Excellently written. This lines up nicely with everything I've been feeling about VDH thus far, and definitely helped clarify some of my thoughts on Legendaries and Covenants. It's frustrating to see Blizzard make the exact same mistakes with this spec for a third straight expansion, but here we are.At least we know what to expect.
Why not just make Spirit Bomb baseline as a soul spender for DMG ONLY. In it's place could be the Frailty talent which adds the Frailty mechanic to the spell. Remove the target cap for Soul Cleave and buff it to the moon. Chains baseline replaced by Cycle of Binding (azerite trait). And maybe make Soul Barrier baseline on a longer CD with Hour of Reaping (azerite trait) in its place? Then we could potentially see some sort of competition with Demonic, at least in lower level content. It's pretty obvious that Blizzard don't have a clear vision for this spec. Feels bad. I also think with the focus on class identity they should make Darkness baseline for Vengeance. Another defensive CD which we clearly need, and a nice piece of group utility. Ruinous Bulwark is also counter-intuitive and needs changed. Maybe instead of % of "overhealing" giving you the shield it's % of "total healing". I could go on all day tbh, I love this spec. Please stop what you're doing Blizz.
Are we really to the point where you will be denied a spot in a M+ group or raid based on your convenant choice? Maybe 20+ keys and Mythic raiding progression? That statement is a bit over the top. The rest seems well thought out. Remember the wowhead audience isnt just top 1% of the player base.
I agree with the mastery assessment, even more so with Demon Spikes getting a small buff. Arms Warrior got a decent rework to their mastery. Vengeance should be next.
R I P vengeance demon hunter is it so hard to ballance every class in a PvE enviroment? I rlly love tje demon hunter tank but i think its going to be dead in shadowlands. I can understand thats its a challenge to ballance classes in Pvp but in PvE.
The article is well written specially because it sums up and gives a verdict (all verdicts are provisory ofc, one should not be afraid to give it) - contrary to the healing specs one.This is the state of VDH since it’s creation. This is what the developers want. Since Legion VDH is a spec that you can play decently and have a lot of fun by the end expansion. It’s amazing now with soulmonger and TD.The problem is that there are tanks that are complete, don’t need “externals”. Therefore those tanks are viable throughout the whole expansion, you Main them.
I have a feeling that Shadowlands will be a fantastic expansion from a world and overall gameplay perspective but it will fail spectacularly from a class design and play perspective.
I want to love my illidaddy spec but sadly it was created and designed after borrowed power was introduced. Meaning, the base spec will always be incomplete and only made whole with external systems (ie: essences, artifacts, legendaries)
I'm currently maining a DH tank right now in M+ and I can say it is embaressing how the class plays. without vision or talent procs you're often left with gaps in active mitigation. Obviously this can be avoided by using demon spikes to fill the gaps betwen gluttoney and vision procs, but still, we can get into situations where, regardless of awareness/knowledge of class, you can find yourself dead in a gcd if you're not very very careful. Another issue with DH tank is their aoe threat. Does not matter how good or bad you think you are, it IS a problem. I run a heroic version of lash of the void to help counter it in M+ while stacking full vers, but soul cleave is just so bad. Even after 2-3 GCDs DH still struggle to maintain aggro where as other tanks it's a complete faceroll.The article is spot on with all the problems that surround the spec atm.
What I'd love to see is dh tanks' fury being a split on offense and defense. Make demon spikes have zero charges, cost X fury, and rework mastery to increase dmg reduction with demon spikes up by x, dmg (all dmg, cuz hella they need it with corruptions gone) whilst also increasing fury cost of demon spikes by 0.02% per x% of mastery. That way, demon spikes and mastery becomes relevant to an x point, active mitigation would no longer be that massively a problem, and personally I would be happy not have another xpac where, oh, idk, dh tanks are solid.
As a vdh main in BfA that is pushing around the +20 to +22 key mark in 8.3 and looking to push higher in SL, I agree and disagree with some things in this article. Granted, there have been multiple tuning changes since this was written, but there are a few things worth noting:It's true that, in most cases, there will be a clear set of talents, covenant/soulbind abilities, legendaries, and such that are "best." In the case of vdh many of the options you don't pick in these situations are just garbage. Blizzard needs to rework these, and should give us more options, but this is true of nearly every spec, especially when looking at talents and how specs are going to play in a post-azerite, post-corruption environment. The meta is what the meta is, unfortunately, and that's just how the game is played. There will always be a "best" set of talents in a game where min-maxing is possible, and taking other things in place of that will always be looked down upon and not viable in the highest levels of play. But, that's why they exist: not everyone seeks to play this game at the highest level, and that's okay.The people who do want to play high-end content will find a way to, even if Blizzard should definitely make it less of a pain in the ass and stop making certain specs significantly more viable than others. They should make the "less desirable" options at least okay enough, so people who look at WoWHead to get baseline builds for things like Heroic raiding don't feel forced into a singular meta, but people pushing the highest content also need to be able to contend with difficult content in difficult conditions and make the best of some of these things. I, for one, will be grateful for some of the legendary abilities that are considered "lesser" in this article, even if there's clearly only one that's "strong." We do what we must, and if we want to be full meta slaves we can be full meta slaves, or we can play an underdog spec to the best of our ability and give our feedback and hope that, somewhere along the way, Blizzard hears the flaws we're finding and addresses them. It's time for vdh to stop being a big underdog spec, but its time might actually be coming (see next paragraph).All of that being said, many high-end players doing beta testing for M+ are putting vdh as the #2 tank and have been for quite some time now. It was second to Brewmaster Monk, but then that got nerfed, so now it's second to Prot Pally just because it does less damage. While I agree that vdh has, essentially, barely been touched from BfA in terms of quality of life, I think this article vastly underestimates some of its play and some of the benefits you can get from various builds. If you aren't filling GCDs with sigils when they're available, you are gimping group utility heavily. Even the fear sigil. I can't tell you the number of vdhs I see that only drop sigils other than Flame Sigil a few times per dungeon. The "ABC" rule of "always be casting" applies to every class, and with vdh you do have more options than you may initially think if you're focusing just on the builder/spender aspects of the spec. One of vdh's biggest strengths is its utility -- use it, and use it often.Also, mathematically speaking, the maximum uptime you can get without outside influence on Demon Spikes is 46% if you calculate uptime based on charges, recharge rate, and not putting both charges immediately on cooldown and forever just double-stacking with heavy gaps in mitigation because you spammed it early. In dungeons and raid content, if I look at overall for my auras after, I average around 40-42% (granted, this is with the benefits of haste and such, but I do not use any expedient corruptions or external haste beyond trying to have some haste on my gear). This still sucks, as it is our main form of mitigation, but it's certainly more than 30%.During those gaps in Demon Spikes mitigation is when you should consider your Fiery Brand and Demonic windows, particularly now that they've essentially baked in the Revel in Pain azerite trait (albeit severely limited). Not the other way around, relying on procs and opportunities to make Metamorphosis your primary mitigation with Demon Spikes to fill in the gaps. Does it suck? Is it not a good enough base mitigation system? Yes. I agree 100%. But you should still treat it as your base mitigation and seek to maintain maximum uptime by watching when your refresh, etc. You simply have to be more thoughtful with your mitigation as a vdh than a prot warrior does right now because of things like armor difference and fewer major defensive cds, but that's part of why I like the spec. It's a challenge, and you get to jump through the air constantly, both of which make it enjoyable to play and it feels like more of an accomplishment to tackle challenging content.I'm no 6k io vdh, so I suppose take all of this with a grain of salt. In fact, at the time of writing this, I'm only 3.2k, so I know I still have a lot to learn, but there are vdhs who are playing up at that level despite having these setbacks and concerns, and there will be again in Shadowlands. I sincerely hope Blizzard notices the gripes we have with a lot of these things, but I'm going to play the spec whether or not things get tuned better and make the absolute most out of the kit available to me, even if that means using a legendary that is "hardly valuable" when compared to the one legendary that's considered the best that I have in another slot if that ends up being how things are. After all, all of that could be said about some of the azerite traits people take one or two of in BfA, even in +25s and higher.If you read all of this, thanks for coming to my TedTalk, and feel free to tear apart my points like only commenters on the internet can do best.