Finally got beta invite: Spirit Bomb feels awkward

[Tech614]

I'll assume you're a troll, because if you think all you have to do is using SC for m+ then let's agree to disagree. Watch Shakib for example and see how often he uses the 3 Sigils on top of Spirit bombs compared to Soul Cleave.

Sigil of flame, silence, misery, chains and Spirit bombs all have a delay. Which is exactly why I hate this class.

Now if you can't comprehend why I don't like this class, then don't think it's my fault. Or else I could say you're biased. But I won't. Because I know there are a lot of DH that can live with it. Much like there are a lot of Guardians druids even though, for me, it's like one of the most boring tank I've ever played.

You build enough pain to use 2 SCs per 1 SB cast. Even in a heavy aoe situation with Essence Sever you should still be using SC on a > 1:1 ration with SB.

If you aren't using SC often you are wasting pain.

You said most of our abilities have a delay... you should be using SC more often then SB just due to the reality of it being necessary filler. SC has no delay, is the top filler ability used. You where wrong.

I'm not sure why it even matters that the sigils have a delay outside of flame to you, they are all used to interrupt casts and control packs. They don't need to be instant to accomplish that. I'm also laughing at the fact you think the sigil spam build is still a thing. You should really keep up on nerfs and tuning tbh, that trait was hit hard. Not only was the trait nerfed in half, a few of the sigils also had their CDs increased on top of it.

I could care less if you like the spec or not, not sure why you keep bringing it up. I merely point out fake issues for what they are.

[Raiz]

You're too dense. I explained why I felt like this class wasn't reactive enough due to the delay of sigils + SB spells. You're still beating a dead horse with that Soul Cleave's crap.

I give up.

/ignore

[BullxBull]

Gluttony ideally is a small window where you do not need to keep demon spikes up, but numberwise it is not worth it. Maybe if it proc'd allot more and meta gave more armor. Feldev is in a weird spot, it does less damage and healing then spiritbomb.

I'll be talenting spiritbomb and I have never liked it, it has always felt weird to push because nothing really happens untill you go through the consuming souls animation and explosion.

[Maylander]

Yeah, I'm not a fan, but I will be using it, especially in M+.

[Donimic]

yeah, the delay on souls is really frustrating. We are basically rogues that have to wait for 0.5-1.0 GCD to use our finishers after they last cast...then wait again for our ability to actually do anything. It just feels clunky.

[Nahela]

They did at least make the default soultracker check combat events instead of some arbitrary wait time. It's on par with the weakaura tracking now. A bit silly that it took all expansion though.

[Yorgl]

- - - Updated - - -

More on the topic at hand, I kinda wish our abilities relied more on the fact that we get solid trickle healing by generating souls and can consume them for a good burst heal. The rotations listed above (Fracture x2 > SB> SC, or Shear x5 > SB) pretend like we're dps and care for nothing else but maximizing dps. When in reality what we should be caring about as tanks is survivability. Trickle healing, or maximizing heal per second (through dps and leach, sure) doesn't actually help us survive spike damage. Being in control of when our burst happens does. And locking ourself into a dps-like rotation for the sake of maximizing souls used in Spirit Bomb works directly counter to that goal. That's why I agree that Spirit Bomb feels awkward as hell, it locks us into a dps rotation when we should be tanking.

Sorry to go back on a 2-week-old post, but I think this is an extremely valid point, and I think a lot of people underestimate this factor. SB is a powerful ability, and juggling between SB and SC in the rotation is not that bad (it's even kind of interesting) but the fact that the moment we're at 4/5 souls rarely coincide with the moment we endure a burst makes this very impractical.

I'll add that on the other hand, we have SC that, by consuming only two souls at a time, allows pooling. If you play it right, you always have 2-3 souls ready to be consumed so after a burst, it's quite easy to use one SC (to react to the burst asap) and then Frac+SC to gain some more healing quite quickly. That and the fact that not using SB gives gluttony (a totally random mitigation, but still a decent way to smooth overall damage), I think that SB being presented as the default choice for this tier is a bit debatable.
(Obviously in AoE situations like in M+ there is no doubt that SB will be almost mandatory, but in single target raid situations, I wonder...)

Also, I wish FD was more attractive because it looks cool af. T___T


Edit : To clarify, since the patch I've only done Mythic dungeons, and so protection dummy test (for what it's worth...), so I don't claim to have an experience on the BFA raiding environment.

[Orloth]

Sorry to go back on a 2-week-old post, but I think this is an extremely valid point, and I think a lot of people underestimate this factor. SB is a powerful ability, and juggling between SB and SC in the rotation is not that bad (it's even kind of interesting) but the fact that the moment we're at 4/5 souls rarely coincide with the moment we endure a burst makes this very impractical.

I'll add that on the other hand, we have SC that, by consuming only two souls at a time, allows pooling. If you play it right, you always have 2-3 souls ready to be consumed so after a burst, it's quite easy to use one SC (to react to the burst asap) and then Frac+SC to gain some more healing quite quickly. That and the fact that not using SB gives gluttony (a totally random mitigation, but still a decent way to smooth overall damage), I think that SB being presented as the default choice for this tier is a bit debatable.
(Obviously in AoE situations like in M+ there is no doubt that SB will be almost mandatory, but in single target raid situations, I wonder...)

Also, I wish FD was more attractive because it looks cool af. T___T


Edit : To clarify, since the patch I've only done Mythic dungeons, and so protection dummy test (for what it's worth...), so I don't claim to have an experience on the BFA raiding environment.

To add to that, in the past two weeks I've cannibalized a Death Strike Weak Aura to give me the expected heal of souls instead, and this has allowed me to greatly increase how much healing I'm getting with Soul Cleave over Spirit Bomb. Spirit Bomb does more dps, but the survivability I'm getting with Soul Cleave, or even just using Spirit Bomb only for timing really powerful Consumes, is far beyond what I'm getting from trying to use all of my Souls on Spirit Bomb. YMMV.

[Yorgl]

To add to that, in the past two weeks I've cannibalized a Death Strike Weak Aura to give me the expected heal of souls instead, and this has allowed me to greatly increase how much healing I'm getting with Soul Cleave over Spirit Bomb. Spirit Bomb does more dps, but the survivability I'm getting with Soul Cleave, or even just using Spirit Bomb only for timing really powerful Consumes, is far beyond what I'm getting from trying to use all of my Souls on Spirit Bomb. YMMV.

Ok that's interesting ! I actually done the same (use a DS aura) a few days ago, but it felt unecessary upon testing (again, on a target dummy for what it's worth, even if they hit hard), as I relied mostly on health lost. If you say it helps, I'll probably give it another shot (also, in a real situation with a healer it might be harder to see when it's the most efficient).

If you don't mind, can you share your aura please ? I'm not entirely sure I set mine correctly while adapting it from DK to DH.

[Psidum]

More on the topic at hand, I kinda wish our abilities relied more on the fact that we get solid trickle healing by generating souls and can consume them for a good burst heal. The rotations listed above (Fracture x2 > SB> SC, or Shear x5 > SB) pretend like we're dps and care for nothing else but maximizing dps. When in reality what we should be caring about as tanks is survivability. Trickle healing, or maximizing heal per second (through dps and leach, sure) doesn't actually help us survive spike damage. Being in control of when our burst happens does. And locking ourself into a dps-like rotation for the sake of maximizing souls used in Spirit Bomb works directly counter to that goal. That's why I agree that Spirit Bomb feels awkward as hell, it locks us into a dps rotation when we should be tanking.

This sums up my concerns with vdh perfectly. It plays like a dps and lacks control of other tanks. On beta in m+ and in high damage situations I feel the only thing to do is retreat, I feel tethered to frost mage for permanent slows. For M+ the spec is riding on the strength of damage output and utility/sigils. In terms of tankyness we are quite squishy.

I feel compelled to pick VDH as my backup tank due to the strength of its damage output and sigils. Honestly though I would rather not as it does not feel like a tank at all.

[Tech614]

It plays like a dps and lacks control of other tanks. On beta in m+

On beta M+ right now no one is even close to touching VDH but BDK. If you're having trouble it's not a class issue.

It's also hilarious to see people acting like every tank doesn't have an optimal dps rotation, that they may have to sacrifice at times to pool resources for survival. That is literally every tank spec in the game right now. Not sure if people only play VDH and imagine it's different elsewhere or what...

That is still the case for VDH even without SB talented FWIW... So yea, talk about a non issue.

SB is still the best talent in the row for survival because only it and Soul Barrier are capable of burst healing 5 souls at once. You could strafe for a similar effect but that would be far more clunky. If you rely on SC getting you 2 souls at once in a burst needing situation you're probably going to die, or make your healer freak out leading to a dps dying.

[Orloth]

But you can't effectively save souls for burst damage without being willing to sit at max pain and not cast Soul Cleave, or cast Fracture again immediately after, both of which feel awkward. We're not talking about effectiveness Tech, we're talking about how it feels to play the spec affecting how well we can control our survivability because Spirit Bomb, while neat and cool and doing a bunch of damage works counter to every other part of how the spec works currently.

And the if you use Soul Cleave you're going to die thing..... Soul Cleave still heals for more baseline the Spirit Bomb does (until it hits something like 9 targets, by my math, less if you count trickle healing from IA, IS, and SoF). Two Soul Cleaves at two souls each, still heals me more than a 5 soul Spirit Bomb and a Soul Cleave. I've gone over logs, and tested this directly. And with Spirit Bomb you run into windows where that option just isn't available to you because you chose to spend all your resources on dps rather than just what was needed to not cap (which is the situation that most other tanks *actually* have. Any Warrior that would spend all of his rage on Revenge rather than saving enough for a Shield Block and/or Ignore Pain would be a bad tank).

- - - Updated - - -

If you don't mind, can you share your aura please ? I'm not entirely sure I set mine correctly while adapting it from DK to DH.

I don't want to hand it to you, because I didn't make it, but here's the original: https://wago.io/NkaTBpcPW

I just changed the values on it to 1% base health min, 8% of damage taken and 1%/2%/4% for the color benchmarks. I then changed the class it loaded on and the spell it tracked so it would show up for me, and a few artsy stuff so it fit into my UI well.

If I were more skilled, I'd like to make one that tracked the potential healing of Soul Cleave and Spirit Bomb moment to moment, based on damage taken, available souls, and targets in range but that is well beyond my coding knowledge.

[Tech614]

I've gone over logs, and tested this directly.

Do you have a link? Cause while that might be the case on low hitting content, as the expansion go's on it will be less and less true as Soul Cleave base heal scaling will be a joke compared to Consume Soul. I already see a massive difference in M+ over 5 on the beta, I don't log it so it could just be a "feel thing" but I doubt it.

From tanking 7-10s on the beta even with having the SB debuff on mobs Soul Cleave with 2 souls is a pathetic amount of healing to a 5 soul burst(in situations where I lost 60-70% of my health in 5 seconds or so). You really want Soul Barrier for those situations, but you can't always have it if it's a situation dangerous enough to warrant LR.

[Orloth]

No, I can't link. But I will acquiesce that I don't take that much damage in anything I've tested.

But let me take a different tack. How do you make sure that you always have the souls you need for those spikes, while continuing to make sure you use all your souls on Spirit Bomb? Because I'm just not able to do it reliably. It seems like every time I use Spirit Bomb for dps, my health drops and my counter ticks up to tell me I should have used it 2 seconds later. It doesn't seem manageable to me. How do you do it?

[Tech614]

Tanking dangerous pulls in M+ atm I don't even worry about maximizing SB dps at all, I'm sure I will come live but until I'm comfortable surviving those pulls I just don't worry about it. I put the SB debuff up on pull with whatever souls I got from fallout and I don't use it again until health drops.

Granted, it's a lot easier to hold off hitting SB on M+ because even with nerfed CoB you still have more buttons to hit then on a standard ST fight.

[Orloth]

Meanwhile I'm getting eye twitches from capped pain. I can see using Spirit Bomb for those big heals, but hate the idea of sitting there with capped pain. Soul Cleave is still an appreciable heal in most of the situations I've run into, healing for 1 or 2 souls worth on it's own, while leaving souls on the ground for continued use.

But let's say you're 100% right and that is the way to go on higher content. Isn't it a problem that we have a rotation that punishes those who play it as advertised (practically the definition of "counter-intuitive")? It's not an us problem as players that have access to community and guides, but it is a problem for your average player, and something we should be going "WTF Blizz?" about.

Also, the guides need to point this out, because right now they tend to label missing using souls for SB as a cardinal sin.

[Tech614]

You can still use Soul Cleave for heals/spending pain even if it's not optimal dps with souls on the ground. Those 2 souls are easily replaceable with a fracture so you maintain a good pool on the ground.

And yea you're right, the guides will need to make it clear optimal dps is not always optimal for survival. It's a big change from legion where it was do the most dps possible with strong leech going, it's more like blood always has been down where you can save your runes for death strikes when you need them(or now in this case souls when you need them).

[Psidum]

It's also hilarious to see people acting like every tank doesn't have an optimal dps rotation,

Because clearly my issue was about optimal dps rotation and not about control. /s

Talk about disingenuous.

[Tech614]

Because clearly my issue was about optimal dps rotation and not about control. /s

Talk about disingenuous.

You claimed it "played like a dps and lacked control".

Every tank spec can be played like a dps doing a simple rotation. If you play VDH like that, yea your control will be limited yet YOU control when you consume your souls, YOU control when you generate your souls. Being able to consume 5 souls and have 2 fractures pooled already for another 4(or more with ES) is literally the same amount of control a BDK has yet you claim it's an issue for VDH...

[Psidum]

I think we will have to agree to disagree. My point is vdh offense and defense are intrinsically linked, your aoe damage is also a heal. I am not seeing anyone hold off on spirit bomb waiting for the damage like dk as part of their standard rotation, instead the the priority is max generation / consumption of souls to create constant healing.

That is not to say you don't pool souls for known predictable damage but for unpredictable damage / damage spikes there is way less control.