normal players don’t have packs bigger than 6 so not really a valid point.

  • 1to5 cap in 1.5 min vs 1 cap in 1 min
  • 1to5 cap in 1.5 min vs unlimited cap in 4 min

The last one is a scenario that will be hardly seen. each covenant skill provide 2 things.

  • Hunt:
    • 1 Damage
    • 2 Leach/HP
  • Sinful brand:
    • 1 Damage over time
    • 2 Slow target for 30%

Bosses and other mobs cant be slow down, so you only get one benefic of the covenant while the hunt will always provide the 2)

in PVP:

  • Sinful brand: i haven’t notice any big difference slowing down another player that is worthy as a defensive strategy. and the dot take to long to be worthy and can be dispel or heal in the duration since is not a big burst.
    -The Hunt can be dispel but since the range is a lot, is hard for all classes to be in reach to do it. and provide instant damage at the beginning as a big burst. and HP to endure the fight.

there is no brain on why choose the hunt over Sinful brand . and specially if you are a tank since hunt scale with master, while havoc doesn’t. (isn’t it weird?)

This is what I was getting at in the main post, no one will realistically get more targets in the meta sinful uncapped than the amount of damage the hunt would do in the down time, also take into consideration you have then used you main cd and dont have it for another optimal time. Sinful is much harder to make work. There are some torghast powers that make the brand cleave to 2 nearby targets, It would be nice to see some changes away from meta and more towards consistent damage. The dot damage profile vs burst is fine but tying it to meta itself makes it far too hard to utilize.

The life steal just puts the hunt over the edge in pvp as we lost baseline lifesteal going into SL so we are sorely needing help there and it just patches that issue up. Sinful needs a mechanical change in pvp like I said above to help it out, as well as a damage buff honestly.

This just show site like ice vein never reliable

yep never believe internet