Vengeance DH-The 1st major problem and solution

Classes Demon Hunter
1

Hi,

Vengeance DH Problem #1: The drastic imbalance between the mitigation of physical and magic damage respectively in both PvP and PvE, specifically the overall lack of magic damage mitigation in general.

Explanation of and proposed solution to Problem #1:
VDH desperately needs a buff to magic damage mitigation or at least give us empower wards back on a 30-45 second cooldown.

The way armor works with VDH is it reduces the amount of incoming physical damage you take from bosses, trash and enemy players. I’m at 400ilvl equipped right now and even without demon spikes up I reduce around 30% physical damage just from my unbuffed armor plus 11% chance to parry. With Demon Spikes active, the amount of physical damage I reduce goes up to roughly 68% plus 15% additional parry chance for a total of 26%. The problem is and has been since the end of Legion is VDH doesn’t have enough magic damage mitigation. Blizzard at least needs to give us Empower Wards back at minimum, and it doesn’t need to be 40% magic damage reduction…even a 20-30% magic damage reduction on use ability with a 30-45 second cooldown. Along with that, I could see possibly scaling up the overall damage reduction of tatto’s from 10% up to 15-20% or maybe even an addition of a Shattered Souls type mechanic for lesser soul fragments to add a stacking buff that reduces overall damage for each lesser soul fragment consumed…SOMETHING to give more balance to overall damage reduction but not mitigate too much magic or physical damage at the same time. Right now we have excellent physical damage reduction when demon spikes is up plus the chance to parry frontal melee attacks, with no magic damage reduction aside from 10% overall from tattoo’s and a relatively weak absorb shield from soul barrier. This is also a major problem not only trying to survive in higher level mythic plus but also in rated battlegrounds. Having no magic damage reduction ability or without a substantial buff to passive magic damage reduction, I stand a very small chance of surviving an enemy offensive push of even a 2-3 man caster dps team, forget trying to survive against a 4 or 5 caster offense, and rbg teams know this. That’s why higher rated RBG teams will run with a guardian druid on flag maps now, they can survive a lot more abuse from an offensive push by far. Lastly and just as important, the fact that there’s absolutely 0 changes to VDH or HDH in the new patch except fixing the glide bug makes me not want to play my DH at all this patch because it’s not even close competition compared to other tank classes. If Blizzard doesn’t understand this fact or other major design changes that VDH needs then really they should hire me to fix the class because I’ve played VDH and HDH for thousands of hours each since Legion began. I know 100% of how the DH class and both specializations and how all talents function in PvP and PvE. The current state of the class primarily VDH is not able to compete with other tank classes in mythic raids, mythic+ or higher rated PvP.

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2

Guess you can build a wall for less than 5 billion…
I will be honest i lost my place 1/4 of the way through but I get the point of the post. The type of incoming damage is only a 1/4 of the issues people have with vengeance dh.

They pruned them just a weee bit to much with spells / healing to be able to get by. I am ok with the style of incoming damage but we are missing 2 maybe even 3 buttons to assist with mitigating it. This is only part of what needs done to bring V DH into the mid pack.

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Like I said, the 1st major problem and solution. I think all other changes/improvements should be done after and secondary priority to the changes I suggested above. But yes I agree several other major changes/reworks in addition to this need to be done.

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It isn’t really an issue though. No tank has magic dmg mitigation anymore. Blizz did away of that for all the tanks. You give us back magic mitigation and we would end up with a clear unfair advantage over all tanks on fights that deal with magic dmg to an extent.

Does veng need a rework? Yes, but not with regards to magic dmg unless they decide to bring that back to all tanks in some form.

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5

Except paladin has Holy Shield, DK has Anti-Magic Shell, and warrior has spell reflect to reduce magic damage. I don’t think monks and bears have anything for magic damage though. Maybe you can consider bear mastery to be effective against magic.

While DH has Fiery Brand, other tanks have more CDs that also help with magic damage. Empower Wards doesn’t need to have the same power as legion. A 15% magic DR on about a 40 sec CD seems reasonable.

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This was intentional. All tanks lost the vast majority of their magic mitigation. No tank has more than 10% passive magic mitigation (we actually have the highest in that regard), and the only non-talent ability with less than a 60s base CD that provides DR against magic is Spell Reflection. All AM now only works on physical (most of them just grant armor), and tank absorbs (Ignore Pain and Blood Shield) only work against physical as well.

Now, a number of tanks have 1m CDs that mitigate magic, but then, so do we (Fiery Brand). A number of tanks have talents that mitigate magic damage, but then, so do we (Soul Barrier and Void Reaver are both effective against magic). A number of tanks have traits that are effective against magic damage, but then, so do we (Hour of Reaping, Burning Soul, Revel in Pain).

Tanks are not intended to have strong magic mitigation. They specifically removed most tank magic mitigation because they wanted tank-targeted magic effects to be the “dangerous” abilities that tanks and healers planned CD usage around.

Note that Holy Shield isn’t just straight magic mitigation. It only works against damage from targeted spells. Spells flagged as unavoidable (many of them, actually), damage from debuffs, and damage from most AoE spells are not considered blockable. And even for the blockable ones, Holy shield typically amounts to around 15-18% mitigation for those effects (and paladins have no passive magic mitigation like we do).

The only other passive mitigation that Paladins have against magic is their Consecrate, which is typically in the 6-7% mitigation range, on level with a druid’s Thick Hide passive. Net is ~20-24% mitigation against blockable magic, and 6-7% against unblockable (and most relevant boss mechanics are not blockable).

AMS is less potent than you think. Baseline, it has the same CD as Fiery Brand, and absorbs up to 30% of max HP. That means that as long as the DK is taking at least 75% of their max HP (97.5% with Anti-Magic Barrier talented) in magic damage over the duration (very likely, if it’s a magic effect worth popping a CD for), AMS has inferior mitigation to Fiery Brand.

It’s also worth noting that aside from AMS, the only magic “mitigation” DKs have is Vampiric Blood, which has a 90s base CD and can be talented to have somewhere around 60s (variable based on Runic power spent). Vamp Blood mechanically functions as ~23.1% mitigation to all types of damage (see Guardian mastery discussion below for the why on that), placing it substantially behind Fiery Brand. DKs otherwise lack any form of sustained magic mitigation unless they talent into Rune Tap (and most don’t),

Spell reflect has the same issue as Holy Shield, many sources of magic damage are flagged as unavoidable or are not reflectable. It does at least have the 20% mitigation, though. Both Demoralizing Shout and Shield Wall work against magic as well, but warriors have no passive mitigation against magic damage,

Ish. Monk stagger works again magic damage, but only at 35% of normal effectiveness. Monks normally sit at around 80-85% stagger with Ironskin Brew up, so that’s around 30% of damage staggered. Monks can rarely purify more than about 50% of damage taken unless that’s the only major hit they are taking for a while, so that stagger amounts to around 15% mitigation, at best.

Druids have no true mitigation, but their mastery mechanically functions as damage reduction. Say, for example, that a druid has 25% mastery (chosen because it makes the math easier to understand) and a baseline HP of 300k. That mastery bumps their max HP to 375k, so a 300k hit only hits them for 80% of max HP instead of 100%. In addition, it only takes 240k raw healing to heal that 300k. In comparison, if they had 300k HP and 20% DR, a 300k hit would land for 240k, and would take 240k healing to heal up.

Basically, if a druid has X% mastery, they mechanically have DR against all sources equal to 1-1/(1+X%). Using the 25% example above, they’d have DR equal to:

1 - 1/(1 + 0.25)
1 - 1/1.25
1 - 0.8
20% DR

Now, it reality, your average bear is going to have closer to 10-14% mastery, due to the scaling on it, which equates to 9-12% effective DR. They also have a passive 6% from Thick Hide, for a net of ~14-17%.

So, from that perspective, VDH mitigation (10% passive) is a tad light, but it not really that unusually low. With Void Reaver, we’ve actually got similar levels of passive mitigation to other tanks, ~15.5%. And while meta doesn’t work against magic at all (something I’ve been complaining about for half a year now), Fiery Brand is hands down the most potent tank ability with a sub 2m CD against heavy magic damage.

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Ignore pain works against magic damage. Death strike / consume soul healing scale with incoming magic damage. DK WOTN works on magic damage, although it was more potent in 8.0.

VDH is certainly not the worst tank for magic damage. Monk/druid might be the worst off in purely magic sustained fights (rixxa, shadow of zul) but monk self-healing still scales with incoming magic damage and they have crit to increase healing taken. Warrior can struggle in purely magic fights too due to lack of rage, but spell reflect can contribute a large amount of damage at least.

I don’t know about the raid, but in M+ holy shield works on more than you seem to think including : sanguine, bursting, reap soul, shadow smash, several aoe/ground target effects and apparently even blessing of sacrifice (lol). It also works for most (if not all) m+ boss magic attacks. Last defender also provides mitigation for magic damage.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/rtfLagNDhGTVkRPX#fight=15&type=healing&source=6&pins=2%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24healing%240%240.0.0.Any%24130611924.0.0.Paladin%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%24152261&view=events
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/cwD4CGBQXhmA2v87#fight=7&type=healing&source=7&pins=2%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24healing%240%240.0.0.Any%24115811022.0.0.Paladin%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%24152261&view=events
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/CZn7Rm9k6Vwfgtba#fight=1&type=healing&source=5&pins=2%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24healing%240%240.0.0.Any%24125180426.0.0.Paladin%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%24152261&view=events
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/whHjJrGbCapZ3K79#fight=9&type=healing&source=119&pins=2%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24healing%240%240.0.0.Any%24115811022.0.0.Paladin%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%24152261&view=events
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/CZn7Rm9k6Vwfgtba#fight=4&type=healing&source=5&pins=2%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24healing%240%240.0.0.Any%24125180426.0.0.Paladin%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%24152261&view=events
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Yea prot pals have a ton of magic mitigation. Between Holy Shield + Mastery and Spell Warding, after all Spell warding doesn’t drop agro.

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Ya, you’re right, IP does (I think it originally was physical only, during either 8.0 or perhaps just alpha/beta, though). Blood Shield is physical-only, though. But that’s fine, all of the tank primary self-healing effects works against magic damage, but then, so does ours. And the statement you quoted was mostly focusing on mitigation (ie. damage reduction), not sustain.

Also, WotN falls into the same category of passive mitigation as the others I discussed. Since it’s prorated, it functions as at most about 9% additional effective mitigation, still below the other tanks even without talents, and especially when you include talents.

Druids are arguably one of the best ones, tbh, since their mastery functions, mechanically, as DR against all damage. They have 14-17% passive magic DR between Thick Hide and their mastery’s equivalent DR, and it isn’t just limited to blockable effects like it is for Paladins. Druids can also spec into an additional 6% mitigation from Rend and Tear or 9% from Pulverize, though I’ve not kept up on Guardian talents enough to know if those are common talents these days. So around 25% magic mitigation, if they have 12% mastery (which honestly only takes 1152 mastery rating, it’s pretty easy to hit) and take Pulverize (9%), plus their baseline Thick Hide (6%), and that’s on top of having two charges of 50% reduction from Survival Instinct, plus a 60s CD 20% DR in Barkskin.

Lol WAT. That’s crazysauce.

I’m not surprised some of those things in M+ are blockable, though. Blizzard tends to be way more aggressive about making raid mechanics unavoidable than they do about 5-man stuff, mostly to prevent immunity and avoidance shenanigans. To be fair, though, more of them are avoidable in BfA than were in Legion. The crazy stuff you can do with Blade Dance is a good example of that.