I realize this is a very subjective, opinion-laced question, but I was wondering people's thoughts on how difficult it might be for someone brand new to DH tanking to jump right into it (no pun intended).
I've played Prot warrior, paladin, and BrM before, and am interested in trying out DH tanking, but it looks incredibly complex whenever I group with one.
What are your thoughts? Any particular tips on easing into it, other than perhaps doing some questing in tank spec?
Thanks!
It is complex but hopefully you should have some transferable tanking skills that will help speed up the process.
First off is spec, right now 121332x is pretty good where your last talent is pretty interchangeable since they all perform well if used correctly.
The rotation is pretty simple once you realize it is all about soul management (which will bring in another complexity later) with pain as a secondary resource. Pain enables the usage of souls you will have an abundance of it. The basic rotation is 1. Fracture/Immolation Aura to generate souls/pain, 2. Spirit Bomb to spend souls, then 3. Soul Cleave to spend pain. Repeat as necessary.
The next step is filling in the empty GCDs with either more damage (Sigil of Flame or Throw Glaives) or with utility (Sigil of Chains/Misery/Silence, Fiery Brand, Consume Magic, Imprison).
Some further improvements would be to start rolling Flame Crash from Infernal Strike but also learning to save a spare jump or both if you need to use it for quick movement as well. Learning effective ways to use your utility Sigils to manage groups or psuedo-interrupt strong casting mobs. Learning to use your defensives (the best rule is Early and Often) but managing your defensive down times with either kiting, group cc, or externals.
Oh and remember when I mentioned soul management? Well, its not just a meter like pain or fury, they are actually falling on the ground and can be "picked up" through movement which is detrimental to your damage, threat, and self-healing. And you also need general tank awareness of you and your party's surroundings and threats.
So yeah, it is pretty complex. It gets easier with practice though and you will learn to anticipate your "empty" GCDs (ones that aren't your primary generate->spend rotation) and fill them accordingly or learning the dungeons, with their unique caster types and heavy damage threats.
The only tip for getting into it is getting into it. Just find some ilvl appropriate content to try it out and just hope you don't get a bad group if you have to PUG. The benefit of playing tank is if you find that you don't enjoy a group, there is a hundred more waiting to have you.
Still, I find it very rewarding. It's much more engaging than a mindless dps rotation while playing "don't stand in the bad". Best of luck if you do try it. If you have more questions, feel free to ask.
EDIT: Just remembered, an essential DH macro is:
This allows you to Infernal Strike is place so you can use Flame Crash without picking up souls since even moving a little bit will cause you to pick up nearby souls.
First off is spec, right now 121332x is pretty good where your last talent is pretty interchangeable since they all perform well if used correctly.
The rotation is pretty simple once you realize it is all about soul management (which will bring in another complexity later) with pain as a secondary resource. Pain enables the usage of souls you will have an abundance of it. The basic rotation is 1. Fracture/Immolation Aura to generate souls/pain, 2. Spirit Bomb to spend souls, then 3. Soul Cleave to spend pain. Repeat as necessary.
The next step is filling in the empty GCDs with either more damage (Sigil of Flame or Throw Glaives) or with utility (Sigil of Chains/Misery/Silence, Fiery Brand, Consume Magic, Imprison).
Some further improvements would be to start rolling Flame Crash from Infernal Strike but also learning to save a spare jump or both if you need to use it for quick movement as well. Learning effective ways to use your utility Sigils to manage groups or psuedo-interrupt strong casting mobs. Learning to use your defensives (the best rule is Early and Often) but managing your defensive down times with either kiting, group cc, or externals.
Oh and remember when I mentioned soul management? Well, its not just a meter like pain or fury, they are actually falling on the ground and can be "picked up" through movement which is detrimental to your damage, threat, and self-healing. And you also need general tank awareness of you and your party's surroundings and threats.
So yeah, it is pretty complex. It gets easier with practice though and you will learn to anticipate your "empty" GCDs (ones that aren't your primary generate->spend rotation) and fill them accordingly or learning the dungeons, with their unique caster types and heavy damage threats.
The only tip for getting into it is getting into it. Just find some ilvl appropriate content to try it out and just hope you don't get a bad group if you have to PUG. The benefit of playing tank is if you find that you don't enjoy a group, there is a hundred more waiting to have you.
Still, I find it very rewarding. It's much more engaging than a mindless dps rotation while playing "don't stand in the bad". Best of luck if you do try it. If you have more questions, feel free to ask.
EDIT: Just remembered, an essential DH macro is:
#showtooltip
/cast [@player] Infernal Strike
This allows you to Infernal Strike is place so you can use Flame Crash without picking up souls since even moving a little bit will cause you to pick up nearby souls.
5 Likes
Thank you so much for this incredible and motivating post! I really appreciate it! :)
Remember that you are very squishy and have limited defensive CDs.
In 5 mans this means you have to run away if you are taking a heavy beating. You have tools to slow them down and make space. It can suck when a heavy hitter is immune to CC (I'm looking at you Irontide Enforcers).
In Raid this means you have to save your CDs for the big hits and space them out evenly if you're not sure about the rhythm of the boss.
In 5 mans this means you have to run away if you are taking a heavy beating. You have tools to slow them down and make space. It can suck when a heavy hitter is immune to CC (I'm looking at you Irontide Enforcers).
In Raid this means you have to save your CDs for the big hits and space them out evenly if you're not sure about the rhythm of the boss.
While learning you can also not spec into talents that will make rotation complex like spirit bomb and fracture and instead spec into passives which will make the rotation trivial. Once your comfortable with the spec on ez mode then bring in the extra 2 abilities.
Best bet is to run some normals and get used to the feeling of the spec. That's what i did back in legion.
How much of a difference does Soul Barrier make? Cuz I healed two DH tanks today and their health was SOOOOO SPIKEY as a Disc Priest. They were using Last Resort and I’m wondering if SBarrier would make a difference.
I’m at a point where I’m very wary of healing DH tanks.
DH in general are spikey when being healed compared to other tanks. Soul barrier wouldn’t be the issue it’s most likely ilvl or one wasn’t keeping up their mitigation aka demon spikes. As a DH you gotta kite mobs to have success. If you pull big and face tank them all your setting yourself up for failure.
This is my first tank, having been DPS all last expansion.
Honestly, it’s a fun tank spec, and I love it’s mobility. I had to adjust it over time to make it better, like at the beginning I used concentrated Sigil just to drop them on the ground, but later went to Sigil of chains with mouse over macros for all sigils and my leap. It’s been a fun learning experience.
The only thing is I often forget I took soul barrier and fail to cast it at time, not fond of last resort as it likely means I dropped the ball on tanking, or the healer sucks.
I have a question, OP; where was you pun supposed to be ? I think you misused the “no pun intended” poorly
The pun was “jump right in” due to the well-known tendency of VDHs to use Infernal Strike to leap into new trash packs.
I really don’t like soul barrier for m+. It has situational uses on bosses with big hits when you need an extra cooldown every 30 sec or so.
For overall mythic plus the reason it isn’t great is because there are two limiting factors to your mitigation:
- Souls
- Demon Spikes cd
Since you can only pump out so many souls, soul barrier eats into the amount of available souls. This requires more pre-planning for big hits, and does take away some dps from spirit bomb.
The second DS, can be reduced by haste.
Personally I prefer last resort or void reaver for m+.
Last resort is great because you can pull huge groups and then reset it. Void reaver is also decent in m+ (maybe could use a slight buff) mitigation tool for large groups of trash.
The pun was terrible, lol. My apologies.
I’m really appreciating all the advice and comments in this thread! Thank you!
I would say the learning curve is similar to other tanks learn the basic rotation then practice. VDH is a high mobility tank so learning when to move and positioning is key. You can’t just face mob get a few attacks kite enough then work away bit more especially depending on the affixes if you are talking about m+. Defensive CD’s arent the best so when to use them ideally as well.
I’m completely new to tanking and I just rocked VDH earlier on on my first real dungeon run as a tank now if the site would please stop being buggy with character profiles and not even letting me switch to him on the forums, I’d be happy. It was a bit intimidating at first, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly and figured out a good layout for my keybinds.
So I think you should be good, especially if you already have experience tanking. ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")