Munkkys Vengeance Demon Hunter Guide UPDATED 7.3

[Jazzhands]

They shouldn't. There is detailed comment on wowhead about this combination (on Archimonde's Hatred Reborn comments page), and long story short Prydaz shield supersedes trinket's shield if they are active at the same time, and considering 10s AHR shield duration, it's unlikely it will absorb all the damage, because 1 mil Prydaz shield always comes first. This combination does have some sense though if you are going in a very high M+ key with incredibly well geared group, like 915+ equipped and want to pull more mobs in Fortified than you normally do; in this situation I assume both shields may be fully utilized.

You could simply play smart with AHR and utilize it for large hitting abilities instead of just using it on CD where it might overlap with Prydaz. It's pretty easy to keep track of Prydaz, and even then, the absorb amount per shield isn't that big, 1 mil damage is like... nothing in any content worth talking about. It usually drops before I even notice it's up. And you don't really need the AHR shield if no big damage is coming, so saving it to possibly line up with meta and get 100% use is worth it.

It's an amazing combo, it just takes work to properly utilize it to 100%, saying it's a bad combo because Prydaz takes the damage first is simply lazy because there are plenty of ways to avoid this and utilize the trinket to 100%.

[daiceman]

Nothing has changed in a long time. Discussions won't become a serious thing until changes happen/new gear comes out/new content comes out. Until then all you get is the rare alt, offspec or reroll asking for advice every now and then.

Speak the devil's name and he shall appear.

Fairly significant DPS buffs this ptr round. I'm actually concerned as I didn't feel like we were all that lacking in dps and think this may lead to nerfs in the future.

In particular, the new spirit bomb now appears be a must have. A 5 soul bomb will be 2000% attack power (over double Fel Dev's damage on live), of which 35% will be healing. In fact, its such good healing that on 2 targets, using spirit bomb will actually provide more healing per soul then actually consuming the soul.

Add in a near across the board 25% damage buff, we're going to be doing much more DPS come 7.2.5

[Tech614]

Fairly significant DPS buffs this ptr round. I'm actually concerned as I didn't feel like we were all that lacking in dps and think this may lead to nerfs in the future.

Not lacking in dps per say, but still behind the top tank ST dps specs and we literally have to blow 2 defensive CDs right off the bat and keep them on CD to even max out our dps and compete.

It's a major design flaw that both brand and meta are both offensive and defensive cds(and FD when talented as well), because you're basically balancing the dps around wasting defensive CDs.

If you're not hitting brand, fd and meta on CD Vengeance ST is pretty laughable. No other tank has to blow their 2 biggest defensive CDs on CD to max out their dps.

[Nahela]

I'm not sure how much of a damage buff there is. They took the 9% damage buff aura off Vengeance and put it into the individual abilities.

I'm curious about the changes they mentioned in regards to Soul Fragment generation, the only real change I see is Spirit Bomb, but I may be overlooking something. Will be interesting to see.

[Nightwatchik]

I'm not sure how much of a damage buff there is. They took the 9% damage buff aura off Vengeance and put it into the individual abilities.

I'm curious about the changes they mentioned in regards to Soul Fragment generation, the only real change I see is Spirit Bomb, but I may be overlooking something. Will be interesting to see.

It will be around 14% buff. Abilities getting buffed by around 25.5%. So 0.91*1.255=1.142

[Extremity]

IT'S HAPPENING. New spirit bomb seems kinda sweet, really looking forward to trying it.

Wow, I didn't notice until you said this, I thought it was just a typo fix or something and didn't check the tooltip. 400% AP damage per orb as an explosion centered on you? That's pretty cool.

The only downside I see is losing the range; I'd use Spirit Bomb as another ranged attack pretty frequently, especially since I could fire off 2-3 at a pack that was far away and it would hit all of them. It's not a huge deal, but changing it to cause an explosion centered on us will definitely change its feel.

[daiceman]

It will be around 14% buff. Abilities getting buffed by around 25.5%. So 0.91*1.255=1.142

Right, I had thought the aura was put in at the start of the PTR so they could "tune damage" without messing with the spells, looks like I remembered incorrectly.

Not lacking in dps per say, but still behind the top tank ST dps specs and we literally have to blow 2 defensive CDs right off the bat and keep them on CD to even max out our dps and compete.

It's a major design flaw that both brand and meta are both offensive and defensive cds(and FD when talented as well), because you're basically balancing the dps around wasting defensive CDs.

If you're not hitting brand, fd and meta on CD Vengeance ST is pretty laughable. No other tank has to blow their 2 biggest defensive CDs on CD to max out their dps.

Now originally, i had forgotten about the 9% nerf, and a 25% buff was going to be way overkill. We were going to essentially go from bottom to middle to near off the charts top.

That said, our design to trade off survivability for DPS isn't great, but taking into account that we just got a 14% buff in those situations we can trade off, we will be extremely strong. As an example look at mythic krosus in the 90th percentily (assuming top 10% are able to go "max dps"):

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...nks&dataset=90


That would bump our average up from 468k (solidly middle of the pack) to 534k (10% higher than the next highest).


Its going to be very hard for blizzard to balance our damage when we're using CDs for survivability versus DPS.

[Munkky]

Did my normal patch write up. Have the full list of changes SO FAR listed here. Most of it is just the numbers tuning. I put any real changes outside of numbers, first.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

[Deleted]

As an example look at mythic krosus in the 90th percentily (assuming top 10% are able to go "max dps"):


That would bump our average up from 468k (solidly middle of the pack) to 534k (10% higher than the next highest).

Krosus is the absolute best case scenario for our ST dps. There is no real need to delay any of our cooldowns, and the constant dot with high damage lets us have a very high uptime with the 15% agi buff provided by empower wards/siphon power.
Cut the uptime on another fight with no constant magic damage, and we won't look that good. On M Trilliax for example, 90th percentile is at 410k, 5th amongst tanks, a 14% buff would put us at 467k, we would only pass the guardian for 4th spot behind warrior, paladin and brm, with all these 4 classes within 10k dps, balanced but not OP.

[Delimit]

As an example look at mythic krosus in the 90th percentily (assuming top 10% are able to go "max dps"):

That would bump our average up from 468k (solidly middle of the pack) to 534k (10% higher than the next highest).

Its going to be very hard for blizzard to balance our damage when we're using CDs for survivability versus DPS.

Stop looking at Krosus, our numbers there are heavily inflated due to Siphoned Power uptime and is in no way accurate for any typical fight.

Regarding the changes, personally I'm not a fan of the new Spirit Bomb. I'm losing the ability to spend 1 soul to maintain Frailty if I'm choosing to use it as a throughput talent. Spirit Bomb and Erupting Souls are also going to be competing for soul usage to do their damage, which invokes a certain amount of head scratching.

[DarkOsa]

Right now on PTR new Spirit Bomb is absolutely broken, it does 1.5m (non-crit) damage to each target with 5 fragments without any buffs, resulting in steady 1.7m dps on 5 imps dummy in our order hall. I can't pull that much in Havoc! On ST there is steady 500k dps with juicy Spirit Bomb 4m crits (with Fiery Brand up). This won't go on live of course, but even if they cut the numbers, new SB mechanic is way better when they removed constant button spam. As a bonus, there is a cool new animation when SB is being used! As for other abilities, they don't seem to be buffed much, they deal just a bit more damage.

[Tech614]

Now originally, i had forgotten about the 9% nerf, and a 25% buff was going to be way overkill. We were going to essentially go from bottom to middle to near off the charts top.

That said, our design to trade off survivability for DPS isn't great, but taking into account that we just got a 14% buff in those situations we can trade off, we will be extremely strong. As an example look at mythic krosus in the 90th percentily (assuming top 10% are able to go "max dps"):

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...nks&dataset=90


That would bump our average up from 468k (solidly middle of the pack) to 534k (10% higher than the next highest).


Its going to be very hard for blizzard to balance our damage when we're using CDs for survivability versus DPS.

As already stated by others Krosus is a terrible example and is the pure outlier for VDH.

1) The damage you're taking 10 seconds into the fight is pretty much the max damage you take the entire fight meaning you lose no real survival by popping CDs at the start.

2) Constant magic damage means major outlier on 15% EW uptime.

So unless every fight has 80% magic damage intake and nothing to cause major spikes in damage you can't balance anything around the numbers that fight produces(and we still aren't the best tank ST damage in a fight that go's 100% in our favor for ST dps).

Compare how much we have to work for our damage compared to a warrior taking 1 talent and shitting DPS out of his ass or a Monk stacking 3 facepalm relics and laughing at us having to use defensives to stay below them. We won't even mention Paladin who have on demand burst out the ass and makes our brand burst look like a joke. There is no way in hell you can claim current VDH STDPS is balanced.

[Nahela]

I posted this on the PTR forums, but I'd be curious about the idea of Spirit Bomb replacing Soul Cleave when talented. Giving a more smoothed heal-over-time playstyle with Fracture backing it up, vs. the more bursty healing of Soul Cleave. Would also solve the problem of too many abilities competing for mass-soul consumption and add Erupting Souls to Spirit Bomb when talented.

I have to imagine the damage on it will be toned down either way, as it's a bit silly right now.

A very significant change that I didn't notice until someone pointed it out, is that Soul Fragments past 5 are now automatically consumed, meaning that you can never 'waste' soul spawns. Actually a pretty huge quality of life change.

[Deleted]

At first I was happy to read buffs almost all over the place, then I got to the Vengeance Demon Hunter which confuses the hell out of me, what does the Decrease Damage/Healing - 35 % and 60 % mean? Doesn't that reduce our damage more than the buffs increase it? Or am I misunderstanding it?

[Khiyone]

At first I was happy to read buffs almost all over the place, then I got to the Vengeance Demon Hunter which confuses the hell out of me, what does the Decrease Damage/Healing - 35 % and 60 % mean? Doesn't that reduce our damage more than the buffs increase it? Or am I misunderstanding it?

Those are the hidden modifiers to Felblade and Fel Eruption for Vengeance (on live they do 50% and 68% reduced damage compared to the default Havoc versions respectively). As you can see, they are being increased.

[Deleted]

Those are the hidden modifiers to Felblade and Fel Eruption for Vengeance (on live they do 50% and 68% reduced damage compared to the default Havoc versions respectively). As you can see, they are being increased.

Ah, neat. Thank you for the clarification.

[Taiina]

At least they're doing SOMETHING about it. It's a lot better than a poke in the eye.

Whilst I'm posting; I've got a quick trinket question...
What do people suggest/recommend to swap in for DPS? whether it be ST or AoE I don't really mind.

Currently using 860 + socket Arcano and 875 Darkmoon Immortality, with an 890 Horn of Valor bagged. I'm 908 equipped so really looking at pushing more DPS out in keystones.

[Deliverer]

I'm not sure how much of a damage buff there is. They took the 9% damage buff aura off Vengeance and put it into the individual abilities.

I'm curious about the changes they mentioned in regards to Soul Fragment generation, the only real change I see is Spirit Bomb, but I may be overlooking something. Will be interesting to see.

It's a 15% damage buff

[ghostomc]

Looks like they might have changed soul cleave cost any one else see that?

[pay928]

Looks like they might have changed soul cleave cost any one else see that?

Not on PTR, but it looks to still be variable from http://ptr.wowhead.com/spell=228477/soul-cleave, just 5/10 less. Don't see it as a big change.