Tank Threat and VDH Issues

Classes Demon Hunter
1

Tank Threat:

There appears to be an ongoing issue with tank threat at the start of pulls but more specifically VDH. You can full channel a fel devastation, drop two sigil of flames and a sigil of spite and still struggle to hold aggro even at the start of pulls against some classes. Going further, our only solution after the pull is spirit bomb in uncapped AoE. Spirit bomb is mostly used at 4 souls, occasionally 5, however, that would put spirit bomb doing 200k damage or 250k damage respectively on its initial burst - which is actually nothing damage. That damage is also reduced beyond 8 targets.

Unholy death knight, balance druid, elemental shaman, devastation evoker and many more are all casually bursting for 10-15+ million dps in packs in 10+ keys on packs with more than 10+ mobs. The VDH is struggling to break 3 million dps sustained.

VDH talent issues:

Looking at the top right-hand-side of the specialization tree in VDH, there are essentially 4 talents that are never picked:

  • Retaliation (generates high threat but we can never take it because of point allocation)
  • Meteoric strikes (a nothing talent)
  • Soul Barrier / Bulk Extraction
  • Revel in Pain

The core mechanic for VDH is generating soul fragments and consuming these souls, yet 8 talent points have to be taken to effectively do our core rotation wrt frailty:

  • Spirit bomb, Void Reaver, Painbringer, Soulmonger, Vulnerability, Soulcrush

Summary and potential solutions:

In short, tanking doesn’t feel good when the core mechanic we are now worrying about is threat. The choice between threat and survivability is a fine line and we are having to draw that line far too much because usually those conflict with each other just to obtain threat. Blizzard has made tanking feel much better wrt the reduction of tank busters and the “smoothness” of damage, but I think this is one of the things they can improve on to make the mythic+ experience even more enjoyable.

For the talent point and tank threat issues, I think a solution could be to make demon spikes baseline and let us be able to take retaliation to at least help with some of the threat issues on pull for starters. There are other issues with talent points and allocation as I mentioned above, but I think it’s not fun to struggle with threat as a gameplay mechanic.

5 Likes
2

I too am tired of ripping off of tanks and dying.

1 Like
3

What is your opener when you pull a pack?

4

Yeah, it’s a bummer when you play with newbie DPS who bursts the second you enter the fight, rather than giving the DH 2 seconds to establish their agro. If they could just fix sigil of glame and throw glaive/reavers glaive bugs that would solve a lot, would barely have to care for the other bugs.

5

VDH has 3 issues with threat:

  1. It has threat bug with mobs who aren’t in combat. I guess it has something with tank threat modifier. If you aren’t in combat with a mob, it doesn’t treat you as a tank.
  2. VDH requires too many gcds to maximize its opener: the hunt → glaive → fiery brand → chains → cleave ↔ fracture → sigils (1s delay). Generally, we need 6 gcds + 1s sigil delay to actually start bursting.
  3. It has no tool to deal with unpredicted agro loss situations, such as a few mobs losing agro, or mobs coming outside of the pull. If it was one NPC, you can still be fine if you don’t miss taunt. If there are more than one and you don’t have sigils, then you have to risk running to them to spam cleave and pray.

at least it feels good to be an immortal tank. current VDH is like shadowlands s3-4 BDK with a bit less dps.

6

i am only playing at the +7 key level right now, but there a couple of thoughts I’ll share from my average player base.

this is all from a trash pack perspective.

threat generation is a problem at the beginning of a pull. you have to save resources from previous pulls to be able to have a good opener.

assuming the tank does that, then there are two issues. one in our control and the other outside

outside first: dps unleashes everything before the gather is completed.

well, they are going to get aggro and die. as the kids like to say “skill issue”

inside our control:

i watched a great yoda video on s2 pulling. his main idea was to use the mobility of VDH to get ahead of the dps.

start the next pull before the dps have finished off the last pull they can’t rip aggro if they aren’t there.

I found for myself as I took this much more aggressive, attacking approach, i had far fewer threat issues and my success in timing keys went up substantially.

it puts a lot of pressure on the healer and I have to constantly mash my big defensives, but it works.

I think retaliation ought to be built into demons spikes the and work much more like druid’s thorns. retaliation might be a very good threat generator, but it is in a horrible place in the tree.

extended spikes or calcified spikes ought to just have in built in or something.

i will echo the idea that all of our abilities that do damage should have substatial threat modifiers. anything that puts us in combat should be treated as if we are in combat.

from a hero talent perspective, if reavers glaive is a capstone talent, then it should be the highest threat generation thing we have, whether casted in or out of combat. it should have the effect of a taunt.

as the class is designed right now, I will continue to work on being a much more attacking tank and try to stay ahead of the dps so that I have time to gain a threat advantage.

7

use spb at 4-5 souls, immo in multi target gets you at that level of souls, save souls from last pull for next pull

retaliation does nothing for threat, if you parry a mob then the talent doesnt do damage. thus is generates no threat.

i have 0 threat issues on my vdh and other vdh players can atest to it as well who are will into 16-17 keys. you just have to adapt.

retaliation does 0 damage thus 0 threat despite saying it generates huge threat. like TG blizzard tooltips are generally wrong.

meteoric strikes is nice to have tbh, using infernal strike offensively when your at a peak of mastery is fun so theres that i guess. but ya it does nothing

soul barrier sucks to much to be consider, bulk extraction needs to be deleted. it was a dps loss since its inception and absolutely abyssmal in st. 1 soul in 1min wow.

revel in pain has the same bug and issues it always has where multiple brands will delay its effect for upward for a minute. really served no purpose should be removed.

every tank has a specific row of talents to function properly. this isnt new, thats how talent trees work. theyre supposed to reward leveling by giving you points to spend on things that you used to get baseline as you level before talent trees.

there really isnt a choice. you can go full pillow and still keep threat if you have rotational mastery of the spec. hence why nospb builds are a thing for players who can be aggressive enough as vdh to make it work.

i feel like you should post a log so we can get to the bottom of your issues instead of calling for wide spread misinformed reform. vdh is a tank that wants you to press buttons and punishes downtime

you also have to tell yoru dps to wait 3 seconds or more if your playing reaver. or they will rip aggro. unless your playing felscarred, felscarred is goated for that.

if you want to go reaver then your opener is strike/sigil (spb as you fly if you have souls from last pull), immo, the hunt, glaive, fracture, sc.do rotation normally so ideally you have 3 globals before you start generating threat.

you ultimately just have to be really aggressive with vdh and cycle your defensives. it doesnt help that reavers glaive for some reason doesnt generate t hreat…

it would be better if they made it work on every damage event that happens during spike. rn its useless cause it does 0 dam and doesnt work if you parry. so for a tank that relies on parry for m+, it ends up being a waste of a talent point. procs like once every blue moon and gets worse as you get more crit for more parry

8

Are you not running SpB? If you aren’t, then there is your problem. We have some bugged issues with threat, for sure. However, I can assure you it’s something you’re doing on your end if you’re not holding threat.

9

In this discussion, a couple times the phrase “big defensives” has been used. I’m new to VDH. What are those big defensives? Offhand I think of Metamorphosis, Fiery Brand, and Darkness.

Do y’all also include big-heals in that list like Fel Devestation? Any others that I’m missing?

10

fel dev, brand, meta, darkness are your big defensives

its hard to label things as such cause each thing in vdhs kit works together and needs to be cycled or paired

1 Like
11

OK, thanks much. It feels weird that my perception of the dps specs I run have more/better defensive o-s### buttons. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.

Much obliged.

12

np, also one last word of advice, drop the concept of a “oh s***” button, those dont exist. you pull around your biggest defensive (meta in this case)

leaving nay defensive unpressed for majority of the dungeon really just makes you weaker in the long run

1 Like
13

demon spikes also has to be timed to a certain extent. you will not have 100% uptime on them (even with feed the demon and extended spikes, you will have gaps). so planning to have them up at critical moments is, well, critical. not having spikes up with a physical tank buster could easily get you deleted.

the hunt’s healing can be used as a proactive measure to get your healing up on a target when you expect incoming damage or as a catch up to damage taken.

and fel devastation is not only a big self heal, it puts you into meta giving you an automatic defensiveness for 5 seconds (via demonic talent)

and never forget mobility. vengeful retreat or infernal strike can put you out of range of a big hit. they can’t hit you you aren’t there. I’m looking at YOU Sir Braunpyke (in priory)

VDH is sort of a middle ground between other tanks like BDK and prot warrior.

BDK makes up for getting chunked with death strike afterwards self-healing
prot warrior keeps up shield block and ignore pain to prevent/absorb damage in the first place.

VDH runs preventative measures (like demon spikes/frailty/painbringer) and then catches up after damage with all of your heals (thrill of the fight/the hunt/fel dev/leech/spirit bomb/etc etc) plus it has the other abilities you noted for the big intake moments.

also making sure that you are keeping up frailty on the mobs. this is, of course, built into your rotation, but you also need to keep in mind that at the beginning of m+ pulls you won’t have stacks.

this make VDH feel backwards sometimes, meaning you are using defensives early in a pull and relying on your rotation/frailty/leech later into the pull.

also, if you are running aldrachi, you might hold your reaver glaive until a big hit is coming to use the increased healing you generate from your combo that procs thrill of the fight (increase healing by 15%)

this is certainly not intended to be a top 1% guide or whatever, because I am not that kind of player, but you can get a feel for the weaving of your various resources together.

1 Like
14

To add to Baradakas. SC applies an additional stack of frailty to whatever you have targeted. In general, keep the mob with the tank buster as your primary target (big momma, azerite extractors, waste processing for example). That way you can keep high frailty stacks going. Provided you’re not undergeared, high frailty stacks and spikes alone will be enough to laugh off a tank buster until higher keys. I’m not saying doing use meta, fd, or brand. But frailty is extremely powerful when it’s used properly.

1 Like