Vengeance WITHOUT Spirit Bomb

[Synthium]

I really dislike the 2xFracture-into-SpiritBomb playstyle of VDH these days. I don't feel like a tank, I feel like a clunky DPS that has aggro. I understand that currently it's probably the best spec for VDH, but can I still be ok if I go full turtle (Feed the Demon + Fel Devastation)? Like, do I only lose DPS without losing the actual TANK value of the spec?

[Dreamy]

Im pretty sure you can keep the same tank value doing Feed the Demon + Fel Devastation. However you will loose a big chunk of damage. So overall you will probably just handicap your group unnecessarily.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

You lose damage, but more importantly you lose healing (Frailty) and damage resistance (Painbringer).
Without Fracture, you are spawning fewer souls.
You will have overall less survivability.

[Tech614]

You lose damage, but more importantly you lose healing (Frailty) and damage resistance (Painbringer).
Without Fracture, you are spawning fewer souls.
You will have overall less survivability.

Only in aoe situations would they lose survivability.

For single target, a FTD, BT, DI build is pretty much just as good if not better survival(definitely more consistent and smooth damage in take wise). With BT you're hitting Soul Cleave on globals more often then not, and with lego legs this build is really close to 100% DS up time. This is actually the build you want to use if ST boss survival ever becomes a issue.

The cookie cutter Fracture+Spirit Bomb build is only superior survival in multi mob situations. The reason people still run it for ST is it's less survival, but not by much and easily 100-150k dps loss running this build.

But to answer the OP if you don't want to use fracture or spirit bomb you take Blade Turning as that allows you far more full power Soul Cleave uses and will provide you far more healing then FD(and SC itself is not that far behind a FD in burst healing either). FD is just always bad now IMO.

[Yorgl]

You lose damage, but more importantly you lose healing (Frailty) and damage resistance (Painbringer).
Without Fracture, you are spawning fewer souls.
You will have overall less survivability.

About the loss of survavibility, sorry if this is more empirical that TC (though I don't recall having seen any TC on the subject), but I have a much different experience.
The general consensus seems to be that SC is good for emergency but overall a surv. loss (as you mention), which led me to try that on the raid boss dummy in Marduum. In my experience, after many tries, there is a huge difference between SB rotations and SC ones , in favor for SC. (iirc, I pushed the dummy to smtg like 30 buffs with SB, and over 40 with SC and playing with SC felt smoother as the rotation is more reactive. I still play with SB as it provides more deeps and enough survival, tho (and switching to SC when needed works just fine).

(I can't stress enough that this is empirical, I'm not claiming this is rigorous. ^^)

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

About the loss of survavibility, sorry if this is more empirical that TC (though I don't recall having seen any TC on the subject), but I have a much different experience.
The general consensus seems to be that SC is good for emergency but overall a surv. loss (as you mention), which led me to try that on the raid boss dummy in Marduum. In my experience, after many tries, there is a huge difference between SB rotations and SC ones , in favor for SC. (iirc, I pushed the dummy to smtg like 30 buffs with SB, and over 40 with SC and playing with SC felt smoother as the rotation is more reactive. I still play with SB as it provides more deeps and enough survival, tho (and switching to SC when needed works just fine).

(I can't stress enough that this is empirical, I'm not claiming this is rigorous. ^^)

Interesting. My concern would be less about Soul Cleave over Spirit Bomb, and more about Feed the Demon over Fracture. Giving up so many Soul Shards, both for DR and healing, sounds dicey. Fewer soul shards combined with losing Frailty sounds even worse. If you want to Soul Cleave, doesn't it make more sense to do it after applying Frailty? But I can't provide hard numbers either so I will continue to follow discussions like these.

[Yorgl]

Interesting. My concern would be less about Soul Cleave over Spirit Bomb, and more about Feed the Demon over Fracture. Giving up so many Soul Shards, both for DR and healing, sounds dicey. Fewer soul shards combined with losing Frailty sounds even worse. If you want to Soul Cleave, doesn't it make more sense to do it after applying Frailty? But I can't provide hard numbers either so I will continue to follow discussions like these.

For context, my tests (for what they're worth) were done with FelDev and Fracture. I considered taking FtD but it didn't seem really useful and Fracture still is very good with SC when you don't need much healing but have pain to spare ; and I don't think that it's a bad idea to keep Frailty if you want to. I guess it would be exactly like in 7.0 and 7.1 for those already using SB : just casting the spell when the debuff needs to be reapplied.
I personnally prefer FD, as it requires less attention (just using on CD or when necessary) and looks cool as hell. (That's some solid TC arguments, I know ).

[MookieRah]

People always bring up ideas to differentiate SB and SC but I have always felt that the easiest and most obvious solution would be to buff the damage of SC's target by quite a bit and leaving the cleave the same as it is. Suddenly you have reason to use SC over SB when fighting a single target or a small group. Considering that we are still one of the weaker tank specs this patch, this likely wouldn't make us op but would still boost us closer while making our rotations a tad more interesting.

Alas, I think Blizz wouldn't want our single target dps to be that high, even if it achieves a better overall balance. God forbid having a leech tank have high enough damage to compensate for the mitigation of bears or monks.

[Sparklelord]

You lose damage, but more importantly you lose healing (Frailty) and damage resistance (Painbringer).
Without Fracture, you are spawning fewer souls.
You will have overall less survivability.

The thing a lot of people overlook is that Spirit Bomb is also fire damage. So with frailty up it's actually closer to 35% of the damage done. Plus spirit bomb does 40-70% increased damage on targets with Fiery Brand. So overall can be higher healing even on single target.

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(iirc, I pushed the dummy to smtg like 30 buffs with SB, and over 40 with SC and playing with SC felt smoother as the rotation is more reactive. I still play with SB as it provides more deeps and enough survival, tho (and switching to SC when needed works just fine).

Only 40 stacks? I pushed it to about 120 stacks with spirit bomb, 915 tank.

[Deleted]

I just tried out Feed the Demon with Blade Turning, Demon Infusion, Fallout and Razor Spikes in M+. I really like that build, damage income is smooth due to Demon Spikes being up almost 100% of the time, while the damage is still decent. I really want the Leech Ring + Legs for this build. Since with the Legs Demonic Infusion grants 3 charges then while almost bridges the cap to 100%

Only 40 stacks? I pushed it to about 120 stacks with spirit bomb, 915 tank.

On a dungeons or raiders training dummy? If its a Raiders Dummy I wanna see proof cuz thats pretty impressive

[Saverem]

Only in aoe situations would they lose survivability.

For single target, a FTD, BT, DI build is pretty much just as good if not better survival(definitely more consistent and smooth damage in take wise). With BT you're hitting Soul Cleave on globals more often then not, and with lego legs this build is really close to 100% DS up time. This is actually the build you want to use if ST boss survival ever becomes a issue.

The cookie cutter Fracture+Spirit Bomb build is only superior survival in multi mob situations. The reason people still run it for ST is it's less survival, but not by much and easily 100-150k dps loss running this build.

But to answer the OP if you don't want to use fracture or spirit bomb you take Blade Turning as that allows you far more full power Soul Cleave uses and will provide you far more healing then FD(and SC itself is not that far behind a FD in burst healing either). FD is just always bad now IMO.

Don't forget the 4pc T20 actually becomes useful with this build as you'll pretty much have 2k verse buff up permanently.

[Sparklelord]

I just tried out Feed the Demon with Blade Turning, Demon Infusion, Fallout and Razor Spikes in M+. I really like that build, damage income is smooth due to Demon Spikes being up almost 100% of the time, while the damage is still decent. I really want the Leech Ring + Legs for this build. Since with the Legs Demonic Infusion grants 3 charges then while almost bridges the cap to 100%


On a dungeons or raiders training dummy? If its a Raiders Dummy I wanna see proof cuz thats pretty impressive

lol apparently it was the dungeon one, going to try out the raider one and see what I can do

I only suck




edit: Yeah only about 40-45 stacks with no buffs or anything lol. Sometimes when you derp, you derp hard. :<

[Jyggalag]

You lose a TON of self healing. 20% leech on fractured mobs + insane damage is the reason it's so good.

[Sparklelord]

You lose a TON of self healing. 20% leech on fractured mobs + insane damage is the reason it's so good.

Plus 35% leech on spirit bomb, Fiery Brand, Soul Carver, Immolation Aura and SoF

Basically you're trading a bit of self sustain (lot of it overhealing) for more damage and about the same healing (just less "OH SHIT" healing).

[nerf shaman]

Plus 35% leech on spirit bomb, Fiery Brand, Soul Carver, Immolation Aura and SoF

Basically you're trading a bit of self sustain (lot of it overhealing) for more damage and about the same healing (just less "OH SHIT" healing).

Not 35. 20

[A-sayo]

Not 35. 20

Sparkle added the bonus from one of gold trait which heals us for 15% of all fire damage dealt : Charred Warblades (20% Leech + 15% trait = 35%).

[Ealyssa]

Not 35. 20

Read your weapon people...

SB is fire damage, it will always win.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I really dislike the 2xFracture-into-SpiritBomb playstyle of VDH these days. I don't feel like a tank, I feel like a clunky DPS that has aggro.

Maybe look at what's actually happening when you use Spirit Bomb and change how you think of it?
Every 5-soul Spirit Bomb provides 15% damage resistance, gives you 20% leech-like effect, does a LOT of damage, then heals you for 35% of that damage in addition to the heal from consuming the souls. It's like using a defensive CD, a self heal, and an AoE attack all at once, every few seconds (as fast as you can Sever->Fracture->Spirit Bomb).

[Synthium]

Maybe look at what's actually happening when you use Spirit Bomb and change how you think of it?
Every 5-soul Spirit Bomb provides 15% damage resistance, gives you 20% leech-like effect, does a LOT of damage, then heals you for 35% of that damage in addition to the heal from consuming the souls. It's like using a defensive CD, a self heal, and an AoE attack all at once, every few seconds (as fast as you can Sever->Fracture->Spirit Bomb).

Don't mean to be rude or anything but I don't want to be told how to feel about the playstyle. I don't feel like a tank. As a tank, I don't like dpsing, I like turtling and defending myself. I do plenty of DPS-ing on my main, when I log my tank or respec to a different spec on my main, I want to turtle. Spirit Bomb and Fracture to me feel like an AoE rotation of a DPS spec with some healing included into the mix. That is of course just my perception of it, but I can't escape it no matter how much I want it to be something else.

[Tech614]

Don't mean to be rude or anything but I don't want to be told how to feel about the playstyle. I don't feel like a tank. As a tank, I don't like dpsing, I like turtling and defending myself. I do plenty of DPS-ing on my main, when I log my tank or respec to a different spec on my main, I want to turtle. Spirit Bomb and Fracture to me feel like an AoE rotation of a DPS spec with some healing included into the mix. That is of course just my perception of it, but I can't escape it no matter how much I want it to be something else.

I already gave you an alternate build.

But guess what? It still requires you to do a "dps rotation". Every tank spec in the game requires you to do a "dps rotation". I don't understand what you want? A tank spec where you a hit a taunt button and go afk outside of hitting a cd now and then?

Guess what happens when you hit Soul Cleave instead of Spirit Bomb? You just did AoE damage and self healing. The exact same things you did when you hit Spirit Bomb.