VDH Buffs Incoming - Updated PTR Notes

Classes Demon Hunter
1

Quote from the 8.2 Preview by Wowhead

  • Guardian Buffs, Vengeance Buffs. They are aware vengeance is useless outside demon spikes. They are aware bears don’t have control on their life. Buffs are in the lines of incoming rage and cost reduction to Iron Fur.

  • Blizzard is aware of the problem of having only DH give magic damage and Monks give physical damage . They want to fix it by giving other classes other interesting buffs, but not the same for multiple classes.

I don’t play VDH, but play bear, and I am glad we are getting noticed.

Edit: Updated with the PTR Notes

Demon Hunter

  • Vengeance
    • Demonic Wards: damage reduction increased to 15% (was 10%).
    • Demonic Wards: armor bonus increased to 100% (was 80%).
    • Demon Spikes: armor reduced to 60% of Agility (was 85%).
      • Developers’ notes: More than other tanks, Vengeance is currently dealing with the problem of low mitigation when their active mitigation is down. These changes are a substantial increase to physical mitigation when Demon Spikes is down, and a neutral-to-very-slight increase when Demon Spikes is active. There is also some overall passive reduction to magic damage. Overall, Vengeance’s sustained damage taken will be lower, and the periods of vulnerability outside of Demon Spikes should be less dramatic.
5 Likes
2

I am very excited they specified outside DS. I hope we get a good chunk more armor. If they wanted to toss us that sweet % damage buff they hooked up 4 legged fur bag friends that would be sweet too.

3

By the Nine let it be so. We shall once more be feared (I hope).

4

why they being so vague?? like shouldn’t some of the changes be on the ptr? these specs been broken awhile please don’t tell me they are only now realizing these things

1 Like
5

Class tuning changes always come in a bit further along in the PTR for major patches, and the PTR isn’t even up yet. Patience. :smiley:

1 Like
6

The biggest thing I would like to see would be giving us the darkness ability back. We had it in Legion beta but they removed it from us for fear of vengeance being over powered.

Having a raid cool down would be a very nice addition to our tool kit. And darkness is already thematically in line with demon hunters it’s not like they would have to come up with a new spell or even animations.

5 Likes
7

Buffs for both specs need to be severe, numerous and clear in detail

A few tiny changes here or there don’t begin to address the issue that specs like VDH feel fundamentally broken in multiple ways with their legion artifact removal

8

I don’t think we’ll see fundamental mechanics redesign until 9.0. I think we’re just in for a baseline mitigation increase, a healing increase (possibly but not necessarily through a buff to Soul Cleave), changes to Demon Spikes cooldown or duration, or some combination of any of them.

I think we’ll see an almost complete rework in 9.0. I expect that Soul Bomb gameplay will be on the chopping block, and we’ll maybe even see Pain disappear as a resource, or see it get completely reworked.

9

well if they are focused solely on numerical changes like DS uptime, cooldown potency, etc. then the spec will continue to feel wrong for the rest of the expansion primarily stemming from this soul cleave vs. spirit bomb issue and pain capping

10

Not to disappoint, but during the T&E video, they had asked if some underpowered specs would be receiving even mini reworks, and they claimed that these would only be tweaks to #s and there would be no severe gameplay changes to specs.

11

This doesn’t matter, because Demon Spike is the bread and butter of VDH. Go look at your Armor rating when you press the ability for Demon Spikes there is about a 1 in 5 chance that it will NOT give its armor buff, but still gives its parry buff. VDH fail because blizzard cant design a class any more, its just like the gear, it fails to proc often as well. So unless they are even aware of this, or plan to give some major changes to support the failed Demon Spike proc it doesn’t matter. We have random health because our core ability blows and doesn’t work.

1 Like
12

They need to make Demon Spike like Shield Block while exchanging the Armor buff into a straight % passive by default.

13

  • Demonic Wards: damage reduction increased to 15% (was 10%).

  • Demonic Wards: armor bonus increased to 100% (was 80%).

  • Demon Spikes: armor reduced to 60% of Agility (was 85%).

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/rise-of-azshara-ptr-initial-class-changes/149899

1 Like
14

I actually dont mind these changes. That is a hefty buff without making us broken.

Far and away the most passive magic mitigation baseline of any tank with a potential 21% with void reaver not counting a high verse set.

This is pretty much in line with what o would have hoped for. A bit of a dps increase would be cool too.

1 Like
15

It’s just missing an update to VDH Meta. It actually gets worse with a baseline armor buff :stuck_out_tongue:

16

That is truth. Now its just a chunk of hp and leech essentially.

What makes me sad is waiting until 8.2 to go live to get these changes. At the end of the day they could put those in a hot fix right now and the game would be better for it. Nothing in that proposed solution is tier tilting. It just makes us not squishier than your average clothie outside of DS.

3 Likes
17

Doesn’t it make meta better? I always thought meta increased your armour by 100% of post Demonic Wards armour increase, is that wrong? How does meta work then?

18

It does double your armor, yes, and the change to Demonic Wards makes Meta slightly better, but it’s essentially irrelevant. Part of the problem is that the diminishing returns curve on armor is insanely harsh in BfA, and all of the AM being armor bonuses really doesn’t help that at all.

For numbers, on my VDH, Meta is currently a 20.81% damage reduction on live, or 14.62% if DS is up (the why on this is because the armor granted by DS is not multiplied by Meta or by Demonic Wards. It’s a flat addition, which massively reduces the benefits of doubling your armor before that addition).

In Rise of Azshara, Meta becomes a 22.12% reduction, or a 16.71% reduction if DS is up. So the change does increase the potency of Meta, but only trivially. Excluding the other damage reduction impacts the change has, the change to meta represents roughly a 1.5-2.5% decrease in damage taken during Meta.

19

Ahhh okay thank you. Always knew meta was a poop cooldown with little mitigation for a 3min cd, was just confused by the people saying its worse now hahaha

20

Probably because of the assumption that pushing you farther along the DR curve would make the bonus armor worse. And frankly, given how the DR curve works, that’s a valid assumption, but doesn’t hold up in this particular case. The increase in raw armor gained makes up for being farther along the DR curve, though it only barely makes up for it, as evidenced above.