Why You Should & Shouldn’t Play Vengeance Demon Hunter in Dragonflight Season 2 – Patch 10.1

We break down all the reasons you should consider playing Vengeance Demon Hunter in Patch 10.1 and even throw in a few reasons of why you might not. From all the changes since launch to the new tier set bonuses coming in 10.1, join us as we explore Dragonflight Season 2 Vengeance Demon Hunter!

Frost DK
Unholy DK

Vengeance DH
Balance Druid

Restoration Druid
Devastation Evoker

Marksmanship HunterSurvival Hunter

Brewmaster Monk

Restoration Shaman

Dragonflight Season 2 Demon Hunter Tier Set

Why You Should Play Vengeance Demon Hunter in Dragonflight Season 2 (and Why You Shouldn’t)

Season 2 is nearly here and with it come new content, tiers, and changes to many specs that can shake up the meta. Typical of the past few tiers, tank balance is once again fairly close and why you choose a spec should be up to personal preference. While Vengeance often hasn’t had a chance to shine in the past, this seems to be one of the better Seasons both in Raid and Mythic+, but of course that will vary depending on group needs. Unfortunately, despite the incredible power of the new Tier set, it’s fairly unlikely that Vengeance will be a meta pick for various reasons – survivability, playstyle, group utility, and so forth. Everyone is calling out Protection Paladins now, but truthfully they are in the ideal spot due to a good mix of damage, survivability and utility, while not being too punishing for errors. If they were to be nerfed (please don’t), another tank would simply take its place in the minds of the community.

Why You Should Play Vengeance Demon Hunter in Dragonflight Season 2

Vengeance is all around a solid spec that is fairly self-sufficient and easy to learn quickly, but difficult to master. With Season 2, Tier 30 brings a significant spike in power relative to most other specs.

Vengeance Demon Hunter Utility
As always, Vengeance brings Chaos Brand to the group, providing a vital 5% magic damage debuff in keys that applies to the majority of specs in the game. It’s effectively required in raid, and the vast majority of raid compositions will bring at least one Demon Hunter, whether Havoc or Vengeance for it. In keys, it can also be quite a gain for the group. At this point, nearly all specs have at least a portion, if not most of their damage coming from magical sources. Unfortunately, that’s our only real raid utility at this point, as Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible doesn’t seem to have any fights where either kiting or our control utility is useful, and Darkness has limited use as well.

In Mythic keystones, we still have the option of Chaos Nova and Sigil of Misery for additional stops, but Sigil of Silence is likely to take a backseat this season, since dungeons seem to have implemented a desync tech on casters that prevents multiple enemies from casting at the same time. This reduces the value of global silences as compared to individual kicks. We also will need to take Imprison for the new affix Incorporeal.

Specific Strengths and Tier Bonuses
Vengeance boasts stronger survivability, as well as a fairly substantial damage boost with the introduction of the new tier set bonuses:

This will be fairly strong in Mythic keystones and particularly good in raid, as we will have improved self-healing compared to Season 1 from the 2-piece bonus in all situations, and significantly higher uptime on Fiery Brand. The strength is already evident in ST situations, but in AoE there is currently strange behavior due to the tier set that makes tier even stronger than a simple reading of the tooltip might imply. Thanks to Meyra for discovering this tech which we’ve chosen to call lunchboxing. The behavior is unintuitive, but essentially with Burning Alive, in order to fix the bug that existed for all of Season 1, where having 2 cast brands out would break the talent entirely, they seem to have fixed it by saving the spread from a tier proc and applying it only after the initial brand has run out. However, this saved spread also applies at the maximum duration of the brand it’s spreading from. In addition, the hidden buff that provides extension from Charred Flesh seems to apply from the proc itself as well as the hard cast brands, allowing us to extend our spread brands even longer. This causes spread brands to potentially last upwards of 35-40 seconds and allows us to get more than 20 brands if using Down in Flames. The end result is a significant damage and survivability increase, as a 40% wall on most enemies and boost to fire damage.

With the tier set also working with Revel in Pain, there is potential on at least one raid boss to run the talent – the final boss Scalecommander Sarkareth. With absorbs being consistently generated, it’s likely possible to entirely negate the Burning Claws damage, which means no damage would be reflected to the raid.

While it does sting a little to lose the bonus Fury from the current tier set, it’s nice to have a new bonus that isn’t based on random procs with no bad luck protection.

Lunchboxing and You
The above section refers to a tech we call lunchboxing, and it’s a bit unintuitive so it needs some explanation.

First, the way Burning Alive works by spreading the dot portion (which also provides damage reduction and Fiery Demise to every enemy with the debuff) from the initial enemy that it was cast upon. We will refer to this spread source as the “origin”. If the origin died, or ran out, it would no longer spread. In addition, there is a cap on the number of spreads possible – it was previously hard-capped at 5 targets, with the tier set adding 3 additional targets due to the shortened duration. The duration of the newly spread Fiery Brand are based on the maximum duration of the origin brand. This also applies to the tier set, meaning a base 6 second proc will only spread at a 6 second duration. This also means that with the tier set, it is possible for the origin brand to last longer than spread brands due to a 4-piece proc, or to reset the origin by proccing the 4-piece onto a new target. If the origin is still active when Fiery Brand runs out on an enemy, it will re-spread to that same enemy.

Effectively, the fix to make Burning Alive work with multiple Fiery Brand is to save and store the spread effect for later if a second brand is cast when the first one is still active. If this wasn’t done, our tier set would have caused them not to spread at all, thus making the spec unable to function with a critical talent. In addition, they had to introduce a couple other bugs by fixing other issues.

1. Fiery Brand is effectively capped at a maximum duration of 15 seconds because of the base duration + Charred Flesh. That means some of the duration would get wasted if a 4 piece proc was applied to a max duration brand. To fix this, the cap was removed.
2. Charred Flesh is only applied for a 9 second duration immediately following a Fiery Brand cast using a hidden buff, Charred Flesh. This means spread brands do not get the full effect, and even if brands are longer and Immolation Aura comes up soon enough, we still cannot extend Fiery Brand with it after 9 seconds has passed. This would be a problem with the tier set, so it was changed to also apply upon any 4-piece proc activation.
3. The spread from Burning Alive was previously capped at 5. This means it would not be able to spread if a second brand were applied from the tier set. To fix this, they kept the cap, but when a proc occurs, the cap is temporarily increased by the maximum value. For example, if a hard cast brand is followed up with a 4 piece proc, it can now spread to 9 total targets – 5 initial, +1 from the proc and +3 from the permitted spread.
4. Fiery Brand would previously stop spreading if the origin no longer existed for any reason, whether it was killed, despawned, or expired. Due to the lunchbox tech, the state is now saved including an additional origin for each hard cast or 4 piece proc, and is applied to a new enemy if the origin brand expires. This allows for continual spreading rather than randomly stopping despite having more allowable targets to which they can spread. In effect, that means despite previously having a cap on maximum spreads, sometimes players would not ever reach the cap if the origin was removed. Now, even if the origin is removed, the saved state is reintroduced and allows it to continue spreading until the cap is reached.

With these changes, we can now track the 4 piece bonus, Fracture onto the target with the longest remaining Fiery Brand, and have it not only add to this duration, but also extend the duration with Charred Flesh, as well as allowing it to re-spread. In effect, in any case where there is more than 1 target, it is possible to continually extend and spread brands given enough soul generation by doing so. On 2-5 targets it is actually possible to have close to 100% uptime on Fiery Brand by constantly using 4-piece procs on the target with the longest remaining Fiery Brand.

Optimally, a player should wait for a 4-piece proc to be ready, cast Fiery Brand on one target, and immediately Fracture onto the first target that it spreads to. This will cause the new brand to be 16 seconds long instead of 10, and will also spread at that duration. When the 4-piece is ready again, casting it on a newly spread brand will now cause it to be 22 seconds long, and all future brand spreads will be 22 seconds. This can be repeated ad infinitum.

What this effectively means is that as long as a Vengeance player is in combat and can chain pull enemies so that there are always new sources to spread to, brands will last for infinitely long durations and do incredible amounts of damage. For reference, a single Fiery Brand with Fiery Demise and Burning Blood will deal ~95% AP of damage automatically, every 2 seconds to each single enemy that it is on with no cap since it is a debuff DoT effect. A single Spirit Bomb can deal up to ~250% AP with the same buffs, but is softcapped at 8 targets. With this DoT constantly ticking on all targets, a skilled Vengeance player can conceivably do more DPS in AoE than actual DPS specs, while having permanent 40% damage reduction on all enemies.

This level of power from a tier set rivals that of the set Blood Death Knights received in Season 3 and 4 of Shadowlands, which catapulted them into the meta.

In order to facilitate this gameplay, you will likely want a WeakAura to track your 4 piece stacks, as well as a Plater profile to highlight the enemy with the current longest Fiery Brand. Thanks to Xepheris, we have both of those in the veng-faq channel in Fel Hammer.

Easy to Learn
Learning how to play Vengeance in its most basic form is quite simple, as unlike most other tanks, the basic priority for survivability is the same as that for doing damage. While there are nuances to both defensive usage and maximizing offense, they are also somewhat mitigated by talent choices and the tier set. This allows for an easy swap to the spec if needed for a specific encounter, or if you simply want to switch and learn it now. The rotation will likely have more to min-max in Season 2, but the majority of the performance will remain by simply playing the standard rotation, with a few minor tweaks.

Why You Shouldn’t Play Vengeance Demon Hunter in Dragonflight Season 2

Target Cap
I mentioned this at the start of the expansion and it is still a problem that Soul Cleave is still fully target capped at 5 targets in addition to the requirements of being in melee range and hitting only a frontal 180 arc. This means it’s more difficult to pick up newly spawning adds and caps us on spreading our primary defensive mechanic – Frailty.

Lack of Useful Utility
Beyond Chaos Brand, Vengeance utility is quite limited. Our only group utility is Darkness, which is not particularly effective in and of itself, but requires being stacked with another raid cooldown to be particularly useful, and it has a long cooldown. Despite having an array of sigils, we have absolutely no way to help on Afflicted, and only minor ways to contribute to the other new affixes in Season 2 Keystones. Even picking up our utility is difficult due to the rigidness of the talent tree. This is primarily down to the way the encounter team has designed fights and affixes, rather than a spec issue, but specs like Protection Paladin, Brewmaster Monk, and Guardian Druid are far more capable of assisting the group and not trading anything for it, but every spec has different issues.

Unfixed Bugs and Unaddressed Issues
Vengeance has a long list of bugs that haven’t really been addressed. In addition, the same issue of needing to apply debuffs to enemies for defensive value continues to plague us. Once all our debuffs are rolling, we have strong consistent damage reduction, but on an initial pull, we are quite vulnerable. The newly discovered lunchbox tech along with the way some Season 2 trinkets lose value out of combat means we will want to chain pull as much as possible, and any sort of skips or RP where we are forced to drop combat will have a fairly large negative effect on both our damage and survivability.

Lack of Changes
This could technically be a reason to play the spec as well, but Vengeance has not received a single Talent change since the launch of Dragonflight, and very few balance changes. This likely signals that they may be happy with the performance and playstyle of Vengeance, but many long-time Vengeance players agree that the current design has too many weaknesses and can be unfun to play around. The talent tree is also incohesive, with a lack of impactful talents when compared with other specs. Starting from the Dragonflight beta, I’ve previously written articles about where and why the power of our individual talents is lacking, and not a single issue has been addressed.

Lunchbox Part 2: Electric Boogaloo
I’ve explained just how powerful lunchboxing is above, but now we explore the downsides of the tech.

As stated above, Fiery Brand needs time to get rolling before the debuff spreads. Vengeance is not a tanky spec outside of Fiery Brand or Metamorphosis. You will need to save Fel Devastation for times when Fiery Brand is beginning to spread.

Lunchboxing is extremely finicky and can be easily ruined. If you ever accidentally use your 4 piece proc on a target that doesn’t have Fiery Brand or has one with low duration, you will have ruined your entire ramp and have to start all over. If you happen to hardcast one onto a long duration brand, you will ruin the duration and have to start over. If you drop combat, you will lose all your brands and again, start over. If you drop to a Single Target, the same thing will happen. Because of how easy it is to accidentally waste procs on the wrong enemy at large target counts and the lack of backup options such as Last Resort due to the talent tree being too rigid, many players will end up spending quite a bit of time lying on the floor rather than fighting enemies.

Losing your lunchbox is not only a major survivability loss, but a major DPS loss. While it is active, you have a 40% damage reduction and 40% fire damage buff with close to 100% uptime when ramped properly. Losing this will drastically cut survivability, and playing it improperly will also be a significant damage loss, since the new tier set causes all of our major damage sources to be fire, with the exception of melees, Soul Cleave, Fodder to the Flame, Elysian Decree, and The Hunt.

Another disadvantage of this set is that we will also generally be trading some of our Frailty stacks for the passive damage reduction from Fiery Brand, since we are likely to use Spirit Bomb more often with the fire damage buff, compared to Soul Cleave, and generating souls to get 4 piece procs more often will be higher priority.

Finally, we are effectively hard locked into certain talents due to the power gain of this tier set, meaning alternative builds are no longer really viable due to the performance delta between specs. Namely, the entire middle section of the spec tree is now effectively dead. It was already a generally weaker option, but now it’s been relegated to oblivion.

Final Thoughts

Vengeance is looking to be an incredibly fun yet challenging spec to play at a high level next patch. However, it has many base issues that have not been even remotely addressed, and is relying on what is effectively a bugged interaction for most of its power. I’d argue that a redesign on the level that Retribution Paladins received is very much needed in order to address these issues. With that said, I’ll definitely be looking forward to Season 2 and I hope the readers are as well!

About the Author

This guide is written by Itamae, Vengeance Demon Hunter TheoryCrafter and Moderator from the Fel Hammer Demon Hunter discord.

For more information on playing Vengeance Demon Hunter, please see our class guide updated for Dragonflight:

Vengeance DH Guide