Soul Cleave vs. Ignore Pain

[AanvilGT]

I know these things have to be considered as part of the entire kit, but Ignore Pain just seems to be at least twice as good as Soul Cleave. It is an absorb, instead of a heal and has basically the same resource cost, but the heal value is double, especially after warriors get all of the various artifact and talent buffs to Ignore Pain. Soul Cleave does good damage, but even that is largely lost because Ignore Pain is off the GCD, so you can combo it with Shield Slam or Revenge. Or, if you don't need the absorb, you can do the dps and save the rage for later, which DH really can't do.


Ignore Pain - 20 to 60 rage- at 60 it prevents 90% of the next 2800% of AP, lasts 15 seconds.

Soul Cleave - At 60 pain does 742% AP as physical damage and heals you for 1200% of AP.


Maybe I'm missing something, lord knows I'm not good at the theory crafting.

[Elbob]

So many problems with this comparison.

As you said you shouldn't compare individual spells they are part of kits. Things like base mitigation and active mitigation come into play.
Soul cleave also pulls in all nearby souls for a lot of healing that you just aren't counting because....?
Soul Cleave does damage, so as a resource dump it has offensive and defensive value.

[Deleted]

you can't compare those 2 so different spells lol
especially not when you ignore parts one one of them.

[AanvilGT]

I haven't been able to find the actual numbers for how much the souls improve the heal. In my personal experience, it still doesn't compare to the heal value of Ignore Pain. I started looking this up because I felt like the heals from Soul Cleave were so often so weak.

And I disagree that they are so different, they clearly fill the same role in our active mitigation. We have each have a basic buff Shield Block vs. Demon Spikes, combo'd with a resource dumping big heal. Ignore Pain vs. Soul Cleave. It just so happens that our big heal is combined into an attack, but Ignore Pain is off the GCD, so you can combine it with an attack if you want. In my experience, the heal from Ignore Pain is way bigger than the heal from Soul Cleave, which seems backwards to me.

[Agilent]

You also forget the soul fragment heals can crit and I'm pretty sure the heal from soul cleave can as well. Unless it was a bug with skada.

[Vakna]

You're not missing anything, Ignore Pain is pretty much flat out the best Active Mitigation in the game.

But then you have to realise that warriors generate rage much slower the DH generates rage, and IP is great at freezing HP but it's not going to save you from dying in the long run - that 10% is still getting through.

Of course that's comparing in a vacuum, in the real world we have 4 other group members to support us. But take it as you will.

[Agartha]

It's the age old imbalance between proactive and reactive active mitigation. It's a very odd situation though because soul cleave isn't something that you can save since it's so important to the rotation. Though just like old bear FR, DH probably saves a non-trivial amount of mana for tank healers, which could be valuable depending on how important mana management is in Legion.

[Arker42]

Incoming Damage is also extremely low pre-Legion, allowing Ignore Pain (and any other absorb for that matter) to cockblock all other healing sources. If the incoming Damage is sufficiently high, absorbs are broken and a significant amount of damage is done to actual Health pools, allowing other heals to do their work. In high consistent damage instances, high throughput healing begins to overtake low throughput absorbs. One cannot look at a healing parse alone to make accurate or meaningful judgments regarding class balance, let alone the relative strength of individual abilities.

[Senen]

1) IP is far less broken at lvl 110 that it currently is at lvl 100.
2) It doesn't have the same cost. Rage generation and Pain generation being quite different now.
3) There are a lot of things you're ignoring, like how does SB compare to Spikes, the fact that you'll have more self-healing due to fire damage, while warriors have basically no self-heal.
4) You didn't consider Soul Fragments either.
5) Etc.

They're two different classes with two different mechanisms. Yes, it can be interesting to compare classes' active mitigation (I often compared SB/SBar to SotR/WoG or even to Death Strike, so I won't blame you ) but that's not the whole picture.

[Deleted]

I haven't been able to find the actual numbers for how much the souls improve the heal. In my personal experience, it still doesn't compare to the heal value of Ignore Pain. I started looking this up because I felt like the heals from Soul Cleave were so often so weak.

Soul Cleave (at max pain) heals for 900% AP (981% with artifact trait), each fragment consumed heals for 250% AP, so 4 soul fragments will cause the heal to be a little more than double the value(at max pain - before that they have a higher impact on your healing). Soul Fragments in particular are tied to various offensive and defensive mechanics via talents and/or artifact traits(For instance a 5s meta-procc per soul fragment consumed).

In general the fragments are an integral part of soul cleave and can't really be left out of the equation.

[AanvilGT]

Okay, but my point isn't that Ignore Pain looks bigger in the pre-patch environment, my point is that Ignore Pain's base numbers are WAY bigger than the numbers for Soul Cleave, so Ignore Pain will always be a lot more healing per cast than Soul Cleave. It's possible that superior pain generation for DH, combined with other advantages, could mitigate this somewhat, but it seems unlikely.

- - - Updated - - -

Soul Cleave (at max pain) heals for 900% AP (981% with artifact trait), each fragment consumed heals for 250% AP, so 4 soul fragments will cause the heal to be a little more than double the value(at max pain - before that they have a higher impact on your healing). Soul Fragments in particular are tied to various offensive and defensive mechanics via talents and/or artifact traits(For instance a 5s meta-procc per soul fragment consumed).

In general the fragments are an integral part of soul cleave and can't really be left out of the equation.

Even with the four soul fragments, we don't get to the total number for Ignore Pain. That said, at max level, we do have a lot more soul fragments, or at least the ability to talent into getting them. That may be a big part of my problem with Soul Cleave right now.

[Arker42]

Okay, but my point isn't that Ignore Pain looks bigger in the pre-patch environment, my point is that Ignore Pain's base numbers are WAY bigger than the numbers for Soul Cleave, so Ignore Pain will always be a lot more healing per cast than Soul Cleave.

Bigger Numbers =/= Better

Just because one ability "bigger numbers" on a single cast does not make it better. You're relying on far too narrow a set of statistics in your evaluation of the relative 'power' of each ability, and by extension, class balance. Comparing one ability to another without any additional sort of context is pointless. Come up with some more detailed scenarios and then we'll have some real meat to chew on.

[Deleted]

demon hunters do not have ignore pain, that is prot warriors.

[Deleted]

Even with the four soul fragments, we don't get to the total number for Ignore Pain. That said, at max level, we do have a lot more soul fragments, or at least the ability to talent into getting them. That may be a big part of my problem with Soul Cleave right now.

Yeah, I basically aimed to provide the information on the healing value of the soul fragments, the rest was basically just my fluff take on it. I'd like to add that fragments dip the odds in the favor of soul cleave when used at low Pain in comparison to Ignore pain used at low rage. (The healing from the fragments is flat per fragment and does not scale with pain - thus it provides a much more significant relative gain when used below resource cost cap)

[Orloth]

Well, yeah, but they don't actually serve the same purpose. Their only similarity is that they'll be what we spend excess resources on.

Warriors have Shield Block, which increases their block chance, offering about a ~30% physical mitigation buff. Demon Hunters have Demon Spikes which offers a huge (with average stats around ~50%) physical mitigation buff, plus 20% parry. That's before all other factors like Artifact Weapon, talents, base mitigation, and cooldowns. No, they don't compare, but they're not supposed to. As you said: compare the kit.

[Sliske]

On a pure ability vs ability basis, soul cleave is worse.

Heals are just worse defensively than absorbs.

[madmossy]

pro-active mitigation has and always will be better than reactive mitigation. It's better to prevent damage no matter how big or small than it is to recover from it.

A 5 fragment soul cleave can heal for a significant amount of health, but its no good if your already dead from the a subsequent hit, being able to mitigate part or all of the damage incoming pro-actively is going to help keep you alive long enough to recover.

[Invisibelf]

Don't forget that Soul Cleave is also an aoe, and can hit your entire pack of mobs at the same time too.

[Anterra]

I think it isn't quite honest to compare this 2 abilities in vacuum.

IP has an absorb, that's all. And it is very big right now, indeed.

Soul Carve -heals, quite good, but not as much as IP, BUT! it has a lot of other benefits, wich you didn't mention for some reason.
1 - Soul carve is Damaging skill also
2 - It's a AoE cone-attack
3 - Consuming souls can proc FBP, wich icreases our hp seriously and pain generation
4 - consuming shards reduces our damage taken via Painbringer.
5 - Consuming shards reduces our CD on Spikes with FtD talent

So, if we stack all the benefits from this skill - it becomes much better, than it is look right now.

[Hyve]

Demon Hunters generate a lot of Pain compared to Warriors generating Rage.

Also, Soul Cleave has two healing components. The initial heal based off the Pain spent, and then the Orbs that we absorb from it. Then add to that there are Talents that allow us to gain an absorb shield that is improved through the use of Soul Cleave, and yeah ...

You soon realise that they're fundamentally very different, and near impossible to compare. Apples & Oranges my friend.

- - - Updated - - -

I think it isn't quite honest to compare this 2 abilities in vacuum.

IP has an absorb, that's all. And it is very big right now, indeed.

Soul Carve -heals, quite good, but not as much as IP, BUT! it has a lot of other benefits, wich you didn't mention for some reason.
1 - Soul carve is Damaging skill also
2 - It's a AoE cone-attack
3 - Consuming souls can proc FBP, wich icreases our hp seriously and pain generation
4 - consuming shards reduces our damage taken via Painbringer.
5 - Consuming shards reduces our CD on Spikes with FtD talent

So, if we stack all the benefits from this skill - it becomes much better, than it is look right now.

Good summary. People comparing Demon Hunters now are forgetting; We don't even have all our Talents yet. We've literally got 2 Talents that change almost nothing about our gameplay right now.