Munkkys Vengeance Demon Hunter Guide UPDATED 7.3

[RoninChaos]

Had a question about DPS/Survival in the spec.

Currently I'm running spirit bomb and my usual rotation has me applying fiery brand and flame crashing a LOT. I'm finding when I have a ton of soul fragments if I spirit bomb then flame crash and fiery brand I heal for a crazy amount. I'm trying to figure out if I can make that jump even higher.

My thought is if ran razor spikes which gives me a 30% physical damage increase I could use that after hitting an enemy with spirit bomb, pop spikes, fiery brand then infernal strike (with flame crash) and get a shit ton of dps and that would equal out to a crazy amount of healing. I'm just not sure how the global cool downs and everything work together for this class and wasn't sure if that's too much stuff all together at once, or if the effort is even worth it. The reason I'm even thinking about this is I'm currently running with abyssal strike which lets me infernal strike a LOT more during an encount so I don't know if being able to do that more often in my rotation ends up being a net gain of healing and dps versus trying to do the combo I just described. Thoughts?

[Deleted]

Had a question about DPS/Survival in the spec.

Currently I'm running spirit bomb and my usual rotation has me applying fiery brand and flame crashing a LOT. I'm finding when I have a ton of soul fragments if I spirit bomb then flame crash and fiery brand I heal for a crazy amount. I'm trying to figure out if I can make that jump even higher.

My thought is if ran razor spikes which gives me a 30% physical damage increase I could use that after hitting an enemy with spirit bomb, pop spikes, fiery brand then infernal strike (with flame crash) and get a shit ton of dps and that would equal out to a crazy amount of healing. I'm just not sure how the global cool downs and everything work together for this class and wasn't sure if that's too much stuff all together at once, or if the effort is even worth it. The reason I'm even thinking about this is I'm currently running with abyssal strike which lets me infernal strike a LOT more during an encount so I don't know if being able to do that more often in my rotation ends up being a net gain of healing and dps versus trying to do the combo I just described. Thoughts?

Fiery brand and infernal strike are fire damage so they dozsnt work with razor spike

[Deleted]

How good would you say AskMrRobots trinket recommendations are? It recommends I use my 900 Parjesh's Medallion and 870 Royal Dagger Heft. I've been running with Immortality deck and an 885 Writhing Heart of Darkness, though I also have an 880 Coagulated Nightwell Residue that I used until getting the Writhing Heart.

This is mostly for raids, as M+ I switch between a couple depending on affixes, though rarely replace the Immortality deck.

Thanks.

[Zoopercat]

@Snafoo - Are you using custom weights, ones that you got from our simulator (that take about an hour to run)? Or are you using defaults?

A quick explanation on how we rank trinkets:

When you run a custom gearing strategy (stat weights) in our simulator, we also sim every single item with a proc. We do that since those items don't rank well (or at all) with stat weights. We then bundle that sim data in with the stat weight report. Then when you use it to rank gear, all of the procs get ranked directly from simulation data. Quite handy.

Here's a guide on doing that if you haven't tried it yet: http://i.imgur.com/r2gpuBW.jpg

[Munkky]

@Snafoo

The trinket rankings aren't very good or reliable. Of those 4, Immortality deck will be best for most fights. Secondary I would go with the heart or Coag in general. Heart more for ST and Coag for AoE or for when you want to save it up for a cooldown. Parjesh at that ilvl wouldn't be terrible because I'm sure it would give a decent amount of stats. Dagger heft is more situational and isn't really an "all around" type trinket. So use that at your own discretion.

In special cases like Star Augur and Krosus, I'd use Heart and Coag, due to them being mostly magic damage.

[Zoopercat]

@Munnky - are you saying AMR's trinket rankings aren't good? Did you use a custom gearing strat or defaults? We rank all procs from simulations now, btw.

@Snafoo and @Munkky - send me your character name and realm, I will run a custom setup and then we can look at the trinket list and see if anything does seem out of whack.

[Munkky]

@Munnky - are you saying AMR's trinket rankings aren't good? Did you use a custom gearing strat or defaults? We rank all procs from simulations now, btw.

@Snafoo and @Munkky - send me your character name and realm, I will run a custom setup and then we can look at the trinket list and see if anything does seem out of whack.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nkkyy/advanced

Munkkyy - Zul'Jin

From my experience with the trinkets in the past, they have been wrong, however that seems to have more to do with the nature of sims as opposed to real play.

On another note, I used the default everything, and I have to say, the default Veng APL isn't working well, so your results may vary. I found multiple issues, though I only ran a couple sims and spent 5 minutes analyzing the data.

While I have been known to say that sims for tanks aren't reliable or realistic, an opinion I firmly believe in, IF something were to happen to fix things, I wouldn't object to using sims. Including those from AMR.

[Delimit]

From my experience with the trinkets in the past, they have been wrong, however that seems to have more to do with the nature of sims as opposed to real play.

This is basically it. Encounters aren't one size fits all, neither are current trinkets. Sims for tanks are just not good representation of actual encounters.

I realize AMR can't recommend trinkets on an individual fight basis, but recommending poor trinkets for universal use just leads people down the wrong path.

[Zoopercat]

@Delimit - we actually CAN sim them on a per-boss basis We just have to get all of the boss scripts out there. We have the krosus one up for tanks right now and will add another one soon for phys damage, and so on.

A quick overview on what we do with tank sims, in case I haven't give you the rundown yet @Munkky.

1. The biggest change from SimC: we let you die (simc gives you infinite health).
2. We have a metric, NPS, that tracks with death chance. So the less you die, the higher your NPS score.
3. We also give you a heal team that acts like 'real' healers. When your health is pretty high, the healers use hots and small heals on you. When your health is low, they start to use big heals. When it's really low, they use instant casts. It's modeled to be 'realistic' in that they have a set of heals and don't unrealistically always keep you alive.
4. We model real bosses, and have a function that lets you anticipate specific damage events. So if you know the boss is going to do a big damage thing, the APL lets you save a big cooldown for that event.

I'd love to hear from you what else you think might need to be added. I'm all ears! (I'll also run some sims and look at some trinket lists with you, if you don't mind. They are based on NPS, your chance to not die).

[Munkky]

@Delimit - we actually CAN sim them on a per-boss basis We just have to get all of the boss scripts out there. We have the krosus one up for tanks right now and will add another one soon for phys damage, and so on.

A quick overview on what we do with tank sims, in case I haven't give you the rundown yet @Munkky.

1. The biggest change from SimC: we let you die (simc gives you infinite health).
2. We have a metric, NPS, that tracks with death chance. So the less you die, the higher your NPS score.
3. We also give you a heal team that acts like 'real' healers. When your health is pretty high, the healers use hots and small heals on you. When your health is low, they start to use big heals. When it's really low, they use instant casts. It's modeled to be 'realistic' in that they have a set of heals and don't unrealistically always keep you alive.
4. We model real bosses, and have a function that lets you anticipate specific damage events. So if you know the boss is going to do a big damage thing, the APL lets you save a big cooldown for that event.

I'd love to hear from you what else you think might need to be added. I'm all ears! (I'll also run some sims and look at some trinket lists with you, if you don't mind. They are based on NPS, your chance to not die).

Specifically with the Vengeance APL, theres multiple things wrong, including horrible resource management, lack of using CDs, nothing for using Fiery Brand/Soul Carver offensively, not having maximum casts on Fiery Brand (probably others as well including Soul Carver/Fel Devastation, Not casting Fracture (a talent) once, having less than half of available casts of Empower Wards on Krosus sim (I'm assuming mainly magic damage type sim?). Thats all after spending 5-10 minutes looking things over, nothing in depth.

You also mentioned the "per-boss basis sims", but I only see 2 of them, with Krosus having been added within the past week or 2? You have some very nice tools, that is for sure, however the accuracy is the main issue. Which in turn is also the main issue with simming for tanks. I can make scripts all day, but if they aren't accurate then what am I working for?

[Delimit]

@Delimit - we actually CAN sim them on a per-boss basis We just have to get all of the boss scripts out there. We have the krosus one up for tanks right now and will add another one soon for phys damage, and so on.

That's what was said back at the start of EN as well. That's not a dig, it's just something that kept getting brought up by people parroting the "sims know all" rhetoric. It's no coincidence (and makes complete sense) that the 2 scripts that have been done are 2 of the least variable fights. Trying to accurately sim for tanks is more than a little difficult, which is why it's generally not accepted as being accurate. (this goes for SimC as well as AMR) There are also issues with how and why sims give the results that they give and how they differ from actual realistic gameplay scenarios. (aka parry)

[Zoopercat]

@Munkky, we'll take a look at the APL and test out some of the changes. If you edited it at all, send it my way and I'll take a look. The APL is the easiest piece of the puzzle, whereas verifying that every mechanic works or writing boss scripts is more time consuming. Stay tuned, and thanks for the feedback.
@Delimit - can you elaborate on what you mean about parry?

[Munkky]

@Munkky, we'll take a look at the APL and test out some of the changes. If you edited it at all, send it my way and I'll take a look. The APL is the easiest piece of the puzzle, whereas verifying that every mechanic works or writing boss scripts is more time consuming. Stay tuned, and thanks for the feedback.
@Delimit - can you elaborate on what you mean about parry?

Sims value parry higher than in a realistic environment. The computer sees "Character X has 33% parry, that means that he will parry ~33% of all attacks and thus reducing those 3m hits to 0 thus reducing damage by 3m." The sims look at that, and from my basic understanding of your system, NPS gets excited when it sees that and gives you a gold star, when in reality you don't play around parry at all and often forget they are even a thing. This is largely RNG based, and when you are actually tanking, you can easily go 5 hits without parrying at all, is it common, no, BUT this makes RNG events unreliabe and makes smoother reliable sources (Haste/Mastery/Vers) to be better in practical use than Crit (even though sims tend to value crit a bit more defensively due to the parry, especially after the recent nerfs to the other secondaries and Crit to parry not getting a nerf). This makes the sims and NPS devalue the 3 main secondaries for tanks and increase the Value of Crit simply due to Crit to parry being a thing.

[Delimit]

@Delimit - can you elaborate on what you mean about parry?

Parry != damage reduction that most sims seem to treat it as. (I believe the AMR blog on NPS mentioned it as well?)

As Munkky said, the APL is definitely off. Empower Wards should be up for nearly all of the possible 30% uptime on that fight. (subsequently roughly 60% uptime on Siphoned Power) Is it thinking a trinket like Haft is valuable because it's expecting you to die due to poor CD management? (the trinket is rubbish otherwise) Is it taking into account talents? IE, Last Resort and Haft aren't really compatible.

[Deleted]

@Munnky - are you saying AMR's trinket rankings aren't good? Did you use a custom gearing strat or defaults? We rank all procs from simulations now, btw.

@Snafoo and @Munkky - send me your character name and realm, I will run a custom setup and then we can look at the trinket list and see if anything does seem out of whack.

Snafoo - Terenas. Thanks Zooper, been subbed to AMR for a while now and usually trust it 100%, but been a little concerned over suggestions on my DH tank. I ran the custom weights sim last night and as you suggested it's improved it, now suggesting Coag and Writhing Heart, though it now also suggests swapping out my Fragment of the Betrayers Prison for Cloak of Fel Flames, considering I have the 4pc losing the leech sounds odd to me, but I guess the magic damage reduction might make up for it.

@Snafoo

The trinket rankings aren't very good or reliable. Of those 4, Immortality deck will be best for most fights. Secondary I would go with the heart or Coag in general. Heart more for ST and Coag for AoE or for when you want to save it up for a cooldown. Parjesh at that ilvl wouldn't be terrible because I'm sure it would give a decent amount of stats. Dagger heft is more situational and isn't really an "all around" type trinket. So use that at your own discretion.

In special cases like Star Augur and Krosus, I'd use Heart and Coag, due to them being mostly magic damage.

Thanks Munkky, that's pretty much what I've been doing, switching the Immortality deck out for any predominantly magic fights, the Parjesh's I haven't really found a use for but the 3095 stamina is absolutely huge, so it must have some niche uses even if it's to buff other things like Meta, Prydaz and the leg trinket.

[Yellowfive]

@Munkky When you set up the AMR simulator for a situation where you actually have a chance to die (the most interesting situations for gearing a tank... easy stuff just doesn't really matter), your actual death chance is what dominates the NPS score.

Instead of trying to reason about what will make you live... whether something random is better or worse than something that isn't, or self heals are better or worse than damage prevention, etc... we just went right to your death chance. That will reflect whether those things "worked" or not without having to layer assumptions on top of it.

Or in other words: if our simulator says that adding a bunch of parry reduces your death chance from 30% to 20%... that means parry "works" for that boss script, even though it is more random. I have no personal bias for or against something random like blocking, dodging, or parrying... my goal is to make a model that can reasonably estimate and discover how good (or bad) it might be in a challenging situation.

[Munkky]

@Snafoo

For that legendary question, yes Cloak is definitely better, especially in Nighthold where there is a lot more magic damage. Even with the tier, the leech isn't amazing and comes out to a small amount of trickle healing, except on large packs of adds. For the most part Cloak will be better.
@Yellowfive

I've seen some of the stuff about NPS, and as I said previously, I do not know that much about it. I understand that you can't do much with things like parry, since its just plug in a dice roll to see if you get hit or not and you plug in the chances of you winning. However from what I have gathered and seen, my main concern is the "Accuracy" of these numbers. My other concern with "tank weights" is that to get "realistic" ones, not only do you have to have a good amount of accuracy in the apl, the data it spits out (including HPS/NPS/TMI/DPS etc.) you also have to sim multiple fight types, with multiple styles and amounts of damage. I'm not going to go into how it's different from DPS, because you know the many extra things involved.

[Narabug]

@Munkky glad to see you've found the time to to raid this tier, and you're finding success. I spent some time creating a custom APL for Ask Mr Robot, if you'd care to see it. Their system also allows you to create your own APL quite easily. You're right in some accounts - it can't account for every situation. What it can do is form a baseline, which you can use to compare specific items. Trinkets, being specifically difficult to compare for value, may be a good example of where a simulation will do a better job of comparison than we can do ourselves.

Also, with regards to trinkets, I made a rough-math post on Writhing Heart on the WoW forums here: Writhing Heart - Scaling. According to the trinket list that you created, our current BiS trinket, the Darkmoon Deck, is roughly 6.9% physical damage reduction. The Writhing Heart, on the other hand, will scale to over 8% damage reduction for all damage. While the stat trade from Agility to Critical Strike is not ideal, the damage reduction on this trinket, specifically on magic damage fights, may prove to be exceptionally powerful.

[Munkky]

@Munkky glad to see you've found the time to to raid this tier, and you're finding success. I spent some time creating a custom APL for Ask Mr Robot, if you'd care to see it. Their system also allows you to create your own APL quite easily. You're right in some accounts - it can't account for every situation. What it can do is form a baseline, which you can use to compare specific items. Trinkets, being specifically difficult to compare for value, may be a good example of where a simulation will do a better job of comparison than we can do ourselves.

Also, with regards to trinkets, I made a rough-math post on Writhing Heart on the WoW forums here: Writhing Heart - Scaling. According to the trinket list that you created, our current BiS trinket, the Darkmoon Deck, is roughly 6.9% physical damage reduction. The Writhing Heart, on the other hand, will scale to over 8% damage reduction for all damage. While the stat trade from Agility to Critical Strike is not ideal, the damage reduction on this trinket, specifically on magic damage fights, may prove to be exceptionally powerful.

For the aforementioned reasons about sims being inaccurate for tanks, I am not going to bother with an apl.

As for the writhing heart discussion. It isn't bad for ST, however if they fixed the scaling on it then that changes things. Previously it was stuck a flat % that did not go up with ilvl. Scaling of trinkets can make shitty ones good, which is a fact that many overlook. The reason Writhing heart is so low on the list, is because it was locked at the 1.28% DR per stack and you generally won't have high uptime on 3 stacks on AoE. Things also die fast enough that you won't get to it or it will matter very little. Link images of all 3 of your trinkets and link logs showing uptimes on it. If you do so and can prove its worth, then I will change the list. Math isn't enough.

A major difference is that DMI is always there. It always works on AoE I also haven't redone math on it since the buffs, but prior to 715, I believe the average was about 8%, though I am at work and don't have any numbers on me.

[Oiysters]

Loving this discussion.

I recognize the value and limitations of sims generally, but what in interesting and potentially valuable project, especially if the sims can be verified within a reasonable margin of error by logs. It's a fun exercise.