VDH the worst tanks for NH?

[pay928]

Your saying you think Bear is easier than vdh on skittish?

Yes, Lunar Beam & Incarnation of bear if losing agro. Swipe is spammable AE with short CD on Thrash that does permableed vs Glaive on a 3s cd that hits 3 targets then SoF, IA, & Soul Cleave. I don't even use LB & incarnation, do fine with RnT & GG since GG can just spam moonfire on multiple targets. Also have Aran's trinket that helps immensely.

[Tinary]

Dont have time to quote you all so:

About skittish: Throw glaive is useless, its just range pull, doesnt help with threath at all during times, pure dps skills are more beneficial during that time. Target switching like wrath prot war is the way to go as VDH during skittish.

Sigil/Gorefiend: Gorefiend grasp radius is 30 yards from the DK, Sigil placement radius is 30 yards while the radius it pulls is 20 yards, meaning its better utility spell than gorefiend grasp during necrotic, high mythic+ when you need to kite and so on. Yesh its pretty much useless on low keys unless you use it as interupt or to stack em for stun.

Back to the topic: VDH is good, so far in nighthold, I have not faced a boss I cant cheese my ability's as VDH to make fight super easy for my co-tank. We do not need "Another big CD for dmg redu", Demon spikes are for that. Manage your cooldowns well and use them smartly. For example, dunno if its fixed or not already but, if you apply FB to Spellblade and she casts Annihilate on your Co-tank, taunt after the first tick, so he gets the debuff and you get 40% dmg redu from the FB. On our heroic progress last week, it worked.

[pay928]

Usually only glaive on pull/new ranged adds, and did tab but it's why I don't like feral or prot warrior as well. He asked about 'easier to tank skittish'.

On topic, do you have 4 piece for better DS uptime? Curious how close to 100% uptime it is with 4pc.

[Tech614]

Tanking 3/10 M thus far mitigation is an absolute joke but I'm not sure if it's more legendaries then class. Between Prydaz, Archimonde and Soul Barier I have an absorb up for a ridiculous amount of up time per fight. Usually in the neighborhood of 250k HPS, well over 300k on Scorp, a good 50%+ of that coming from absorbs.

Yes, VDH ST is still the bottom. It's not as low as it was in 7.1 though. Could still use some ST dps love, shear, brand, FE/FB could all use some love to bring our ST up to par. Have to be careful buffing aoe however, as our AoE is already really competitive with the other tanks.

[Littlepwny]

Yes, VDH ST is still the bottom. It's not as low as it was in 7.1 though. Could still use some ST dps love, shear, brand, FE/FB could all use some love to bring our ST up to par. Have to be careful buffing aoe however, as our AoE is already really competitive with the other tanks.

Part of the problem with our ST damage is that Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the ST-pain spender should be a talent instead of a baseline ability which causes major issues in balancing.

If non-Fracture does competitive damage, Fracture using DH will be incredibly strong.

[Tech614]

Part of the problem with our ST damage is that Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the ST-pain spender should be a talent instead of a baseline ability which causes major issues in balancing.

If non-Fracture does competitive damage, Fracture using DH will be incredibly strong.

Fracture ST is still the lowest tank ST dps. That's the issue, even if we prioritize ST in talents we're still behind. I do agree and have for awhile that Fracture should be baseline.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

About skittish: Throw glaive is useless, its just range pull, doesnt help with threath at all during times, pure dps skills are more beneficial during that time. Target switching like wrath prot war is the way to go as VDH during skittish.

I agree with you about target switching, but disagree regarding Throw Glaive.

Throw Glaive: "Throw a demonic glaive at the target, dealing 135% Physical damage. The glaive can ricochet to 2 additional enemies within 10 yards. Generates high threat."

[Tech614]

I agree with you about target switching, but disagree regarding Throw Glaive.

Throw Glaive: "Throw a demonic glaive at the target, dealing 135% Physical damage. The glaive can ricochet to 2 additional enemies within 10 yards. Generates high threat."

Throw Glaive is worthless because Soul Cleave does a ridiculous amount of threat with the healing component as well as damage component. A VDH should NEVER have any issues with Skittish. Prot Pal and VDH can fall asleep and hold threat in skittish compared to the other tanks.

[Deleted]

How is sloot? Never heard of him till now. Did you really need to label it VDH.... is there any other tank that a DH can be than V? Why can't people just type out the words.

All tanks are viable unless some silly race to the "top". I'd also say that is ranking a tank by how much dps it puts out is the way to rank a tank... then there is something wrong with the game. It should be based on how better it stays alive.

Its all about dps then why don't they try using a dps as a tank and push the dps even further. If you could tank with a dpser why bring a tank then as they would be a liability to lower dps.

I wish they'd bring back the day where as a tank you have to keep yourself alive and use skills to help keep yourself alive and dps was secondary.

I'm just curious, which days are you talking about? Are you talking about pre-mop when tanks had nothing to do with whether they lived or not during combat and all they had to do was have good gear and hold threat? Or perhaps are you talking about in MoP when due to vengeance if you weren't thinking about your dps as a tank you were doing it wrong? Because neither of those make sense in regards to what you said, and you surely can't miss WoD so you won't be talking about then.

@Saverem: simple answer is you're not in a top 50 guild so it doesn't matter what you play with the current balance, but I don't believe that Sloot would say that he is playing a tank because of its damage and nothing else or he would not be playing monk.

[Deleted]

Blood DK is the worst tank right now.

[Meanshield]

If they just nerfed Guardians like they should all tanks would be on par, except for Prot Warriors who are useless once IP is on cooldown.

[Biggmac]

If they just nerfed Guardians like they should all tanks would be on par, except for Prot Warriors who are useless once IP is on cooldown.

I'm not sure why you would say prot warriors are useless once IP is on CD..... There is no CD for IP and you can pretty easily keep a strong IP most of the time, Plus SB is really good for physical mitigation and Spell reflect is real strong for magic. Warriors have a strong toolkit for dealing with most anything thrown at them, so to say they're useless outside IP is a bit silly and just wrong.

Back to the topic though. DH for me is insanely fun to tank with and has a fairly versatile toolkit and a talent setup that allows us to almost freely choose between any build based on preffered play style and situation. This is not a luxury most other classes/specs have and I think that's a big part, for me at least, that puts DH ahead of the rest.

ST DPS is lagging behind a bit even if talented into a DPS focus, AOE DPS is good but nothing great. Survival and mitigation since 7.1.5 has improved significantly and since the patch I feel super tanky.

I swapped from Warrior to DH because I just have more fun on the DH and feel like all the tanks are close enough that progression at my level of raiding will not be effected based on my selection.

[Deleted]

The problem is VDH are just soo cluncky.

Soul Cleave: Do i use it to do more AoE on this Boss fight or do i wait until my health goes down abit more?

Spirit Bomb: Do i need all 5 stacks for my cleave + 15% dmg reduction or do i increase my threat/aoe dmg

I think demonic infusion would have been better as a talent which transforms your demon spikes into a stronger version on a longer CD.

Fracture and SoC need to go baseline.

[Logwyn]

I'm just curious, which days are you talking about? Are you talking about pre-mop when tanks had nothing to do with whether they lived or not during combat and all they had to do was have good gear and hold threat?

I quite remember having to keep certain abilities up or you'd get smashed by crushing blows on pre-mop raid bosses. Shield block comes to mind. I also remember having to keep track of If an attack was parried or not and have to deal with stopping to attack to prevent a boss ability pre-mop. Rolling cool-downs during certain phases as well.

[Saverem]

@Saverem: simple answer is you're not in a top 50 guild so it doesn't matter what you play with the current balance, but I don't believe that Sloot would say that he is playing a tank because of its damage and nothing else or he would not be playing monk.

I'm guessing he's Monk because their mechanics are unique and lets them cheese a lot of mechanics. Perfect example would be Odyn spears. A 10million damage hit before externals = instant tank death for any tank without CDs except for Monks. Monks can basically have their ISB up 100% of the time and now with the set bonus, they can mitigate 95% of the upfront damage. So that 10 million damage spear hits the BrM for 500k damage. The other 9.5 million is turned into a DoT on them which they can Purify half off and then healers have 10s to heal the rest of the damage instead of having to deal with an instant hit.

[Narabug]

A 10million damage hit before externals = instant tank death for any tank without CDs except for Monks. Monks can basically have their ISB up 100% of the time and now with the set bonus, they can mitigate 95% of the upfront damage. So that 10 million damage spear hits the BrM for 500k damage. The other 9.5 million is turned into a DoT on them which they can Purify half off and then healers have 10s to heal the rest of the damage instead of having to deal with an instant hit.

Probably also worth noting that, for monks, they probably synergize extremely well with the Hilt trinket, which allows them to play at low HP more safely than before.

One thing about Fracture that I haven't seen mentioned yet is how much it nerfs our survival. It's a meaningful damage increase, but it makes us extremely squishy in many cases. I'm not sure that other tanks have to be so reckless to play offensively. It's possible that Fracture's initial design was in tune with cat weaving, or similar, where you would be mostly off-tanking, and therefore not need the mitigation, but it fails to deliver on DPS there as well.

[Delimit]

Probably also worth noting that, for monks, they probably synergize extremely well with the Hilt trinket, which allows them to play at low HP more safely than before.

Nobody is planning their tanks around that mediocre trinket.

[Narabug]

Nobody is planning their tanks around that mediocre trinket.

You clearly don't understand the value of cheat death. If you're not raiding in an environment where cheats are useful, you wouldn't find value in it.

[Delimit]

You clearly don't understand the value of cheat death. If you're not raiding in an environment where cheats are useful, you wouldn't find value in it.

Nice meme.

[Tech614]

You clearly don't understand the value of cheat death. If you're not raiding in an environment where cheats are useful, you wouldn't find value in it.

Cool story bro, if you're in a situation where you need a cheat talent LR. That trinket is literal trash and all it provides for 95% of situations is a thousand some crit. Giving up an actual useful trinket slot on "I might die" tells me you need to play better. Situations where you need a cheat are very rare, and usually involve cheesing a mechanic. The reason LR was so good before the nerf and SB buff was not because it was a cheat death, but because you could intentionally die to enter a new full duration meta not because it was a cheat death.