Munkkys Vengeance Demon Hunter Guide UPDATED 7.3

[Deleted]

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.

My 885 Writhing Heart is 1.92% per stack. If I get chance later in the week I'll get some logs of me using it in NH HC. Off the top of my head I've had very high uptime on it.

Edit - Nevermind got my logs uploaded 88.25% uptime vs Gul'dan. Can't post links yet though. On warcaftlogs .com/reports/ fdNq1kcJ9vtT6Wn3#fight=23&type=auras&view=analytical&source=3&spells=debuffs&by=target&pin s=0%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24auras-cast%240%240.0.0.Any%24105435078.0.0.DemonHunter%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%24214229

Of that, 73.8% vs Gul'dan not including adds, and the majority of the time it's 3 stacks. Pretty much the entire time I haven't got to run away from mechanics it is up and on 3 stacks.

[pay928]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...false%24214229

Link for Snafoo.

[Lolsteak]

Personally I don't put a lot of stock in Soul Barrier, especially in mythic+. I think Last Resort is still the best option in mythic+ even with the nerfs, since it does now reset on death.

Soul Barrier is great combined with other defensives, A talent that requires you to die to take full advantage of isn't great at all.

Defensives are there to help you to not die, Not require it.

[Temp name]

Soul Barrier is great combined with other defensives, A talent that requires you to die to take full advantage of isn't great at all.

Defensives are there to help you to not die, Not require it.

But Last Resort is there in CASE you die. It happens sometimes, either due to incompetence, bad luck, or something else. With SB, you're now dead, and the boss/trash can go kill your party, but with LR you're still alive.

If we were a dps spec, LR would be utterly useless, but we're a tank spec, death, while not entirely expected, shouldn't be ignored.

[Resurgo]

my understanding of DH skills have pretty much gone in the toilet.

Because apparently, I can't utilize the defensives we have available well enough to not get annihilated by Aluriel's 'Annihilate' at 2 stacks. This is having Soul Barrier and Spikes up at the same time. There are simply times where I will just let it go and use things like the Royal Dagger Haft to just eat getting pummeled while still being able to have Soul Barrier talented.

[Littlepwny]

Because apparently, I can't utilize the defensives we have available well enough to not get annihilated by Aluriel's 'Annihilate' at 2 stacks. This is having Soul Barrier and Spikes up at the same time. There are simply times where I will just let it go and use things like the Royal Dagger Haft to just eat getting pummeled while still being able to have Soul Barrier talented.

Don't forget about Fiery Brand.

[kabnine]

But Last Resort is there in CASE you die. It happens sometimes, either due to incompetence, bad luck, or something else. With SB, you're now dead, and the boss/trash can go kill your party, but with LR you're still alive.

If we were a dps spec, LR would be utterly useless, but we're a tank spec, death, while not entirely expected, shouldn't be ignored.

Soul Barrier saves my life more times per pull during progression than LR on an 8min CD can.

[redfella]

Just jumping in to comment on Writhing Heart scaling:

840 - 1.27% (3.81%)
855 - 1.45% (4.35%)
885 - 1.92% (5.76%)

projected:
925 - 2.78% (8.34%)
955 - 3.59% (10.77%)
985 - 4.55% (13.65%)
1365 - 33.34 (100% )

It's a solid trinket if you score it with high enough of a ilvl.

[Bladeweaver]

Soul Barrier saves my life more times per pull during progression than LR on an 8min CD can.

I think it's really personal preference and less clear which is actually better.

When pushing the fringe for keystones, I see it go off anywhere between 1-3 times in a M+ to a series of events that are just bad luck or missed mechanics

I'd say either are viable choices, Demonic Infusion too if you don't have 4 piece T19

[Veraa]

Soul Barrier is great combined with other defensives, A talent that requires you to die to take full advantage of isn't great at all.

Defensives are there to help you to not die, Not require it.

Each to their own of course, but to run soul barrier optimally you need to also run fracture. It can work with fallout instead but obviously its less reliable, in doing so you miss out on soul rending which really helps with a lot of big pulls in mythic+. Of course raids are a different issue entirely and wouldn't run Soul Rending there. Again, its all personal preference.

[Narabug]

Each to their own of course, but to run soul barrier optimally you need to also run fracture. It can work with fallout instead but obviously its less reliable, in doing so you miss out on soul rending which really helps with a lot of big pulls in mythic+. Of course raids are a different issue entirely and wouldn't run Soul Rending there. Again, its all personal preference.

Fracture is pretty terrible in Mythic+. Especially if you're running Spirit Bomb, more damage = more healing, and Soul Cleave is going to do more damage than Fracture if there are 3 or more targets, not even accounting for the the healing component that it grants. The extra shielding that you receive by eating souls with Soul Barrier is actually relatively negligible. The strength of the talent is a combination of the initial absorb and the base absorb.

Again, to go back to simming - these are the kinds of things that are extremely difficult to validate through gameplay. Without some accurate model or standard of comparison, we can all discuss our preferences, but we have no definitive answers. Many times this results in confirmation bias - every top DH is running X talent in Y content, therefore it must be the best. Obviously if they are running that talent with success, it can work, but it does not always correlate to objective results.

[Veiled Shadow]

Fracture is pretty terrible in Mythic+. Especially if you're running Spirit Bomb, more damage = more healing, and Soul Cleave is going to do more damage than Fracture if there are 3 or more targets, not even accounting for the the healing component that it grants.

Calling Fracture "terrible" for mythic+ is quite a stretch, as it increases your ST DPS quite a lot on bosses and is a mitigative gain over spending the pain on Soul Cleave during Soul Barrier. You can get much of the same effects as SR via Spirit Bomb + minimum absorb portion of Barrier as well.

[Narabug]

Calling Fracture "terrible" for mythic+ is quite a stretch

Again, lots of opinions on both sides that are hard to validate without simulating. Do the extra fragments during Soul Barrier make up for dropping FtD? Perhaps the healing from Soul Rending is better?

For the sake of comparison, let's assume that we always have access to Fracture and Soul Cleave. If there are 3 or more mobs, Soul Cleave = ~350k per hit x 3 hits = 1,110k damage for 60 pain, and takes 1 GCD. For the next 2 GCD, you cast Shear/Sever for ~190k avg, totaling ~1.5m. Fracture x3 would be ~250k per hit x6 hits = 1.5mil damage. With Cleave you're at 20 Pain, but with Fracture you're at 0, so you have to spend at least 2 more Shear to get back to catch back up. So for damage output, 3 targets is a slight edge to Soul Cleave, without considering any other talents in the row. This also doesn't take into account the ability to squeeze that single cast of Cleave into the final second of Razor Spikes damage buff, where Fracture would not get full benefit from casting all three. Considering other talents in the row, Feed the Demon will grant higher up-time of Demon Spikes, leading to higher damage reduction and extending your up-time of 30% physical damage buff.

For mitigation/survival, I think that you'd find it very difficult to find much support for Fracture providing more mitigation. You can look at Mythic Krosus as an example and just check people who run Feed the Demon vs Fracture to see how much external healing they require. I don't want to detract from Fracture's usefulness for Single-Target damage output, where it does have its uses, but in Mythic+, AoE is king.

[Delimit]

For mitigation/survival, I think that you'd find it very difficult to find much support for Fracture providing more mitigation. You can look at Mythic Krosus as an example and just check people who run Feed the Demon vs Fracture to see how much external healing they require. I don't want to detract from Fracture's usefulness for Single-Target damage output, where it does have its uses, but in Mythic+, AoE is king.

Why would you look at M Krosus as an example for anything? It's one of the most distorted fights in the game. For the same reason that the fight unreasonably skews tank DPS numbers in favor of VDH(60%+ uptime on Siphoned Power), with 80% magic damage, FtD provides very little there. Also bearing in mind the heavy DPS requirement, there's a reason most competent DH aren't running FtD there.

[Veiled Shadow]

Again, lots of opinions on both sides that are hard to validate without simulating. Do the extra fragments during Soul Barrier make up for dropping FtD? Perhaps the healing from Soul Rending is better?

For the sake of comparison, let's assume that we always have access to Fracture and Soul Cleave. If there are 3 or more mobs, Soul Cleave = ~350k per hit x 3 hits = 1,110k damage for 60 pain, and takes 1 GCD. For the next 2 GCD, you cast Shear/Sever for ~190k avg, totaling ~1.5m. Fracture x3 would be ~250k per hit x6 hits = 1.5mil damage. With Cleave you're at 20 Pain, but with Fracture you're at 0, so you have to spend at least 2 more Shear to get back to catch back up. So for damage output, 3 targets is a slight edge to Soul Cleave, without considering any other talents in the row. This also doesn't take into account the ability to squeeze that single cast of Cleave into the final second of Razor Spikes damage buff, where Fracture would not get full benefit from casting all three. Considering other talents in the row, Feed the Demon will grant higher up-time of Demon Spikes, leading to higher damage reduction and extending your up-time of 30% physical damage buff.

For mitigation/survival, I think that you'd find it very difficult to find much support for Fracture providing more mitigation. You can look at Mythic Krosus as an example and just check people who run Feed the Demon vs Fracture to see how much external healing they require. I don't want to detract from Fracture's usefulness for Single-Target damage output, where it does have its uses, but in Mythic+, AoE is king.

I'm not contesting any of this. Rather, the contention is more that the other talents on that row do not have real DPS benefit (I suppose FtD has a little bit of benefit if you are using Razor Spikes, but in most AoE scenarios Abyssal Strike is better), and Fracture gives you a lot of single target damage on bosses, which can be a DPS hurdle on Tyrannical especially. You are not really losing much AoE damage (actually zero if you are playing with Abyssal Strike) and getting relevant DPS in exchange.

Of course, in some cases you will prefer the extra survivability from FtD/SR, so it's definitely situational. The original post of mine just wanted to clarify that Fracture can definitely be useful for M+.

And yes, like Delimit said above, FtD is more or less totally useless on Krosus, I think only about ~15% of my total damage intake on that boss was physical. Also, Fracture is very strong on Krosus and can actually be viable from a mitigative standpoint, since you can easily collect all the soul fragments that spawn just by strafing.

(3 Fractures is 1500% AP in healing and Painbringer stacks, Soul Cleave + 2 Shears is 1800% AP in healing).

[Narabug]

Abyssal Strike may be good with very little Haste, not taking FtD, and not having 4 piece. Once we have 4 piece, it looks like the DPS output from Razor Spikes is a substantial DPS gain. If you care to check, here's my sources on that, running a M+17 simulation:

Razor Spikes - 514,555k DPS
Infernal Strike - 497,962k DPS

My APL is also perfectly lining up the maximum amount of Infernal Strikes into Fiery Brand windows - I doubt I would be good enough to make those split second decisions in practice as well as a computer model can.

With regards to Fracture v FtD in M+, I agree that Krosus is a poor choice, but picked it as an example where we are trying to squeeze out as much DPS while still taking substantial damage. Spellblade would be a more accurate depiction of a Mythic+ environment, where you have single-target in conjunction with many groups of small packs. The same results are true on Spellblade as I mentioned above and poorly used Krosus as an example.

[Munkky]

The main point of Fracture in dungeons is for bosses. It's not for AoE, except for when a specific target needs to die (thus prioritizing ST). Also mitigation wise, you won't use Fracture, even for souls in most cases with or w/o Soul Barrier, on AoE. The exception being when you have downtime for some reason or are kiting etc. Where it won't be beneficial to Soul Cleave or you have a chance to pool souls.

FTD is a dps gain on AoE when you use Razor Spikes, even more so when you use Fallout. Though as Nara said, once you acquire tier, FTD becomes more of a moot point, especially in dungeons where you are Soul Cleaving more. Which is why Razor Spikes is recommended in general in the guides for AoE over Abyssal.

So you are both right on certain points.
@Veiled Shadow @Narabug

[Bladeweaver]

Does anyone know if Convergence of Fates works for us in reducing Meta or does it just become a stat stick?

[Radde]

The Proc is labeled inactive if you switch your spec to vengeance.

[Munkky]

So no, it's not usable by tanks.