Veng DH Covenant choice - much harder now

Classes Demon Hunter
1

Hit 59 this AM and with all the Nerfs to NF, K and V I am strongly leaning towards Necrolord:

  • Elysian Decree (Kyrian) damage reduced by 10% for Vengeance Demon Hunters.
  • The Hunt (Night Fae) damage decreased by 10% for Vengeance Demon Hunters.
  • Sinful Brand (Venthyr) damage decreased by 10% for Vengeance Demon Hunters.

Even Conduits:

  • Repeat Decree (Kyrian) base damage now 15% (was 25%).
  • Fel Defender now affects Fel Devastation for Vengeance Demon Hunters (was Fiery Brand).

The gap has been severely narrowed so now to me it is about aesthetics and immersion, and Necrolord is just too dang cool. Plus all buffs:

  • Fodder to the Flame (Necrolord) has been redesigned – Your damaging abilities have a chance to call forth a demon from the Theater of Pain for 25 seconds. Throw Glaive deals lethal damage to the demon, which explodes on death, dealing damage to nearby enemies and healing you for 30% of your maximum health. The explosion deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
    -and
  • Fleshcraft has been redesigned – Form a shield of flesh and bone over 3 seconds (was 4 seconds) that absorbs damage equal to 40% of your maximum health for 2 minutes. While channeling, your damage taken is reduced by 30%. Passive effect – Moving near an enemy’s corpse consumes their essence to reduce Fleshcraft’s cooldown by 1 second.

Thoughts from some of you VDH veterans?

2

Necrolord will likely do well, depending on the PPM of Fodder to the Flame. But the changes to Fleshcraft are quite good.

Elysian Decree still does a lot of damage, plus it generates 3 Soul Fragments for healing. And the threat it generates is extremely helpful when you need to kite.

I don’t really understand the nerf to Sinful Brand truthfully. I mean, sure Vengeance could do some nutty damage if you pulled a lot of mobs and popped Meta to apply it to everything but that’s about the only time it really shined. If they want to decrease its damage a bit, then at the very least they should add like 5-10% damage reduction into it, or some Leech(Since Brand is the only Covenant ability that offers nothing in the way of healing).

The Hunt, will still be default for any DH, whether Havoc or Vengeance who is even remotely serious about PvP. And will still do okay damage in PvE if you can get it to pass through mobs for the DoT.

The Fiery Brand conduit being changed sucks. As it’s a direct nerf to basically our only viable legendary. But having a bit more Meta uptime due to it reducing Fel Devastation may be enough to offset it for the most part. Though it may just make us need to kite a bit more. I wish our other legendaries didn’t suck, lol.

All that said, it’s definitely closer now. I’d imagine Kyrian will still be the top, mostly due to how good Phial is. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Necrolord jumped to 2nd, since having a bit more mitigation in the form of Fleshcraft can be quite helpful.

But, I’m sticking with Venthyr. I’ve picked based off aesthetics from the start, and despite how boring Sinful Brand is, I can’t abandon my vampire buddies and General Draven(plus his soulbind is pretty nice for tanking imo).

Of course, I don’t think I’m good by any means, slowly making my way through Heroic and working up to M+15’s. And I’m too lazy to install PTR, so yea, just my opinions.

1 Like
3

Eh, I pvp so “The Hunt” is too good for me to pass up.

4

Even if the damage was hugely cut out of it, the mobility from Night Fae is so good for Veng PvP. Double leap, The Hunt 50 yards to someone, then the spirit animal let’s you pretty much cross any map.

5

yeah giving a strictly better blink as the night fae ability was cosmically stupid from a covenant balance perspective