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Vengeance Demon Hunter: First Impression of the New DH Talent Trees in Dragonflight
Dragonflight
Publié
16/09/2022 à 09:00
par
Itamae
With the reveal of the Dragonflight DH talent trees, our Vengeance Demon Hunter writer Itamae provides initial reactions and thoughts on this revamped system. We break down the DH talent trees, discussing the new talents and providing some sample builds. Join us as we predict how this class could play in Dragonflight!
To learn about the best PvE talent builds in Dragonflight for this class, and export these builds into the game, please check out our Havoc and Vengeance Demon Hunter class guides:
Havoc Demon Hunter Talent BuildsVengeance Demon Hunter Talent Builds
Introduction
With the release of Dragonflight Beta, Vengeance Demon Hunter has finally received its talent tree. Being the last spec to have its tree unveiled, expectations were high. Now we can see whether it met those expectations. Please note that everything I've written here is from a PvE perspective and primarily contains my own opinions, though many of them concur with many current Vengeance players. In addition to the talent changes, we've also received a soft mastery rework which I'll discuss near the end.
N.B. This was written based on Beta build 45569 released on the week of September 14, 2022.
Demon Hunter Dragonflight Class Tree
What's New?
In Dragonflight, the talent system has changed from the current system of selecting one of three talents every five levels, to a tree reminiscent of the original WoW while being brought into the modern era. The trees are split into two separate sections, class and specialization, and starting from level 10, we gain one talent point per level, alternating between a class point and a spec point, for a total of 31 class talents and 30 spec talents. The class tree primarily contains abilities that seem to be centered on abilities and passives that could be useful for the whole class, while the spec tree is more for strengthening specialization related spells. As Demon Hunters were the only 2-spec class prior to Dragonflight, while being designed entirely during the Artifact weapon era of Legion, we have a short history of prior powerful borrowed powers to lean on. As a result, we have gained access to a number of core utilities and defensives that were previously only available to Havoc, while maintaining many of our current abilities, as well as some brand new talents. Due to it being a replacement for new spells as we level, many abilities that are currently baseline have been converted into talents which we must spend points on as well, and with the limited talent points, we must give up some of what we may be accustomed to having already.
A number of our class talents are abilities we have currently baseline or as talents but without restricting us to a single option on a talent row, such as our sigils and their related talents,
Armure infernale
, and
Démoniaque
. Additionally, we have some very powerful new options for mobility in
Retraite vengeresse
, as well as core utility from Havoc in
Nova du chaos
,
Voile corrompu
, and
Ténèbres
. We've also got some borrowed powers returning from Legion through Shadowlands, like
Lames de guerre calcinées
from our Artifact weapon,
Armure infernale
from Azerite traits,
Restauration brisée
from conduits, and Covenant abilities like
La traque
.
These are simply some of the example talents that have been added to the Vengeance class tree, and I'll be covering them and more in-depth in the First Impressions selection below.
First Impressions
I've included a visual version of the tree below which may help for following along with my impressions.
Legend
Starting Free Talent
Don't Pick Talent
Must Take Talent
Pick One (Fury Gen)
Situational/Casual Talents
Pick One (or both)
Filler Talents
Optional Talents
The tree is primarily broken down into three major sections - the top section in which we must spend at least 8 points, a center section that opens up and where we must spend at least 20 points in combination with the top section, and a capstone section that primarily contains most of our powerful talents. Each section is then partitioned into a left, middle, and right subsection, which seem to be Havoc-focused, general class, and then Vengeance-focused respectively.
The top section is fairly well designed, perhaps exceedingly so. We start with a free point in
Sigil de feu
, and to spend 8 points here, we get a mix of Fury generation, defensives, mobility, and utility. As it is, we currently want to make our way down to
Gangrelame
immediately, as it removes a number of empty GCDs from our rotation due to lack of Fury economy. On the way, we take
Retraite vengeresse
and
Chemin embrasé
for mobility,
Restauration brisée
for a boost to self-healing,
Fureur incontrôlée
to prevent overcapping and allow for some pooling due to the way our Fury comes in bursts, and
Ébranlement amélioré
for a bit of extended range on kick. We also potentially want to pick up
Lames de guerre calcinées
for a small amount of leech, and
Emprisonnement
and
Manavore
have some utility, especially in dungeons or on adds during raid encounters. Finally, we'll probably want to pick up at least one of
Flammes de fureur
,
Fureur perturbante
, or
Colère ravalée
for some extra Fury. These talents are situational depending on which is more common between kicks and purges, while
Flammes de fureur
is the consistent option when neither is possible. Unfortunately,
Liens vengeurs
and
Glaives rebondissants
are unlikely to ever be picked up due to lack of a niche.
Poursuite
can be taken for speedrunning old content, but we give up too much elsewhere to take it. Similarly, with current tuning, we're unlikely to be able to take
Aura de souffrance
as we currently need
Gangrelame
for the Fury.
Moving on to the center, I would consider this section the worst by far of our class tree. There are 6 talents which we absolutely never want to take, with all the good talents being in the middle class subsection. There are exactly 8 points that we want to spend here, all starting from
Ruée du chaos
which reduces our
Métamorphose
cooldown from 4 minutes to 3 minutes. After that, we path down to both
Déchirement de l’âme
and
Armure infernale
despite the latter being fairly lackluster, and then
Nova du chaos
,
Démoniaque
, and
Sigil de silence
respectively. This unlocks the entire bottom section of our tree for flexibility, while giving us some add control and survivability. Unfortunately, as tuned,
Ancêtre des Illidari
will never be picked due to it being strictly worse than
Démoniaque
in all scenarios. The left and right subsections of the center are simply atrocious. On the left, we have a couple semi-useful utility options in
Hâte de gangrefeu
and
Maître du glaive
, but limited so that we don't really want to spend the points on them over talents in the top section.
Connaissance illidari
unfortunately is not worth the points, as it's fairly unlikely we'll ever want extra magic damage reduction on top of what we have, especially when it costs effectively 3 points to get it. The right side is even worse, with two talents that are actively detrimental to players in a choice node between
Sigils focalisés
and
Sigils précis
, as well as a current conduit in
Égarement dans les ténèbres
that had exactly 2 uses this expansion and thus far, none in Dragonflight's first patch. They then lead to
Volonté des Illidari
, which sounds good on paper, but is absolutely not worth spending any of these points to get to. Because we only spend 8 points in the center, that frees us up to spend 4 extra points in the top, where we pick up a few more marginally useful talents.
Finally, our bottom section is nearly perfect, with only a couple minor issues. We get access to
Voile corrompu
, ironically our most powerful defensive by far as it was previously limited to Havoc. Then we want either one (or both) of
Ténèbres
and
Sigil de supplice
, depending on the situation to allow us to path down to
La traque
- a fan favorite option that provides a good amount of single target burst and survivability, as well as minor AoE. After that, we take
Malveillance surnaturelle
for some extra damage, especially in AoE. Finally, we take
Création des Aldrachi
for nearly all situations,
Cachets prolongés
and
Sigils accélérés
. While
Cachets prolongés
isn't the most value for 2 points, it does have some uses and provides pathing below. That leaves us with 3 points of our choice to take
Fragments du chaos
for survivability in AoE,
Supplice de la défaite
for a small bit of bonus damage in Mythic+ or on adds,
Noir intégral
if we need a shorter cooldown, or
Gangrecœur erratique
for extra damage on single target.
Muselière démoniaque
may be an option if there is an all-magic fight with unparryable damage, but that type of fight has so far not been common enough to be taken. Unfortunately, none of our choice nodes are real choices.
Puissance déchaînée
is generally unnecessary and doesn't provide any survival compared to
Fragments du chaos
,
Poursuite implacable
is difficult to get value from as we'd have to game the cast when mobs are about to die, rather than an always-active damage option, there are nearly never times when we need 2 extra seconds from
Longue nuit
, and reducing the cooldown of
Sigil de supplice
with
Sigil de supplice amélioré
still doesn't allow us to permanently CC enemies and we lose free damage.
Instinct désespéré
is in a unique position, as it's quite good for casual play, but terrible for high level play. Being unable to control exactly when to use a defensive is a net negative, as there are situations where we may drop below 35% health and proc
Voile corrompu
, and then it will be on cooldown when we actually do want it a bit later.
Issues and Potential Fixes
The main issue with the tree layout is that the middle section of the tree is so lackluster, leaving us with an hourglass shape in terms of how we want to spend points. We end up spending 12-8-11 in each section respectively. Beyond that, I would only consider
Gangrecœur erratique
to be out of place, as it seems fairly weak for 2 points in the capstone section of the tree, and it might be better served in the center or top sections.
With some testing and logs on the Beta, Fury generation is currently slightly problematic, since the costs of our spenders were raised from 30 on live, to 35 for
Division de l’âme
and 45 for
Bombe spirituelle
. This currently results in a fairly empty GCD rotation due to lack of Fury generation, which is only alleviated through taking
Gangrelame
, another Fury generating option (
Flammes de fureur
,
Fureur perturbante
, or
Colère ravalée
), and
Sang-de-feu volatil
from the spec tree. Of the three class options, the best choice depends on whether we have enemies that can be kicked or purged successfully or not, and when we don't, even
Flammes de fureur
is fairly weak in ST, but decent in AoE. It is possible to play without
Gangrelame
, but we end up with a fair number of empty GCDs which feels fairly awkward. I'd like to see our rotation be completely filled if taking
Gangrelame
, with only a couple empty GCDs per minute if we choose to forgo it rather than the current situation where we have around 6-8 empty GCDs without, and 2-3 with. One way to accomplish this could be a minor cost reduction for our spenders. In addition, to make
Aura de souffrance
more competitive, I think it should perhaps provide double Fury on crits, or have some other method of helping generate Fury, like
Sang-de-feu volatil
does, while reverting
Sang-de-feu volatil
to its previous function. This would balance it out as we wouldn't be taking Fury talents in both class and spec tree, and it creates a competitive choice node.
Lames de guerre calcinées
, while still being taken, is currently somewhat undertuned as well. If playing with
Bombe spirituelle
, it's about 3% leech, while without, it drops to 1-2%. A simple fix for this would be to make all of our magical damage abilities deal either Fire or Chaos damage, bringing it up much closer to 3-4% leech depending on the build played.
In the middle section, we have a number of dead talents that simply don't provide enough value, but with some tuning, they could be options. However, on the right-center subsection, I am of the opinion that those nodes should entirely be scrapped and replaced with something else.
Égarement dans les ténèbres
can stay perhaps for PvP, but in PvE it's simply not an option. The choice node of
Sigils focalisés
and
Sigils précis
is simply an abomination. While it is a decent choice for accessibility, both options remove player agency entirely, which is a net negative for play. If it exists for accessibility issues, I believe it would be better to enable @target casting of reticle-based ground-targeted abilities, similar to
the bug introduced in 9.2.5
that was quickly fixed. Then, both these talents would effectively just be macro options. That leaves control of how to use sigils in the hands of the player, while still allowing to path through. As a replacement,
Chaînes de colère
would be a good candidate, at 2.5/5 yards rather than 1/2, or perhaps make it a single point talent for 3-4 yards instead.
Out of the good nodes,
Armure infernale
seems fairly weak for a 2 point node as well. For the investment, we receive 20% to armor and a small thorns effect only while
Aura d’immolation
is active. Vengeance Demon Hunters already have the lowest armor for all tank specs (bar Brewmasters, who have stagger), and a 20% increase to this armor value is only worth ~6-10% effective health, depending on active cooldowns. In addition, it's only up during
Aura d’immolation
, meaning it has somewhere between 40-80% uptime depending on haste and talents selected. This makes it worth somewhere between 2.4-8% effective health after taking uptime into account. For 2 points, that's barely on par with
Volonté des Illidari
, a talent we don't even take. While not directly comparable due to different paradigms, Warriors are already the highest armored tank, and they get
Plaques renforcées
, a single point node that increases armor by 20% permanently. The thorns effect also only applies to successful melee attacks, so it gets worse with higher avoidance from better gear.
Yet again, we run into the problem of our choice nodes not being real choices.
Ancêtre des Illidari
now reduces the cooldown of
Métamorphose
by 1 minute and gives a bonus 10% Versatility while it is active, but that effectively raises its uptime from 8.33% to 12.5%. In comparison, if we look at 6 minute windows, it is effectively giving 30 extra seconds with 10% more Versatility. With no other supporting talents from our spec tree,
Démoniaque
is worth 48 seconds of uptime alone, when including the 2 second channel time which is counted as being in
Métamorphose
. This can be increased up to 80 seconds if we get lucky with high rolling on
Faveur de Regard-noir
. Not only does
Démoniaque
provide significantly more uptime, but it also has far more flexibility in usage, allowing us to weave regular casts with the procs. While the idea of a choice between more uptime or more power is good in theory, the amount of power gained with 10% Versatility is simply far too low to be competitive. Given the loss of flexibility,
Ancêtre des Illidari
would need to reduce the cooldown to 1 minute, while still providing a power boost, or we'd need to have a significant boost every 2 minutes to make it worthwhile.
Supplice de la défaite
was recently changed from 10% damage buff on adds to everyone, to a 20% personal damage buff after
Sigil de supplice
ends. Unfortunately, that makes it much less powerful as we already have rotational conflicts for setting up
Fragilité
.
Down at the bottom, the choice nodes seem to be non-choices for Vengeance, though they may be useful for Havoc, so we can leave those as is. As stated before,
Gangrecœur erratique
feels out of place here, so I'd like to see something more added to make it more attractive, perhaps extra distance or another charge added.
Instinct désespéré
has the same problem as the choice node on the center-right portion of the tree. It removes player agency entirely from when we want to use our defensive cooldown. While this isn't an issue in casual content, as it will likely just proc on cooldown, it gets actively worse the more difficult the content. Even when comparing to similar abilities from other classes (
Vétéran aguerri
for Warriors,
Instinct infaillible
for Druids,
Récupération post-traumatique
for Monks,
Volonté de la nécropole
for Death Knights), their passive defensives are on a separate (or no) cooldown from their actives. The 10% bonus reduction is attractive, but not at the cost of control. I'd like to see the ability on an entirely separate cooldown, perhaps with the potency/cooldown adjusted so that it isn't too powerful, which would make it worthy of a capstone talent. This would also create some much-needed tension in the bottom section of the tree, forcing us to choose among damage/utility/survivability.
Vengeance Demon Hunter Dragonflight Spec Tree
What's New?
Similar to the class tree, the specialization tree for Vengeance is comprised of a mix of current baseline abilities and talents, some borrowed power including Legendaries, Conduits, Covenant abilities, Artifact and Azerite traits, and some brand new interactions.
Current Baseline/Talents
Dévastation gangrenée
- Baseline spell
Marque enflammée
- Baseline spell, Rank 2 upgrade included
Pointes de déviation
- Baseline Rank 2 upgrade
Glaive parfaitement équilibré
- Baseline Rank 2 upgrade
Fracture
- Talent
Chute de météores
- half of a current Talent
Festin d’âmes
- Talent
Flammes déchirantes
- Talent
Barrière d’âme
- Talent
Extraction de masse
- Talent
Douleur délectable
- Baseline Rank 3 upgrade
Saccageur du Vide
- Talent, slightly modified
Retombées
- Talent
Bombe spirituelle
- Talent
Sigil de chaînes
- Talent
Rempart délabré
- Talent
Brûlé vif
- Talent
Nourrir le démon
- Talent
Chair calcinée
- Talent
Dernier recours
- Talent
Brand New
Fragilité
- Previously part of
Bombe spirituelle
but now totally separate with new functionality
Représailles
- Inspired by a PvP talent
Pointes crantées
but much weaker
Pointes calcifiées
Entaille acharnée
Chaînes de colère
Pointes prolongées
Sang ardent
Sang-de-feu volatil
- somewhat inspired by our current Tier 2p
Division focalisée
Vulnérabilité
Âme meurtrie
Submersion de flammes
Borrowed Powers
Flambée
- Shadowlands Conduit
Fortification de gangreflamme
- Legion/Shadowlands Legendary
Fournaise d’âme
- Shadowlands Conduit
Angoisse collective
- Shadowlands Legendary
Douloureuse
- Legion Artifact Trait
Faveur de Regard-noir
- Shadowlands Legendary/Torghast Power
Trépas enflammé
- Legion Artifact Trait
Animancien
- inspired by BfA Azerite Trait
Cycle de liens
- inspired by BfA Azerite Trait
Déchirement d’âme
- Legion Artifact Trait
Cachet de dépit
- Shadowlands Covenant Ability
(should be
Offrande aux flammes
) - Shadowlands Covenant Ability
First Impressions
Overall, my immediate reaction to the tree is that it is in a fairly good position, but could be improved. Similar to the class tree, I'd categorize it into three sections in two different ways. The top/center/bottom division requires us to spend specific amounts of points so that we can't build too heavily into the capstone section at the bottom. More generally, the left/middle/right sections of the tree seem to each have a general theme being explored. On the left, we have
Fragilité
-focused talents. The middle is primarily focused on improvements to
Dévastation gangrenée
. The right side is mainly
Marque enflammée
. Finally, we have some unique talents that don't particularly belong anywhere being interspersed into all three parts of the tree.
Again, I've included an annotated visual tree below that may be useful for following along with my impressions.
Legend
Don't Pick Talent
Must Take Talent
General AoE
Generally Picked (Pathing)
Situational (High Risk of Death)
Survivability
DPS
Pure ST
Casual Content
I'll primarily be discussing the sections from a top to bottom perspective, as that is how we will be spending our points, but will also review the synergy for each thematic section as well as the unique talents.
Firstly, at the top, we must spend 8 points. These points are almost always going to be locked in with the current tree layout. We are forced to take the top 3 talents -
Dévastation gangrenée
,
Fragilité
, and
Marque enflammée
, which makes sense, as they are the primary themes of each portion of the tree and critical to our spec working. There isn't much to say here, other than that
Fragilité
seems to be the new focus for Vengeance. It used to be a 20-second long duration debuff that granted 10% leech and was applied by
Bombe spirituelle
, but now it's been reworked to apply from
Sigil de feu
, lasts only 5 seconds, and heals for 8%. It may seem somewhat undertuned at first glance, but it's just because there are many supporting talents below which greatly increase its power.
Following those 3 points, we have 3 talents which improve various baseline spells, 2 of which we always take.
Pointes de déviation
used to be a baseline Rank 2 upgrade, and while it is fine, I'd rather see this as part of the ability baseline, while giving us a talent that improves it instead.
Glaive parfaitement équilibré
is a rank 2 upgrade to
Lancer de glaive
which is currently a button that is of lowest priority, which is unfortunate because we have to spend the point to access the good talents below it.
Chute de météores
has some nice utility for extra mobility, but points are generally better spent elsewhere. There is a strange synergy with our class tree talent
Gangrecœur erratique
at the moment which reduces the cooldown by a significant amount, generating a fairly large amount of off-gcd threat.
For our last 3 points in this section, we'll generally be spending them on
Fracture
,
Flambée
.
Fracture
is generally considered one of Vengeance's signature abilities despite being a talent, with
Entaille
being fairly reviled by most Vengeance players.
Pointes calcifiées
helps smooth out damage when
Pointes démoniaques
drops. I can even see some situations where we aren't taking much Physical damage, so we'd use
Pointes démoniaques
and cancel it preemptively for a bonus damage reduction. Unfortunately,
Flambée
is quite underpowered as the healing from
Dévastation gangrenée
is generally irrelevant, but we need it for pathing.
The remaining talents are bad enough that we would rarely ever consider taking them.
Entaille acharnée
improves the Fury generation of
Entaille
, but as stated above, most players do not like the playstyle without
Fracture
. I could see it being fairly useful for a simple rotation for new players, as it would mainly require pressing
Entaille
and
Division de l’âme
.
Représailles
provides a very small damage increase and threat bonus, which in testing so far, seems rather underwhelming. Being locked behind
Chute de météores
also means that we'd only build into it if forced. Meanwhile
Fortification de gangreflamme
is yet another magic damage reduction which has low utility in most cases. Even in the cases where we would like extra magic damage reduction, it's unlikely that any other tank spec would be able to survive.
In the center section, we want to take
Fournaise d’âme
as it improves our damage on both
Division de l’âme
as well as
Bombe spirituelle
. Interestingly enough, due to the way
Bombe spirituelle
works with the souls being consumed before the damage is dealt, it will in fact proc on the
Bombe spirituelle
that absorbs a 10th soul.
Festin d’âmes
is an option for extra healing, but it is an AP% based heal and it refreshes rather than stacking or rolling like ignite, so with the way it's tuned, it won't ever be selected.
Pointes prolongées
is quite a nice uptime buff to
Pointes démoniaques
, and similarly,
Flammes déchirantes
is quite attractive for both damage and Fury generation purposes.
Barrière d’âme
and
Extraction de masse
in the choice node aren't generally worth the point due to bad interactions with Souls and low tuning.
Sang ardent
is very nice and will likely be taken for damage in many builds.
Saccageur du Vide
is the first of many talents that improves
Fragilité
. It not only allows
Division de l’âme
to apply the debuff, but also improves it so we take 4% reduced damage as well. A lovely talent and much improved from the current version on live.
Sang-de-feu volatil
is a strong talent that will smooth out our Fury flow.
Retombées
has a 60% chance per enemy damaged to generate a Soul on the cast of
Aura d’immolation
, up to a cap of 5 Souls.
Rempart délabré
has the same weaknesses as
Flambée
, but in this case, it doesn't even have forced pathing so we will try to avoid it. Sadly,
Douleur délectable
, previously a rank 3 upgrade to
Marque enflammée
is again locked behind bad pathing while not being strong enough for us to want to go that way.
Bombe spirituelle
has always been a popular talent since its introduction in Legion's patch 7.1.5, but has either overshadowed
Division de l’âme
rotationally, or been eliminated due to anti-synergies. Currently on the Beta, it's barely performing equally in AoE below 5 targets and a significant loss in ST due to a later talent, which is an odd decision, as it is effectively spending a talent point for no gain outside of large target count pulls. This could be a tuning issue, or perhaps a candidate for a rework. In most cases I'd still probably take it simply because it's a cheaper way to path down into the strong talents in the capstone section below as well as being effectively required beyond 5 targets.
Douloureuse
was a great Artifact trait that helped smooth out our damage taken, and now it's back, albeit in a weaker form.
Faveur de Regard-noir
is our currently most used Legendary, and the new form reduces the randomness somewhat by guaranteeing at least a partial refund. It will be a required talent for AoE/Mythic+, but isn't all that great in ST.
Trépas enflammé
is another powerful Artifact trait that was brought down in power from its previous form, but allows for some interactive and fun gameplay around burst windows every minute.
Sigil de chaînes
, while popular for mob control, is unfortunately locked out of the way behind a weak talent and it's likely we will almost never consider picking it up - a sad fate for such a useful tool. Behind it is
Chaînes de colère
, a nice utility talent, but for only a 2 yard radius and is again locked behind low value talents.
Finally, in the capstone section, we have
Division focalisée
, which significantly increases the damage dealt by
Division de l’âme
on Single Target, fixing one of our core weaknesses from Shadowlands.
Animancien
is a bit of a trap, as it performs extremely well currently on the Beta, but we are also taking very little damage. It gets worse as content gets harder and we spend less time at max health.
Angoisse collective
is quite a nice damage boost, and it synergizes with our class talent
Lames de guerre calcinées
as well as our other sources of leech to provide a decent amount of healing.
Brûlé vif
continues to be lackluster as it already was this expansion, due to the slow spread and target limit.
Cycle de liens
is a minor dps and utility increase, but will likely only be taken in specific situations for maximizing damage. The 100ms ICD means that it can only proc once per cast, rather than per target as some people may misinterpret the tooltip.
Vulnérabilité
is another talent in the
Fragilité
family, making us deal increased damage to all debuffed targets. It's quite strong as is, and definitely worth the points.
Nourrir le démon
grants us increased
Pointes démoniaques
uptime through cooldown reduction and can finally be taken without losing
Fracture
, making it much more attractive than it is now.
Chair calcinée
is a nice extension to
Marque enflammée
, but again is on the weaker right side of the tree, so we won't be going for it.
On the absolute final row, we've got
Âme meurtrie
, which is fantastic. It allows us to stack
Fragilité
multiple times, making all other talents that affect it also stack. In addition to that, it allows both
Division de l’âme
and
Bombe spirituelle
(despite not being in the tooltip) to apply a second stack onto your primary target, making our ST damage and survivability even better! I could not have dreamed of a better talent, so this was a real surprise. Next, we've got
Déchirement d’âme
, a throwback to our Legion Artifact, for even more ST burst damage.
Dernier recours
still exists, but now that it's not the only somewhat useful talent on a bad row and it's actually quite weak in comparison to most other cheat deaths, it's a rather hard sell. Surprisingly, we may not even take it outside of a few edge cases. Sadly, the
which seems to be intended to be
Offrande aux flammes
in game, will never be taken as it still has the same issue as it does in Shadowlands - no control over the proc, as well as a new issue in that our
Lancer de glaive
is even weaker.
Cachet de dépit
is still good, though not nearly as strong as it currently is, but as tuned, it's the second strongest option after
Âme meurtrie
. Lastly, there's
Submersion de flammes
, which simply provides one extra charge. While having a charge rather than a cooldown does mean that there is slightly more flexibility in the usage of
Marque enflammée
and allows for some delay in usage, it's simply not strong enough for a capstone at the moment, meaning we'll never take it.
Overall, all three sections are somewhat fairly laid out from top to bottom, but there is a power imbalance from left to right. While our point distribution is good, there are some pathing issues in general. In addition, the left side
Fragilité
is overwhelmingly dominant, with the middle being fairly mediocre, but just slightly better than the right side, which is woefully undertuned at the moment. This leads us into primarily ignoring the right side entirely in most builds.
Potential Builds
Here are a few potential builds at the moment with a quick breakdown of why specific talents were selected.
We pick up full defensive talents here, with as much mobility as possible. If there are adds that can be controlled, we can swap a few points over into
Supplice de la défaite
.
This gives us absolute maximum ST damage, with a huge burst window every minute from
Trépas enflammé
, but we lose out on some AoE and survivability.
This gives us a decent mix of survivability, AoE damage, and ST damage for Mythic+. In extremely high keys, we may swap over to slightly more defensive talents.
Issues and Potential Fixes
My main gripe with the current spec tree layout is the lack of power on the right side. Prior to this update, I'd suggested putting the
Aura d’immolation
-related talents onto the right, while moving the Sigil-related talents to the middle, which would allow for better access and flow throughout the tree. Instead, they've been concentrated in the opposite sections, making it hard to take anything in the top and center right sections.
I'd like to reiterate that I believe
Pointes de déviation
should be made baseline, with something like
Pointes défensives
replacing it instead. The change in talent position in the recent build which forced pathing through
Glaive parfaitement équilibré
is unfortunate, as it has effectively obsoleted
Représailles
, which was previously never taken. Neither talent is good, but
Représailles
could potentially be improved. Right now, it's simply a thorns effect which only procs on successful melee attacks against us, same as
Armure infernale
. A minor change to allow it to proc off any melee even if avoided would go a long way in making it more palatable.
Flambée
(required for some pathing) and
Rempart délabré
(completely avoided) share the same problem - they both improve the weakest aspect of
Dévastation gangrenée
, a heal that's effectively irrelevant. Similarly,
Festin d’âmes
is a heal that doesn't stack, but refreshes and is of low value as well.
Pointes prolongées
is a bit weak for 2 points, especially when comparing to active mitigation from other tank specs. It has great synergy for increasing uptime with
Nourrir le démon
, but spending 4 points to improve one of the weakest AM spells in the game feels bad. Even with all the talents spent on
Pointes démoniaques
, it continues to be one of the least powerful survivability options.
Barrière d’âme
is unfortunate because it disappears effectively instantly after being cast, making it not worth the Souls absorbed. A nice buff could be to revert it to the Legion version, which had a minimum absorb so that it lasted the full 12 seconds with new Souls adding to it consistently.
Extraction de masse
would be more interesting if it didn't immediately absorb the Souls, and could have a reduced cooldown or deal more damage. Both are currently quite unattractive, but could be swapped with
Fortification de gangreflamme
to make them better candidates, as they'd have more general and interesting use cases.
While
Sang-de-feu volatil
is currently in a good place, it was changed from granting a Soul on crit to a random amount of Fury. This helps make our Fury flow smoother, but in return we've lost one fairly strong source of Souls for both healing and damage. As mentioned in the class tree issues above, I'd like to see this change reverted, while putting the crit Fury bonus into
Aura de souffrance
instead, giving us a choice of a smaller passive amount of Fury, or more Fury at the cost of extra globals spent.
Sigil de chaînes
and
Douleur délectable
being swapped would make them much more interesting, as it groups the Sigil talents together, while keeping the shielding theme grouped up top as well.
Animancien
is in a strange spot, as it is strong in easy content, and gets worse in harder content. A simple way to balance it out would be to make it more similar to the Azerite trait it came from, which was a flat absorb for every Soul consumed, or perhaps make it shield for a % of all actual healing done by the Souls, rather than overheal.
Now that
Division de l’âme
is hard capped at 5 targets, a change I heavily disagree with,
Bombe spirituelle
has a separate niche. The hard cap feels quite bad and I don't like this way of forcing a talent to have a niche. I'd prefer to see something like this done instead:
Revert the target cap on
Division de l’âme
.
Make
Bombe spirituelle
a passive upgrade to
Division de l’âme
during
Métamorphose
, but rework it so that it works similar to
Ames en éruption
, so it does baseline Physical damage and additionally, bonus Fire damage in an AoE per Soul consumed while increasing Soul consumption up to 5 instead of 2.
Replace the
Bombe spirituelle
talent with a talent that makes all Physical portions of
Division de l’âme
deal Fire damage instead.
Convert that talent into a choice node, with the above and another new spell like Spirit Spear, which would be a ST finisher type spell that consumes up to 5 Souls to do heavy Fire damage to a single enemy, giving a choice between more AoE and more ST focus.
Additionally, despite the change to auto-consume Souls being reduced from 6 yards to 4 yards, it's not quite enough for a
Bombe spirituelle
-based build. Any time we are up against a wall or some sort of stationary hole-in-the-ground boss, the Souls are forced to spawn near us, and even the slightest movement will auto-consume them. If we want to maintain the class fantasy of having Souls nearby, please give us a toggle that lets us not accidentally consume them by walking too close, or make that default while giving us a button to absorb all souls similar to
Extraction du mal
.
Very minor concern with
Angoisse collective
is that it currently doesn't scale with haste(number of ticks) or crit(as it is guaranteed), while the base
Dévastation gangrenée
does, making it relatively weaker as we go longer into the expansion.
On the bottom right section, the
Marque enflammée
talents are kneecapped by the target limit and slow spreading of
Brûlé vif
, making them fairly lackluster. I think it'd be far more interesting if
Brûlé vif
spread to all enemies damaged by
Sigil de feu
or had some other, quicker spread mechanic to make it more appealing and competitive with
Fragilité
-based builds. In particular,
Submersion de flammes
just feels too niche and not powerful enough to be a capstone, so perhaps something similar to our current Legendary power
Âme flamboyante
(but working off any Soul consumption) would be in order here.
Offrande aux flammes
currently doesn't seem to have a use-case either, as it is outshone by
Cachet de dépit
in all content due to lack of control and requiring us to use a global on
Lancer de glaive
to kill it.
There is also a tuning imbalance between talents such as
Déchirement d’âme
(as much as I like it), and
Cachet de dépit
. While not shown in the tooltip, there is a 50% penalty on the offhand strike (n.b. this also applies to
Fracture
) which is the second AP value listed. This means that it does 150%+75% initial fire hit damage, each of which can individually crit, and then the 97.65% AP DoT afterwards, for a total of 322.65% AP. In
Fracture
's case, it does 40%+40% AP damage as Physical. While
Déchirement d’âme
is Fire damage, so it can benefit from interacting with
Trépas enflammé
, it deals less damage than a single cast of
Cachet de dépit
on ST which deals 350% AP Arcane damage, while not having the advantage of multi-target scaling. In addition, there is more consideration required for optimizing
Déchirement d’âme
whereas
Cachet de dépit
generally has less setup required. I believe that an easier to play talent should be slightly less powerful than one which has more restrictions, so it would be nice to see a small buff to
Déchirement d’âme
or nerf to
Cachet de dépit
.
Finally,
Dernier recours
has lost much of its luster; as a cheat death, it's not particularly strong compared to others, and now that it's not a forced choice in a row of bad options, it's been reduced to a very small niche, which isn't great for a capstone. Much of this is due to the loss in power of
Métamorphose
as a cooldown during the transition from Legion to BfA. In Legion,
Métamorphose
was quite powerful, as we had flat % reduction, and gaining armor on top of that was quite strong. However, with the conversion of
Pointes démoniaques
to flat armor, and
Métamorphose
not applying to any temporary armor gains, it's no longer a strong survivability option. In Shadowlands, it's currently possible to proc
Dernier recours
and die while having
Métamorphose
already up, and the long 8 minute cooldown makes it even worse. A reduction in cooldown, or a change to
Métamorphose
(perhaps giving it a flat damage reduction instead of armor, or increased healing in addition) would make it a much more attractive option.
Mastery Soft Rework
On the latest version, our mastery has been soft reworked into granting half the armor bonus at all times, and the other half during
Pointes démoniaques
. In addition, a bug was noticed and fixed in that our Mastery was only at a 2.5 multiplier per Mastery point rather than 3 as the tooltip stated. These are both buffs, increasing the relative value of Mastery compared to other stats. However, at this time, it's not nearly enough to make Mastery a valued stat. It simply makes it so that we don't immediately want to discard an item that has Mastery on it. Prior to these changes, Mastery was effectively worth ~25% of the value of any other stat, and these changes bring it up to an estimated ~50-60%. In addition, the Mastery armor is not multiplied by any other modifiers, so it loses even more relative power during
Métamorphose
. The changes I suggested above would help, but would only be a step towards making Mastery valuable.
Final Thoughts
All in all, I think the Vengeance tree is looking good, with most of my concerns being quite minor. If it launched as is, I wouldn't hate it. However, I do think much could be improved even in small ways. If your preference is to use a single cookie-cutter build for most content, I think you'll enjoy this iteration of the tree, but I would prefer to have more variety and be able to tailor builds for specific situations.
Interested in playing Vengeance Demon Hunter now? Check our out live guide for this spec!
Vengeance Demon Hunter Guide
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