Vengeance Image Problem

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

You don’t have to convince me that Demon Hunters are capable tanks. I’ve played every tank besides BM, and as you can see from my sig below I chose my pally and demon hunter to co-main for Legion. My DH has survived double trash pulls when the healer DC’d, finished M+ bosses when everyone else died to mechanics… all the things you expect a competent tank to be able to do.

We do, however, have an image problem. There’s no point denying it. If you doubt it exists, just check out this poll I started in the Dungeons & Raids forum:

Healers' Favorite?

Healers prefer large mostly stable health bars that fluctuate slowly, like bears and warriors. They like having time to plan their heals so they can use their resources efficiently. Having the tank’s health bar ping-pong and wasting emergency heals just as we do a full heal on ourselves drives them crazy. On top of this, we have the same problem DKs had back in the day – so many new tanks chose the flashy DH to be their first learning experience that everyone has had to deal with DHs who were still learning and made more mistakes than those who’d played their specs longer. Even some of my guild healers, all of whom trust me and love healing my pally, have been nervous about healing my DH for the first time (talking M+ here).

So what can we do to narrow this gap between the way we are perceived and the capable tanks we know ourselves to be? I’ve spent time explaining to my guild healers how Last Resort works and how they don’t need to stress over my health if it hasn’t proc’d in the last 3 minutes. Some of them had no idea (can’t expect everyone to know everyone else’s spec – be honest, do you know all your healer’s talents?); they were relieved to know our trapeze act comes with a safety net. We worked together to create Weak Auras for tracking it: one for me that announces to group when it procs, and another for them that tells them when any DH tank they pug has it proc.

What else can we do to reassure Azeroth that DH tanks can be trusted to get the job done?

[Tech614]

You shouldn't care what any healers but the ones you play with care about.

Healer healing you differently then another tank is a healer issue and not your issue. Healers do not need to change their playstyle for playing with a spiky tank like Blood, Pal or VDH vs more stable ones like Brew or Guardian. By and large outside of crazy circumstances(aka undergeared progression) a properly played tank is going to need the same amount of assistance from a healer. If a healer can't figure out the spikey tanks survive through burst healing and other means on their own part that's on them.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

You shouldn't care what any healers but the ones you play with care about.

Healer healing you differently then another tank is a healer issue and not your issue. Healers do not need to change their playstyle for playing with a spiky tank like Blood, Pal or VDH vs more stable ones like Brew or Guardian. By and large outside of crazy circumstances(aka undergeared progression) a properly played tank is going to need the same amount of assistance from a healer. If a healer can't figure out the spikey tanks survive through burst healing and other means on their own part that's on them.

No offense, but you sound like you never pug, and never have to recruit good healers for a raid team with DH tank. Perception matters, if only to get your foot in the door.

[Tech614]

No offense, but you sound like you never pug, and never have to recruit good healers for a raid team with DH tank. Perception matters, if only to get your foot in the door.

Perception doesn't matter. I do pug, and I get an instant invite to any group 9/10 times when farming AP.

It seems the community has no problem inviting a VDH. When a group is qued up and just needs a tank they're inviting any tank of proper ilvl that ques up spec means jack shit. You read too much forum hyperbole, but then again aren't you the guy that said your healers can't see debuffs on you so you had to make a WA for them? No wonder you're making threads like this, even default blizzard UI clearly shows debuffs.

[Stormspark]

Death Knights had the same image problem in Wrath, when there were 10,000 Death Knoobs trying to tank without having any clue what they were doing. It's true that bad demon hunter tanks might as well be rogues as far as tanking goes, if you're not using your mitigation properly. It'll pass, just like it did with Death Knights. The people who don't know what they're doing will get tired of the class and move on. DH's are the "new thing" right now so everyone and their grandmother is playing them.

[Zyrosis]

The problem with that poll you linked is that it only shows who the most desired is, not what the worst is. Do all those who voted for anything but DH believe they're the worst to heal? Not necessarily. They could view any of the tanks they didn't vote for. A better poll would've been to ask what the worst to heal is from a healer PoV.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

The problem with that poll you linked is that it only shows who the most desired is, not what the worst is. Do all those who voted for anything but DH believe they're the worst to heal? Not necessarily. They could view any of the tanks they didn't vote for. A better poll would've been to ask what the worst to heal is from a healer PoV.

Comments posted to that poll:

• "Warrior > Guardian > Blood > Paladin > Brewmaster > Vengeance"
• "Prefer warriors/guardians, then pala/DK and finally monk/DH"
• "DKs and DHs are quite similar, they have incredibly self heal but also get large hits from time to time. From those two I rather prefer DK, since DHs seem to ignore the group and just rush out of range all the time."
• "tbh im not a fan of DH tanks at all"
• "I pretty much avoid any DH tank I can."
• "My least favourite to heal is certainly DH."
• ”A good DH is nice to heal, but a bad DH is like healing a cloth wearer. I've had so many bad DHs, mostly DPS going tank to get invited, that I don't invite DHs to my groups until after I look them up on armory.”
• ”DH and blood I find are usually really spikey”

There were a few exceptions (we got 5 top votes!), but the overall response was pretty clear.

- - - Updated - - -

aren't you the guy that said your healers can't see debuffs on you so you had to make a WA for them? No wonder you're making threads like this, even default blizzard UI clearly shows debuffs.

Not what I said. Of course they see and track all the debuffs they are used to worrying about. Some of them did not know about Last Resort. I won't blame them, since I couldn't tell you what any healers level 100 talents are. The Weak Aura was my idea. I use Weak Auras anytime there is important information I want to make more prominent on my screen.

[Tech614]

Not what I said. Of course they see and track all the debuffs they are used to worrying about. Some of them did not know about Last Resort. I won't blame them, since I couldn't tell you what any healers level 100 talents are. The Weak Aura was my idea. I use Weak Auras anytime there is important information I want to make more prominent on my screen.

If they can see debuffs then they can see LR procced and on CD. It's that simple. The only possible way they need your assistance to keep track of it is if they're oblivious to looking at debuffs in which case they're bad healers.

When I have to communicate with a healer on hard content, I will let them know when brand is up, when I pop meta etc. That is also only with healers I don't know, as most of the healers I do know actually show tank CDs in their raid frame(but they're used to playing at a high level). No healer ever needs to know if LR is available or not. It's literally the simplest thing to know.

LOL I just realized the poll you're linking to is some poll you created with only 2 pages of comments and sub 200 total votes. Yea, great sample size that we should take serious. Druids are stomping every tank in a landslide in it as they should as they're the only tank spec that is actually broken atm and clearly better then everyone else.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

No healer ever needs to know if LR is available or not.

Brilliant.

[Tech614]

Brilliant.

So how many healers do you play with again that can't see a very clear debuff on a DH that says LR is not available again?

You should share your magical WA for all healers world wide, expand it to every debuff in the game since they clearly don't look at them.

[Delimit]

aren't you the guy that said your healers can't see debuffs on you so you had to make a WA for them? No wonder you're making threads like this, even default blizzard UI clearly shows debuffs.

Aren't you the guy claiming he was tanking week 1 Heroic EN, with zero external healing at 850ilvl? Claiming that no VDH should ever need external healing in Heroic raids? The one who refused to provide any evidence of this historic feat? Nice meme, kid.

Not every healer is using the same raid/party frames, and they don't all show Uncontained Fel by default.

[Shutyertrap]

Perception doesn't matter.

Brewmaster says hi!

[Deleted]

I don't tank outside dayli Hc dungeon bc I know I'm bad and heals are biased

[Crookids]

What else can we do to reassure Azeroth that DH tanks can be trusted to get the job done?

Play the waiting game. It might be until next expansion but I already see the DH population dwindling. It's definitely nowhere close to stable -- but it's happening. More people are realizing that their numbers suck and are blaming it on the class due to the rotation being quite difficult. Also, given DHs start at level 98, you have a lot of players coming back after missing a few expansions and jumping right on a class that is already a high level. This means they are skipping time that would otherwise be structured around learning things. Then most of them roll damage for leveling then say "hey I wanna tank for instant queues der der" and queue up.

Accompanied with WQs proccing high ilvl gear, the importance of secondaries (ie ilvl being deceiving based on a player not knowing stat priorities) and DHs learning curve (needing to know when to pop defensives on fights, knowing when to heal, prepping their healer before they begin) -- you have the components for a very vicious cycle. This isn't even including most healers not knowing their own rotation besides knowing how to heal a DH.

This is why I think it will take an expansion. Blizzard will flesh out the issues in coming patches (even though I hope they don't take the control away from a VDH), people will read more complaints about the class then switch mains and then hopefully a majority of DHs will be dedicated through thick and thin and learn the class.

I think it will just take time. Truthfully, the image is one of the reasons that stopped me from switching my Rogue to a DH. I see 877 DHs, damage or otherwise come into our raid or running Mythics and they usually do not perform adequately according the their ilvl. It almost makes me roll my eyes whenever I see someone say their DH is their main. I am equally as hopeful that this dies down because I truly do love tanking and DPSing with him.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Play the waiting game. It might be until next expansion but I already see the DH population dwindling. It's definitely nowhere close to stable -- but it's happening. More people are realizing that their numbers suck and are blaming it on the class due to the rotation being quite difficult. Also, given DHs start at level 98, you have a lot of players coming back after missing a few expansions and jumping right on a class that is already a high level. This means they are skipping time that would otherwise be structured around learning things. Then most of them roll damage for leveling then say "hey I wanna tank for instant queues der der" and queue up.

Accompanied with WQs proccing high ilvl gear, the importance of secondaries (ie ilvl being deceiving based on a player not knowing stat priorities) and DHs learning curve (needing to know when to pop defensives on fights, knowing when to heal, prepping their healer before they begin) -- you have the components for a very vicious cycle. This isn't even including most healers not knowing their own rotation besides knowing how to heal a DH.

This is why I think it will take an expansion. Blizzard will flesh out the issues in coming patches (even though I hope they don't take the control away from a VDH), people will read more complaints about the class then switch mains and then hopefully a majority of DHs will be dedicated through thick and thin and learn the class.

I think it will just take time. Truthfully, the image is one of the reasons that stopped me from switching my Rogue to a DH. I see 877 DHs, damage or otherwise come into our raid or running Mythics and they usually do not perform adequately according the their ilvl. It almost makes me roll my eyes whenever I see someone say their DH is their main. I am equally as hopeful that this dies down because I truly do love tanking and DPSing with him.

Well said. As someone who mained a DK from WotLK through WoD, this all feels very familiar. We were poor stepchild for quite a while, then became golden favorites in Cataclysm. It's a combination of weeding out the less dedicated, then healers getting to know us even as we are getting better at playing the spec.

[Raiz]

Accompanied with WQs proccing high ilvl gear, the importance of secondaries (ie ilvl being deceiving based on a player not knowing stat priorities)

Gear is overated. I mean, what are the chances you'll have only the worst stats for every piece of gear ? Do you seriously think you'll sudendly get a whooping 50% dps increase ? No (with maybe the exception of mage, because they seems to be very reliant on their crit, but sadly I've never played mage in my entire WoW career).

WQ proccing high ilvl gear mean you'll get your primary stats buffed. Nothing can come wrong out of it. I really think people need to stop being so obsessive with their gear. At best you're getting probably 10-15% DPS increase. I've said it before and will say it again : the most important part for the character is to know their rotation and their strongs assets. And then probably the Weak Auras or others tools that can help you track better of all of your CDs. I don't know where the stats are on the priority's list, but you have to be extremely unlucky to have only the worst stats for every piece which is highly unlikely.

[Faenlyn]

Perception doesn't matter. I do pug, and I get an instant invite to any group 9/10 times when farming AP.

It seems the community has no problem inviting a VDH. When a group is qued up and just needs a tank they're inviting any tank of proper ilvl that ques up spec means jack shit. You read too much forum hyperbole, but then again aren't you the guy that said your healers can't see debuffs on you so you had to make a WA for them? No wonder you're making threads like this, even default blizzard UI clearly shows debuffs.

I dont disagree with you or agree with the OP but I can tell you the first part of your statement is false. Ive been in a few premade finder groups waiting on a tank to join and the group leader has passed up geared DH tanks choosing instead to wait longer. When I have asked why they didnt grab the tank who signed up, the simple answer "DH" only as if that explains it all

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I dont disagree with you or agree with the OP but I can tell you the first part of your statement is false. Ive been in a few premade finder groups waiting on a tank to join and the group leader has passed up geared DH tanks choosing instead to wait longer. When I have asked why they didnt grab the tank who signed up, the simple answer "DH" only as if that explains it all

Yep. Back in October we had some top DPS leave our raid team and our guild because the GM & RL refused to replace the DH main tank. I thought he was a very solid tank, but they felt it would limit our progression. I'm not arguing that there is problem with DH tanks; I am saying that many are prejudiced against them. Note: We stuck by the DH tank, but he left in November for his own reasons. I now MT for that team on my pally, with a warrior off-tank. My own DH alt tanks M+ for the guild.

[Effreet]

I main tank for my guild. We have only done a few bosses in Mythic (always short of 20 people. Had to 17 man Nythendra first kill on her) and I've tanked Heroic Helya before the nerfs. I was turned down for a Mythic Assault on Violet Hold. I'm 886 with the "Glory of the Legion Hero" achievement and they STILL did not want a DH tank. They waited in LFG for 15 minutes and refused to believe I was qualified or competent enough to tank a regular mythic dungeon. I can only imagine what pugging Mythic Keystones is like if you are a slightly under geared but decent Veng DH. Luckily I can always get a guild group going because our core is pretty active.

Some people are just really that bad that it taints our image and only time will heal that.

[Tinary]

Gear is overated. I really think people need to stop being so obsessive with their gear. At best you're getting probably 10-15% DPS increase. I've said it before and will say it again : the most important part for the character is to know their rotation and their strongs assets.

This is about tanking, having 10% flat dmg reduction and 50% psyhical damage reduction and armor for more psyhical reduction is a big deal. Yes, for dps 10-15% dps increase does not matter and prolly wont be the death of a group or wipe on raid bosses but 10-15% damage reduction on a tank is. There's a difference between getting melee'd for 2m on tryrannical bosses and getting melee'd for 1,7m. Just sayin'

Now, the DH tank in pugs is kinda nightmare yesh, but I noticed that if you have high gearscore (875+), people dont mind taking them, yesh they prefer guardians or prot warriors/paladins cause they feel good but as long as you got the gear to back the tank up, healers wont QQ that much. Skill matters at m+9 and foward since thats the only place mobs and trash start killing tanks.