Haven’t played my DH in a little while, what is the go to mythic plus build and raiding build for vengeance DH?
Are the essences helping their survivability?
I heard they had been moving up the ranks in the tank meta.
So I ask you fellow DH players, educate me please 
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/23#class=Tanks
I stopped mythic raiding (and most raiding period, tbh) at the end of last tier, so I can’t speak from experience. However, on the parse level, DHs still have pitiful representation in mythic raiding, clocking in at only about 6.8% of the total parses (compared to 37.4% for monks).
They seem to have recovered slightly in M+, but are still one of the lowest represented tanks at 13.9% in timed 10+, ahead of only druids (though this is a solid step up from the ~8-9% representation they had last season).
TL;DR they still struggle.
While this is all true, I think the main issue is that people left them prior to 8.2, gearing up and building teams around other tanks. Even with the recent buffs to the class, there is little reason for the high key runners to switch back to them.
Granted, they could have given us a bit more in terms of buffs, but the class is hella fun and is doing well with those that choose to play it.
As Cylo said.
A lot of tanks switched to other classes.
This late in, not many will drop back and regrind essences for a second or 3rd tank spec.
I personally enjoy mine very much running in the 10-12 bracket of m+.
Only bad affix combos give me problems with sustainability, but the self heals help that a ton.
I dont mythic raid, but heroic tanking is not bad at all.
Just my .02
Overall for M+ they are better than they were, especially if you go gluttony + VOP essence for absurd healing numbers and prioritize versatility everywhere. I’m fairly comfortable with mine pugging +15-16 keys. However the damage is lacking and spiky physical damage intake will kill you at times. In the end they are certainly nowhere near an equivalent prot warrior in M+ but are definitely better than the joke that is bear druid.
Bear druids are making a comeback atm though, offering some pretty high dps and a giant meat sponge.
To the OP, the main point here is to pick something you enjoy playing and like the class fantasy of. At the end of the day, every tank will be able to run 10+ with no problem and with some practice and gearing, 15+ is doable by all.
It isn’t until you start pushing really high keys that the outliers start to shine and become important. If this was you, I would suspect you wouldn’t be coming here for information about tanks as you would already know the answer. Enjoy the class if you stick with it, they are so much fun and have a surprisingly large amount of utility, especially when you get creative with their tools.
Hi. The Visions of perfection essence, paired with the Gluttony Talent seems to be a popular build. The Azerite trait Soulmonger is stacked if possible on this build. I think Feed the Demon and Void Reaver are also used. The survivability is said to be superior as compared to the Soul Bomb build. Gluttony or Spirit Bomb , an older post you might look at. DH Tanking in the current patch? Another. I feel the Gluttony build is a gamble, hoping to get the proc at the right time. To me its just more RNG, hoping to get lucky, or at least not unlucky. I have too much of one, and don’t want to start the other! I have the spirit bomb build, and important Azerite traits for me are Hour of Reaping and Essence Sever, I ALWAYS want to have one of each of these. My main Essence is Nullification Dynamo, a pretty good magic damage shield.
Vengeance can clear 15s pretty easy with gear.
They just lack damage compared to other tanks. If they had 25% damage increase (which is ALOT) outside of spirit bomb they would be as equal to prot warrior or prot paladin most likely.
Even if you pick all damage talents and damage azerite pieces you will be the lowest damaging tank with gluttony + vop.
The problem with VDH is if you go spirit bomb build you do an insane amount of damage but you fall over because you have literally zero survivability
OR
you pick gluttony and vop and you have so much survivability but you have no damage.
You are forced to pick while other tank classes do not have that trade off
VDH is pretty good recently after their recent buff. They are more sturdy than before and you can clear any 15+ with right set of gear. Previously most people go for Spirit Bomb + Last Resort build for M+,which still a good choice if you prefer Damage over Survivability. But Vision of perfection enabled a new talent build where you will choose Gluttony Talents and Vision of perfection + Last Resort. The trade off is you will loose Damage, but your survivability will improve dramatically. Almost 40% of the Dungeon run you will sit on Metamorphosis proc from Gluttony and Vision of Perfection. In next patch Vision of Perfection is getting 12% more proc rate buff which will help VDH a lot. I don’t raid so can’t comment on that but M+ they are very good if you get right set of gear for your build.
Thank you all for the feedback!
Is vision of perfection major plus spirit bomb viable? Still get the meta pecs, just less frequently without gluttony?
Will the 12% increase in procs make more of a hybrid between the two designated builds?
I will personally be checking out the increased proc rate on visions.
I only use it on really bad weeks.
Like fort, bolster, necro nightmare kind of weeks.
I normally run crucible major all the time now.
Good managment of defensives on normal weeks is plenty in the 10 range, so long as the healer is awake. (Not a stab at healers, I heal too btw)
Much higher and I look for undying essence or another dmg reduction.
I just tried out the Glutt/visions build and while I do feel the survival is much higher, it is a pain to try and get initial aggro. You just dont have much to draw the attention away until you get things ramped up.
Clearing +15s is fine whatever your build is as long as you have the good essences and a tank trinket or two from the raid.
I think Gluttony + Vision is way less reliable and, more importantly, way less fun.
I think that we’re usually tanky enough that the benefit of Void Reaver is pretty low. When we have DS up, we’re fine, and when we don’t have anything, 5% DR isn’t going to make that much difference. Last Resort, on the other hand, not only serves as a cheat death, but also pretty much takes you out of danger for the duration of the meta.
Those reasons you state is why you see vengeance in keys especially in the 20+ range literally only taking VOP + Gluttony. While it is “way less fun” as you put it, allowing your healer to help dps in keys, while also providing moderate hps outburst.
It allows you to make mistakes and helps keep your head cool, especially if you are new to tanking.
I ran a key with jdotb yesterday, arguably one of the best healers in this game as he is in Method NA and he didn’t need to focus on me. He helped dps and spot heal other people.
Sometimes, especially in pugs, making everyones job easier significantly increases the chance of timing a key.
I’m sure 15s and under you can roll with whatever you want but I average about 25k dps overall using gluttony and vop. Maybe that’s on the low side of overall for tanks. I went havoc one key and saw a guardian pull 30k dps overall. What kind of DPS is spirit bomb build averaging overall on higher keys?
Oh, no idea, though normally Spirit Bomb accounts for ~24% of my DPS, it seems. Since Soul Cleave does about 40% of the damage Spirit Bomb does, I think you’d be missing out on somewhere in the neighborhood of 17% more DPS. But obviously if you aren’t surviving, that doesn’t matter. I’m probably missing out on some DPS by wearing Edict rather than using a DPS trinket, but it provides more mitigation than I’m comfortable going without.
Grats on grouping with Jdotb. That’s pretty sweet!
In general, my team has been less enthused about pushing keys this season - emissaries have just been less fun to deal with. I’m actually going Guardian next tier for the brez for my team’s comp, bigger deeps, and just to change things up.
I think everyone feels that way with beguiling.
Most of those former season 2 crushers have not enjoyed this affix. Void weeks are basically super dead on pushing high high keys.
Even my former team I played with kinda just refuse to do mythic plus this season so I have been pugging alot of keys this season.
I mean last week quaking + void meant your party was pushed down to sub 10% health. Kinda horrible because you can’t outplay quaking and you may not outplay void if you cant LOS it.
Anyways, if you run a key this week post here what your average overall is. I see from raider io you’re doing 15s to 17s so should be similar type pulls.
My HP very rarely falls below 70% and since I am using tides azerite it’s a free 2 million dps overall on tyrannical. If I am hypothetically doing 17% less dps it would just push me to 29k, meh. I guess I have to think “if my healer has to heal me more, could he/she do 4k dps extra overall to make it up”.
I prefer running with paladins now because they are just omega dps pushers compared to resto druid. Most Resto druids I roll with only average between 16k and 20k dps but paladins are almost always 20k to 25k overall.
Even if its less damage and less buttons to push, I can’t imagine getting to be in Meta for 40% of a dungeon, being an absolute beast of a tank getting boring. One of the many reasons I love this class
Gluttony build definitely brings the “class fantasy” part back over spirit bomb as you feel like Bruce Banner and the Hulk letting that inner beast out of you temporarily to crush foes and still do up to +20 keys competitively.
Did run a couple +15s last night to help friends finish their meta achieve for the season, my pal will be uploading logs later this afternoon so I can peruse. Overall damage is probably lower this week for us since we tend to pull fewer mobs at a time for bolstering, but since neither Spirit Bomb nor Soul Cleave have a target cap, damage percentages should be proportionate. Last caveat is that I am, of course, a baddie. 
EDIT: Also, it’s not that I don’t like the class fantasy aspect of it, I just wish there were any substantial damage gain at all from meta. :-/
I recently switched from havoc to vengence to fill my mythic raid teams off tank spot. No problems on the first four bosses what so ever, the damage isn’t anything crazy, and our magic resistance helps a lot. M+ has been a blast so far.