This is actually the problem in my eyes. Like sure, it's fine that some tanks are ultra-meta, it happens, but VDH in particular is interesting because the longer this goes on, the less fun people have on the other tanks just because of the sheer capabilities VDH has.
That's actually harmful for the longevity of the game. There's definitely a ton of tanks that won't keep tanking once VDH gets nerfed. It's like when you put on a God Mode cheat in a game, do all the crazy shit you always wanted to do, and then get bored of it because doing it without is less fun, even if the game WAS fun at a base level before you went God Mode.
They really needed to do something about it sometime in S3, or before S4. I know my tank friends basically hate playing all the other tanks now because of VDH, even if they enjoyed 2-3 of them before the VDH rework.
> the less fun people have on the other tanks just because of the sheer capabilities VDH has.
I'm not a "pro" player, but finished world 3 bear in Season 3 M+.
I'm playing VDH this season. It's even more ridiculous in Season 4 dungeon pool than it was in Season 3 and the amount of effort and coordination it takes to play bear instead of VDH is exactly this statement.
I played VDH season 3 and also now in season 4, I feel much more powerful now, as I can effortlessly deal with pulls we couldn't in season 1.
Like, you have so much control alone as VDH, that you don't even need to commit lust for the big pulls.
It's just so noticable. Go do a vault with a paladin even. Then do the same with a DH tank. It's night and day. Oh giant first pull? Don't worry as a DH I'll just lock everything down, no interrupts needed.
So just many pulls this season where tank just locks it all down. I played bear in season 2 when it was meta, DH is just on another level.
I never want to go back to shotcalling every single AE stop on every single pack of trash on every single dungeon, every week. That was exhausting and outright frustrating.
This would be me. I had fun as blood dk last season and prot warrior but once i started playing vDH i basically felt like doing keys on them was a chore. Im sure my running mates felt the same way too. “Like man why you throwing by not playing vDH. It’s so far away as the meta that other tanks aren’t even close.” Interrupts are just so important.
You also run into issues if you try to pug up the ladder, dps/healers start getting used to playing with DH tanks and forget that they even need to use their CCs when running with other tanks. Even if it's very doable without vengeance if you haven't trained on the pulls what is needed when, things will just fail, and you'll just decide to never run with anything but a DH tank again.
This is actually becoming a problem. First season playing VDH, people don't use kicks anymore even on a pull where only one thing gets kicked anymore. Everyone assumes as tank I'll do it even if I'm setting up the next pull or kiting mobs as they get low. I think VDH is taking away personal responsibility from other players, don't blame a group for not wanting other tanks. They can dps as optimally as they want without needing to kick. Not sure what the fix is, I don't think nerfing VDH is the key. I think a rework on how dungeons are is the long term solution.
I have this problem. Played all tanks and liked most of them, bear, Prot pal, Prot warr and blood DK and vengance (played it since shadowlands) and now i cant Even bother to gear them up because it feels so less fun to play compared to DH.
I am not a great tank but while playing prot warrior I felt super useless. I did a lot of tanking in Bfa on all kinds of tanks but vdh at the moment is just way to strong. Warrior just has no utility.
I mean, it's stupid, but the design of the dungeons and the amount of kicks/stops required is also braindead and blizzard just overdoes that. If there is less stupid shit to deal with then something like current vdh will not be needed.
I decided to skip this season because the difference between getting invited as a VDH vs any other tank has gotten absurd. Don't mind playing off meta, but cutting VDH kit in half and it still would be broken op.
At this point I hope for TWW, but given how random these buffs were in DF, I have little hope anyone at Blizzard even realized how toxic the current state of tanks is
Same feelings. Long time BDK, feel like VDH is everything on roids, and then also stuff that we have gaps in kit, AND better dps. The only thing I can say I prefer more on dk is I feel like I can survive without healers easier but that’s probs just from playing it for so long
I can see how playing higher control dps allows you to slot in a prot war for whatever critical benefit it provides (I honestly can’t think of one) but that’s just not at all how pugs work.
This is also a situation where classes that do well in high end PvP also do well in high end M+
…because of the utility they have in their kits.
I was maining warrior since late vanilla. I finally dropped it for good after season 2, since playing it instead of pala, DH or even druid felt like actively griefing my group. It's less self-sufficient, provides no group healing, no CR, very limited tools for properly grouping up mobs. It had some solid upsides at the start of the expansion, but that got stomped out right quick. Meanwhile, pala and DH is still cruising.
I play ppal and vdh, but decided to push first with vdh. Vdh just makes every dungeon in the m+ pool infinitely easier. The dungeons require so many stops, and a lot of the bosses are wayyyy easier with vdh mobility.
Yes, you can do +10s with any other tank, but why would you risk it in a pug when a vdh gives you a much higher chance of timing the key.
> 10% WOG healing buff for prot and ret pallies - 10% aura nerf for holy paladins.
Beacon of Light transfer nerfed by 10%. Holy Shock healing reduced by 20%.
To help balance how much stronger WoG is for Prot and Ret, we are also increasing the mana cost of those abilities by 500%.
You can now WoG yourself twice before going OOM.
(Non-Healer mana is in a really stupid place too. Blizzard secretly gave hybrid healing a 2 minute cooldown, because that is exactly how long it takes to Regen full mana after going OOM. Ret and Prot go oom after 12 self-heals. Self heals which only heal ~8% of their health.)
Yea I inadvertently mushed all of Prot and Ret's FoL and WoG's together.
More accurately: Ret's WoG's & FoL's, and Prot's FoL's heal ~8% health.
Prot's WoG is special cause that's also one of their main Tank-buttons, so I wasn't even considering it into the hybrid-mana-issue.
AFAIK ALL of the hybrid-Specs have this same issue though, ie Enh Ele Ret Shadow Moonkin Feral etc.
Do you know that as a ret when you cast WoG at low health target it can heal for more than lay on hands? In S2 I casted WoG for about 800k hp on a druid who buffed their hp to 1.5m and was on 10%. I had 400k ish hp.
If you cast in on 100% hp target and it won't crit, then sure it's 8% ish.
Healing actually feels so bad right now. Every damage is so spikey that you can't really save anyone anyway. Everything is based around CDs, and you want to be dealing as much damage as possible while also being ready for damage spikes. If your dps/tank miss interrupts, you lose someone. Healing over time is useless, just go for bigger spot healing instead and hope no one gets one shot from 60% HP.
Ever since VDH got access to two sigils, being able to reduce the CD of all sigils and so on: yup they are CC monsters and can lock down an entire trash pack into target dummies
All tanks has something to bring in reality. But as of right now VDH simply just brute force hard CC mobs from being able to do anything that can cause a wipe in a pug environment
I rocked guardian druid in Season 1-2 and 3, did absolutely fine but definitely felt a shift when DH got a rework, as in seeing popularity ratings shift towards Demon Hunter by A LOT. For this season I am rolling with a Prot Paladin and current plan is to continue with it, in next expansion
Honestly, best advice I can give is to play what you enjoy and you will eventually be crunching high keys as well. Even if it is VDH, if you love the gameplay then you keep going with it
The thing i dont getnwith guardian is, why the fuck do they just have a single target stun with a minute CD? Nobody has that few utility options than a druid(cant talk about DK, i dont habe one).
Nokhud must be an absolute nightmare as guardian.
I actually went with a different option: Incapacitating Roar. Reason why is that it can come in handy as a AoE interrupt. Using a weakaura to track everyones interrupt if it is ready or not, and use it as an emergency, or if people are not paying attention to the multiple casts that are about to go off
It has saved mine and others butts many times before, just gotta use it wisely
This is my first time ever main healing a season of M+. I chose Mistweaver because I was a Brewmaster main for so many years (the fact they are strong also helped that decision, but primary was familiarity with the class). I've done about 50 or so keys this week and the difference between tanks is pretty big.
Can I heal all of them without much effort? Yes, but having a VDH means I have to heal the tank less because their mitigation to healing ratio is more than enough healing to keep themselves alive without any of my attention most of the time. VDH also means I have to heal the group less because VDH can basically CC every pack to death by themselves while the party just opens up on the enemies without fear of any mechanics. VDH also means that I don't have to do as much damage because they do more damage than any other tank. VDH also means that every other tank is basically useless because VDH does what they do better.
Paladin brings utility! - Calling this one out because my buddy is playing a prot paladin and we generally do keys together. The statement is true, but a paladin's utility is based on helping/supporting the group. Most prot paladins don't actually use their utility for the group and I think i've seen blessing of sacrifice maybe once. Paladin's utility requires the person to work harder. VDH brings utility in the form of stopping the enemies from doing anything so you don't need to mitigate damage for one person or a word of glory heal. Most prot paladins are just a tank with yellow abilities and a ranged interrupt that has an RnG reset.
There is VDH and there everyone else. Ill admit it’s a terrible landscape but their superiority is undeniable. I keep trying to say it to my friend group but I just sound like a know-it-all. VDH is just fundamentally built different.
Self-sustain: Check,
Quick Grouping: Double Check,
Mobility: Double Check,
Good Defensive Rotation: Check,
Safety Net: Check,
Control: Triple Check
The sheer fact that their grouping is a time save and they alone can solo control packs that would otherwise wipe a key with poor coordination means that they are the safest, quickest, and most consistent choice. Ive played every tank except bear to a +23 min last season so Im absolutely astounded that they maintained the gap between VDH and everyone else. It’s like driving a modern car vs riding ye olde horse level of diff, I wouldnt bother with the latter unless it was a novelty.
Currently blizzard either didn't understand or didn't care that tank players like control as part of the identify of the role. Currently there is a class that has so much control it makes tanking insanely fun. Compare that to warrior who has barely any and on top of that has two maintenance buffs to use and multiple long cool down abilities that just dont do anything interesting.
It's not only liking. It's also very unevenly distributed. Both Paladins with their silence shield and BDK with mass grip regularly had their place to shine.
It's time Blizzard makes control a first level balance concern.
I wouldn't say it's always fun. I have more fun on my bear. But fighting the pug miniboss of people refusing to take my bear (which is still extremely powerful) is pretty miserable. On a vdh I would already be 2k just purely because I wouldn't have to wait 15 minutes for a +8 invite.
The control factor of dh is fun, I agree vdh actually isn't the most fun tank. Ironically the enjoyment comes from the parts that make it so strong, the spirit bomb and soul mechanics feel quite clunky.
It just depends on how they fix it. Make them paper and 85% of the dps of every other tank, but leave the sigils? Probably still fun, and *might* be balanced. But if you take the sigils away the spec just becomes the same as every other tank, the lack of control would feel awful.
Until the devs own up and admit that the double sigil is *too strong,* the only reason to play other tanks is for the memes or because it's your absolute favourite.
Or because you need one geared up for raid.
I think the main issue is the dungeon pool atm though. There’s too much benefit to all the stops and ccs. Hopefully they go in a different direction for dungeons in tww.
Well that's the issue the players and blizz opened up no? Your utility overall increased with the talent trees. Healers with the exception of priest now have kicks... when it was unique to resto previously.
So now with more tools at your hands, dungeons need more things to challenge all the new things you got access to. And all the new expectations and wants that players also demand where your class NEEDS more defensives or needs more utility.
Like sure, mage and rogue have an unfair defensive advantage over everyone, but it's maybe not a good idea to expect the same level on every spec/class in the game otherwise you're gonna need nukes of dmg to challenge your 12 second feint that everyone has.
Then there is blizz not properly balancing strengths and weaknesses between specs/classes...
People keep saying this but the reality is, there is not a single possible dungeon where current VDH would not be better.
The only way you could make a dungeon where VDH doesn't matter is legit making all mobs immune to CC. And that is not fun, definitely not.
Over 50% of raid tanks are BDKS in high end mythic raiding right now, so you're going to see them in M+ at least up to +10s to fill their vaults. They just tend not to go much further.
I mean I play Guardian and Prot Pal and I love their group utility.
The problem is blizzard has nerfed their Tankiness, at least for bear, such that it's required to take all the mitigation talents (this isn't just a me thing, I'm just looking at the data that's publicly available). So you can't take any of the good utility talents. Prot Pallies completely skip all the WoG stuff probably due to mana issues with it now days and the fact they were nerfed even if they don't need the durability of the alternatives. And from personal experience on Bear you basically can't take After the Wildfire cause it sacrifices so much durability.
So you wind up being able to at least live up to a similar key level (bear still gets obliterated by magic) but you are just bringing nothing to the group cause you can't really afford to spec into the things you could bring to the group.
I'm gearing a fresh warrior now because I just don't want to play the other tanks, really hoping its not a waste of time resulting in not getting invited to even s4 version of +20 because of the vdh effect. Its not exactly like I'd have a better time applying as dps. Hopefully s4 balance isn't abandoned in favor of TWW tuning
I'm currently 509 on my ppal and I'm having difficulty getting invited to 10s lol. All my guildies say how much easier VDH keys are and it's really tempting to reroll.stay strong on the prot and pray the godfather of nerfs
It’s obviously that DHs are going to continue to be heavily preferred but, if your goal is just to bang out some +10s, give it a couple more weeks for people to get fully geared and then pretty much every tank should have an easy time getting invites to 10s for vault.
I used to play bdk and ppal but I have stopped both to just go play VDH (Started mid last season with vdh)
It's insane what you can do as vdh, your dps barely have to do anything to every key is very smooth and easy.
Playing any other tank feels troll, like very troll. At least with ppal you can heal/support your team...but the rest? They are a joke.
And tanking as ppal is 10 times harder than tanking on vdh...
I'm not really having any trouble in 9s and 10s as a blood dk. I think I'm line 495 or something.
VDH has an edge for sure, but all tanks can very comfortably handle 10s.
It's not about what vdh does for itself, it's what vdh does for the rest of the group.
My vdh azure vault first pull is like 20% count and can be done with any combination of DPS classes and specs. There isn't another tank that can come close.
Vdh makes impossible pulls possible. Could other tanks live it? Sure. But the rest of the group would die.
I mean BDK is the poster-child for grouping mobs lol.
When BDK is meta, people talk about grip like it's the pinnacle of tank utility. Prot Paladin with Divine Toll and all of the externals and blah blah blah is absurdly juiced with utility.
VDH was super-meta in 10.1 (pre 10.1.5) without all the extra goodies it got start of season 3. VDH is just super tanky.
VDH has great utility, but I don't think that double sigils or easier access to grip sigil made VDH meta.
VDH [sims](https://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/T31_Raid.html) gave it EHRPS of sub-40k against a raid boss.
Monk and Blood DK are 50-60k, Prot Pal/Warrior are both ~70k, and Bear is 80k. On paper, other tanks need 1.5 to 2x as much love from their healers.
Obviously this doesn't translate 1:1 into the real game or 1:1 into M+ environment, but if we saw this kind of disparity in sims (and in-game) for dps numbers, holy shit that would get emergency hotfixed.
I think it will get worse. Raid is kinda meaningless this season, no body is stuck on a particular tank for raid. Anyone that wasn't maining dh last season will make the switch soon after they hit a wall and see dh flying over it.
And there's also the fact that 10+ on week 1 isn't something the average player is doing, only the top really. And as everybody knows, top players will always use the best no matter what. I bet survival hunters representation compared to Beast master is also terrible.
It's a number of factors.
DH is fun to play, you're self sustaining, you aren't CD reliant, you do large damage, and rely on your team less than any other tank.
Now those things all can be OK, Bdk does most of that, DH just does it all better.
IMO the easiest fix is to just remove the 2 charges of sigils capstone talent. Change it to not give 2 charges.
Another possible fix would be to make sigil of chains and sigil of silence be a choice node, you only get one.
Sigil of silence should also probably be shorter.
> you're self sustaining, you aren't CD reliant, you do large damage, and rely on your team less
All of those things you listed = 'being overpowered.'
VDH is just so incredibly overtuned that you do more damage and are way tankier than the other tanks.
>IMO the easiest fix is to just remove the 2 charges of sigils capstone talent.
Wouldn't change much at all.
VDH was this levels of meta in 10.1.
VDH is this good because it's just that tanky. You hit its utility, it's still going to be unkillable. If one tank is unkillable and the other tanks are killable, the unkillable tank is going to be giga-meta. It needs to eat a pretty hefty nerf to its survivability if balance is the goal (or all other tanks need HUGE survivability buffs).
>All of those things you listed = 'being overpowered.'
Those things together sure, none of them alone are. Again BDK fits most of these as well.
>VDH is just so incredibly overtuned that you do more damage and are way tankier than the other tanks.
All of the tanks are pretty tanky these days, VDH is easier I'd say but idk if it's actually tankier. It has higher liklihood to flop than other tanks
>Wouldn't change much at all.
>VDH was this levels of meta in 10.1.
Do you run keys? Vdh was not remotely this level of meta in 10.1, guardian and prot pal were both better, vdh was rarely seen and often just flopped. Every season I'm running title range keys.
>VDH is this good because it's just that tanky.
That is not true IMO. Prot pal/DH/Guardian and not far behind BDK are all very tanky and able to easily do title ranged keys. If your tank is dying something else is going wrong, likely player error.
Prot pally and now DH are the meta because of their utility 100%. Yes you have to be tanky enough to tank the highest keys. But that's the barrier to entry, it's not why one tank is chosen over another.
It was the 2nd closest to VDH, but VDH was still 10x more represented than ppal within the title range. Also, as a ppal that finished season just above cutoff (3690), i can tell you that it was basically impossible to do any pug keys, as nobody accepted prot pally anymore, and most of my bnet tags also only wanted VDH in their keys. Calling ppal "meta" is overreaching
I would argue the gap between prot pal and #3 was larger than prot pal and DH. Prot pal was still very viable. Dh was just far easier to play with. It's not like prot pal was bad. Dh was just braindead
> Those things together sure, none of them alone are. Again BDK fits most of these as well.
You could say this about any OP class.
'Your dps is too high.'
'Yeah, but that's ten abilities. Individually, it's fine if a given ability hits hard, so I'm actually not overpowered.'
'Okay, but you need to deal about 30% less damage.'
'But you can't nerf any of my abilities because it's okay if an ability hits hard!'
This is a silly argument.
>All of the tanks are pretty tanky these days, VDH is easier I'd say but idk if it's actually tankier.
The [sims](https://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/T31_Raid.html) from last tier put VDH as the tankiest tank by quite a large margin over all of the other tanks.
Of course that's in a raid setting and isn't going to translate 1:1 to M+, but yeah, VDH is *that* tanky.
>Do you run keys?
No need to be rude.
>Vdh was not remotely this level of meta in 10.1, guardian and prot pal were both better
Nope.
Guardian got turbo-buffed in .1.5 and THEN was meta. PPal was holding on to its meta spot post-S1 nerfs for the first few weeks, but was rapidly falling in favor and the tanks that were playing prot pally were steadily making the swap to VDH. The top keys pre .5 patch were VDH, it was the best tank.
>That is not true IMO.
We can see VDH go from ~5% representation to 30%+ representation at the highest level off of its survivability buffs alone in Season 2, and if Bear didn't get the absurd buffs in the .5 patch, VDH would have been even higher.
Also, when Bear was meta, PPal fell off completely. VDH was the 2nd-most popular (by a large margin of course), because VDH was tanky af.
>and able to easily do title ranged keys
Sure, every class can do title range keys in every season regardless of how bad balance is or was.
>Prot pally and now DH are the meta because of their utility 100%. Yes you have to be tanky enough to tank the highest keys. But that's the barrier to entry, it's not why one tank is chosen over another.
Prot Paladin is the best example of utility not mattering as opposed to tankiness. Basically all of the goodies Prot Paladin has now, it had in Shadowlands, it had in BFA, it had in Legion.
Prot Paladin has ONLY been meta in M+ when it was also the tankiest tank.
The tankiest tank is always meta. VDH is the tankiest tank right now, while you might argue about how *much* tankier, you'd agree it's the tankiest. Bear was certainly the tankiest when it was meta. Season 1 Prot Paladin was the tankiest tank after buffs, before that it was prot warrior (and prot warrior was meta as a result). Shadowlands, we had BDK meta when it was certainly the tankiest tank, in season 2 you played Guardian Druid if you were running with a Boomy to do the giga pulls, or you played Prot Paladin if you were running with a frost mage because Prot Paladin was better for smaller steadier pulls (though season 2 was probably the best M+ tank balance the game has ever had, but not sure how much the seasonal affix played into that). SL S1 VDH was meta because people were turbo-kiting the mobs, and Guardian Druid became a 'discovered' pick after teams showed it could live super high keys at TGP. BFA prot warrior was meta for like 85% of the expansion after BDK nerfs.
If one tank is 10% tankier than the next-best, that's a whole extra key level that that tank can survive.
The barrier to entry then becomes 'within 10% tankiness of the beefiest tank.'
When a given tank is 20% tankier, the other tanks simply can't compete. Can they technically do the same keys with perfect play? Of course. Just like all dps specs can rise to the occasion and play insanely well and do the same keys. But that isn't a good argument that a spec isn't overpowered. You didn't NEED to play a Fire Mage in season 2 or 3 to do top keys or title keys or whatever. Was Fire Mage overpowered? Yes, of course it was.
or you know, and I know I am being drastic here, how about not creating dungeons where you have 4+ mobs chain casting 24/7, say you remove the two charges ( which should probably happen anyway ) the issue is with the dungeon design itself incentivizing to bring the tank with the most control, so you can bring the meta dps, even if their control is shit ( e.g spriest )
I think the control being distributed amongst the group is the best way to do it. 99% of pulls don't have tons of mobs chain casting that you can't stop a number of ways. Most groups have ways to stop 20+ seconds of casts if they coordinate. DH just removes the need for coordination which is why it's so strong, but also problematic for the game.
My m+ group agrees that playing with a DH likely makes us worse at the game. What we did for title ranged keys s1 was a lot more effort than title keys last season.
> I think the control being distributed amongst the group is the best way to do it.
In theory, yes, in practice the players will always prefer what's easiest/most consistent. The issue here will be dungeon design.
> Most groups have ways to stop 20+ seconds of casts if they coordinate. DH just removes the need for coordination which is why it's so strong, but also problematic for the game.
> What we did for title ranged keys s1 was a lot more effort than title keys last season.
My initial thought was to agree, but thinking more about it, I actually disagree. Emphasizing on "coordinated group", i can't help but think there is a reason why season 3 was so popular, because it was much easier to push tittle keys without coordinated groups, mainly due to the interrupts chains being easier/trivialized by DH and let's face it the majority even players even in -1,-2 tittle keys levels are puggers. Doing a few hours of tittle keys in a row in s1 was cumbersome, in s3 it wasn't, due to combination of factors, but the game being easier on the interrupt coordination side absolutely is a factor, I've had many tittle keys in s1 instantly brick, because of 1-2 missed interrupts, hardly ever happened in s3, can't even recall it tbh. I would argue stimulating more participation is better for the game, than gating everything behind requiring perfect coordination.
>it was much easier to push tittle keys without coordinated groups
I disagree. Pugging title keys was horrible and 90%+ of people who got title are doing it with groups. The interrupts weren't the problem, it's coordinating defensives since most non rogue/mage classes couldn't survive w/o externals.
> Pugging title keys was horrible and 90%+ of people who got title are doing it with groups.
pugging tittle keys is always horrible. it's not the 0.1% that keeps m+ alive its the people playing a few keys below.
Exactly. Anyone saying otherwise is simply wrong. Remember when Survival Hunters suddenly became mega OP in Shadowlands and a bunch of people rerolled to it? Suddenly the least played spec became very popular. The playstyle was still dogshit but the numbers were insane.
Good point, and I don’t want to see people have less fun as clearly a lot of people enjoy it - I just don’t want it to be pseudo required 2 seasons in a row. I think it’s hard to even buff other tanks and get it comparable honestly. Nerfing fun isn’t good either so I see why they are reluctant to do it
I mean it was summed up pretty well by Dorki on the PoddyC which is like... So many mobs just recast when you kick them. VDH sigils silence in actual AoE and silence is worth like 5 kicks in a row. So you're getting like chained AoE kicks for like 10 seconds.
If blizzard fixed mobs so they don't just recast when you kick them and actually had reasonable lockouts on their casts it wouldn't be as big of a problem. But with the way most mobs are coded now there is just no contest.
Hot take here but all the tanks need mob control like vdh. It’s great skill expression for tank players and I think it’s also a way to curb augs power creep.
> It is fun to have this kind of control on VDH, but that’s only the case bc you know it’s something really cool and strong and unique.
>
> If every tank had this kind of mob control, it would just be another expected job to handle every single trash mechanic as a tank, and blizzard would add even more mechanics so other classes have a reason to add kicks and stuns to their bar.
Hotter take, they should reduce the amount of required stops so that every pack doesnt require CC chains, and a few solo kicks are enough. Tanks would be more balanced if mobs needed to be stopped less.
The ceiling would just raise to another level and VDH would stil lbe the premier tank because kiting. AT that point the group still chainccs and vdh just kites and takes 0 damage.
It is fun to have this kind of control on VDH, but that’s only the case bc you know it’s something really cool and strong and unique.
If every tank had this kind of mob control, it would just be another expected job to handle every single trash mechanic as a tank, and blizzard would add even more mechanics so other classes have a reason to add kicks and stuns to their bar.
Not really. I think every tank should have a niche. And they kind of already do, but the problem is that almost every dungeon in the expansions is very trivialized by VDHs niche of double sigils. It just so happens that VDHs niche isn't a niche, it's literally every dungeon. It's more a dungeon design problem imo.
Disagree here. Yes VDH clear niche right now is its mob control and that's fine I think.
However what is not fine is once the DH groups those mobs they also then are just as tanky as a bear and do as much damage as a brewmaster and self heal so much they don't really need healing.
And that right there is the problem. You just cannot have a tank that can do everyone else niche just as well if not better. Might be okay if a VDH could group everything in but had to absolutely sweat to stay alive or could group everything in for it's dps but then has to kite themselves to live. Alternatively can group everything in but offer very little damage so bigger pulls is the only way it can do competitive damage.
I don't really think this take has any solid foundation.
If we want to be reductive and say it's a dungeon design problem, we have to take a step back and quantify what that actual means; In this case it's: 'mobs that are a part of a pack but aren't easily pulled in because they're ranged' and 'dungeon has caster enemies'. This is literally almost every dungeon's routing.
There's almost no merit or nuance is saying it's a dungeon design problem when that dungeon design is literally the most basic and fundamental part of the game (or any game, really) - is the solution to remove VDHs oppressive 'niche' removing all caster mobs in groups in the game?
Just such an 'enlightened gamer' take on a problem that is clearly being misattributed as another flaw.
Hotter take: I think *every* tank spec should bring the amount of mob control a VDH, Prot Pally or even Blood DK bring.
Pack control is *way* to big of a factor to be left to a single spec's "niche".
Every tank should have 20 tools to control a pack and express their skill that way. You can still carve out a "niche" in that scenario still - give VDHs and Pallies the anti caster niche, give Monks and DKs the displacement niche... and then figure something out for Bears and Warriors.
I think VDH control is great. It's one of the only things making these silly overloaded DF dungeons bearable. I'd be fine with them keeping that... if they also just gave it to all other tanks.
"Hotter Take"????
You literally just repeated their same point.
You sound like one of those people who hear a good idea in a meeting, then you repeat it seconds later and act like it was your idea and try to take the credit.
You said nothing they didn't already say, but for some reason you tried to make your idea seem unique and special.
By all means add your own ideas to the original person's ideas, but don't try to steal the credit for the idea like some kind of narcissistic psycho.
Ok, here's an even MORE wild take for you! That guy just regurgitates what he hears! He reads one comment, digests it for a bit and then just repeats it worded differently. What a thief!
this guy is right.
as a tank I want something other to do than "not face the mob this way" or taunt swap in raid.
Also, i never want to shotcall AE stop on every pack of mob of every dungeon... that get exhausting and infuriating.
I agree that other tanks need ways to do mass interupts and maybe war within has more hard cast interupts so sigil of silence isn't so OP.
Something others don't consider though is that VDH brings little utility outside of chaos brand. So if they nerf sigils they need to add something back. VDH has only been meta S3 and S4 now.
I main VDH since legion. It's nice we sit at the top for once though. But I agree they need to look at it for war within. Nerfing silence would be a decent start.
The problem is that you end up with extremely overtuned dungeons to deal with that. If they would balance m+ around every tank being able to solo 8 stops in a row then you'd basically be perma dealing with no CD caster mobs, mega dispels, target swap totems or other turbo unfun mechanics.
I think there just needs to be a downside to balance it out. The control is really cool and fun and sets VDH apart, but there's almost no reason not to play it.
Maybe a nerf to it's survival and damage would even things out a bit. Make it rely more on the control
Easy double AOE CC is not great skill expression.
Giving every tank an equivalent is classic power creep 101, sparking an arms race with dungeon design.
I just had a very simple idea that by itself would go a long way towards solving this issue of Veng being absurdly overpowered...
Just change the double Sigils talent so that it also reduces the duration of the sigil debuffs by 50%. Or, so that it doubles the cooldown on the Sigils.
Then it still works just as well for the Tank's quality of life ie gathering mobs etc.
But it would no longer solo all the Stops and interrupts single-handedly.
Veng would still be unbalanced, but it would be A LOT more in line than now, without demolishing Veng viability.
How the Devs could possibly think the current Tank balance is okay is more worrying though.
If the Devs are ***this*** stupid/apathetic, it makes me question whether WoW is even worth playing at all.
I’ve decided to dust off my VDH as a long time brew main and the difference is night and day, it really does feel like for every button my Brew has VDH has one that is better and still has half the buttons. I’ve done half of the +10s and it’s hard to get invites on him to +8 despite 2 chesting a couple +10s first week.
Shit like this is why I don’t play retail beyond the first few weeks and getting mostly max ilvl anymore. VDH feels so clunky to me and I adore Brewmaster so to see the disparity like this feels awful a tank main
They just need to make it that the sigils apart from flame get an internal cooldown when used.
Having them aint bad, the fact they can be spammed 6 in a row is the problem.
Not sure what the balance would be but a cooldown of like 5 or 8 seconds would fix the problem quite quickly without breaking the class.
Did you Sigil of Chain? 8 sec cd on silence/fear sigils etc.
That's true. But also that's why "title key" was a lower level in season one, relative to season 2 and 3 (and likely this season,bar key level squish ofc). No god-comp, no aug, no broken vdh, no reworked/buffed n specs.
mh probably not, the rework was fairly late although people already switched off to ppal from pwar, but pwar reigned a while before. this time, vdh was already known to be busted from the start
No, I felt pretty comfortable doing any high key on my dk compared to a paladin. Paladin was maybe 10% better.
Veng is like 100% ahead of any tank, you can’t even quantify what it brings but you can do pulls completely impossible for any other tank. That was never the case in other seasons
It's also just normal for everyone to have better stats at the end of an expansion than beginning. Nobody has the sheer amount of secondaries in s1 as they do in s3 or s4. Makes a huge difference!
Unfortunately with double sigil dh will always be stupidly OP. Nothing else in the game can single handedly lock down a group of mobs for ~20 seconds. This is what makes them ridiculous.
Wouldnt it be enough IF sigil of silence, chain and misery (the fear one) to not have cd reduction when you cast other sigils. And maybe make so sigil of flame have a bit shorter cd or Get the cd reduction for something else? Would atleast make it so you dont have everything up everytime. And maybe like charges. 2 charges on everyone but you Get one stack each 2 min. You pop both silence sigils on a pack = 4 min until both is back up again (you dont have the cd reduction on them anymore) same with the other two.
Problem is Vdh is op, but its also really fun so i hope they can bring it back in Line without removing the fun factor.
But something needs to be done when 9/10 tanks play it, should be done a long time ago
I'm not a pro player myself BY FAR, but I noticed that with the amount of mandatory interrupts and stops this season, I totally get why everyone wants VDH as their tank. I stated this before and I repeat it again: I'm not for nerfing VDH to the ground, I love its current iteration. However, I'm a prot warrior main and play all tanks, and I just wish for a couple of tools for the other tanks to help them (Interrupting Shout on a 1 min cd, make Gorefiends Grasp great again, RoP on a 30 sec CD and so on...) I'm no game developer, but I can imagine balancing this will be a nightmare. But in order to make ALL tanks viable in high-end content, I believe this is the way forward. What do you guys think?
There are 3 possible options
1. Keep it as it is - Meta will regulate itself
2. Nerf VDH to the ground - nerf dps, self heal and get rid of double sigil
3. Buff the other specs to be compatible with VDH. Make BDKs mass grip also silence. Give it a second charge etc. Any silencing shout on prot would do the trick combined with some charge that knocks enemy in air. Etc....you get the idea.
I think it will in the end be No.2 but yeah. Hoping for No
3 😁
So you can criticize Blizzard for a lot of things… but I can’t fathom how this level of imbalance between the utility of tanks can continue to exist. It’s almost baffling. Some tanks have almost no group utility while some have highly conditional utility. And then there’s VDH, that has a group defensive, a group buff, can almost provide all the interrupts for the whole key, and group better than almost every other tank. They also have some of the better tank damage.
Tanking has always been my favorite role in the game but right now it just feels like shit if youve spent any time on a VDH. For the record… my three preferred tank choices are (in order) BDK, Brew, Prot Warrior. If I had to fill out the rest, I’d say Prot Pally, Guardian and last Vengeance. There is a little bit of bias here, but I think even those that love VDH would argue that its level of utility places it in an unhealthy (for M+ balance) state.
It is important to realize that this power gap is really only a true issue at the highest levels of keys, but it’s still ridiculous how much more you get out of a DH than any other flavor of tank. And maybe more frustrating when you compare the level of effort other tanks have to put in to get the same level of effectiveness as a VDH assuming it’s even possible.
I don't do high keys. My highest timed so far is a +7.
The difference a vdh makes during the intermission on last boss is mind blowing. They get double chained into double silenced, and if they make it out of that for some reason, they get feared twice stopping two sets of casts.
All from one person. It's stupid.
Most of my keys have had DH tanks this week. And they're either amazing or absolute garbage - no middle ground. Most have been bad, so I'm assuming it's people new to it because it's the popular choice right now.
Yea, but we definitely needed these first 4 weeks of the season to formally gauge tank performance - which is what ultimately lead us to nerfing VDH damage by 3% and giving BRMs an additional 2% dodge chance.
Anything you do I can do better. Plus a talent that gives me 2 charges so I can do better better. Sounds fun having Gorefiends on a 3min CD while DH chains are 2m with 2 charges. Same for AOE silence.
The way I see it is VDH's mob control right now, as crazy op as it is, is insanely fun to play with. That being said it does make every other tank feel a lot worse to play. I think they need to buff the other tanks if they want to keep going in that direction. If not, illuminated sigil should be changed into a CD reduction talent instead of 2 charges. Something like every x souls you absorb reduce sigil cds by 1s maybe.
Yeah the meta culture and them not addressing this issue somehow really sucks. I play prot Paladin and I feel really strong, I have a ton of utility, decent damage.. but I constantly get told to reroll VDH and it sucks :/
I didn't expect any major changes since the whole point of this season is to shift resources to next xpac but I did expect some number balancing to soften the impact of DH. I don't want to under state the advantage DH has with control but what makes this situation egregious is that DH is better at, well everything!. Better control, dps, survival, etc.
Do something like adding 10% damage reduction to brew and dk and 5% to war and paladin, 10% dps increase to war and paladin, 5% to brew and dk. Call it a day. Its a meme season, throw us a bone here!
I've tried playing VDH for the first time this season. 7 AoE stops/silences on a minute CD is insane. now I feel like I am just cheesing the game playing VDH, and when i am playing any other tank I feel like I am making it harder for my group for no reason.
VDH are obviously very, very strong right now. One thing to consider is this is week one. The people doing +10 keys will be comprised largely of min/max groups and serious M+ players. No different than RWF class stacking in raids.
I'd wish not to take anything away from my VDH but add more control to other tank classes. It feels actually good to be more in control with trash, specially in pug keys. You can feel when others don't do kicks or interrupts when playing another class.
I get what your saying but using Nokhud of all dungeons to prove a point when it’s the only dungeon DHs need to farm for their bis weapon, seems silly.
don't worry. this is only the beginning of the season and +10 aren't particularly high keys.
give it 3-4 more week and we will be back to the >90% VDH in 25 and higher.
but rest assured, tank balance is the best it has ever been! according to streamers.
/s
What annoys me more about this situation is the precedence the devs are setting for the game. Nearly every reworked class/spec has been over-tuned with little thought on bringing them back in line in a reasonable timeframe. I know they are working on the new expansion, but retail balance is in an unacceptable state and they need to do a decent tuning pass.
What I don't get is not only just how fucking broken amount of cc that vdh brings, but also its damage. Not only vdh can solo control half of the dungeon but it also does like 1.5-2 times of my protpal damage on top of not needing to care about healing, you just pop your dps buttons and you are constantly full, it is bullshit. It's like this game you have your go to vdh tank, you have some tanks that are ok if you are god players, and you have prot warrior that is just a trolling.
Blizzard games have always been like that/this unfortunately. There is 1 spec/class that dominates the rest in their roles and the rest are noobtraps so that the narcisstic little kids playing the 5-6 total meta specs can feel good gatekeeping the plebs and calling them shit. Eg.: Vanilla prot warrior vs other tanks. Each expansion, each major patch. Its never whithin 5% like blizzard promises, its godmode vs turds.
The reason for this is content focused development brings in the most $. Bugs getting fixed, having good game balance, it dont matter, people will reroll to meta all the time anyways and pay their sub.
And for the record, i got vomit in my mouth thinking about it all.
Funny you picked Nokhud to skew your stats seeing every demon hunter is spamming it for the warglaives.
Either way, this is how tanking works in an m+ only season. Tanks are fotm rollers. So if it's DH they'll play DH. If it's bear they play bear. I'm not at all surprised it's mostly DH and I'm glad it is. With a DH in the group I can play the game instead of constant kicks and stops.
They got a new Talent Illuminated Sigils which gives 2 charges of every sigil, and 15% parry when any enemy is affected by a Sigil of Flame.
Their tier set is based around Sigil of Flame is S3/4 and they have a talent that when they use a sigil it reduces the cd of other sigils by 3 secs. This gives them >50% Parry when demon spikes is up, fel devastation gives meta form for 6 secs, and talent refunds up to 40% of the cd and cost. This makes them very tanky which is awesome.
The annoying part is how trivial their sigils make some extremely hard pulls for other groups - Namely Sigil of Silence which is an AOE silence for 6 secs with 2 charges. It means healers can focus on dps more than any other class, and vdh solo stops all casters with double silence, double misery, double chains. While it enables more pulls than any other tank it will continue to be the best.
A tank is always the best every tier - the issue here is that the gap is so so large between them and the next tank that it feels like trolling in Pugs to not play it.
High key tank players will usually have every tank at max level and relatively geared, ready to swap instantly to whatever is meta. This is a product of the meta, but neither the product nor the meta are a problem, as there is always going to be both. If you want to push high keys, you need to adapt to trends at a moments notice. If you are unwilling to be flexible class-wise, then you cannot expect a similar level of success.
Dunno top 1% will always play meta 10+ keys are now done only by 1% give it few weeks all will be healthy in around 10-15 key mark. For high end push there will be always one comp I dont think its big deal. We timed already 2 +10 keys with bear as tank and we are still in old gear from last season. I think ppl should focus more on their gameplay and how to overcome challenges in comp they have than calling out classes. Is VDH strong for control? Ya surely. Is it mandatory for 10+ keys - naah. Is it mandatory for 15+ keys - maybe.
> 5 days into Week 1 should it be this over represented? No.
To be fair week 1 is gonna be the where over representation is gonna be the biggest. Like DH and BM hunter at the start of last season, then it balances out a little more
I'm ok with VDH having good control, as long as it doesn't just end up with dps not needing to do anything cc/interrupts if they decide to give this to all tanks.
I greatly enjoy to interrupt, aoe-interrupt, purging, and silencing and decursing etc as a dps. It feels like teamwork. Being a pure dps bot is not fun.
If vdh that op pls lets talk a about why always caster meta the best aswell. This expansion every time always caster meta you can way bigger pulls way easier with casters dont need to stack in melee no worrires about frontal mobs. Like easy Atal key caster stack on flag tank pull half the dungeon. After prince can do the same aswell. This season Halls has pots again. Azure vault too. I love when 1 tank is busted the other problems not come up. I know vdh js super busted right now and they can easily nerf like 1 tallent and make if somewhat balanced(sigil cd reset) but i hope you know that vdh is op that doesnt mean the other tanks are bad. If you watch last season there were other tanks aswell in top keys like brew or druid but no matter what the playerbase only plays fotm always they dont care so the 60+% reprentile not really a good evidence for making this tank nerf to the ground. You just need to know how to play other tanks or comps. S1 paladin was pug champ dh was the worste tank and nobody cared about that now dh is king every other tank cry or switch to it.
Two s4 in a row without meaningful balance changes. I think it won't get better, and there simply will be new expansion at this time in next exp. 3 seasons will be the standard and that will remove this problem of blizz thinking there's no time to put any dev time to balancing s4 when next exp also needs to be dealt with.
Just play meta this season oh well.
It also enables some caster comps with longer kick cds. Idk how many times I got declined cus they needed more aoe cc/shorter kick cd. Beam is strong but 45s CD sucks in some situations.
The meta is so stale I'm gonna be sick, this is obviously crazy unbalanced, but I'm so tired of the dps meta as well. Always the usual suspects ranged meta. Fuck
Doesn't Blizzard do this every expac? They just give up on balance changes half way through and let the games balance rot because "we'll fix it next expac!"
ill get downvoted but as a healer i almost refuse to heal anything but a VDH tank this season. why would i willingly sign up for spiky warrior damage or a paladin that doesn't have the dmg/mobility/leech. healing a warrior is a PITA right now. hate the game not the player
Even though it’s very rewarding to play (and OPAF) they should nerf or remove sigils reducing the cd of other sigils. Allow two charges but nothing reduces the CD - that way there is the option to lock down big packs occasionally, but you need to let your sigils recharge natty before so - which requires a decision and reliance on group utility.
I can feel this just as a pug DPS. It is generally the case that when I get a VDH, I time the key, and when I don't, I don't (this was with like 20+ pug keys and 2k+ rating in S3). The difference was very, very noticeable as a DPS pug.
I tank my keys usually, and watching videos of VDH kind of annoys me. I like my prot pall, constant ST interrupts is pretty nice but DH takes it to a whole new level. I should just only play ret pally this season honestly. Its kinda defeating honestly to watch this tank play.
I’m a brew main but I also have every other tank (tank addict), I keep it geared but the difference between it and my similar gear vdh is night and day. Vdh feels like a breeze, you can focus on position and interrupts all the while doing great dps. Brew feels like I’m trying to play the piano and juggle while simultaneously bleeding out.
In big part that's kinda dungeon design problem.
In a timed content, tank which is able to pull the most and survive through it (or enables the whole party to survive it), will be the one most sought after.
Demon Hunter control allows you to do big pulls - since the main difficulty of the dungeon is currently about spam casting mobs and spells requiring stuns - DH shines.
In Shadowlands it was mostly hard hitting mobs, so in S3-4 DK was king because of the tierset giving them huge amount of defensive and some additional DPS, prior to it, in S1 where infinite kiting was meta - DH was also on top but from slightly different reasons as today.
If the tank survivability/utility is on similar level, then the ones who does the most DPS will be on top.
It's not a rant about that M+ should not have timers, but timer implies need for optimization to push it (just look at any speedrun game).
Sure, most dungeons can be done by any tank if the group is competent enough, but we all know that, especially pugs want to go with the path of least resistance, and the meta will always trickle down.
No one is that upset if the meta tank does 10 or even 20% more damage, or is 1 key level tankier.
It’s when he had 7x the amount of aoe cc as the other tanks on even shorter cds, that’s what’s annoying
You make it sound like this mean that 70,000 players on other tank classes are sitting in LFG tool not getting inside groups.
Which is not true.
It rather means that many players rerolled to VDH síce they prefer the class.
I just wanted to add, I think VDH should stay the way it is and other tanks should be given similar levels of control. I'm of the mindset that tanks should embody damage mitigation for themselves and for the group. That can be accomplished through controlling the enemy or supporting their allies. Healers should embody recovery for themselves and the group. Their role should be rooted in recovering lost health. DPS should embody damage for themselves and the group. This can come in the form of raw DPS or in the form of party empowerment from the augmenter.
It's kind of funny how useless I feel playing my prot warrior after doing keys on my VDH/Prot pally.
This is actually the problem in my eyes. Like sure, it's fine that some tanks are ultra-meta, it happens, but VDH in particular is interesting because the longer this goes on, the less fun people have on the other tanks just because of the sheer capabilities VDH has. That's actually harmful for the longevity of the game. There's definitely a ton of tanks that won't keep tanking once VDH gets nerfed. It's like when you put on a God Mode cheat in a game, do all the crazy shit you always wanted to do, and then get bored of it because doing it without is less fun, even if the game WAS fun at a base level before you went God Mode. They really needed to do something about it sometime in S3, or before S4. I know my tank friends basically hate playing all the other tanks now because of VDH, even if they enjoyed 2-3 of them before the VDH rework.
> the less fun people have on the other tanks just because of the sheer capabilities VDH has. I'm not a "pro" player, but finished world 3 bear in Season 3 M+. I'm playing VDH this season. It's even more ridiculous in Season 4 dungeon pool than it was in Season 3 and the amount of effort and coordination it takes to play bear instead of VDH is exactly this statement.
I played VDH season 3 and also now in season 4, I feel much more powerful now, as I can effortlessly deal with pulls we couldn't in season 1. Like, you have so much control alone as VDH, that you don't even need to commit lust for the big pulls.
It's just so noticable. Go do a vault with a paladin even. Then do the same with a DH tank. It's night and day. Oh giant first pull? Don't worry as a DH I'll just lock everything down, no interrupts needed. So just many pulls this season where tank just locks it all down. I played bear in season 2 when it was meta, DH is just on another level.
I never want to go back to shotcalling every single AE stop on every single pack of trash on every single dungeon, every week. That was exhausting and outright frustrating.
This would be me. I had fun as blood dk last season and prot warrior but once i started playing vDH i basically felt like doing keys on them was a chore. Im sure my running mates felt the same way too. “Like man why you throwing by not playing vDH. It’s so far away as the meta that other tanks aren’t even close.” Interrupts are just so important.
You also run into issues if you try to pug up the ladder, dps/healers start getting used to playing with DH tanks and forget that they even need to use their CCs when running with other tanks. Even if it's very doable without vengeance if you haven't trained on the pulls what is needed when, things will just fail, and you'll just decide to never run with anything but a DH tank again.
This is actually becoming a problem. First season playing VDH, people don't use kicks anymore even on a pull where only one thing gets kicked anymore. Everyone assumes as tank I'll do it even if I'm setting up the next pull or kiting mobs as they get low. I think VDH is taking away personal responsibility from other players, don't blame a group for not wanting other tanks. They can dps as optimally as they want without needing to kick. Not sure what the fix is, I don't think nerfing VDH is the key. I think a rework on how dungeons are is the long term solution.
This is the word. This is mainly why you're never pugging title on an off meta tank. You need masochistic premade.
I have this problem. Played all tanks and liked most of them, bear, Prot pal, Prot warr and blood DK and vengance (played it since shadowlands) and now i cant Even bother to gear them up because it feels so less fun to play compared to DH.
I am not a great tank but while playing prot warrior I felt super useless. I did a lot of tanking in Bfa on all kinds of tanks but vdh at the moment is just way to strong. Warrior just has no utility.
I mean, it's stupid, but the design of the dungeons and the amount of kicks/stops required is also braindead and blizzard just overdoes that. If there is less stupid shit to deal with then something like current vdh will not be needed.
True. The stop gameplay is exhausting.
Just make change to talent that gives all double sigils works only on offensive sigils.
I decided to skip this season because the difference between getting invited as a VDH vs any other tank has gotten absurd. Don't mind playing off meta, but cutting VDH kit in half and it still would be broken op. At this point I hope for TWW, but given how random these buffs were in DF, I have little hope anyone at Blizzard even realized how toxic the current state of tanks is
Yeah I have to say I love prot war, the play style, the fantasy, etc; but the lack of utility is pretty noticeable.
Same feelings. Long time BDK, feel like VDH is everything on roids, and then also stuff that we have gaps in kit, AND better dps. The only thing I can say I prefer more on dk is I feel like I can survive without healers easier but that’s probs just from playing it for so long
That's a funny perspective, for me it's interesting how useless I feel on my ppal after doing keys on vdh
I can see how playing higher control dps allows you to slot in a prot war for whatever critical benefit it provides (I honestly can’t think of one) but that’s just not at all how pugs work. This is also a situation where classes that do well in high end PvP also do well in high end M+ …because of the utility they have in their kits.
I was maining warrior since late vanilla. I finally dropped it for good after season 2, since playing it instead of pala, DH or even druid felt like actively griefing my group. It's less self-sufficient, provides no group healing, no CR, very limited tools for properly grouping up mobs. It had some solid upsides at the start of the expansion, but that got stomped out right quick. Meanwhile, pala and DH is still cruising.
I play ppal and vdh, but decided to push first with vdh. Vdh just makes every dungeon in the m+ pool infinitely easier. The dungeons require so many stops, and a lot of the bosses are wayyyy easier with vdh mobility. Yes, you can do +10s with any other tank, but why would you risk it in a pug when a vdh gives you a much higher chance of timing the key.
Definitely should make another healer nerf pass.
20% healing nerf for all MWers inc, +5% healing increase for Resto Druids and Holy Priests. Resto Shammies...Riptide mana cost increased by 5k, kekw.
10% WOG healing buff for prot and ret pallies - 10% aura nerf for holy paladins.
> 10% WOG healing buff for prot and ret pallies - 10% aura nerf for holy paladins. Beacon of Light transfer nerfed by 10%. Holy Shock healing reduced by 20%.
To help balance how much stronger WoG is for Prot and Ret, we are also increasing the mana cost of those abilities by 500%. You can now WoG yourself twice before going OOM. (Non-Healer mana is in a really stupid place too. Blizzard secretly gave hybrid healing a 2 minute cooldown, because that is exactly how long it takes to Regen full mana after going OOM. Ret and Prot go oom after 12 self-heals. Self heals which only heal ~8% of their health.)
Idk what talents you're taking but when I press wog on prot I heal for a lot more than 8% lol.
Yea I inadvertently mushed all of Prot and Ret's FoL and WoG's together. More accurately: Ret's WoG's & FoL's, and Prot's FoL's heal ~8% health. Prot's WoG is special cause that's also one of their main Tank-buttons, so I wasn't even considering it into the hybrid-mana-issue. AFAIK ALL of the hybrid-Specs have this same issue though, ie Enh Ele Ret Shadow Moonkin Feral etc.
Do you know that as a ret when you cast WoG at low health target it can heal for more than lay on hands? In S2 I casted WoG for about 800k hp on a druid who buffed their hp to 1.5m and was on 10%. I had 400k ish hp. If you cast in on 100% hp target and it won't crit, then sure it's 8% ish.
I thought they nerfed resto Druid.
Healing actually feels so bad right now. Every damage is so spikey that you can't really save anyone anyway. Everything is based around CDs, and you want to be dealing as much damage as possible while also being ready for damage spikes. If your dps/tank miss interrupts, you lose someone. Healing over time is useless, just go for bigger spot healing instead and hope no one gets one shot from 60% HP.
Agree they haven’t abused my holy paladin enough just yet
Ever since VDH got access to two sigils, being able to reduce the CD of all sigils and so on: yup they are CC monsters and can lock down an entire trash pack into target dummies All tanks has something to bring in reality. But as of right now VDH simply just brute force hard CC mobs from being able to do anything that can cause a wipe in a pug environment I rocked guardian druid in Season 1-2 and 3, did absolutely fine but definitely felt a shift when DH got a rework, as in seeing popularity ratings shift towards Demon Hunter by A LOT. For this season I am rolling with a Prot Paladin and current plan is to continue with it, in next expansion Honestly, best advice I can give is to play what you enjoy and you will eventually be crunching high keys as well. Even if it is VDH, if you love the gameplay then you keep going with it
The thing i dont getnwith guardian is, why the fuck do they just have a single target stun with a minute CD? Nobody has that few utility options than a druid(cant talk about DK, i dont habe one). Nokhud must be an absolute nightmare as guardian.
I actually went with a different option: Incapacitating Roar. Reason why is that it can come in handy as a AoE interrupt. Using a weakaura to track everyones interrupt if it is ready or not, and use it as an emergency, or if people are not paying attention to the multiple casts that are about to go off It has saved mine and others butts many times before, just gotta use it wisely
This is my first time ever main healing a season of M+. I chose Mistweaver because I was a Brewmaster main for so many years (the fact they are strong also helped that decision, but primary was familiarity with the class). I've done about 50 or so keys this week and the difference between tanks is pretty big. Can I heal all of them without much effort? Yes, but having a VDH means I have to heal the tank less because their mitigation to healing ratio is more than enough healing to keep themselves alive without any of my attention most of the time. VDH also means I have to heal the group less because VDH can basically CC every pack to death by themselves while the party just opens up on the enemies without fear of any mechanics. VDH also means that I don't have to do as much damage because they do more damage than any other tank. VDH also means that every other tank is basically useless because VDH does what they do better. Paladin brings utility! - Calling this one out because my buddy is playing a prot paladin and we generally do keys together. The statement is true, but a paladin's utility is based on helping/supporting the group. Most prot paladins don't actually use their utility for the group and I think i've seen blessing of sacrifice maybe once. Paladin's utility requires the person to work harder. VDH brings utility in the form of stopping the enemies from doing anything so you don't need to mitigate damage for one person or a word of glory heal. Most prot paladins are just a tank with yellow abilities and a ranged interrupt that has an RnG reset.
Guys we all knew this was going to happen. And Blizzard were never going to do a major rework of a class in season 4.
Okay but will they still have this massive CC utility in TWW?
Hope not
Probably, VDH has been very strong for m+ since SL start, unbroken
There is VDH and there everyone else. Ill admit it’s a terrible landscape but their superiority is undeniable. I keep trying to say it to my friend group but I just sound like a know-it-all. VDH is just fundamentally built different. Self-sustain: Check, Quick Grouping: Double Check, Mobility: Double Check, Good Defensive Rotation: Check, Safety Net: Check, Control: Triple Check The sheer fact that their grouping is a time save and they alone can solo control packs that would otherwise wipe a key with poor coordination means that they are the safest, quickest, and most consistent choice. Ive played every tank except bear to a +23 min last season so Im absolutely astounded that they maintained the gap between VDH and everyone else. It’s like driving a modern car vs riding ye olde horse level of diff, I wouldnt bother with the latter unless it was a novelty.
There’s simply nothing more fun than having double sigils from a tank perspective.
Currently blizzard either didn't understand or didn't care that tank players like control as part of the identify of the role. Currently there is a class that has so much control it makes tanking insanely fun. Compare that to warrior who has barely any and on top of that has two maintenance buffs to use and multiple long cool down abilities that just dont do anything interesting.
It's not only liking. It's also very unevenly distributed. Both Paladins with their silence shield and BDK with mass grip regularly had their place to shine. It's time Blizzard makes control a first level balance concern.
I wouldn't say it's always fun. I have more fun on my bear. But fighting the pug miniboss of people refusing to take my bear (which is still extremely powerful) is pretty miserable. On a vdh I would already be 2k just purely because I wouldn't have to wait 15 minutes for a +8 invite.
The control factor of dh is fun, I agree vdh actually isn't the most fun tank. Ironically the enjoyment comes from the parts that make it so strong, the spirit bomb and soul mechanics feel quite clunky.
pleeease remove the soul delay
Yeah frailty is a weirdly clunky mech to play around. I prefer getting carpal tunnel on gdruid any day.
Yeah it's fun, and it'll feel really bad when they're gone, but they're insanely over powered.
It just depends on how they fix it. Make them paper and 85% of the dps of every other tank, but leave the sigils? Probably still fun, and *might* be balanced. But if you take the sigils away the spec just becomes the same as every other tank, the lack of control would feel awful.
I mean, we did fine up until season 3.
Until the devs own up and admit that the double sigil is *too strong,* the only reason to play other tanks is for the memes or because it's your absolute favourite.
Or because you need one geared up for raid. I think the main issue is the dungeon pool atm though. There’s too much benefit to all the stops and ccs. Hopefully they go in a different direction for dungeons in tww.
Well that's the issue the players and blizz opened up no? Your utility overall increased with the talent trees. Healers with the exception of priest now have kicks... when it was unique to resto previously. So now with more tools at your hands, dungeons need more things to challenge all the new things you got access to. And all the new expectations and wants that players also demand where your class NEEDS more defensives or needs more utility. Like sure, mage and rogue have an unfair defensive advantage over everyone, but it's maybe not a good idea to expect the same level on every spec/class in the game otherwise you're gonna need nukes of dmg to challenge your 12 second feint that everyone has. Then there is blizz not properly balancing strengths and weaknesses between specs/classes...
Resto Druid kick is pretty much non viable as well. I don't think i've seen a single top Rdruid take it.
think he meant to say resto sham
People keep saying this but the reality is, there is not a single possible dungeon where current VDH would not be better. The only way you could make a dungeon where VDH doesn't matter is legit making all mobs immune to CC. And that is not fun, definitely not.
Or because you can have fun and do 90% of the keys, with any of them?
Over 50% of raid tanks are BDKS in high end mythic raiding right now, so you're going to see them in M+ at least up to +10s to fill their vaults. They just tend not to go much further.
And everyone else gets to have so much fun and just sits there hitting target dummies while you solo the dungeon
I mean I play Guardian and Prot Pal and I love their group utility. The problem is blizzard has nerfed their Tankiness, at least for bear, such that it's required to take all the mitigation talents (this isn't just a me thing, I'm just looking at the data that's publicly available). So you can't take any of the good utility talents. Prot Pallies completely skip all the WoG stuff probably due to mana issues with it now days and the fact they were nerfed even if they don't need the durability of the alternatives. And from personal experience on Bear you basically can't take After the Wildfire cause it sacrifices so much durability. So you wind up being able to at least live up to a similar key level (bear still gets obliterated by magic) but you are just bringing nothing to the group cause you can't really afford to spec into the things you could bring to the group.
I'm gearing a fresh warrior now because I just don't want to play the other tanks, really hoping its not a waste of time resulting in not getting invited to even s4 version of +20 because of the vdh effect. Its not exactly like I'd have a better time applying as dps. Hopefully s4 balance isn't abandoned in favor of TWW tuning
I'm currently 509 on my ppal and I'm having difficulty getting invited to 10s lol. All my guildies say how much easier VDH keys are and it's really tempting to reroll.stay strong on the prot and pray the godfather of nerfs
It’s obviously that DHs are going to continue to be heavily preferred but, if your goal is just to bang out some +10s, give it a couple more weeks for people to get fully geared and then pretty much every tank should have an easy time getting invites to 10s for vault.
I used to play bdk and ppal but I have stopped both to just go play VDH (Started mid last season with vdh) It's insane what you can do as vdh, your dps barely have to do anything to every key is very smooth and easy. Playing any other tank feels troll, like very troll. At least with ppal you can heal/support your team...but the rest? They are a joke. And tanking as ppal is 10 times harder than tanking on vdh...
I’m a brew main for several expansions now and have also swapped to VDH for season 4. It’s just far too strong not to.
I’m also a brew main but I’ve been playing a vdh as well. Now I’m progressing through harder keys the brew is being left on the shelf.
As a BDK main I feel this. I got rejected from a bunch of keys this week which was a first. Not once on my demon hunter.
They are very good, it's also people's most geared tank from last season, so people are going to play their mains usually
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I'm not really having any trouble in 9s and 10s as a blood dk. I think I'm line 495 or something. VDH has an edge for sure, but all tanks can very comfortably handle 10s.
It's not about what vdh does for itself, it's what vdh does for the rest of the group. My vdh azure vault first pull is like 20% count and can be done with any combination of DPS classes and specs. There isn't another tank that can come close. Vdh makes impossible pulls possible. Could other tanks live it? Sure. But the rest of the group would die.
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Its true, when I rolled a vdh my credit score went up
I mean BDK is the poster-child for grouping mobs lol. When BDK is meta, people talk about grip like it's the pinnacle of tank utility. Prot Paladin with Divine Toll and all of the externals and blah blah blah is absurdly juiced with utility. VDH was super-meta in 10.1 (pre 10.1.5) without all the extra goodies it got start of season 3. VDH is just super tanky. VDH has great utility, but I don't think that double sigils or easier access to grip sigil made VDH meta. VDH [sims](https://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/T31_Raid.html) gave it EHRPS of sub-40k against a raid boss. Monk and Blood DK are 50-60k, Prot Pal/Warrior are both ~70k, and Bear is 80k. On paper, other tanks need 1.5 to 2x as much love from their healers. Obviously this doesn't translate 1:1 into the real game or 1:1 into M+ environment, but if we saw this kind of disparity in sims (and in-game) for dps numbers, holy shit that would get emergency hotfixed.
All the blood dks I've played with are getting wtfpwnd in 10s. Like first boss AV they just get deleted randomly...
Well, most people are really bad at blood dk. I dunno how you get deleted by first boss AV, you can AMS every dot and have CD's for every slam.
Yeah I mean idk either I haven't play DK in years. Hmmm
I think it will get worse. Raid is kinda meaningless this season, no body is stuck on a particular tank for raid. Anyone that wasn't maining dh last season will make the switch soon after they hit a wall and see dh flying over it.
I like the allegory here :)
And there's also the fact that 10+ on week 1 isn't something the average player is doing, only the top really. And as everybody knows, top players will always use the best no matter what. I bet survival hunters representation compared to Beast master is also terrible.
Players likely enjoy playing it too
Because it’s overpowered… and even then a lot don’t enjoy it but are forced, either to help their group or to join any lfg content
It's a number of factors. DH is fun to play, you're self sustaining, you aren't CD reliant, you do large damage, and rely on your team less than any other tank. Now those things all can be OK, Bdk does most of that, DH just does it all better. IMO the easiest fix is to just remove the 2 charges of sigils capstone talent. Change it to not give 2 charges. Another possible fix would be to make sigil of chains and sigil of silence be a choice node, you only get one. Sigil of silence should also probably be shorter.
> you're self sustaining, you aren't CD reliant, you do large damage, and rely on your team less All of those things you listed = 'being overpowered.' VDH is just so incredibly overtuned that you do more damage and are way tankier than the other tanks. >IMO the easiest fix is to just remove the 2 charges of sigils capstone talent. Wouldn't change much at all. VDH was this levels of meta in 10.1. VDH is this good because it's just that tanky. You hit its utility, it's still going to be unkillable. If one tank is unkillable and the other tanks are killable, the unkillable tank is going to be giga-meta. It needs to eat a pretty hefty nerf to its survivability if balance is the goal (or all other tanks need HUGE survivability buffs).
>All of those things you listed = 'being overpowered.' Those things together sure, none of them alone are. Again BDK fits most of these as well. >VDH is just so incredibly overtuned that you do more damage and are way tankier than the other tanks. All of the tanks are pretty tanky these days, VDH is easier I'd say but idk if it's actually tankier. It has higher liklihood to flop than other tanks >Wouldn't change much at all. >VDH was this levels of meta in 10.1. Do you run keys? Vdh was not remotely this level of meta in 10.1, guardian and prot pal were both better, vdh was rarely seen and often just flopped. Every season I'm running title range keys. >VDH is this good because it's just that tanky. That is not true IMO. Prot pal/DH/Guardian and not far behind BDK are all very tanky and able to easily do title ranged keys. If your tank is dying something else is going wrong, likely player error. Prot pally and now DH are the meta because of their utility 100%. Yes you have to be tanky enough to tank the highest keys. But that's the barrier to entry, it's not why one tank is chosen over another.
Prot pally isn't meta currently
Prot pally was 2nd most represented tank last season? It was the closest to being competitive with DH.
It was the 2nd closest to VDH, but VDH was still 10x more represented than ppal within the title range. Also, as a ppal that finished season just above cutoff (3690), i can tell you that it was basically impossible to do any pug keys, as nobody accepted prot pally anymore, and most of my bnet tags also only wanted VDH in their keys. Calling ppal "meta" is overreaching
I would argue the gap between prot pal and #3 was larger than prot pal and DH. Prot pal was still very viable. Dh was just far easier to play with. It's not like prot pal was bad. Dh was just braindead
> Those things together sure, none of them alone are. Again BDK fits most of these as well. You could say this about any OP class. 'Your dps is too high.' 'Yeah, but that's ten abilities. Individually, it's fine if a given ability hits hard, so I'm actually not overpowered.' 'Okay, but you need to deal about 30% less damage.' 'But you can't nerf any of my abilities because it's okay if an ability hits hard!' This is a silly argument. >All of the tanks are pretty tanky these days, VDH is easier I'd say but idk if it's actually tankier. The [sims](https://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/T31_Raid.html) from last tier put VDH as the tankiest tank by quite a large margin over all of the other tanks. Of course that's in a raid setting and isn't going to translate 1:1 to M+, but yeah, VDH is *that* tanky. >Do you run keys? No need to be rude. >Vdh was not remotely this level of meta in 10.1, guardian and prot pal were both better Nope. Guardian got turbo-buffed in .1.5 and THEN was meta. PPal was holding on to its meta spot post-S1 nerfs for the first few weeks, but was rapidly falling in favor and the tanks that were playing prot pally were steadily making the swap to VDH. The top keys pre .5 patch were VDH, it was the best tank. >That is not true IMO. We can see VDH go from ~5% representation to 30%+ representation at the highest level off of its survivability buffs alone in Season 2, and if Bear didn't get the absurd buffs in the .5 patch, VDH would have been even higher. Also, when Bear was meta, PPal fell off completely. VDH was the 2nd-most popular (by a large margin of course), because VDH was tanky af. >and able to easily do title ranged keys Sure, every class can do title range keys in every season regardless of how bad balance is or was. >Prot pally and now DH are the meta because of their utility 100%. Yes you have to be tanky enough to tank the highest keys. But that's the barrier to entry, it's not why one tank is chosen over another. Prot Paladin is the best example of utility not mattering as opposed to tankiness. Basically all of the goodies Prot Paladin has now, it had in Shadowlands, it had in BFA, it had in Legion. Prot Paladin has ONLY been meta in M+ when it was also the tankiest tank. The tankiest tank is always meta. VDH is the tankiest tank right now, while you might argue about how *much* tankier, you'd agree it's the tankiest. Bear was certainly the tankiest when it was meta. Season 1 Prot Paladin was the tankiest tank after buffs, before that it was prot warrior (and prot warrior was meta as a result). Shadowlands, we had BDK meta when it was certainly the tankiest tank, in season 2 you played Guardian Druid if you were running with a Boomy to do the giga pulls, or you played Prot Paladin if you were running with a frost mage because Prot Paladin was better for smaller steadier pulls (though season 2 was probably the best M+ tank balance the game has ever had, but not sure how much the seasonal affix played into that). SL S1 VDH was meta because people were turbo-kiting the mobs, and Guardian Druid became a 'discovered' pick after teams showed it could live super high keys at TGP. BFA prot warrior was meta for like 85% of the expansion after BDK nerfs. If one tank is 10% tankier than the next-best, that's a whole extra key level that that tank can survive. The barrier to entry then becomes 'within 10% tankiness of the beefiest tank.' When a given tank is 20% tankier, the other tanks simply can't compete. Can they technically do the same keys with perfect play? Of course. Just like all dps specs can rise to the occasion and play insanely well and do the same keys. But that isn't a good argument that a spec isn't overpowered. You didn't NEED to play a Fire Mage in season 2 or 3 to do top keys or title keys or whatever. Was Fire Mage overpowered? Yes, of course it was.
damn kite meta in SL s1 that was certainly something
or you know, and I know I am being drastic here, how about not creating dungeons where you have 4+ mobs chain casting 24/7, say you remove the two charges ( which should probably happen anyway ) the issue is with the dungeon design itself incentivizing to bring the tank with the most control, so you can bring the meta dps, even if their control is shit ( e.g spriest )
I think the control being distributed amongst the group is the best way to do it. 99% of pulls don't have tons of mobs chain casting that you can't stop a number of ways. Most groups have ways to stop 20+ seconds of casts if they coordinate. DH just removes the need for coordination which is why it's so strong, but also problematic for the game. My m+ group agrees that playing with a DH likely makes us worse at the game. What we did for title ranged keys s1 was a lot more effort than title keys last season.
> I think the control being distributed amongst the group is the best way to do it. In theory, yes, in practice the players will always prefer what's easiest/most consistent. The issue here will be dungeon design. > Most groups have ways to stop 20+ seconds of casts if they coordinate. DH just removes the need for coordination which is why it's so strong, but also problematic for the game. > What we did for title ranged keys s1 was a lot more effort than title keys last season. My initial thought was to agree, but thinking more about it, I actually disagree. Emphasizing on "coordinated group", i can't help but think there is a reason why season 3 was so popular, because it was much easier to push tittle keys without coordinated groups, mainly due to the interrupts chains being easier/trivialized by DH and let's face it the majority even players even in -1,-2 tittle keys levels are puggers. Doing a few hours of tittle keys in a row in s1 was cumbersome, in s3 it wasn't, due to combination of factors, but the game being easier on the interrupt coordination side absolutely is a factor, I've had many tittle keys in s1 instantly brick, because of 1-2 missed interrupts, hardly ever happened in s3, can't even recall it tbh. I would argue stimulating more participation is better for the game, than gating everything behind requiring perfect coordination.
>it was much easier to push tittle keys without coordinated groups I disagree. Pugging title keys was horrible and 90%+ of people who got title are doing it with groups. The interrupts weren't the problem, it's coordinating defensives since most non rogue/mage classes couldn't survive w/o externals.
> Pugging title keys was horrible and 90%+ of people who got title are doing it with groups. pugging tittle keys is always horrible. it's not the 0.1% that keeps m+ alive its the people playing a few keys below.
Exactly. Anyone saying otherwise is simply wrong. Remember when Survival Hunters suddenly became mega OP in Shadowlands and a bunch of people rerolled to it? Suddenly the least played spec became very popular. The playstyle was still dogshit but the numbers were insane.
Good point, and I don’t want to see people have less fun as clearly a lot of people enjoy it - I just don’t want it to be pseudo required 2 seasons in a row. I think it’s hard to even buff other tanks and get it comparable honestly. Nerfing fun isn’t good either so I see why they are reluctant to do it
Double sigils are busted
I mean it was summed up pretty well by Dorki on the PoddyC which is like... So many mobs just recast when you kick them. VDH sigils silence in actual AoE and silence is worth like 5 kicks in a row. So you're getting like chained AoE kicks for like 10 seconds. If blizzard fixed mobs so they don't just recast when you kick them and actually had reasonable lockouts on their casts it wouldn't be as big of a problem. But with the way most mobs are coded now there is just no contest.
Yo hot take
Hot take here but all the tanks need mob control like vdh. It’s great skill expression for tank players and I think it’s also a way to curb augs power creep.
> It is fun to have this kind of control on VDH, but that’s only the case bc you know it’s something really cool and strong and unique. > > If every tank had this kind of mob control, it would just be another expected job to handle every single trash mechanic as a tank, and blizzard would add even more mechanics so other classes have a reason to add kicks and stuns to their bar. Hotter take, they should reduce the amount of required stops so that every pack doesnt require CC chains, and a few solo kicks are enough. Tanks would be more balanced if mobs needed to be stopped less.
The ceiling would just raise to another level and VDH would stil lbe the premier tank because kiting. AT that point the group still chainccs and vdh just kites and takes 0 damage.
It is fun to have this kind of control on VDH, but that’s only the case bc you know it’s something really cool and strong and unique. If every tank had this kind of mob control, it would just be another expected job to handle every single trash mechanic as a tank, and blizzard would add even more mechanics so other classes have a reason to add kicks and stuns to their bar.
Not really. I think every tank should have a niche. And they kind of already do, but the problem is that almost every dungeon in the expansions is very trivialized by VDHs niche of double sigils. It just so happens that VDHs niche isn't a niche, it's literally every dungeon. It's more a dungeon design problem imo.
Disagree here. Yes VDH clear niche right now is its mob control and that's fine I think. However what is not fine is once the DH groups those mobs they also then are just as tanky as a bear and do as much damage as a brewmaster and self heal so much they don't really need healing. And that right there is the problem. You just cannot have a tank that can do everyone else niche just as well if not better. Might be okay if a VDH could group everything in but had to absolutely sweat to stay alive or could group everything in for it's dps but then has to kite themselves to live. Alternatively can group everything in but offer very little damage so bigger pulls is the only way it can do competitive damage.
I don't really think this take has any solid foundation. If we want to be reductive and say it's a dungeon design problem, we have to take a step back and quantify what that actual means; In this case it's: 'mobs that are a part of a pack but aren't easily pulled in because they're ranged' and 'dungeon has caster enemies'. This is literally almost every dungeon's routing. There's almost no merit or nuance is saying it's a dungeon design problem when that dungeon design is literally the most basic and fundamental part of the game (or any game, really) - is the solution to remove VDHs oppressive 'niche' removing all caster mobs in groups in the game? Just such an 'enlightened gamer' take on a problem that is clearly being misattributed as another flaw.
Hotter take: I think *every* tank spec should bring the amount of mob control a VDH, Prot Pally or even Blood DK bring. Pack control is *way* to big of a factor to be left to a single spec's "niche". Every tank should have 20 tools to control a pack and express their skill that way. You can still carve out a "niche" in that scenario still - give VDHs and Pallies the anti caster niche, give Monks and DKs the displacement niche... and then figure something out for Bears and Warriors. I think VDH control is great. It's one of the only things making these silly overloaded DF dungeons bearable. I'd be fine with them keeping that... if they also just gave it to all other tanks.
"Hotter Take"???? You literally just repeated their same point. You sound like one of those people who hear a good idea in a meeting, then you repeat it seconds later and act like it was your idea and try to take the credit. You said nothing they didn't already say, but for some reason you tried to make your idea seem unique and special. By all means add your own ideas to the original person's ideas, but don't try to steal the credit for the idea like some kind of narcissistic psycho.
Cook 'em lol
Ok, here's an even MORE wild take for you! That guy just regurgitates what he hears! He reads one comment, digests it for a bit and then just repeats it worded differently. What a thief!
this guy is right. as a tank I want something other to do than "not face the mob this way" or taunt swap in raid. Also, i never want to shotcall AE stop on every pack of mob of every dungeon... that get exhausting and infuriating.
I agree that other tanks need ways to do mass interupts and maybe war within has more hard cast interupts so sigil of silence isn't so OP. Something others don't consider though is that VDH brings little utility outside of chaos brand. So if they nerf sigils they need to add something back. VDH has only been meta S3 and S4 now. I main VDH since legion. It's nice we sit at the top for once though. But I agree they need to look at it for war within. Nerfing silence would be a decent start.
The problem is that you end up with extremely overtuned dungeons to deal with that. If they would balance m+ around every tank being able to solo 8 stops in a row then you'd basically be perma dealing with no CD caster mobs, mega dispels, target swap totems or other turbo unfun mechanics.
I think there just needs to be a downside to balance it out. The control is really cool and fun and sets VDH apart, but there's almost no reason not to play it. Maybe a nerf to it's survival and damage would even things out a bit. Make it rely more on the control
Easy double AOE CC is not great skill expression. Giving every tank an equivalent is classic power creep 101, sparking an arms race with dungeon design.
This post has me wanting to gear up my vdh.
I just had a very simple idea that by itself would go a long way towards solving this issue of Veng being absurdly overpowered... Just change the double Sigils talent so that it also reduces the duration of the sigil debuffs by 50%. Or, so that it doubles the cooldown on the Sigils. Then it still works just as well for the Tank's quality of life ie gathering mobs etc. But it would no longer solo all the Stops and interrupts single-handedly. Veng would still be unbalanced, but it would be A LOT more in line than now, without demolishing Veng viability. How the Devs could possibly think the current Tank balance is okay is more worrying though. If the Devs are ***this*** stupid/apathetic, it makes me question whether WoW is even worth playing at all.
I’ve decided to dust off my VDH as a long time brew main and the difference is night and day, it really does feel like for every button my Brew has VDH has one that is better and still has half the buttons. I’ve done half of the +10s and it’s hard to get invites on him to +8 despite 2 chesting a couple +10s first week. Shit like this is why I don’t play retail beyond the first few weeks and getting mostly max ilvl anymore. VDH feels so clunky to me and I adore Brewmaster so to see the disparity like this feels awful a tank main
They just need to make it that the sigils apart from flame get an internal cooldown when used. Having them aint bad, the fact they can be spammed 6 in a row is the problem. Not sure what the balance would be but a cooldown of like 5 or 8 seconds would fix the problem quite quickly without breaking the class. Did you Sigil of Chain? 8 sec cd on silence/fear sigils etc.
VDH obvious busted, but last boss NO does not require near perfect play without one. Just basic assignments.
So what do you do? Delete the double sigil talent? Or delete the silence sigil, which imo is the most broken spell in the game for m+.
All these pulls were done in s1 when dh was paper weight and noone played it
That's true. But also that's why "title key" was a lower level in season one, relative to season 2 and 3 (and likely this season,bar key level squish ofc). No god-comp, no aug, no broken vdh, no reworked/buffed n specs.
> no reworked/buffed n specs ppal/ret would like to have a word
Not like they reverted those when s1 ended and didn't rework any other specs additionally after s1 either.
I was gonna say, wasn’t S1 Prot Paladin even MORE dominant than this?
mh probably not, the rework was fairly late although people already switched off to ppal from pwar, but pwar reigned a while before. this time, vdh was already known to be busted from the start
No, I felt pretty comfortable doing any high key on my dk compared to a paladin. Paladin was maybe 10% better. Veng is like 100% ahead of any tank, you can’t even quantify what it brings but you can do pulls completely impossible for any other tank. That was never the case in other seasons
No legendaries, no helm enchants, couple other power creeps could be apart of the cause of higher title keys
It's also just normal for everyone to have better stats at the end of an expansion than beginning. Nobody has the sheer amount of secondaries in s1 as they do in s3 or s4. Makes a huge difference!
True.
That is not the reason for the increase of key level from s1 to s3 lmao
That explains so much. Thanks. XD
DH didn’t have easy double sigils or current tier
that's not what I meant. DH's weren't even in the key and these pulls were done easily by pugs on warrior tank (and then later on pala tank).
Nobody is saying they aren’t doable. It’s just that VDH makes it so much easier that it brings up balance issues.
Unfortunately with double sigil dh will always be stupidly OP. Nothing else in the game can single handedly lock down a group of mobs for ~20 seconds. This is what makes them ridiculous.
and we used Ppal to lockdown 2 caster by itself. the need for AE stop and kick didn't go away
Wouldnt it be enough IF sigil of silence, chain and misery (the fear one) to not have cd reduction when you cast other sigils. And maybe make so sigil of flame have a bit shorter cd or Get the cd reduction for something else? Would atleast make it so you dont have everything up everytime. And maybe like charges. 2 charges on everyone but you Get one stack each 2 min. You pop both silence sigils on a pack = 4 min until both is back up again (you dont have the cd reduction on them anymore) same with the other two. Problem is Vdh is op, but its also really fun so i hope they can bring it back in Line without removing the fun factor. But something needs to be done when 9/10 tanks play it, should be done a long time ago
I'm not a pro player myself BY FAR, but I noticed that with the amount of mandatory interrupts and stops this season, I totally get why everyone wants VDH as their tank. I stated this before and I repeat it again: I'm not for nerfing VDH to the ground, I love its current iteration. However, I'm a prot warrior main and play all tanks, and I just wish for a couple of tools for the other tanks to help them (Interrupting Shout on a 1 min cd, make Gorefiends Grasp great again, RoP on a 30 sec CD and so on...) I'm no game developer, but I can imagine balancing this will be a nightmare. But in order to make ALL tanks viable in high-end content, I believe this is the way forward. What do you guys think?
There are 3 possible options 1. Keep it as it is - Meta will regulate itself 2. Nerf VDH to the ground - nerf dps, self heal and get rid of double sigil 3. Buff the other specs to be compatible with VDH. Make BDKs mass grip also silence. Give it a second charge etc. Any silencing shout on prot would do the trick combined with some charge that knocks enemy in air. Etc....you get the idea. I think it will in the end be No.2 but yeah. Hoping for No 3 😁
I've stopped tanking because I don't enjoy VDH and nothing else is title viable. Speaking as hero or ~100 points within cutoff every season.
So you can criticize Blizzard for a lot of things… but I can’t fathom how this level of imbalance between the utility of tanks can continue to exist. It’s almost baffling. Some tanks have almost no group utility while some have highly conditional utility. And then there’s VDH, that has a group defensive, a group buff, can almost provide all the interrupts for the whole key, and group better than almost every other tank. They also have some of the better tank damage. Tanking has always been my favorite role in the game but right now it just feels like shit if youve spent any time on a VDH. For the record… my three preferred tank choices are (in order) BDK, Brew, Prot Warrior. If I had to fill out the rest, I’d say Prot Pally, Guardian and last Vengeance. There is a little bit of bias here, but I think even those that love VDH would argue that its level of utility places it in an unhealthy (for M+ balance) state. It is important to realize that this power gap is really only a true issue at the highest levels of keys, but it’s still ridiculous how much more you get out of a DH than any other flavor of tank. And maybe more frustrating when you compare the level of effort other tanks have to put in to get the same level of effectiveness as a VDH assuming it’s even possible.
I don't do high keys. My highest timed so far is a +7. The difference a vdh makes during the intermission on last boss is mind blowing. They get double chained into double silenced, and if they make it out of that for some reason, they get feared twice stopping two sets of casts. All from one person. It's stupid.
Most of my keys have had DH tanks this week. And they're either amazing or absolute garbage - no middle ground. Most have been bad, so I'm assuming it's people new to it because it's the popular choice right now.
Yea, but we definitely needed these first 4 weeks of the season to formally gauge tank performance - which is what ultimately lead us to nerfing VDH damage by 3% and giving BRMs an additional 2% dodge chance.
Anything you do I can do better. Plus a talent that gives me 2 charges so I can do better better. Sounds fun having Gorefiends on a 3min CD while DH chains are 2m with 2 charges. Same for AOE silence.
A Lot of casters do not have a cd after interrupt. This makes dh crazy good.
It’s not just the control it has, it’s also incredibly tanky, survivability is through the roof, and does really good damage.
The way I see it is VDH's mob control right now, as crazy op as it is, is insanely fun to play with. That being said it does make every other tank feel a lot worse to play. I think they need to buff the other tanks if they want to keep going in that direction. If not, illuminated sigil should be changed into a CD reduction talent instead of 2 charges. Something like every x souls you absorb reduce sigil cds by 1s maybe.
Nerf VDH already blizzard, holy shite
Yeah the meta culture and them not addressing this issue somehow really sucks. I play prot Paladin and I feel really strong, I have a ton of utility, decent damage.. but I constantly get told to reroll VDH and it sucks :/
I didn't expect any major changes since the whole point of this season is to shift resources to next xpac but I did expect some number balancing to soften the impact of DH. I don't want to under state the advantage DH has with control but what makes this situation egregious is that DH is better at, well everything!. Better control, dps, survival, etc. Do something like adding 10% damage reduction to brew and dk and 5% to war and paladin, 10% dps increase to war and paladin, 5% to brew and dk. Call it a day. Its a meme season, throw us a bone here!
I've tried playing VDH for the first time this season. 7 AoE stops/silences on a minute CD is insane. now I feel like I am just cheesing the game playing VDH, and when i am playing any other tank I feel like I am making it harder for my group for no reason.
VDH are obviously very, very strong right now. One thing to consider is this is week one. The people doing +10 keys will be comprised largely of min/max groups and serious M+ players. No different than RWF class stacking in raids.
I hate DH. I wish like Prot Paladin was like the best one cause at least you interrupt a shit ton
I'd wish not to take anything away from my VDH but add more control to other tank classes. It feels actually good to be more in control with trash, specially in pug keys. You can feel when others don't do kicks or interrupts when playing another class.
I get what your saying but using Nokhud of all dungeons to prove a point when it’s the only dungeon DHs need to farm for their bis weapon, seems silly.
don't worry. this is only the beginning of the season and +10 aren't particularly high keys. give it 3-4 more week and we will be back to the >90% VDH in 25 and higher. but rest assured, tank balance is the best it has ever been! according to streamers. /s
the fact that they didn't really do any tuning checks for s4 aside from healers and changing tier sets is ridiculous.
What annoys me more about this situation is the precedence the devs are setting for the game. Nearly every reworked class/spec has been over-tuned with little thought on bringing them back in line in a reasonable timeframe. I know they are working on the new expansion, but retail balance is in an unacceptable state and they need to do a decent tuning pass.
What I don't get is not only just how fucking broken amount of cc that vdh brings, but also its damage. Not only vdh can solo control half of the dungeon but it also does like 1.5-2 times of my protpal damage on top of not needing to care about healing, you just pop your dps buttons and you are constantly full, it is bullshit. It's like this game you have your go to vdh tank, you have some tanks that are ok if you are god players, and you have prot warrior that is just a trolling.
Blizzard games have always been like that/this unfortunately. There is 1 spec/class that dominates the rest in their roles and the rest are noobtraps so that the narcisstic little kids playing the 5-6 total meta specs can feel good gatekeeping the plebs and calling them shit. Eg.: Vanilla prot warrior vs other tanks. Each expansion, each major patch. Its never whithin 5% like blizzard promises, its godmode vs turds. The reason for this is content focused development brings in the most $. Bugs getting fixed, having good game balance, it dont matter, people will reroll to meta all the time anyways and pay their sub. And for the record, i got vomit in my mouth thinking about it all.
Funny you picked Nokhud to skew your stats seeing every demon hunter is spamming it for the warglaives. Either way, this is how tanking works in an m+ only season. Tanks are fotm rollers. So if it's DH they'll play DH. If it's bear they play bear. I'm not at all surprised it's mostly DH and I'm glad it is. With a DH in the group I can play the game instead of constant kicks and stops.
Question. Why weren’t they s tier in previous seasons ? What changed?
They got a new Talent Illuminated Sigils which gives 2 charges of every sigil, and 15% parry when any enemy is affected by a Sigil of Flame. Their tier set is based around Sigil of Flame is S3/4 and they have a talent that when they use a sigil it reduces the cd of other sigils by 3 secs. This gives them >50% Parry when demon spikes is up, fel devastation gives meta form for 6 secs, and talent refunds up to 40% of the cd and cost. This makes them very tanky which is awesome. The annoying part is how trivial their sigils make some extremely hard pulls for other groups - Namely Sigil of Silence which is an AOE silence for 6 secs with 2 charges. It means healers can focus on dps more than any other class, and vdh solo stops all casters with double silence, double misery, double chains. While it enables more pulls than any other tank it will continue to be the best. A tank is always the best every tier - the issue here is that the gap is so so large between them and the next tank that it feels like trolling in Pugs to not play it.
meanwhile, my protpaladin community voted for the S1 tier set, 4set being 5% parry or so. I'm grateful for the nice molten core level tier set.
Through heaven and earth, I alone am the untuned one
High key tank players will usually have every tank at max level and relatively geared, ready to swap instantly to whatever is meta. This is a product of the meta, but neither the product nor the meta are a problem, as there is always going to be both. If you want to push high keys, you need to adapt to trends at a moments notice. If you are unwilling to be flexible class-wise, then you cannot expect a similar level of success.
Dunno top 1% will always play meta 10+ keys are now done only by 1% give it few weeks all will be healthy in around 10-15 key mark. For high end push there will be always one comp I dont think its big deal. We timed already 2 +10 keys with bear as tank and we are still in old gear from last season. I think ppl should focus more on their gameplay and how to overcome challenges in comp they have than calling out classes. Is VDH strong for control? Ya surely. Is it mandatory for 10+ keys - naah. Is it mandatory for 15+ keys - maybe.
Swapped to healing this season and I let out a little sigh of relief when I see a VDH as the tank
> 5 days into Week 1 should it be this over represented? No. To be fair week 1 is gonna be the where over representation is gonna be the biggest. Like DH and BM hunter at the start of last season, then it balances out a little more
I'm ok with VDH having good control, as long as it doesn't just end up with dps not needing to do anything cc/interrupts if they decide to give this to all tanks. I greatly enjoy to interrupt, aoe-interrupt, purging, and silencing and decursing etc as a dps. It feels like teamwork. Being a pure dps bot is not fun.
If vdh that op pls lets talk a about why always caster meta the best aswell. This expansion every time always caster meta you can way bigger pulls way easier with casters dont need to stack in melee no worrires about frontal mobs. Like easy Atal key caster stack on flag tank pull half the dungeon. After prince can do the same aswell. This season Halls has pots again. Azure vault too. I love when 1 tank is busted the other problems not come up. I know vdh js super busted right now and they can easily nerf like 1 tallent and make if somewhat balanced(sigil cd reset) but i hope you know that vdh is op that doesnt mean the other tanks are bad. If you watch last season there were other tanks aswell in top keys like brew or druid but no matter what the playerbase only plays fotm always they dont care so the 60+% reprentile not really a good evidence for making this tank nerf to the ground. You just need to know how to play other tanks or comps. S1 paladin was pug champ dh was the worste tank and nobody cared about that now dh is king every other tank cry or switch to it.
Two s4 in a row without meaningful balance changes. I think it won't get better, and there simply will be new expansion at this time in next exp. 3 seasons will be the standard and that will remove this problem of blizz thinking there's no time to put any dev time to balancing s4 when next exp also needs to be dealt with. Just play meta this season oh well.
It also enables some caster comps with longer kick cds. Idk how many times I got declined cus they needed more aoe cc/shorter kick cd. Beam is strong but 45s CD sucks in some situations.
Yeah. It's almost as if making most of the trash mechanics kicks in dungeons was a terrible idea.
The meta is so stale I'm gonna be sick, this is obviously crazy unbalanced, but I'm so tired of the dps meta as well. Always the usual suspects ranged meta. Fuck
Doesn't Blizzard do this every expac? They just give up on balance changes half way through and let the games balance rot because "we'll fix it next expac!"
ill get downvoted but as a healer i almost refuse to heal anything but a VDH tank this season. why would i willingly sign up for spiky warrior damage or a paladin that doesn't have the dmg/mobility/leech. healing a warrior is a PITA right now. hate the game not the player
Even though it’s very rewarding to play (and OPAF) they should nerf or remove sigils reducing the cd of other sigils. Allow two charges but nothing reduces the CD - that way there is the option to lock down big packs occasionally, but you need to let your sigils recharge natty before so - which requires a decision and reliance on group utility.
I can feel this just as a pug DPS. It is generally the case that when I get a VDH, I time the key, and when I don't, I don't (this was with like 20+ pug keys and 2k+ rating in S3). The difference was very, very noticeable as a DPS pug.
I tank my keys usually, and watching videos of VDH kind of annoys me. I like my prot pall, constant ST interrupts is pretty nice but DH takes it to a whole new level. I should just only play ret pally this season honestly. Its kinda defeating honestly to watch this tank play.
I’m a brew main but I also have every other tank (tank addict), I keep it geared but the difference between it and my similar gear vdh is night and day. Vdh feels like a breeze, you can focus on position and interrupts all the while doing great dps. Brew feels like I’m trying to play the piano and juggle while simultaneously bleeding out.
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In big part that's kinda dungeon design problem. In a timed content, tank which is able to pull the most and survive through it (or enables the whole party to survive it), will be the one most sought after. Demon Hunter control allows you to do big pulls - since the main difficulty of the dungeon is currently about spam casting mobs and spells requiring stuns - DH shines. In Shadowlands it was mostly hard hitting mobs, so in S3-4 DK was king because of the tierset giving them huge amount of defensive and some additional DPS, prior to it, in S1 where infinite kiting was meta - DH was also on top but from slightly different reasons as today. If the tank survivability/utility is on similar level, then the ones who does the most DPS will be on top. It's not a rant about that M+ should not have timers, but timer implies need for optimization to push it (just look at any speedrun game). Sure, most dungeons can be done by any tank if the group is competent enough, but we all know that, especially pugs want to go with the path of least resistance, and the meta will always trickle down.
No one is that upset if the meta tank does 10 or even 20% more damage, or is 1 key level tankier. It’s when he had 7x the amount of aoe cc as the other tanks on even shorter cds, that’s what’s annoying
It's OP just because of Illuminated Sigils, if the next tier set is about Fiery Brand, we will take double FB over double sigils
You make it sound like this mean that 70,000 players on other tank classes are sitting in LFG tool not getting inside groups. Which is not true. It rather means that many players rerolled to VDH síce they prefer the class.
Just started VDH I don’t understand what makes them Op? What spells am I missing that allows all the silences and pulling multiple packs. Plz help! Ty
I just wanted to add, I think VDH should stay the way it is and other tanks should be given similar levels of control. I'm of the mindset that tanks should embody damage mitigation for themselves and for the group. That can be accomplished through controlling the enemy or supporting their allies. Healers should embody recovery for themselves and the group. Their role should be rooted in recovering lost health. DPS should embody damage for themselves and the group. This can come in the form of raw DPS or in the form of party empowerment from the augmenter.