Vengeance Rework

Classes Demon Hunter
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Hi folks,

I’ve mained Vengeance since Legion and wanted to voice some concerns involving the current state of the spec. We all know that VDH’s current strengths involve Mobility and slightly higher than average damage. Being a DH, we bring Chaos Brand which is a pretty helpful buff for our dungeon and raid parties. Beyond this, why should raid teams or M+ groups pick up a VDH? I had this revelation when playing my Blood DK. Compared to a Spec like Blood or Prot (W+P), even BM, the amount of utility we bring is miniscule. Sigils being the one exception, however, they are severely outclassed by other spec utility (I’m looking at you Abomination Limb/GFG)

If vengeance is to gain desirability amongst the higher sought after tank specs, particularly in a raid setting, some changes need to be made the class. It is very underwhelming to play VDH compared to other specs at this time, unless you are solely looking to deal slightly above average tank damage. Let me put a few examples on the table for perspective after spending time on a few other specs this patch:

  • Taunts: VDH: 1, BDK: 3, Warr (at least 2 I’m aware of), Monk gets a statue that AoE taunts on top of provoke (2 I’m aware of)
  • Interrupts: VDH: 2? (If you count Chaos Nova), BDK: 3, potentially more (3 easily controllable interrupts on most mobs with relatively low cds, and a significantly higher ranged interrupt, with CDR options)
  • Raid utility: VDH (Darkness, Chains, SoS, rarely imprison and SoM), BDK (DG X2, Gorefeinds, Slappyhands, AMZ, AMS for soaks, targeted slow that only costs 1 rune, near 100% self-sufficient healing (yes this counts is utility in my book if it makes other player’s jobs easier)
    -Tank CD’s/Mitigation: VDH: Spikes, Brand, Meta, BDK: Vamp Blood, Boneshield, AMS, AMZ, icebound fortitude, Tombstone, Prot Warrior: I don’t even want to talk about it…

I get it - a lot of BDK references and apologies in advance but it’s what I know best outside of VDH. Yes, BDK is way less mobile, but to be honest, when has VDH mobility ever provided true value to your groups? If anything mobility gets more players into trouble than not (Definitely don’t remove our mobility, but I’m making a point that being more mobile does not make a spec better at being a tank, it just allows us to get from point A to point B faster).

Not all tanks are created equal, that’s how it’s always been. And not all tanks should be designed the same by any means. I’m sure other specs share similar problems, but based on the above and my experience playing the class, it feels bad to see these other specs with clearly more tools under their belt and the only truly unique thing VDH brings to the table is a raid wide buff that most groups would have anyway with a Havoc DH.

My proposal would be to add more to the VDH’s toolkit - perhaps bring back abilities that were removed? For one, I believe VDH would heavily benefit from receiving Empower Wards back, a Magic Shield that l’ve gravely missed since BFA started. If we want to lean on the sigil fantasy, then why not give us sigils that do more? Or give us other spells that fit our class fantasy?

Some things I think a lot of us would like to see:

  • Give VDH at least one more raid utility spell that can be used to benefit an entire raid party if used properly
  • Give VDH 1 more major tank CD
  • Give the VDH talent tree a second look, there are options that feel bad to take but are required. Right now it feels terrible to take Sigil of Chains given how far off it is on the tree, for instance
  • Give VDH at least one more option for aggro control much like the other specs
  • And I think I speak for a lot of DH’s, Fotter to the Flame feels bad and confuses players, I think there are cooler design options for a final tier talent that could be explored. Some of you may hate me but the hunt does not fit the DH aesthetic at all. I’m not even really a fan of pressing it to be honest… But if anything just change the color effect to fel and it makes more sense for the class.
  • Regarding CC I think VDH is fine, but, I think sigil of misery deserves a rework. I love the idea of fears, as they are not explored much but many classes. I think maybe a talent that replaces SoM and makes it so that when you cast meta or go into demon form, all surrounding mobs tremble in place in fear for 1-2 sec. This would give us a bit more CC that we used to have as baseline but now caked into the our core abilities, doesn’t require a GCD lock and thematically fits the class.
  • If we’re looking at unique utility that only a VDH provides (to my knowledge) let’s expand on the ‘Warden’ theme we have going on from imprison and Sigil of Chains. If you want to keep going with more Sigils, how about a sigil traps all mobs Inside of it for a certain period of time? This would be the opposite of Monk’s Ring of Peace. Maybe call it Sigil of Condemnation or something like that. You could also just use a similar concept and change it based on the fantasy. If you want to go more of a Twisting Nether theme, perhaps a black hole style ability much like Zarya’s ult from Overwatch (although this is something Druids already have)
  • Sorry one last thing, Chaos Nova’s animation still shows the Havoc DH demon form when we press it in Vengeance spec. This was an issue in Beta but not sure how many players voiced this, would there be a way to change that to be our vengeance DH form?

Vengeance is not a Blood DK, it’s not a Prot Warrior or any other spec and it shouldn’t be, but it needs more under it’s belt to stand out, especially as a Hero class spec. If you’ve read this far thank you for reading and please share your thoughts. If we don’t at least say something we can’t get frustrated if changes don’t happen, thanks!

6 Likes
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I forgot to include Sigil of Silence, Chains and Misery as interrupt options in my bullet points but you have to be very precise if you want to reliably interrupt specific mobs. Given their higher CDs I didn’t mark them down for consideration.

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While I agree with a few of your points here, I think you misrepresent them slightly. Chaos Nova is not an interrupt, and BDK does not have 3 interrupts. Those are stops, and only work on CCable enemies. BDK has one true interrupt (with the option for it to go on a lower CD when successful), VDH has one true interrupt. ProtP is a better example here, as they have a baseline interrupt, Avenger’s Shield and Divine Toll, granting them access to three interrupts, one of which is the lowest CD interrupt in the game due to haste scaling and one of which is up to 5 targets.

It also feels like misrepresentation to label monks as having black ox statue, as to my knowledge most brm do not talent into it and instead take white tiger statue for the DPS.

I went over CC between a few tank specs here, which is has less misrepresentation and further helps the cause.

The problems with the VDH defensive rotation could be pretty easily solved and I’m not sure why Blizz hasn’t done anything about it.
-Give slight DR during meta so it’s actual mitigation
-Give CDR to meta
-Make FB cast on the DH

Bonus points if they improve Soul Barrier and make it accessible.

The VDH tree just flat out needs a rework. It’s too dependent on a specific capstone to function in any capacity, which is inherently bad design, and 1/4 of the tree is quite literally unplayable. Not sure what Blizz was thinking.

At least in M+, VDH doesn’t really have threat issues. Not sure what they’d even give us besides maybe a sigil that taunts, though it’s not really necessary and would further clutter the spec tree.

I don’t really understand the hate for fodder, personally. A demon spawns, you cleave it down then get a damage boost. Synchronizes well with how much leech we do and overall is the most thematically appropriate covenant ability barring potential reskins. That being said, they just need to make ED actually competitive as an alternative, really.

A potentially better solution, and likely one easier for Blizz, would be to simply make SoM and SoC more accessible, as well as remove SoS from competing with a survivability talent, as relatively underwhelming as it is. The easiest option for that is probably to lessen the 2pt node clutter in the class tree then add SoC/SoS as spec specific options to the class tree. Mirror these on the Havoc side with the DI/NW node and Fel Eruption, as they have been asking for quite some time now. If spec specific nodes are on the table, make full use of them.

I like this thematically but it would probably end up just being closer to a reskinned ursol’s or spear of bastion without the damage. Still good utility, but not spec-specific and doesn’t really help fill a niche.

All in all I definitely agree VDH needs help, but the biggest help they could give is a rework to the class tree to make it less saturated with 2 pt nodes, adding actual choice options, and reworking the spec tree so 1/4 of it isn’t entirely dead. A lot of talents need reversions to Azerite Trait/etc versions (Soulmonger/CoB/etc), reworked, massively buffed or just plain replaced. We need to be less dependent on the Frailty side of the tree (this is not asking for it to be nerfed, it’s asking for it to be more accessible), DS should have higher uptime, Meteoric Strikes needs a Flame Crash component or it’s a lackluster point and overall just need more points to spend.

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This was a well thought out post, I agree with most of your points. I would like to see blur added back to our defensive kit as well.

Frailty should stack on the DH as a DR buff.
Meta should indeed offer DR% reduction to make it an actual defensive CD. Have a way to reduce the cool down like feed the demon works with spikes.

These are all good options, the next season we are going to have to run the DIF build and putting talents in as many soul generators as possible for it work well. Will be a learning curve as well for many. DIF will punish you.

Our tier set is fiery brand based for S2

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Utility is not going to change the game for VDH. People has been asking for dark and chaos nova, and now that we have both, we are in the same boat. It not going to be meta for raid unless one or more of the conditions are met:

  1. When the other tanks specs are poorly tuned and vengeance is the spec that requires the least amount of attention.
  2. Havoc is the worst dps spec in raid(see Nathria tier) .
  3. The end bosses dont have mechanics that are cheesed by grip/grabby and AMS(broodmother).

Now, just because a tank isnt meta, doesnt mean is bad by any means. Outside of the broodmother mechanic, the raid felt pretty balanced for tanks and even gave us some moments to shine. Here is some examples

Terros:Darkness got some value on prog. Solid cooldown to drop right after a smash, into the debuff that put a ball over your head. Even bad rng gave it some gnarly healing.

Spider: we had a lot more control than other tanks when it came to the ice(becauss of leap and glide). Slight benefit because personally, there was a handful of times i would died not being a dh. This would save a brez or wipe.

Dathea: Like spider, alot more control of our movement to save ourselves from mistakes. Platforms gave sigil of silence good value(kinda cracked to have a 10 sec silence) on top of a aoe stun.

Raz: I literally think we are the best tank to prog this fight. Sigils give a ton of value to cover sparks. Mobilty makes it impossible to fall off(couple of time i even take a gate backwards and still have plenty of room to not be knocked). Sigil of silence would just negate any casting for 2/3 add groups in the intermission.(the mechanic has been heavily nerfed, but the adds would just machine gun some one down if you missed a kick). We come close to fully sustaining ourselves in the first intermission. We bring some short cd burst for shields in p2.

Second intermission, leap is great for the dodging breath/balls quickly and safely. Chains is avaiable if your group lacks a grip. Vdh mobility makes you a tornado gobbler in the final phase. You’ll passively take less ticking damage then any other tank(with two talent options to further reduce that and breaths damage). Each breath is met with a 40% DR and small shield from fel dev.

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At this time, I’m not seeing cases in which raid teams desire VDH’s. I can make a use case for every other tank:

  • Why take a Prot Warrior? Prot Warriors have some of the best mitigation in the game and currently deal insane amounts of damage. They are also decently mobile.
  • Why take a Prot Paladin? Prot Paladins have decent damage and healing but truly shine in utility with their ability to bring varying buffs. They are apparently now good at healing raid members as well, following the rework.
  • Why take a Blood DK? BDK’s have the best self-healing in the game along with utility that is often times required to more easily complete raid encounters. Your healers will also thank you for not needing to be funneled heals most of the time.
  • Why take a BM Monk? Monk’s bring stagger and some other decent utility. Monk’s also have some of the highest damage potential now for tanks. Stagger has notoriously been a fantastic mechanic for raid progression which allows the BM to tank serious mechanics with damage dealt to them over time, versus them receiving flat damage, which allows healers to more easily do their job.
  • Why take a Guardian druid? Guardian druids also provide decent utility and bring the best of all tanks with their powerful mitigation, massive health pool and assortment of personal CDs. They also currently do a heavy amount of damage and are great for beginners. Rolling druid also allows you to be flexible in your role much like paladins and Monks, with the added bonus of being able to go ranged DPS if your group requires.

So then this begs the question - why should a raid team have a Vengeance DH over any of the above options? Our damage is average, our mitigation is lacking, self healing is okay, we lack CDs and bring mostly dungeon utility to raid. The only thing we have over other tanks is mobility (sort of) which rarely gives us any sort of advantage.

My point is, VDH does a lot, sure. But we’re a jack of specific trades and aren’t masters of anything in particular. Realistically, if I’m a raid leader I would pick any of the above over a VDH, UNLESS I am lacking a Havoc Demon Hunter, which there are an abundance of.

1 Like
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I’d love to see:

  • extended spikes baseline. this is just dumb
  • revert soulmonger to be the azerite power (all fragments shield no matter what). I got this idea from another forum member.
  • have the dropoff on calcified spikes cut in half (every 2 seconds instead of every 1 second)
  • put Burning Alive in Fiery Demise position.
  • make Burning Alive spread every 1 second.
  • Buff the hell out of Revel in Pain and make it easier to reach in the tree.

I think with those, and the new tier set, you could make Vengeance great without adding a new tank CD.

Agreed. Talent is lame and should just be replaced with something better.

Also, why the hell is Spirit Bomb so far down the tree? It’s an essential piece of the kit. Change this.

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For the CD problem, it really depends on how they plan to go about mechanics in both dungeons and raids.

If some mechanics continue to specifically require mitigation (such as Raz), we need more actual mitigation. We’re designed to basically be a health sponge (when we can get into meta), but that doesn’t work for some things. Fiery Brand should be baseline and move DIF to Fiery Brand’s position. With it being a single target defensive, this is not gamebreaking by any means and simply helps round out our defensive kit. Put Fiery Soul into DIF’s former position. Next, add a minor mitigation component to Meta, maybe something like 10%?

Regardless of whether mechanics specifically require mitigation or not, we need more defensives. Buff Soul Barrier and make it more accessible, potentially moving it into FFF’s place to actually mirror the choice node on the opposite side. Bulk Extraction either needs a massive buff, rework or melded into Soul Barrier as a 45-60s CD because as it stands it’s garbage. If we are going to be designed around DR from Frailty, the Frailty talents should be far more accessible and not lock us into spending 23% of our talent points into Frailty talents alone, not to mention the points to bridge the gap between those talents.

Calcified Spikes and Deflecting Spikes should either be a single talent or one of them should be made baseline, CS especially so if we’re not going to be able to reach 100% uptime on Spikes like other tanks can with their active mitigation. Make SoS baseline and combine Roaring Fire + Ruinous Bulwark, then rework Ruinous Bulwark to give the shield after exiting meta, this way we actually get an absorb when we need it rather than when we are most tanky. Painbringer is far too essential for survivability and should be made 1 point for full value somewhere more central in the tree IMO. Soulmonger, as already mentioned, needs reversion to it’s Azerite Trait version (same with Cycle of Binding).

Fiery Brand spread via Burning Alive should be significantly faster given the point sink it is to get it. Last Resort either needs massive CDR or just a flat reduction in its cooldown. We also either need CDR for Meta or access to First of the Illidari without sacrificing Demonic. (Demonic is a toxic talent choice regardless since its 100% pickrate for both Havoc and Vengeance. Just make it baseline at the earliest level we would be able to get it) Not exactly mitigation, but Illidari Knowledge and Will of the Illidari in the class tree are objectively worse than every analogous counterpart that other tanks have access to, especially with Sanctified Plates now being an option. These either need to be 1 point, massively buffed or have secondary benefits to be anywhere near equal to what other tanks can get. Feast of Souls, FFF, Revel in Pain and multiple other talents need massive buffs and reworks to even be considered.

Not defensive changes, but Meteoric Strikes needs a Flame Crash equivalent to be worth considering, especially with the lackluster talents it leads to. Retaliation should be reworked to unleash a significantly larger attack on successful parries while Demon Spikes is active as the name implies, similar to how All-Totem works except without the ICD. Darkglare should honestly be 1pt with how point starved we are and overall most of our 2pt talents should be reduced in point cost.

I could go on even further, but I feel like this is substantial enough for now.

edit: Also Spirit Bomb should either be baseline/further up in the tree or SC should be uncapped. It’s a false choice and a forced talent. Fracture should probably be made baseline too, or FD should be baseline and this should be the first node.

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Fiery Soul would be v nice.

I actually think Extended Spikes needs to be baseline. Either the duration is 8 seconds or it’s not. Why do we need to spend 2 talent points just to make our mitigation have the correct duration?

Great idea.

Wasn’t a huge fan of this playstyle. It seems like momentum, tying your movement abilities to your damage rotation.

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i highly doubt vdh gets a re work, they cant re work every class then tune it.

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I’d like to see something like this:

Ruinous Bulwark (Talent)
Requires Demon Hunter, Level 50
Fel Devastation heals for an additional 10%, and 100% of its healing is converted into an absorb shield that lasts for 10 seconds after exiting Metamorphosis.

And for the new talent that would synergize:

Soul Feast (Talent)
Requires Demon Hunter, Level 60
Each Soul Fragment consumed during Metamorphosis increases the absorb shield created by Ruinous Bulwark by 5% and increases the duration by 1 second. This effect can stack up to 10 times.

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Bring. Back. Abyssal. Strike. There was NO reason to take it away and give us trash talents like Fodder or Elysian Decree. I’m a DH, not a Kyrian or Necrolord.

gosh vdh is such garbage rn and it’s embarrassing.

I would like to have Blur back since we’ve been nerfed so much and are so squish rn. Again, took away an ability for no reason.

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Blur would be an excellent addition, or possibly even a VDH unique version of it and I agree, not sure why they took Abby strikes away from us. Someone mentioned why spirit bomb was halfway down the tree. It’s one of our core abilities now and should either be baseline or at the top of the tree

I’m still struggling to think of ways to give us a unique identity, but with all the reworks happening recently I’m hopeful that blizz will give us another look.

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I think giving us more of a shield identity or a soul furnace identity would be sick. It would allow us to setup and gain a large shield before big hits come out.

I would love for blizz to really lean into the fantasy that we are essentially carving the souls from our enemies and using them as fuel.

Also who remembers when we had Pain as a resource? XD

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Extended spikes should be a 1pt node w/ a secondary benefit, or a 2pt node with massive secondary benefit. Other tanks get analogous +2s to their active mitigation talents for 1pt, most with secondary benefits (Enduring Defenses, Iron Heart, Consecration in Flame). Something like a rework or weaker version of Razor Spikes might be a good addition.

Ideally, FTD would be buffed so we can achieve near 100% uptime on our active mitigation, like almost every other tank can.

It needs the Flame Crash equivalent to even be worth considering. If you don’t enjoy it, you wouldn’t really need to play it in an ideal world, but as it stands it’s just not worth the point in any scenario.

That being said, even with the 16s CD without Meteoric Strikes (14s with an evoker, iirc), creating an @player macro to keep one strike on CD adds a fair amount of damage between GCDs. Having the reduced CD from Meteoric Strikes would basically make the CD entirely negligible at ~9.6s IIRC.

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Not sure what you even mean by that, to be entirely honest. If this were an issue, it would apply to quite literally every other class they’ve reworked since the talent trees came back. It’s clearly possible for them to do it and it’s desperately needed.

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Honestly, I like Fodder. It feels more like a DH ability than a Necrolord ability to me. The Hunt would be a perfect DH ability if Blizz wasn’t so stubborn and reskinned it to look like Illidan’s ult of the same name from HotS, or even just use a felfire green animation, either maybe with the sound replaced by the demonic screeching you hear during FD or EB. ED could probably be saved too, though it’d likely need a reskin + rename + change of sound effect (plus yknow buffs/alterations to how the ability works to actually make it competitive).

My point is there are ways to make these abilities work and feel thematic, Blizz just arbitrarily refuses to.

I can partly see why Blur was removed from the tree since it would force Havoc to go the entire leveling process without a defensive, but they honestly should have just made it a shared baseline ability with how the VDH tree is set up. Give VDH different tuning on the ability, maybe less dodge but more DR or something, and boom it’s perfectly balanced. Really unfortunate that they just took it from us entirely.

Revert Soulmonger to the Azerite Trait version so there’s a benefit to spending before a hit comes, similar to Blood Shield then buff Soul Barrier and put it into a more accessible location. Problem mostly solved.

As it stands we’re a weird amalgamation of a lifesteal kiting debuff CD oriented tank that at times feels extremely awkward to play because we have to invest so incredibly heavily into achieving any of those playstyles that we miss out on a large part of the others.

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All really good ideas, I think we all can agree Blizz needs to take a second look at our class design.

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There is no reason to bring one. Our kit is not desirable for bleeding edge crowd(which is a huge influence for rest of the player base). We already have the cds to succeed, we just dont have the kit to zero out mechanics, or be left on our own.

We are still by far the best tank on Raz though, its just not talked about.

Soul barrier is definitly my most missed talent. I agree, bulk extraction is weird being on a 1.5 min cd. Combining the 2 and setting it to a min, id be down. Still, i would like to see the legion iteration and swap with soul monger or something.

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I agree with all of your points. Vault has felt really nice for VDH as a whole. A lot of moments where our mobility really gets to shine and is brought to the surface as a valuable utility. It felt like the adds on Broodkeeper were specifically made for our class to handle.
Just a shame our guild’s raid comp didn’t have a DK; I had to become a sigil slot machine for the entirety of Dathea. Having to go so far down the right-hand side of the tree to pick up Chains of Anger is making me nauseas just thinking about it

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