The vengance changes are extremely underwhelming

While I generally agree with what you say, I’d absolutely hate this form of Spirit Bomb. You directly compare it to Seraphim, which does sacrifice a good deal of tankiness(2 charges of SotR), but you also gain a tiny bit of passive tankiness from the secondary stats provided(Crit=Parry, Haste=GCD, Mastery=Consecration damage reduction and block. Minor things, but they are there).

I’d be all for Spirit bomb losing the heal from consuming the souls or the frailty debuff but losing both basically makes it completely worthless, especially if our Souls would be completely RNG. You have acknowledged several times that our TPS and damage is trash without it. Yet, you also feel okay with removing its heal, removing the debuff and making it a psuedo ranged spell that we may or may not be able to use it when we need threat and damage the most?

It would literally be worthless and not even an option in that form. At least, that’s my opinion of course.

Could work. Though I’d kinda like something like Chaos Brand to be tweaked into Vengeances Mastery. (leave the debuff as is for both specs,). Like, change our Mastery to Demonic Brand or even Charrged Warblades. "Enemies afflicted with Chaos Brand do X% less physical damage to you(halved for magical affects). Additionally, heal for Y% of all fire damage dealt.(with a cap, obviously).

I dunno, probably a horrible idea but, outside of the attack power, our Mastery is completely worthless. It needs either more passive mitigation built into it, or more affects. If not both.

Bears get more health, receive more healing and get attack power. Paladins get damage reduction in Consecration, increased block and attack power. Warriors get increased block, increased critical block chance and attack power. Monks get stacking dodge when hit or using Blackout Strike(resetting on successful dodge) and increased attack power. Blood DK’s get a % of Death Strikes heal as a physical absorb shield and attack power. And then we have VDH, we get attack power and a buff to Demon Spikes.

Arguably, Blood DK’s and VDH both have weak a weaker mastery(compared to everything else) but at least Blood has something that is always useful, even if it doesn’t feel impactful(though it can be pretty good at reducing physical damage taken in the long run). Our Mastery may as well be “increases attack power by X”. So yea, why not merge our Mastery with Charred Warblades and give us something else, maybe increased Parry(since shield folks get block), or damage reduction added onto our tattoos. We are Parry based tanks, one would think our mastery would reflect that, just like Warriors and Paladins get a mastery that reflects their blocking ability. I dunno, we need something though, you know?

TLDR: Probably bad ideas, sleep deprived. Rambled. So it goes.

1 Like

It’s more of a band-aid fix than anything, because I don’t expect big overhauls to come, although they are VERY much needed on some parts.

1 Like

Oh I agree.

Honestly, while I do enjoy this girl, part of me wishes they’d just bring Ranged Survival back. Was sad when my main of over a decade got deleted. I’d go back to that in a heartbeat since Blizzard can’t seem to get Vengeance figured out.

And, sleep times! Maybe. Insomnia sucks.

1 Like

That’s a fair criticism. However, do note that I also compared it to Revenge, which is a sacrifice of rage (IP absorb) for purely DPS. You can’t even argue it from an Azerite trait perspective, since the free casts from avoidance resets are more than sufficient to keep Callous Reprisal stacked (and also, the trait is pretty “meh” to start with).

I could see Frailty staying on it, though. 10% leech isn’t that significant, even in AoE, but it’s certainly something.

Our DPS and TPS is trash right now without it. This entire thing assumes that our kit is balanced towards reasonable DPS without it, especially since the redesign wouldn’t have it replacing Soul Cleave anymore.

I mean, we shouldn’t be tolerating a talent design where our baseline kit literally lacks the tools to properly hold threat, and we’re forced to choose between survivability and actually doing our job as a tank. If that’s not fixed, nothing else really matter, because VDH is still going to be garbage even if we’re flat immortal.

Ya, that’s valid, especially with Soul Cleave consuming the souls regularly. Maybe just remove the soul requirement from it entirely, then. Make it be a cooldown or charge metered ability that’s there mostly for ranged threat, some extra AoE and ST damage increase , and maybe a bit of healing from Frailty or some other ancillary effect. It’s intended to compete with other DPS-increasing talents like Abyssal Strike (Flame Crash effect) and Felblade. Somewhat like warlocks’ Burning Rush tier, two increase mobility somehow, as well as DPS, and one reduces our dependency on mobility (ranged attack for picking up adds), as well as adding DPS.

Not sure I like it being integrated with Chaos Brand, especially since that has a permanent uptime in PvE. That said, they could lean harder into the Charred Warblade concept:

Charred Warblades
Dealing Fire damage with Vengeance abilities heals you for X% of the damage done, and reduces the damage done to you by the target by Y% for 12 seconds.

Basically amounts to the same, a 100% uptime DR, but a bit more flavorful, has a bit more nuance and skill factor to it, and arguably is a bit more thematic.

Also, to double down on this:

I wouldn’t even be satisfied with that. Even split in half, more better masteries don’t work for tanks, or at least not for sub-100% AM uptime tanks. They changed the Paladin mastery in BfA for exactly this reason, because by the end of Legion, the difference between having SotR up and not was rapidly approaching the difference between absolute immortality and “why am I dead?” There’s absolutely zero reason we should be stuck with the exact same mechanic. We’re a sub-100% AM tank, and we need an always-active mastery as a result (and not just half of it, all of it).

Fun fact: bear mastery is effectively just straight up DR. Since it increases both healing taken and health by the same percentage, it both reduces healing pressure and increases one-shot threshold. Mathematically, a bear mastery of X% is identical a flat DR bonus of 1 - 1/(1 + X%). If the bear has, for example, 25% mastery (impossibly high, but easier for numbers, that’s identical to a 1 - 1/(1+0.25) = 1 - 0.8 = 20% DR. In all respects (except for the numbers on the meter), they act as if they received 20% less damage than they did.

1 Like

I agree. I just suggested a basic compromise Blizzard could make that would make Vengeance better even if just a little.


I also think Blizzard should make Vengeance’s Metamorphosis a bit more interesting by changing how our abilities work in it in a fundamental level, not just increasing Soul Shard generation by one.

With Fracture being made baseline in place of Shear, maybe turn it into Demon Claws while in Meta and make it cleave up to two more targets with no extra souls by cleaved target.

Also make Soul Cleave leave a dot that helps with threat generation and damage. Something like you scar your target’s very soul, making it bleed for X damage for Y seconds for a flavor text or something like that, idk.

The talent trees are also majorly underwhelming on several rows and the more I look at Demonic, the more I think it should be made baseline for both specs. I’ve said it before, but weaving in and out of demon form defines the fantasy of the class so very well that it’s such a missed opportunity to let it like it is right now. It also makes a lot easier to balance with having it in mind.

3 Likes

I hope in one of the upcoming class design interviews someone asks a pointed question about vengeance mastery.

1 Like

Ya, something like:

Prot paladin mastery in Legion increased the effectiveness of Shield of the Righteous. In Battle for Azeroth, this was changed to block chance and damage reduction via Consecrate, and the development team explicitly stated that it was because it was creating too large of a difference between having SotR up and having it down, and devaluing mastery as a result. Given that, why has the Vengeance mastery not been changed, given that it has the exact same issues?

2 Likes

I would be happy with vengeance if it got an ability to drain chunks of fury and enter ‘pseudo-meta form’… mastery reduces the fury drain per second.

Lets us play around with meta a bit more, makes mastery interesting and gives us something for when AM is down.

The more I’ve thought about it from another thread, the more inclined I am to think that a MoP Demo capacitor-style Meta system would be amazeballs for Vengeance. It would give us much better control over our durability, it would reward resource generation properly, it would be hella thematic, and a ton of fun to boot.

Basically, Meta becomes a toggle rather than a cooldown (we’d obviously need something else as our major CD, maybe Demon Spikes re-imagined as a Shield Wall type ability). While in Meta, our fury drains continuously at an ever-increasing rate, but we gain substantial durability, damage, and self-healing bonuses. We’d exit Meta when we hit the button again, or when we run out of fury. Our entire gameplay would revolve around generating fury to fuel Meta, and then shifting into our demon form regularly as our form of “active mitigation”. Skilled players would learn when to time their meta for maximum impact, and how to maximize pain generation to maximize Meta’s overall uptime. The increasing drain over time would encourage being in meta for relatively short periods of time, akin to the 4-7s duration of other tank AMs right now. Shifting in an out would also be off the GCD, to encourage regular use woven into our rotation. Mastery could either improve our fury generation, decrease the drain in meta, or provide a general bonus. With that much control over when we’re in meta, a mastery that bonuses how often we can be in it or how long we can remain in it (rather than how durable we are while in it) would actually probably be pretty solid.

The only issue is that it would represent a huge change to Vengeance, and Blizzard appears to be sticking to their “we’re not actually putting effort into class changes” ethos for SL.

2 Likes

Just to note for the guy who said monks were garbage in WoD, that’s not how I remember it at all. It wasn’t until HFC when they finally nerfed Guard that anyone considered BrM not absurdly OP.

Re: VDH, they haven’t solved Spirit Bomb and don’t appear to be seriously interested in looking at other aspects of our talents. I think the best we can hope for is that the numbers work out that our baseline mit is okay and that they tune our damage a lot better so that we can compete with specs that can spam AoE.

All of our power right now, defensive and offensive, is borrowed, and that feels terrible to me. I’m cautiously optimistic about Demonic from a mitigation chaining standpoint, but who can know?

I’ll be watching from over on my Fae DK, enjoying the need to only have 1 weapon.

I have 0 faith that Day 1BfA persistent class problems are going to be fixed when they still haven’t started to address them.

Shear spam should never have been a good option.

1 Like

If only Blood DK felt better in dungeons right now. :-/

Indeed thats how i remember BRM .

It really makes me scratch my head with our talents …

The only saving grace i see so far is we wont have a repeat of BFA beta, when everyone cried how OP VDH was, leading to nerfs and that turned out so well…

Considering how many specs in alpha seem borked it may be to early to throw in the towel but between relatively meh covenants and how beastly DK and Pally look we may be locked down for yet another expansion of mediocrity.

as for now the 1 sec dodge during blade dance is there and it seems the only thing is the amount of damage receive during blur is 35% from 50% everything else looks the same,
we might get scare for a sec but we need to start paying attention to the ranks, lol final ranks looks the same, but reading this looks like

-Fell rush only have one charge, didn’t see anything about another rank. I might be wrong,
meta instead stun now just daze, that sucks =( having a 4min CD I was expecting to be a worthy skill to use.

-Glaives now just bounce from the target once and not 2 =( I love using the glaives

  • soul rending: Leech increased by 10%.5%.
    Gain an additional 10%25% Leech while Metamorphosis is active. I think they want us to use more meta more often, but with 4 min CD =( this will be bad in PVP

as tanks our talent abysal strike doesn’t add the 10 yards =(

It’s not clear if it is or not. The dodge is present in the tooltip the same way rank-up mutations are present in other tooltips, but without a corresponding rank-up to provide it. It’s also apparently not present or active in the tooltip on the alpha. We honestly have no idea whether this is intended or not.


Blur is going from 35% right now to 20% in SL. It only has 50% right now with Desperate Instincts, and will have 35% with the same in SL.


https://shadowlands.wowhead.com/spell=320416/fel-rush

Fel Rush Rank 2
Requires Demon Hunter (Havoc)
Requires level 28
Fel Rush gains an additional charge.

The Daze is only against players, it still stuns in PvE. Also, this isn’t any different from BfA, the exact same behavior is already present on live:

and stunning them for 3 sec. Players are Dazed for 3 sec instead.


https://shadowlands.wowhead.com/spell=320386/throw-glaive

Throw Glaive Rank 2
Requires Demon Hunter
Requires level 23
Throw Glaive ricochets to an additional target.


The increase in the Meta benefit is because Meta no longer has any leech baseline. Right now, we get 10% out of meta and 40% in meta (20% baseline +10% at all times from Soul Rending + 10% additional in meta from Soul Rending). In SL, we’ll have 5% out of meta and 30% in meta (0% baseline + 5% at all times from Soul Rending + 25% additional in meta from Soul Rending). Net is a 50% reduction in our out-of-meta leech and a 25% reduction in our in-meta leech.

1 Like

VDH got blade dance in SL ?

News to me

1 Like

We all wish, my friend. We all wish.

thanks for explaining with details.

Similar thought I had was for fel devastation to have it’s cd reduced by spending fury. Some thing like ‘base 30 sec cd, and then 1 sec reduced by X amount of fury spent’

Vengeance looks to be the bottom tank according to Alpha data I have looked at.

Blizzard might believe the class is fine but vengeance looks really bad on alpha.

In before anyone says “bUt ItS aLpHa”… yeah vengeance has been bad for almost 2 full years in BFA. It’s core issues were never addressed. 100% not about to be suboptimal for 2 more years.

I have a friend who has alpha access and he’s been streaming me vengeance playstyle etc. It’s basically back to spirit bomb and fel dev uptime is so bad. There’s significant downtime in our active mitigation. Will be 100% BFA all over again without seeing any of the soulbind system.

2 Likes