The Hunt’s damage over time effect no longer deals an additional tick on application. Damage dealt over the total duration remains unchanged.
Vengeance
Thick Skin armor bonus increased to 130% (was 100%)
Calcified Skin initial damage reduction value increased to 12% (was 10%)
Painbringer duration increased to 6 seconds (was 5 seconds)
How do you folks feel about this, I feel like it is going to make demon spikes/feed the demon build more important vs the fiery brand build. Lmk know what you folks think
The buffs affect other builds just as much as the spikes build—if you needed more survivability with Spirit Bomb you could just take out Soul Furnace + Darkglare boon and put 2 into Pain Bringer. Infact, the buffs are probably more significant for Spirit Bomb than they are for Spikes build for at least a few reasons.
Also, running spikes build means you do like 40k dps instead of 100k dps in M+ pulls, which sounds terrible. Why would you want to do that? I can already survive with Spirit Bomb in high keys (even though I don’t pull as bravely as Prot Warrior).
its actually not much of a buff, the armor is a 4% buff without dr, and it gets less with spikes and even smaller with brand.
painbringer is neat but its still a 1% dr gain, and spikes also neat but again its a small dr gain. overal the rotation doesnt change and the best build is still the drown in flames (dilf build) since it utilizes all of these buffs since you can dump soul furnace for painbringer.
heres the pin from itamae one of vdh theory crafters and top players
Jan 10 2023 hotfix 30% bonus armor (this is a 15% increase, going from 200% total armor to 230%) - mediocre, is affected by IA and meta, spikes is not affected, about 4% less dam taken baseline, less during meta/IA/spikes calc spikes strength and duration increased by 2%/2sec, increases avg DR by 1% and longer effect - good extra 1s pb duration - good, just over 1% increase in avg DR hunt damage dot damage shift - fine None of this makes up for the increased damage nerf we got in 10.0.2 (edited)
most people copy what “top” dh’s are running in warcraft logs. which is a terrible thing to do cause most of these builds are just not good and ascerfices alot of damage and defensive power for crutches like last resort and trap talents like soul monger
Why wouldn’t spikes be affected? Say you have 30% reduced damage baseline and 40% with spikes up. After the buff you have 35% reduced damage baseline, wouldn’t that make it so you have 45% reduced damage with spikes up? Technically spikes aren’t affected, but you will still have more DR because your baseline is higher no?
except they arnt, a few actual vdh mains are hitting “high” io levels with dilf build. please keep in mind that the high io isnt much of a milestone right now
Hmmm I thought you were full of it but I looked at the top 10 VDH I could find and none of them were using the fireybrand build. They use spiked + spirit bomb, the majority opting for Elsyian Decree over Fodder.
It’s probably much easier to play their build too. I’ll have to try it out, but hopefully after the buff we might see more fiery brand (it just does so much damage, even if it’s more involved).
:pepetired: again i wouldnt look at high io players right now. everyone of them, in every spec are using very gimped builds. there is no reason to take decree over fodder. fodder is just more damage, healing, leech, damage amp. elysian is just not rng but worse by 30% overal
Again with the spreadsheets and talents in a vacuum. Fodder may be better, but it takes a few seconds to target the demon, sometimes longer because it’s weird in a pack, during that time you are targeting it you aren’t targeting mobs to make sure you can kick things, you aren’t paying attention to your rotation, your mitigation, or your positioning, for those few seconds you are attempting to target and click the demon or getting lucky with tab. While yes, it’s better on paper, it’s much easier to just press a button and elysian decree and have no downtime targeting and you won’t ever fumble it.
If you could take into consideration human error, or even reaction times of targeting the demon, in that time you would have at least a few globals that it takes to click the demon and then pop it. Add whatever you’re doing in those globals to elysian decree and add in the fact that your attention is never lost like it is to fodder, and I’ll bet you’ll find they are pretty equal.
You have a way you talk that takes some effort to get past but I’ll humor you anyway.
Throwing out some number like “Elsyian is worse by 30% overall” is so absolutely absurd to say, that I am sure that you are even confused as to why you typed it.
I generally use Fodder right now but I already want to swap back to Elsyian: HUGE AoE burst on pull, instant full power Spirit Bomb, 10% extra DR immediately, Large HP gain due to life steal, and it’s back up by next pull.
you dont target the demon, you cleav eit down for more soul frags and leech
it is tho, elysian decree is roughly 30% behind fodder due to the sheer amount of things fodder does. legit i implore you all to check with the dh discord to get informed why X is better than y and why Z is a trap talent.
eylsian decree is just worthless without bird conduit or blind faith
At a practical level I think it is significantly wiser to defer to the people actually doing things rather than defer to the people talking about doing things. Models and simulations and theories are great and all but if you see 8 out of the top 10 players using X instead of Y, there might be a reason. It might well be because they are stupid or wrong, or the content is undertuned (it’s not)—OR, it might be because they are correct and see something others don’t.
Fodder just feels comfortable. Another enemy to leech off of, a sometimes damage buff (greater leech too), a walking punching bag which is useful to generate souls between pulls, a heal, an additional fallout target. These are all random btw because it’s usually not up, and it is often buggy when it is up, and almost useless if there is another DH around. If it moved a lot quicker and didn’t evade when it spawned, didnt get stuck all the time, couldn’t be targeted by other DH’s, actually died when you glaived it (which you still want to do occasionally), spawned slightly more often / consistently, then it would be better.
To throw out a random number like 30% in one statement and then call it “useless” in the next—these are not coherent on any level. My guess is it’s just an ego thing for you.
okay bro. ill just run soul monger and be immortal right, since all the high io vdh are running it. must be good right
at casual keys, you can run anything. infact theres a case going on that you can run anything in “high io” level keys. since these mongs are intentionally gimping themselves
That is so arbitrary though. My guess for your definitions are:
Casual keys: 99.99 percentile players
Non-casual keys: 99.999 percentile players
Gimping: Doing a build you don’t like
Sarcastic “high io”: The current top players who you think are not good or smart as the hypothetical players that exist in your mind.