Is DH raid tanking as bad as everyone says it is?

[Marrilaife]

lol no, Ursoc on mythic literally had 100x the burst damage of any boss in Uldir(that was tested anyways). It was plain and obvious the second you got to Ursoc the large gap in tank balance legion had even early on.

Ursoc was a problem because the biggest damaging ability was the bleed put on the offtank, which means you would take damage all the time, either tanking boss, or not tanking boss. Same problem as with Aggramar. Tanks like DH, Warrior and Paladin work the best when "tank swap" allows them to build up mitigation charges when not actively tanking. Any boss that has stready high damage going on will prefer a tank with 100% defensives coverage. Ofc early Legion warrior had perma ignore pain which was the best mitigation, that's gone out of the picture and good riddance, so sure, we shouldn't compare tank balance with early legion. Also the BFA change "every active mitigation is armor" did a step towards homogenizing tanks, which was not the case in Legion.

I would really hope bosses are designed around classes this time, because Legion saw lots of blunders in that department (pre 7.2 Krosus / Star Augur when some tanks were significantly weaker in magic mitigation capability?)

Still my wishlist for DH would be that some other talent builds would situationally outshine the "1 size fits it all" fracture + spirit bomb build we're stuck with since 7.2. It works well in AOE scenarios but it's quite disappointing there's no "single target" build. For example for DK and Paladin have clear aoe and clear single target talents. Many Uldir bosses have some adds, but that's no excuse to pigeon hole a tank into "you're good as long as aoe is involved".

Anyway most people won't be doing "early progression", if you're raiding normal, heroic, or mythic sub world 500 rank, things are doable with any tank, however some things still might be easier on some tank. But if you feel more comfortable on a class it's worth playing that, as not everyone can play every class at the same level of capability. If you're top 50, maybe top 100, then yeah, probably you're at the skill level you can easily master any class so you pick the most OP one for the current fight. However people who aren't in that bracket often have more benefit from sticking to the class they're most proficient on.

However it's quite curious that early beta feedback (youtube ranking videos etc.) were putting veng DH close to top if not THE top of the tank ladder, but it started crawling down the ranks as the beta was closing to an end. The opposite happened with druid, early vids were placing bear as the worst tank, but it slowly came back to appreciation.

[Nemb]

Dh main here. In legion i primarily tanked higher keys and have not raided much. I find the current dh tanking style to make no sense at all. I am this high mobility class with huge holes in mitigation due to demon spikes not lasting long enough. So I find myself kiting a bunch, which means I cannot apply my dps. So the high mobility goes contrary to high dps. This class desperately needs something that would be a filler for when the demon spikes are down.

Sigils and CC are great utility though.

[Tech614]

This class desperately needs something that would be a filler for when the demon spikes are down.

You mean like Soul Barrier?

Fiery Brand?

Pooling Fracture charges for spike healing?

There are many things you can do to fill DS down time. Unfortunately the guides just tell you to smash fracture and SB as much as possible with SC filler and that's not always optimal for survival. And why on earth are you kiting anything in this xpac right now?(outside of the few mechanics that are intentionally supposed to be kited like storm temple boss etc).

[denisgsv]

Dh main here. In legion i primarily tanked higher keys and have not raided much. I find the current dh tanking style to make no sense at all. I am this high mobility class with huge holes in mitigation due to demon spikes not lasting long enough. So I find myself kiting a bunch, which means I cannot apply my dps. So the high mobility goes contrary to high dps. This class desperately needs something that would be a filler for when the demon spikes are down.

Sigils and CC are great utility though.

how was this different in legion ?

i mean yea we spamed fractured and bomb, but spikes werent 100% up either

[pay928]

Dh main here. In legion i primarily tanked higher keys and have not raided much. I find the current dh tanking style to make no sense at all. I am this high mobility class with huge holes in mitigation due to demon spikes not lasting long enough. So I find myself kiting a bunch, which means I cannot apply my dps. So the high mobility goes contrary to high dps. This class desperately needs something that would be a filler for when the demon spikes are down.

Sigils and CC are great utility though.

Only half the tanks have 100% uptime on mitigation. Pally, Warrior, and DH all have intended gaps where their health spikes without normal AM. Pallies have the instant heal + consecrate heal, warriors have Ignore Pain, and DH has soul healing + soul lowering damage a small %. This ignores the longer cooldowns.

[Lucrece]

Only half the tanks have 100% uptime on mitigation. Pally, Warrior, and DH all have intended gaps where their health spikes without normal AM. Pallies have the instant heal + consecrate heal, warriors have Ignore Pain, and DH has soul healing + soul lowering damage a small %. This ignores the longer cooldowns.

The healing from souls is virtually nonexistent. It's pathetically low to the point where it doesn't even mitigate two autoattack from an elite mob.

Pally and warrior also have far more potent cooldowns than DH. Pally in particular.

Metamorphosis is hot garbage.

[Marrilaife]

how was this different in legion ?

You had more leech and spirit bomb healed for more. You also had leggos like pants and shoulders to help with AM uptime. (Yeah I know other tanks lost stuff too, just pointing out what DH lost).

Only half the tanks have 100% uptime on mitigation. Pally, Warrior, and DH all have intended gaps where their health spikes without normal AM. Pallies have the instant heal + consecrate heal, warriors have Ignore Pain, and DH has soul healing + soul lowering damage a small %. This ignores the longer cooldowns.

Paladins don't have any "consecrate heal", it's removed (consecration still slows if you pick that talent), you can spec judgment of light, but it's nerfed and weak. You still have lay on hands though and it's actually worth something now that healers can't top you up in 1 global. It's long cd, but you have a new talent to slightly lower that cd (and bubble, and 1 defensive). Ignore pain was also nerfed and both ignore pain and light of the protector being on gcd makes warriors and paladins rage about it. Warriors have really cool talent bolster that makes last stand combined with old artifact ability property (100% block during) and it's fairly low cd with anger management. So that's a backup mitigation button. However contrary to dh and paladin they lack any in combat self healing.

[Nemb]

how was this different in legion ?

i mean yea we spamed fractured and bomb, but spikes werent 100% up either

In legion painbringer artifact ability existed as well as the legendary trinket and legs. You could weave those in to fill the gap. Also had empower wards. So no you didn't just spam bomb mindlessly.

https://www.wowhead.com/spell=207387/painbringer

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You mean like Soul Barrier?

Fiery Brand?

Pooling Fracture charges for spike healing?

There are many things you can do to fill DS down time. Unfortunately the guides just tell you to smash fracture and SB as much as possible with SC filler and that's not always optimal for survival. And why on earth are you kiting anything in this xpac right now?(outside of the few mechanics that are intentionally supposed to be kited like storm temple boss etc).

Soul barrier over last resort? Last resort is probably the most redeemable thing about dh tank right now.

How does fiery brand help me on a big trash packs, which are the thing I am having problem with damage intake wise? And yes kiting is a thing when half the time somebody pulls 2 extra trash packs (happens all the time in new dungeons). Bosses are fine right now, it is trash that's painful. Cant even imagine how it will be on higher keys with fortified.

[pay928]

Paladins don't have any "consecrate heal", it's removed (consecration still slows if you pick that talent), you can spec judgment of light, but it's nerfed and weak. You still have lay on hands though and it's actually worth something now that healers can't top you up in 1 global. It's long cd, but you have a new talent to slightly lower that cd (and bubble, and 1 defensive). Ignore pain was also nerfed and both ignore pain and light of the protector being on gcd makes warriors and paladins rage about it. Warriors have really cool talent bolster that makes last stand combined with old artifact ability property (100% block during) and it's fairly low cd with anger management. So that's a backup mitigation button. However contrary to dh and paladin they lack any in combat self healing.

Ah, I thought it still healed during pre-patch but I only played pally a little. Warriors can spec into that 30s heal, but I think it's suboptimal. Guess I did forget to add that both Paladin and Warrior can block, but I don't remember how much that actually mitigates. Meanwhile, DH only has dodge and parry. DH's scaling may mitigate this later on since they gain so much more from armor but probably not.

[Tech614]

In legion painbringer artifact ability existed as well as the legendary trinket and legs. You could weave those in to fill the gap. Also had empower wards. So no you didn't just spam bomb mindlessly.

https://www.wowhead.com/spell=207387/painbringer

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Soul barrier over last resort? Last resort is probably the most redeemable thing about dh tank right now.

How does fiery brand help me on a big trash packs, which are the thing I am having problem with damage intake wise? And yes kiting is a thing when half the time somebody pulls 2 extra trash packs (happens all the time in new dungeons). Bosses are fine right now, it is trash that's painful. Cant even imagine how it will be on higher keys with fortified.

You shouldn't have to kite mobs at all all period, even with extra pulls. I have never kited a single thing that isn't intended to be kited and I have cleared every mythic dungeon this week(besides siege which we're doing tonight) with 0 wipes on trash and a handful of wipes on bosses.

Also last resort is trash compared to soul barrier as it stands right now. Soul Barrier can save far more deaths. In current gear it's an absorb for 30% of your life and in a world where healers heals only heal for 15-20k that's a massive fucking absorb. It's basically like having an even better Prydaz that you can control. I have had pulls on mythic of doing 15k hps as Soul Barrier was a good 25-30% of the healing, and more so then just healing it's straight mitigation as well being an absorb and all.

But please tell me more about how you have to kite mobs or rely on an 8 min CD cheat death to get through dungeons...

[Deleted]

Soul barrier over last resort? Last resort is probably the most redeemable thing about dh tank right now..

A talent that does literally nothing until someone makes a mistake is the most redeemable thing about the spec?

If last resort is regularly triggered you either are taking unnecessary damage or are unlucky enough to get really bad groups a lot.

Ended up speccing into soul cleave with how rarely it was triggered, although I still need to test soul barrier to see which works best.

Personally I'd quite like to see fiery brand act as either a cleave or sigil so it by default applied the damage reduction to multiple mobs so we aren't quite so lacking in cooldowns.

Metamorphosis has saved me on multiple occasions though and i'm surprised to see someone here say it's terrible. There's even been a couple of occasions where I've triggered it so the healer can focus more on the group. This isn't contrary to what I've said about last resort either due to the fact it's a cooldown and not a cheat death on a huge cooldown.

[pay928]

Metamorphosis has saved me on multiple occasions though and i'm surprised to see someone here say it's terrible.

Every other class has cooldowns that reduce damage taken by a percentage. As the only defense cooldown DHs have baseline, Meta is lacking.

Warrior - Shield Wall (Demo Shout also debuffs enemy by %)
Monk - Fortified Brew
Druid - Survival Instincts
Paladin - Ardent Defender, Guardian of Ancient Kings
DK - Icebound Fortitude (AMS for magic as well)

[Orloth]

Um.... Fiery Brand?

It's single target, but only has a minute cooldown.

That said, I do really miss Empower Wards. Kinda wish it would come back as a talent or even a Glyph for Demon Spikes.

[Narabug]

The bottom line is that if you have to ask, then the answer is no.

World-first guilds are going to skip normal/heroic/mythic+ and go straight into mythic raids. They're also probably going to keep their lockout active until they clear the raid. Because they are doing cutting edge progression at low item levels, they value classes that can smooth damage the most - that's not where vengeance excels.

Under the assumption that you are not in guild that is competing for world-first kills, you will be more than capable of tanking any content on any tank that you wish to play.

[Tech614]

World-first guilds are going to skip normal/heroic/mythic+ and go straight into mythic raids.

This is not even close to true lol... They will run all of those into the ground the week of Sep 4th...

[Narabug]

This is not even close to true lol... They will run all of those into the ground the week of Sep 4th...

I worded that poorly. The point is that they are not going to spend months farming normal/heroic/m+ before venturing into mythic raids like most people. The instant it opens, the race begins.

The point of pushing top tier progression at lower item levels still stands - if you're not planning on doing this, Sco's rankings can be ignored. He even says it himself in his video. The average player (who will never see mythic raids while they are current) should just play the tank that has the most appealing play style to their game play.

[Saverem]

I wouldn't say they are trash for raiding, but they are about where they were in Legion. They got their healing buffed on raid bosses but lost some mitigation.

They'd be fine if they got a small mitigation fix. All they need to do is knock about 3s off DS CD and change Meta so it's actually a decent 3m CD. Remove it's armor buff and give it like 35% less damage taken. Boom! Fixed.

[Marrilaife]

I worded that poorly. The point is that they are not going to spend months farming normal/heroic/m+ before venturing into mythic raids like most people.

Most people don't do that either. They either don't raid mythic at all (because the guild doesn't have numbers for it, because they're unguilded and rely on pugs, because they're not interested etc.) or they venture into mythic the moment it opens, which is after 1 week of heroic (and they WILL clear normal + heroic on that first week before mythic is open). The difference is average mythic guild will get stuck around 4-5th boss of mythic for quite some time, while method is gonna finish the race within 1-2 resets tops.

Whether they reclear or extend during the race if it goes into second week depends whether they deem the gear more helpful than the time spent reclearing for the last boss. I reckon Method didn't extend even in Tomb, they recleared the fallen Avatar even though it was a bitch before any nerfs.

[pay928]

Whether they reclear or extend during the race if it goes into second week depends whether they deem the gear more helpful than the time spent reclearing for the last boss. I reckon Method didn't extend even in Tomb, they recleared the fallen Avatar even though it was a bitch before any nerfs.

I'm fairly certain they reset since the extra gear in the raid was more impactful. Only time they wouldn't reset is when they're within like 5% of the final kill and not hitting the enrage timer. These guilds are putting in dozens/hundreds of attempts on week 1 gear levels, so the extra gear always helps more than banging their head against the wall.

However, the point I think Nara was trying to make is DHs are worse at lower levels and other tanks will make early attempts easier with less gear.

[WskyDK]

I will say, stacking the azerite trait that makes immo aura give armor is helping a ton for AOE defensive ability. I’m getting around 725 armor every 14 seconds and its on for 6 secs. I can get it around 1k if I switch out my sigil cycling piece.

Alternating spikes and aura and using soul cleave has really smoother out a lot of the pack damage I was taking (only 226ilvl right now)