Vengeance Demon Hunter Raid Guide

Welcome to the Vengeance Demon Hunter raid guide for the World of Warcraft patch 11.1.0! This guide covers everything you need to know to understand your character! Are you starting out and leveling up from 70? Check out the leveling guide!

• For Raiding I recommend Aldrachi Reaver as it offers more ST damage than Fel-Scarred, as well as greater overall survivability.

Tier Set

• 2-Set: Each time you take damage you have a chance to cast Metamorphosis for 4 sec and gain Luck of the Draw! which increases your damage dealt by 15% for 10sec.
• 4-Set: The hunt has a high chance to refresh its cooldown when you gain Luck of the Draw!

Opener

AoE

Defensive Cooldowns

• Metamorphosis
  • Metamorphosis is your biggest defensive cooldown and you should learn to plan around Metamorphosis usage to have a smoother time mitigating incoming damage. With 2 points in Rush of Chaos, Metamorphosis can become a 2 minute cooldown making it usable considerably more often.

• Fiery Brand
  • Fiery Brand debuffs the enemy to deal 40% reduced damage to you and is one of your most frequent defensive and offensive cooldowns. Normally, you want to use this spell on cooldown as it does very high damage, and can buff your other fire damage spells with Fiery Demise. However, hold this spell if there is a tank buster or mechanic that does a lot of damage and you need to save extra defensives to survive. With talents, it can be extended through Charred Flesh to last even longer than usual and have an additional charge as well as a shorter cooldown with Down in Flames.

• Fel Devastation
  • Demonic allows for this spell to become exceptionally strong since it gives Metamorphosis which is Vengeance Demon Hunter's strongest defensive cooldown. You want to use this spell almost off cooldown and plan your other defensives around it. You should hold Fel Devastation if there is a tank buster coming.
• Sigil of Flame
  • With Illuminated Sigils talented, Sigil of Flame becomes an important defensive cooldown. The 15% increased parry is very significant and is worth tracking Sigil of Flame debuff to make sure you know when it falls off.
• Darkness
  • Darkness lasts 8 seconds and causes all damage you or an ally take while inside the darkness to have a 15% chance of being negated completely. This is not great versus large single hits, but is good for lots of little hits, such as melee attacks. If you're not saving it for something in particular, you should go ahead and use it almost on cooldown because of the defensive benefits.

Offensive Cooldowns

• Sigil of Spite
  • Sigil of Spite deals a moderate amount of damage and generates 3 Soul Fragment, allowing you to cast Spirit Bomb more frequently. Use on cooldown with ideally at least 3 stacks of Frailty.

• The Hunt
  • A huge charge from 50 yards away, does big chaos damage and roots the target in place, applying a DoT that does additional chaos damage over 6 seconds up to 5 targets that were caught in the path of the charge. For maximum damage, you want to use this on cooldown with ideally at least 3 stacks of Frailty.
  • With Aldrachi Reaver this ability becomes very strong, as it procs Reaver's Glaive granting a very large damage bonus, as well as Soul Fragment generation.
• Metamorphosis
  • While you are in Metamorphosis during AoE, you want to Spirit Bomb at 3+ Soul Fragments instead of 4+. This is because every Fracture cast while you are in Metamorphosis gives you 3 Soul Fragments. Therefore, this allows you to:
    1. Fracture.
    2. Spirit Bomb.
    3. Fracture.
    4. Spirit Bomb.
  • This makes Fracture an incredibly high priority during Metamorphosis.
  • With Fel-Scarred, Metamorphosis becomes an insane DPS cooldown as it enhances many abilities and increases the base amount of damage the enhanced abilities do by a substantial amount.
    • Moreover, it gives Demonsurge damage that does large AoE damage around you, that also ramps in damage, increasing with each empowered ability cast.

Sigils

• Sigils are Demon Hunter specific abilities that are placed on the ground and then have a delay of 2 seconds before having an effect within an 8 yard radius.
  • Talenting into Quickened Sigils brings that delay down to 1 second.
  • They generate 1 Soul Fragment with Soul Sigils.
  • Demon Muzzle gives a small amount of Magic damage reduction.
  • Chains of Anger increases the duration of your sigils by 2 seconds and their radius by 2 yards.
  • Cycle of Binding grants you a 2 second cooldown reduction on all sigils when any sigil hits an enemy.
  • Illuminated Sigils grants 1 extra charge to Sigil of Flame.
  • Both Demon Muzzle and Cycle of Binding require you to affect a target with your Sigil. Therefore; Sigil of Silence, Sigil of Chains and Sigil of Misery used on a boss don't give you the benefits.

Cycling defensives on Vengeance Demon Hunter

• Vengeance Demon Hunter's active mitigation Demon Spikes has very low uptime, meaning that as Vengeance Demon Hunter you need to fill in the gaps with your other defensive cooldowns.
  • Metamorphosis, Demonic, Fiery Brand and Illuminated Sigils (if talented) are the main defensives used for this.
• An example of this is to Fel Devastation when Demon Spikes is about to end and then waiting with your next Demon Spikes for when Metamorphosis has ended.
• For cycling defensives, while Demon Spikes is our most available active defensive, players should be trying to maximize the uptime of Metamorphosis > Fiery Brand > Demon Spikes in that order.
  • This does mean that you end up overlapping and layering Demon Spikes with other defensives. The main goal is to make sure that you're not capping Demon Spikes charges either.
• This type of gameplay sets Vengeance Demon Hunter apart from other tanks since it needs to be done frequently in high-level content as taking damage with no defensive cooldown can spell disaster.

Frailty management

• Frailty is important to think about when managing DPS burst windows with The Hunt and Sigil of Spite.
  • Your goal is to have as many stacks as possible by using Soul Cleave a lot, which through Soulcrush gives Frailty.
• Another important thing to note is that because of the talent Void Reaver, Frailty stacks are important to track because of the added damage reduction. This can be especially important for min-maxing defensive usage as with high Frailty stacks, you can forego other defensives or have fewer than normal.
• Remember that with Soulcrush, Frailty from all sources stacks and Soul Cleave applies an additional stack of Frailty to your primary target.

Understanding Mechanics

Rotational min-maxing is just one aspect of mastering a specialization, but there are numerous other key mechanics that influence your performance. Use the following guides to improve them.

• Pandemic
• Spell Queue Window
• Stat Diminishing Returns

The following tips are mainly applicable to Heroic Bosses. Mythic tips are going to be released after our progression concludes.

← Scroll for more Bosses →

Understand your secondary stat priority and the tertiary stats needed for optimal performance raiding as a Vengeance Demon Hunter. For more detailed information, visit the Stats and Attributes guide.

Survivability

Damage

Reasons for Stats

Haste is always the most sought after Stat as it gives a high amount of damage, as well as cdr on Soul Fragment generating abilities and Demon Spikes, which gives a lot of survivability. In Raiding, you can't often get as much defensive value out of Critical Strike as you can with Versatility, especially because a lot of bosses have tank busters or abilities that cannot be parried. Therefore, Versatility is slightly better than Critical Strike for survivability in Raiding as well as more consistent which is something you value a lot in "Progress Raiding".

Moreover, currently, if you play Aldrachi Reaver Versatility scales exponentially with Incorruptible Spirit, allowing for some insane absorbs currently and creating an even bigger disparity between Versatility and Critical Strike.

• All secondary stats are affected by diminishing returns. Click here to learn more!

Tertiary Stats

• Avoidance - Slightly reduces damage taken from area of effect attacks. This can be certain tank abilities a boss does, as well as trash. Starts diminishing returns heavily at 20% (2000), but it has no cap.
• Leech - Causes a player to instantly return health from both outgoing damage and outgoing heals. Health returned is equal to your amount of Leech. For Example; 1 % of Leech gives health equal to 1% of damage and healing done.
• Speed - Increases movement speed.

In conclusion, Avoidance is what you should go for as a Vengeance Demon Hunter in raiding to min-max survivability as it gives you the greatest benefit in Raid over the other two tertiary stats. Leech is better on fights with lots of adds that are difficult to tank and live a long time.

Trinkets

Below you can find active and passive alternatives to our recommended trinkets. Do note that some trinkets are better than others depending on the raid boss.

Active Trinket alternatives

• Chromebustible Bomb Suit
  • Strongest on-use defensive trinket for Tanks
• Ringing Ritual Mud
  • A great alternative to Chromebustible Bomb Suit.
• Signet of the Priory
  • Provides you your highest secondary stat for 20 seconds which can be used in combination with Metamorphosis.

Passive Trinket alternatives

• Cinderbrew Stein
  • A defensive trinket that will passively give you absorb shields, as well as primary stat to you and your allies. Comes with a downside of giving a lot less primary stat in comparison to other trinkets of the same item level.
• Eye of Kezan
  • A good passive trinket that loses a lot of value in mythic+ because its stacks drop of from leaving combat which often occurs in dungeons.
• Tome of Light's Devotion
  • Passive trinket that has its biggest value offensively, make sure to always have the "The 50 Verses of Radiance" buff up.

Embellishments

• Adrenal Surge Clasp
  • Provides good passive Agility for the loss of some mastery.
• Writhing Armor Banding
  • Empowering your Adrenal Surge Clasp.
  • On Wrists, Boots, Waist, or Cloak depending on your available gear.

Remaining Sparks

• Crafted items are 675 item level and regular items are 678 on max item level, therefore, it's a small loss to equip crafted items outside of your 2x embellishments unless you don't have access to other high item level gear on that slot.

Simcraft

To find the best combination of gear available to you or identify the best possible upgrades, visit our Simcraft guide to learn how to utilize Simcraft easily and effectively.

• Phials
  • Flask of Tempered Swiftness -- overall best option for both DPS and Survivability
• Food
  • Feast of the Divine Day
• Combat Potion
  • Tempered Potion
  • Potion Bomb of Power -- group potion, this is a DPS loss for you.
• Health Potion
  • Algari Healing Potion
• Weapon Stone/Oil
  • Algari Mana Oil -- Crit + Haste
• Augment Rune
  • Crystallized Augment Rune
• Sockets
  • Quick Sapphire
  • Culminating Blasphemite -- Unique, use one of each gem colour to enhance your Blasphemite.
    • Quick Onyx
    • Quick Ruby
    • Versatile Emerald

Enchantments

In this section of the Vengeance Demon Hunter Raid Guide, we showcase and explain how impactful certain racials can be in World of Warcraft.

• Arcane Torrent -- Blood Elf
  • Strong racial to dispel or purge enemies, the value is very limited but sometimes can come in handy.
• Shadowmeld -- Night Elf
  • Also one of the most potent racials in Mythic+ historically.
  • Use-cases:
    • Run past basically any mob and then cast ‍Shadowmeld to make them reset. Even works on mobs that have stealth detection if you get enough distance before you ‍Shadowmeld.

Recommendation

I personally recommend Night Elf because of its use cases in Mythic+ which get more value out of as a player even as a Raider. The difference between both races in raiding is not very big at all, so you might as well play Night Elf for its bonuses in Mythic+.

Discover recommended macros for Vengeance Demon Hunter for Raids and watch a quick video guide on creating simple macros for your character.

Macro Import Guide Video

Taunt Macros

Taunt at Mouseover --- Mouseover macro for Torment (Taunt) that allows you to get aggro easily from targets that just come into view or spawn without having to change target. If you have nothing over mouseover it taunts your primary target.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,harm,nodead][]Torment

Boss 1 Taunt --- Casts Torment on Boss1

/cast [@boss1] Torment

Boss 2 Taunt --- Casts Torment on Boss2

/cast [@boss2] Torment

Cursor Macros

Sigil of Silence at cursor --- This makes it much faster to quickly use Sigil of Silence in any given scenario

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Sigil of Silence

Sigil of Chains at cursor --- This makes it much faster to quickly use Sigil of Chains in any given scenario

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Sigil of Chains

Sigil of Misery at cursor --- This makes it much faster to quickly use Sigil of Misery in any given scenario.

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Sigil of Misery

Sigil of Flame at cursor --- This makes it much faster to quickly use Sigil of Flame in any given scenario.

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Sigil of Flame

Sigil of Spite at cursor --- This makes it much faster to quickly use Sigil of Spite in any given scenario.

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Sigil of Spite

Infernal Strike at cursor --- This makes it much faster to quickly use Infernal Strike so that you can move around quicker and more effectively.

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Infernal Strike

Focus Macros

Focus Target Macro --- This is one of my favourite macro's that puts a target in focus on mouseover and also marks the target as "Cross" (red). This is a very very good macro to have for high level play and it also comes with an easy way to clear focus as well.

/focus [@mouseover,exists]
/run if not GetRaidTargetIndex("focus") then SetRaidTarget("focus",7) end
/clearfocus [@mouseover,noharm]

Focus Interupt --- This macro casts "Disrupt" or interrupts your focus target. It also interrupts your main target if your focus target is out of range or if you don't have a focus target. Very solid macro for general use play.

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus, harm, nodead] [] Disrupt

Focus Imprison --- Macro that puts your Imprison on focus target if you need to re-CC or stop your focus target.

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus, harm, nodead] [] Imprison

Utility Macros

Cancelaura macro --- Here is a very important macro that you want to fill with any buff that is an immunity that you would need to cancel in a given scenario. For example; you used a paladin's Blessing of Protection to get rid of a debuff quickly and need to cancel so that you can continue being the primary aggro target before your allies are tanking instead.

/cancelaura Blessing of Protection

Player Macros

Infernal Strike at Self--- Allows to instantly Infernal strike at the feet, which can be used to min max a bit more damage since Infernal Strike is off the GCD. This should not be done that often but it has its use cases.

#showtooltip
/cast [@player] Infernal strike

Below, you see a screenshot of the author's User Interface for their Vengeance Demon Hunter, outlining which addons are used and how they are utilized in Raids to make your life easier.

Addons

• Shadowed Unit Frames (SUF) -- Full User Interface replacement
  • Addon to replace your Unitframes and other UI Elements with a more clean look. Takes quite some time to configure but there are plenty of pre-done profiles that you can easily import and check out.
• BigWigs -- Generic Boss Mod
  • BigWigs is a boss encounter add-on. It consists of many individual encounter scripts, or boss modules; mini add-ons that are designed to trigger alert messages, timer bars, sounds, and so forth, for one specific raid encounter.
• Weakauras -- Jack of all trades
  • WeakAuras is a powerful and flexible framework that allows the display of highly customizable graphics on World of Warcraft's user interface to indicate buffs, debuffs, and other relevant information. This addon was created to be a lightweight replacement for Power Auras but has since introduced more functionalities while remaining efficient and easy to use.
• Plater -- Advanced Nameplates
  • Plater is a nameplate addon with an extraordinary amount of settings, out of the box debuff tracking, threat coloring, and support for scripting similar to WeakAuras and wago.io + the WeakAuras-Companion for Mod/Script/Profile updates.
• Details -- In-depth Damage Meter
  • Most powerful, reliable, handsome, damage meter for World of Warcraft.
• MRT -- Notes, Raid cooldowns, and more
  • Helpful addon for raiders, especially for raid leaders and officers.
• Echo Raid Tools -- Notes, Raid cooldowns, and more
  • Echo Raid Tools is a World of Warcraft addon designed by Echo Esports to enhance raiding efficiency. It offers "Echo Approved" WeakAuras for each raid boss accessible through an in-game Dungeon Journal interface, allowing easy import and customization.
• Bartender -- Action Bar Changer
  • Bartender4 is a comprehensive action bar replacement addon for World of Warcraft. It allows full customization of action bars, including scaling, alpha settings, and visibility based on macro conditions.

Weakauras

Soul Fragments

Soul Fragment Tracker for Vengeance Demon Hunter.

Patch 11.1.0

DEMON HUNTER

• Lost in Darkness has been redesigned – Spectral Sight has 5 second reduced cooldown and no longer reduces movement speed.
• Spectral Sight has been reworked:
  • No longer removed upon taking an action.
  • No longer removed when taking damage.
  • Now removed by loss-of-control effects.
  • Now Magic-dispelled.
  • Movement penalty reduced to 20% (was 30%).
• Immolation Aura damage increased by 6%.
• The Hunt damage increased by 8%.
• Sigil of Spite damage increased by 8%.
• Sigil of Flame damage increased by 6%.
• Imprison now breaks based on a small damage threshold instead of any damage.
• Activating Vengeful Retreat now enforces a brief cooldown for Felblade, similar to its behavior with Fel Rush.
• Activating Felblade shortly after activating Vengeful Retreat will now cancel Vengeful Retreat’s movement if Felblade’s target is too close to dash to it.
• Hero Talents
  • Aldrachi Reaver
    • Wounded Quarry has been updated – Expose weaknesses in the target of your Reaver's Mark, causing your Physical damage to any enemy to also deal 20% of the damage dealt to your marked target as Chaos, and sometimes shatter a Lesser Soul Fragment.
      • Developers' notes: We are mostly happy with Wounded Quarry's new effect in Undermine(d), but the soul generation component of its previous effect was important to the pacing of Aldrachi Reaver's gameplay and mechanics. In order to match the overall intended gameplay we are updating the damage effect to have a chance to generate a Lesser Soul Fragment.
    • Fixed an issue where Wounded Quarry damage was not scaling with some damage multipliers.
    • Fixed an issue where several abilities were double-dipping on Thrill of the Fight’s ability damage bonus.
    • Fixed an issue causing Wounded Quarry to double-dip with Thrill of the Fight's damage bonus and Mastery: Demonic Presence.
    • Fixed an issue causing Reaver's Glaive to double-dip with Thrill of the Fight.
  • Fel-Scarred
    • Demonsurge damage increased by 65% and now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.
    • Flamebound now increases Immolation Aura critical damage bonus by 50% (was 25%).
    • Student of Suffering bonus Mastery value reduced by 33% and duration reduced to 6 seconds (was 8 seconds).

• Vengeance
  • All ability damage increased by 20%.
    • Developers' notes: We have noticed damage dealt by tanks has not been keeping pace with damage dealers, we are adjusting damage of all tank specs to bring them into a closer alignment with DPS specs.
  • Burning Blood bonus to Fire damage reduced to 8% (was 10%).
  • Fiery Demise bonus to Fire damage dealt to targets affected by your Fiery Brand reduced to 15/30% (was 20/40%).
  • Demon Spikes duration increased to 8 seconds (was 6 seconds).
  • Cycle of Binding effect is now triggered by Sigil of Flame (was all Sigil skills) and reduces Sigil skill cooldowns by 5 seconds (was 2 seconds).
  • Fallout’s chance to generate Soul Fragments has been increased at lower target counts, with 1 guaranteed Soul Fragment generated when striking a single target. Maximum possible remains 5.
  • Feed the Demon is now a 1-point talent (was 2).
  • Feed the Demon now reduces the cooldown of Demon Spikes by 0.35 seconds per Soul Fragment consumed (was 0.25/0.5 seconds).
  • Fel-Scarred
    • Demonsurge damage reduced by 10%.
    • Burning Blades now deals 40% of listed ability damage over 6 seconds (was 35%).
    • Fixed an issue where Fel Devastation did not share a cooldown with Fel Desolation.

Q: How to get better at tanking?

The biggest tip I can give is to always figure out why you died in a given scenario and how you can improve. Tanking is tough, with constant opportunities to better use your externals, rotation, and defensives. Recording your gameplay and reviewing Warcraft Logs are great methods. Being good at tanking requires cognitive flexibility—focus on what you could have done better instead of blaming others. This mindset is more rewarding and healthier for becoming a better tank.

Credits

Written By: Nicememes

Reviewed By: Xerwo