Vengeance Demon Hunter in Shadowlands - Tank Strengths, Best Covenants, Soulbinds and Legendaries

Beta Posted 2020/11/13 at 1:50 PM by Itamae

IntroductionVengeance Demon Hunter Tank Guide - Dragonflight 10.0.2Check out all our Shadowlands Launch Opinion articles by our Class Writers and members of the community! Click on any of the colored specs below to see what articles we've released so far.
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Blood Death Knight

Arcane Mage

Vengeance Demon Hunter

Demonology Warlock

About the AuthorFel HammerClass Changes and Talentslast articleBaseline Spells and Talents

Soul Fragment was nerfed by 25%, reducing our healing from 8% of damage taken in the last 5 seconds to 6%.

Fel Devastation had its cooldown increased by 33% from 45 seconds to 1 minute.

Demonic was nerfed by 25%, reducing its duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.
This comes out to 25% nerf to "passive" Metamorphosis uptime from the cooldown reduction(4.4% down to 3.3%), and 43.75% nerf on "active" uptime (17.8% reduced to 10%), total combined nerf comes out to 40% (22.2% down to 13.3%).

Soul CleaveFeast of SoulsDemon SpikesTalentsSpirit BombVengeance Talents guideLoss of Azerite Traits and EssencesVision of PerfectionConflict and StrifeHour of ReapingDemon Hunter Class ChangesLeveling Perks

At level 54, we get Fiery Brand which is half of the effect of the Azerite Trait Revel in Pain.

At level 56, we get Focused Cleave which is a minor buff to Soul Cleave damage. While not much of a buff, it's better than nothing.

At level 58, we get Revel in Pain which is the other half of the Azerite Trait Revel in Pain.

Revel in PainSoul CleaveSoul CleaveVengeance Demon Hunter Covenants

Kyrian

Class Ability: Elysian Decree adds a brand new sigil to our arsenal, dealing high damage and generating souls as long it damages something on a one minute cooldown. This is the total package, providing an extra source of damage that isn't hard-capped, some defensiveness, and on a short cooldown. In short, the ideal sort of external power without any real drawbacks.
Related Conduit: Repeat Decree - Great conduit for a great Covenant ability. It simply multiplies the power of your Elysian Decree by a scaling percentage. Given the strength of the baseline ability, this is a must-have.
Signature Ability: Summon Steward provides some miscellaneous services such as changing talents, but its key strength is the Phial of Serenity which gets improved by soulbinds, allowing for all sorts of interesting play in removing debuffs! Another ability with many uses that I have nothing to complain about.

Necrolord

Class Ability: Fodder to the Flame spawns a demon with a fairly large health pool that we have to kill before gaining any benefits. It can't be attacked by allies so we have to fight it alone. When it dies, it drops a pool of demon blood that reduces the damage dealt by enemies standing it by 15% as well as a Demon Soul which increases damage dealt by 25%. There are so many drawbacks to this ability that I can't justify ever taking this Covenant. Not only is it clunky to use, requiring you to fight an additional enemy, but the Demon Soul only works properly if you run towards the green soul on the ground that it drops. If it gets absorbed through another ability such as Soul Cleave or Spirit Bomb, it becomes a regular Demon Soul instead, so you lose the 5% bonus damage. However, this might be a blessing in disguise, as the Demon Soul doesn't even apply to Spirit Bomb, so if you're playing that talent, you aren't gaining the full benefit! Lastly, it requires you to keep enemies in the pool to gain damage reduction. While this might be viable in some raid encounters, there are many cases in Mythic+ where you'll be wanting to move your enemies.
Related Conduit: Brooding Pool - Great conduit for an awful Covenant ability. It adds to the duration of the Demon Soul buff. Great if it works, but if it bugs then it has no value whatsoever.
Signature Ability: Fleshcraft creates a shield after channeling for 4 seconds for 20-50% of maximum health, depending on the corpse consumed. It always lines up with Fodder to the Flame so we're always able to get the 50% shield. Sounds great, right? Well, not really. Ideally we want to use this shield to cover for mitigation downtime, but in that case, it gets removed within a global or two. In addition, you can't dodge or parry or move(unless taking a specific soulbind) while channeling, so it's even more difficult to find a time to use it.

Night Fae

Class Ability: The Hunt allows you to charge to your enemy after a short cast time, dealing damage to it and up to 5 enemies between you and the target, then grants 25% leech against the target for 30 seconds. Sounds like a solid ability, but it has some peculiarities that need to be fixed to make it really useful. First, leech on a single target isn't very useful, given that our base ST damage is quite low. Second, the hitbox of this ability is melee range. This means that it is extremely difficult to hit targets if your hitbox does not pass through the hitbox of an enemy, so you'll likely need to use Sigil of Chains to group them up before using it. This also means that the DoT portion can actually miss your primary target despite it being targeted, losing half the damage! So while it's an interesting ability in theory, in practice it comes out not being as competitive as I'd like.
Related Conduit: Unnatural Malice - Solid conduit for a decent Covenant ability. It adds to the damage on the primary target. No complaints here, take it if you pick this covenant.
Signature Ability: Soulshape transforms you into a spirit fox, teleporting you instantly and makes you faster. Great addition to mobility that lets you dodge another mechanic. While it's not the most powerful, it will definitely have some creative uses.

Venthyr

Class Ability: Sinful Brand puts a DoT on your target, slowing its attack and cast speeds by 30% for 8 seconds and dealing a good amount of damage, scaling with haste. When Metamorphosis is cast, it applies to all nearby enemies. Note that this does not work with the Demonic talent. Overall a very good Covenant ability for ST and quite powerful in AoE when Metamorphosis is available. The defensive portion isn't particularly useful, as it really just prevents one extra melee swing in its duration from each target. While the concept of it applying in AoE is very nice, unfortunately the defensive portion is not very useful because we are already extremely tanky during Metamorphosis, so we really just use it for damage.
Related Conduit: Increased Scrutiny - Okay conduit for a good Covenant ability. It reduces the cooldown of Sinful Brand, allowing for more uses. Unfortunately it has no effect in AoE as it only applies to the base ability. Still, it's worth taking
Signature Ability: Door of Shadows allows you to teleport after a short cast. It's got some decent utility for moving around, and more mobility never hurts. However, with the cast time, it's a bit difficult to dodge mechanics with it.

Kyrian ability Elysian Decree had its AP modifier increased from 135% to 350% and had a target cap added. This target cap causes it to deal reduced damage after 5 targets, but still allows it to hit every target, so it's not a hard cap. It follows a similar damage pattern as Thunder Clap, where it deals reduced damage from 6-20 targets using the formula of sqrt(5/n) damage per target, and then sqrt(5/n)*20/n damage after 20 targets when it is soft capped. For those of you disinclined to math, it means that the damage dealt to target counts above 5 is reduced, but it still gains damage overall up to 20 targets.

Necrolord ability Fodder to the Flame had its 20% attack speed from the pool replaced by a 10% haste buff, which was then removed and replaced with 5% more damage to the soul and 5% more reduction in the pool

Venthyr ability Sinful Brand had its AP modifier increased from 440% to 520% and then decreased to 338%

Night Fae ability The Hunt had the most drastic change, being reworked from an ability that provided a damaging charge to target while doubling fury generation and allowing teleports without line-of-sight, to a charge that deals damage to the primary target, and applies a DoT to up to 5 targets in the path, including the primary target. The AP modifier was increased from 275% to 455%, and the DoT also was buffed from 79% to 455%.

Choosing a CovenantSummon StewardDoor of ShadowsSoulshapeFleshcraftShadowlands Covenant Overview - Abilities, Rewards, How to UnlockBest Soulbinds for Vengeance

Combat Meditation Unfortunately, unlike other tanks, Mastery is a very bad stat for us, only really providing attack power for damage while requiring Demon Spikes to be up for any defensive value.

Focusing Mantra is okay in Mythic+, but unlikely to be useful in raid.

Let Go of the Past is quite powerful, offering a nearly permanent 4% Versatility.

Valiant Strikes provides a fairly substantial heal and procs quite often from any critical strikes done by yourself or allies

Ascendant Phial upgrades the Phial of Serenity to provide full immunity from those debuffs for 8 seconds, instead of just removing them.

Cleansing Rites is a decent sized shield before starting a pull.

Resonant Accolades is a small, but helpful healing increase.

Viscous InkFel DefenderFiery BrandResilient PlumageVengeance Demon Hunter Conduits

Growing Inferno - Despite being listed as a Havoc conduit, this actually works for Vengeance as well, and is our best Potency conduit aside from the Covenant-specific ones.
Soul Furnace - This conduit is extremely lackluster. It periodically increases the damage of Soul Cleave, which is a low damage spell, and by a miniscule amount.

We're still missing our second Vengeance-specific Potency conduit, despite being weeks away from release. In addition, we're pigeonholed into using a conduit that isn't even for our spec, because our one implemented conduit is beyond awful.

Repeat Decree (Kyrian) - Quite powerful, this gives a nice damage boost to Elysian Decree. Would always be taken if playing Kyrian.
Brooding Pool (Necrolord) - Good duration increase on the buff from Fodder to the Flame, and still better than most of our potency conduits. For the people who take Necrolord, it would likely still be picked.
Increased Scrutiny (Venthyr) - Not very powerful at early ranks, but will be extremely strong later on due to the cooldown reduction on Sinful Brand. Quite powerful if playing Venthyr.
Unnatural Malice (Night Fae) - A decent increase to the primary target damage of The Hunt. Likely to be taken if playing Night Fae.

Fel Defender - A good conduit for the Fiery Brand spread build which is one of the two builds. Not quite as powerful for the standard Spirit Bomb build.
Shattered Restoration - Extremely powerful conduit. This is effectively a required conduit now, with the nerf to our healing. It brings our healing per soul up back to 7.5%, which is still worse than the 8% we had before.
Viscous Ink - Decent, but not particularly powerful. We are already one of the sturdiest tank specs against magic, and this puts us further ahead. There may be some niche use against high magic damage fights. In addition, it was recently nerfed by 2% at all ranks.
Demon Muzzle - Another conduit similar to the above, but only applied after Sigil of Silence ends. It does work on immune enemies, but is more reduction for a shorter period, versus permanent reduction. Will likely be unnecessary as we would always take Viscous Ink if we need more reduction, and there are no encounters where stacking them would be useful.
Roaring Fire - A very weak conduit. Fel Devastation heals based on AP, not a percentage of max health or damage taken. This means it doesn't scale nearly as well as it should, and it already heals very little by default. Currently, it's only used to activate Demonic or build threat as it is uncapped AoE.

Demonic Parole - Absolutely useless in PvE. Perhaps has some PvP purposes?
Felfire Haste - A decent move speed increase after we've already used our mobility. Most likely to be used in general situations.
Lost in Darkness - Another PvP focused conduit, unlikely to have any use in PvE unless there's a specific encounter with invisible enemies and pulsing damage.
Ravenous Consumption - Random chance to remove multiple buffs, again mostly PvP focused, but could have some niche uses in PvE encounters.

Choosing Conduits

Potency: In general, we'd evaluate the Covenant-specific conduit first, and then use either that or Growing Inferno for our Potency slot. If there's 2 slots, we'd use both.

Endurance: Note that the third place conduit, Fel Defender, can rise in value up to first place depending on the specific raid encounter or if playing the Fiery Brand build.

Finesse: Generally, just take the top ranked one if you are required to take one, with the other two used in niche situations.

Demon Hunter Conduits for ShadowlandsVengeance Demon Hunter Legendaries

Echo of Eonar: This legendary has changed multiple times. In its latest incarnation, it is effectively useless in all content.
Judgment of the Arbiter: This has potential for decent damage if other people in your group are wearing it, but offers nothing defensively.
Maw Rattle: Too many requirements to really be useful. There's potential for gaming it for the 5% DR in keys but with current dungeon design, is rather unlikely.
Norgannon's Sagacity: Useless as we are not casters and are locked in place during Fel Devastation anyway.
Sephuz's Proclamation: Provides a decent amount of stats with good uptime in keystones. Can likely be procced on cooldown.
Stable Phantasma Lure: Niche use for farming Phantasma.
Third Eye of the Jailer: Niche use for world content, too restrictive to be useful in instanced content.
Vitality Sacrifice: Formerly the strongest legendary, it has been reduced to a shadow of its former self. Absolutely no use case for it now.

Collective Anguish: A decent damage boost, but rather buggy as it always spawns in a specific location relative to the player and does not move, so it can miss.
Darkest Hour: Appears strong at first glance, but an uncontrollable defensive that also relies on randomness to provide any benefit is not good overall.
Darkglare Boon: Was previously quite strong but reduced in value due to the lower duration of Demonic and longer cooldown on Fel Devastation.
Fel Bombardment: Now works for Vengeance, but the effect was nerfed to only apply bonus damage to the primary target. It's still not very good.

Fel Flame Fortification: Close to useless. We are already the tank that takes the least damage from magic overall, stacking more magic reduction is pointless because any situation that would require it would be impossible to tank for any other spec.
Fiery Soul: Quite powerful in combination with the Fiery Brand build. This is what enables it, increasing the uptime to nearly 50% on up to 5 targets. This will be the premiere defensive option.
Razelikh's Defilement: The strongest legendary when playing Kyrian. It works with Elysian Decree at a reduced rate, allowing for about a 45 second cooldown, making it generally better than our other Legendary choices.
Spirit of the Darkness Flame: Never useful. We generally want to use Fiery Brand before the damage comes in, not after, so the healing is pointless. The damage increase is hard to stack to full, making it significantly worse than other options.

Choosing a LegendaryRazelikh's DefilementElysian DecreeFiery SoulFiery BrandConclusionSpirit BombFiery BrandSpirit BombFiery Brand

Comment by Prime543I always did think of DH tanks as a high risk high reward type of tank regarding damage taken.Comment by buscavaReally good write up. Thanks Itamae.

It's really sad to see vengeance so neglected over the alpha/beta cycle. Lots of potential. but gets given almost nothing. The fact that it's STILL missing a conduit is ridiculous, and the legendary selection combined with conduits is really frustrating.Comment by StixxWe're still missing our second Vengeance-specific Potency conduitComment by buscavaWe're still missing our second Vengeance-specific Potency conduitComment by hotaru251I always did think of DH tanks as a high risk high reward type of tank regarding damage taken.Comment by FlowerhornSpirit Bomb should've been made baseline years ago. There's always 2 types of builds for DH tanking, and one of them is always Spirit Bomb....
As for the damage buff to the Fiery Brand build, they can just make that Golden Trait from legion, increase your fire damage dealt to the target, a baseline effect to the spell.
The Charred Flesh talent used to be the Golden Trait, but no one took it because we took Crashing Flame. Then they reworked it to what it is now, but Spirit Bomb is on that tier lol
I honestly just want the original Gluttony to be a baseline passive man, that's my ideal DH.
Have Spirit Bomb and a random chance to go into Meta
I just want Legion Classic already tbhComment by PlsBlizzardnoThey need to buff Venthyr more ... pls ffs. It needs to have significantly stronger burst than kyrian for havoc pls.Comment by ecaflipThey need to buff Venthyr more ... pls ffs. It needs to have significantly stronger burst than kyrian for havoc pls.Comment by DraconaxThe round of Vengeance nerfs close to the end of Beta made me so salty. Been playing Vengeance for 4 years, and starting yet another xpac at the bottom tier of tanks makes me so upset. Probably going to main Brewmaster for the start of SL, until Vengeance inevitably gets a round of buffs in the first balance path, just like the last two expacs. Nerfing the only positive aspect of the spec, while providing nothing in return, makes absolutely no sense for a spec that is already a poorly performing tank spec.Comment by voidoxThey need to buff Venthyr more ... pls ffs. It needs to have significantly stronger burst than kyrian for havoc pls.Comment by EploarI am NOT going Kyrian on my Demon Hunter, I don't care how good it is.Comment by King88MartynI personally think Fel Bombardment should be made baseline for both specs, it would give an extra level of interaction that DH is sorely missing.

One question though, you talked about Kleia being the best soulbind and called out Resonant Accolades as a notable reason why, yet you haven't selected it in the example build. Does that change things at all?Comment by ItamaeI personally think Fel Bombardment should be made baseline for both specs, it would give an extra level of interaction that DH is sorely missing.

One question though, you talked about Kleia being the best soulbind and called out Resonant Accolades as a notable reason why, yet you haven't selected it in the example build. Does that change things at all?Comment by King88MartynWicked, thanks very much for clarifying.Comment by HadesPrinceAnyone have a suggestion for the best slot to use Fiery Brand on?Comment by Flawlesskuncan i just speak to every1 that actualy enjoys playing vengeance demon hunter with a functional brain and cojones in place, that spirit bomb should be the way to play this spec ? i mean the fact the ppl went kyrian to press shear instead of spirit bomb, made me quit wow after the first sub. just fyi

oh that, and the complete cesspool this comunity is. You have friends ? go ahead play the game. Pugging for gear ? lol just get friends 4head