Veng for Shadowlands thoughts?

[naeblis495]

i got so hype when i saw a blue post talking about DH .

But of course it was about nothing of value .

[ElDoorO]

I have a developing concern that we're very meh. As long as we're not -bad- I'm fine because I don't push hard content anymore. And, correct me if I'm wrong, almost all specs and classes are "reasonably close" now. As almost nothing is "bad" -- they simply aren't "amazing". Right?
Double jump and glide are, literally, the sole reason I like DH's. I've grown spoiled. So regardless I'm sticking with them.
DK, which is the next closest class, is just too immobile for my liking.

[dcc626]

at this point, all im expecting for tanks is damage balancing. pally and dh do considerably more than other tanks (warriors too i suppose). they wont buff the lower tanks much, so i expect pally and dh to get their damage nerfed.

[naeblis495]

The goal of this expac seems to be "make the DH bitch tier"

so far , it's going pretty well for veng,it's the worst tank along prot warrior.

[Psyala]

The goal of this expac seems to be "make the DH bitch tier"

so far , it's going pretty well for veng,it's the worst tank along prot warrior.

Veng DH is one of, if not the best tanking spec on the Beta right now - I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that it's alongside prot warrior.

[dcc626]

Veng DH is one of, if not the best tanking spec on the Beta right now - I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that it's alongside prot warrior.

from the same place that everyone else is pulling their tier lists out of: their asses.

i can guarantee you that there will be buffs/nerfs before live. nobody knows who will be "best", especially with the way people use the beta. lot of the perceived notions about tanks came from people doing keys without affixes, abusing old gear for scaling. along with bugs (like the ardent defender bug and the broken brew healing conduit) causing people to lose their minds and plan rerolls.

[naeblis495]

Veng DH is one of, if not the best tanking spec on the Beta right now - I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that it's alongside prot warrior.

sure , it's have one of the best dps for tanks when taking Spirit bomb.

But it fall dead on the floor the second it doesn't have demon spikes active , wich is 20~ seconds in the fight . Fire brand build take way too much time to spread in a dangerous pack to be remotely usefull.

Early beta you could have more meta uptime and heal a bit to compensate for those weak windows , but it got killed a few patch back .
So now you have whole windows of multiples seconds where you have no active mitigation and no cd ,along with overnerfed healing .

[Cyraxe]

@OP You should tune into Sloot's stream (http://twitch.tv/sloot) He thoroughly tests every tank with all 3 convenants every beta iteration where they do class changes. Right now he ranks them: BDK >= Prot Pally > BRM > VDH >= Prot Warr > Guardian

[ElDoorO]

@OP You should tune into Sloot's stream (http://twitch.tv/sloot) He thoroughly tests every tank with all 3 convenants every beta iteration where they do class changes. Right now he ranks them: BDK >= Prot Pally > BRM > VDH >= Prot Warr > Guardian

Is that ranking survivability, dps, or a combo of the two?

I know very little about twitch streaming. Is there a summary I can read? Or an overview video? Or a specific video of theirs I should watch? Help a brother out pretty please ^_^

[Tech614]

@OP You should tune into Sloot's stream (http://twitch.tv/sloot) He thoroughly tests every tank with all 3 convenants every beta iteration where they do class changes. Right now he ranks them: BDK >= Prot Pally > BRM > VDH >= Prot Warr > Guardian

Sloot go's into every xpac thinking prot paladin is going to be top tier and somehow it never ends up being the case. He likes the spec and is far too attached to it and over values their support abilities, just saying. I do agree blood and brewmaster are strong atm though, everyone else is pretty much in same category of viable but flaws depending on level of content.

[Cyraxe]

Is that ranking survivability, dps, or a combo of the two?

I know very little about twitch streaming. Is there a summary I can read? Or an overview video? Or a specific video of theirs I should watch? Help a brother out pretty please ^_^

That's ranking their overall strength/effectiveness/etc. He doesn't really have an area where you can read a summary of his thoughts/findings. I would say go through his videos that involve Shadowlands and look for ones of tanks you're interested in.

Sloot go's into every xpac thinking prot paladin is going to be top tier and somehow it never ends up being the case. He likes the spec and is far too attached to it and over values their support abilities, just saying. I do agree blood and brewmaster are strong atm though, everyone else is pretty much in same category of viable but flaws depending on level of content.

Of course you're going to want the class/spec you play to be the best but, in his testing there's not really any bias information that comes out of him. Sure he'll flex a bit if the paladin does well or gets changes that positively effects the class. He even says to some degree BDK is stronger than Pally. He does high mythics on each tank in beta and tries his damndest to complete the instance. He goes over every specs strengths and weaknesses, even has a Google Doc with all that information. Sure his information/findings are not going to reflect the entirety of an expansion and if someone has that mindset well, their loss? Every class atm even in BFA are exactly what you've said, "in same category of viable but flaws depending on level of content." It will be the same for the expansion. Yes, every class that can tank will be able to tank in the expansion but, it's going to be limited depending on the level of content. If you're a LFR/Normal raider or non-pushing M+ player then sure you can probably get away with tanking on anything you want. If you want to be competitive and competent you're going to pick the fotm.

[Tech614]

If you want to be competitive and competent you're going to pick the fotm.

Which won't be prot paladin because it never is. Like I said, his tier list is the same song and dance before every xpac and Prot Pally gets stuck being mid tier best case scenario for all of them. It hasn't been anywhere near a top tier spec since freaking MoP ffs.

Meanwhile Brewmaster ends up strong in every single xpac since it existed. You're free to get smoke blown up your ass about how prot paladin is better then it, but it's never going to happen. Listen to max talk about prot paladin where he explains the same flaws are still there and in spite of utility they are at risk of getting chunked all the time and probably not that viable for high end play.

[Cyraxe]

Which won't be prot paladin because it never is. Like I said, his tier list is the same song and dance before every xpac and Prot Pally gets stuck being mid tier best case scenario for all of them. It hasn't been anywhere near a top tier spec since freaking MoP ffs.

Meanwhile Brewmaster ends up strong in every single xpac since it existed. You're free to get smoke blown up your ass about how prot paladin is better then it, but it's never going to happen. Listen to max talk about prot paladin where he explains the same flaws are still there and in spite of utility they are at risk of getting chunked all the time and probably not that viable for high end play.

I never said it was going to be prot pally or even said they were going to be the cream of the crop at the end of the expansion. I just reiterated what his findings were. I refuse to be a max fan boy all because Limit finally got a WF. People really ride his and the guilds nuts instead of Sco and Method (well not anymore) because of that. Pally may have never been S tier since MoP but, they've always been a solid consistent tank to use. Go look at all the top guilds using them in raids from MoP and on. Each tank has had their moments in raids since MoP for certain bosses where they're better at handling X mechanic(s). No smoke is getting blown up my ass, big cool tough guy. I don't let Sloot's opinions sway my decision to play X class. Hell, I don't even tank unless absolutely needed. People aren't going to roll X tank since they're S tier a year later. Sure they'll roll that tank as an alt and keep it ready but the OP is wanting the now and potentially future from current beta info.

I'll no longer talk about this off topic stuff... give the OP some helpful information about VDH for SL instead of arguing with me because you love max and hate sloot.

[naeblis495]

Well , with Shadowlands delayded , we have more chances of being looked at.
But i really doubt they'll fix our core issues( low mitigation uptime and useless mastery) considering we spent all of BFA with them .

[Orloth]

I don't think mitigation uptime is a serious issue. It's literally how they are designing tanks right now. Mitigation delta (the difference in mitigation between base and with AM up or CDs) *is* a problem. We should not be feeling like we have to have something up or we die. They buffed our Mastery, but that really just makes the delta worse.

[naeblis495]

Sooo... mitigation uptime IS a problem then .

Buffing mastery won't do nothing if demon spikes keep having low uptime. Either they fix low mitigation uptime and mastery stay , or they change mastery to something worthwhile so we don't die in a global in challenging content .

Currently we share a lot of problems with prot pally : we die very easily without mitigation up and we can't maintain mitigation all the time.
But we're far worse than paladin due to : much lower base armor , can't block and our mastery is useless during our most critical periods. Healing is pretty much a non factor when you die in 1 hit .

Blizz tried to fix paladin's problems : better mastery that help them survive in all situations,gace consecration a baseline damage reduction and gave them more uptime on their mitigation when they reverted them to holy power .

But nothing critical was done to help with VDH problems . We still have laughable base armor , still big windows with no defensives and they even gutted the new toys we got that allowed us to be in meta more often.

It is not fun to watch our death get closer and closer as we use exhaust our defensives options one by one and know that we WILL run out at some point and die , no matter your level of skill , because the spec is flawed at it's core .

[Tech614]

I don't think mitigation uptime is a serious issue. It's literally how they are designing tanks right now. Mitigation delta (the difference in mitigation between base and with AM up or CDs) *is* a problem. We should not be feeling like we have to have something up or we die. They buffed our Mastery, but that really just makes the delta worse.

Meanwhile brewmasters keep 100% uptime on shuffle just from doing their base dps rotation and it doesn't even share charges with purify anymore...

You're right though, base mitigation should be buffed and demon's spikes and meta should be nerfed to compensate the difference. VDH is just way too all or nothing, super tanky or super squishy with no mid way point. It should work out mostly fine for M+ since you can plan out keeping mitigation up for shorter pulls but it's a massive issue for mythic raiding.

[Tinary]

It should work out mostly fine for M+ since you can plan out keeping mitigation up for shorter pulls but it's a massive issue for mythic raiding.

Why is it a bad thing that every spec is not good all around the content? I think its healthy for a game to have a dungeon tank, mythic raiding tank, jack of all trades tank etc. It gives a choice and I think they should enforce it more.

[Tech614]

Why is it a bad thing that every spec is not good all around the content? I think its healthy for a game to have a dungeon tank, mythic raiding tank, jack of all trades tank etc. It gives a choice and I think they should enforce it more.

Last I checked it was called a tanking spec, not a "dungeon tanking spec". With proper play you shouldn't have windows where you will be globaled on a mythic raid boss but that is current VDH reality that certain other specs, especially brewmaster laugh at.

[Tinary]

If you watch it at that pov yes but in the end whats the point of playing anything different then? While you hate brewmaster but thats their strong niche, ST tanking. DH excels at dungeons. While I agree that it is a bad feeling when you get globaled on a mythic progression or even later, having a 6 tanks with same set of skills and mitigation but just different colors and names is a boring outcome. Not everyone should be able to do everything.

Also while I do not know current "top tier" raiding comp, wouldnt a healers externals help with those windows? Wouldnt that bring out more options to take into raid different healers to compensate the tanks problems? For example if you use brew you bring a dedicated ST tank healer who pumps healing into their stagger? If you have veng you bring a healer with short def cd and occasional healing?

As I see it, difference in classes/specs is healthy for a game but the top 1% who insist that everything should be viable in everywhere yet play the one thats 0.0001% better do not make the game healthy for others.