Vengeance Demon Hunter Tank Guide — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

The Midnight Pre-Patch brings with it the majority of changes for the Midnight expansion, which means that a lot of things will change both regarding talents and abilities. Down below you will be a breakdown of changes that will impact the spec on a broader level, which excludes tuning changes that are simply numerical.

• There have been several baseline updates to our Hero Talents.
  
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  2.1.

  Aldrachi Reaver

  • Sigil of Spite now activates Art of the Glaive instead of The Hunt, which is no longer available forVengeance Demon Hunter.
  • New Talent: Broken Spirit - Sigil of Spite spawns an additional Soul Fragment, and casting Soul Cleave has a chance to spawn a Soul Fragment.
  • New Talent: Keen Edge - All Physical damage is increased and Reaver's Glaive damage is increased Further.
  • New Talent: Bladecraft - Reaver's Mark to stack up to 3 times, and finishing your Reaver's Glaive combo with Fracture puts 3 stacks of Reaver's Mark, and finishing the combo with Soul Cleave grants 12 slashes instead of 6 from Fury of the Aldrachi.
  • Thrill of the Fight now increases Reaver's Glaive damage by 30% and grants 6% Haste for 30 seconds. Does not stack.

  
  

  2.2.

  Annihilator

  Annihilator replaces Fel-Scarred as our second Hero Talent option. It plays around Voidfall, a buff we build up with Fracture and releases with our spenders to deal massive damage to enemies and reduce the cooldown of Metamorphosis through World Killer.

  Most of the remaining Hero Talents can be broken into a couple categories such as; buffs to abilities like Fracture, stat buffs linked to our Voidfall stacks, buffs and effects tied to Metamorphosis, and simple buffs to Voidfall damage.

• There have aslo been changes to both active and passive parts of our defensive toolkit.
  
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  • Fiery Brand now applies a buff to us which reduces all damage taken by 40%, instead of being reliant on the DoT effect to reduce enemy damage done.
  • Passive talents Painbringer and Frailty no longer have the option to stack, instead the baseline values are stronger to give more upfront defensive value without being reliant on ramping.
  • Demon Spikes now has the Parry built into the base spell, a longer duration and only a single baseline charge with the second locked in the Class Talent Tree. Feed the Demon is buffed and more easily available and functionally guarantees full uptime.
  • Demonic has been removed for Vengeance, making Fel Devastation more of a damage ability.
  • Soul Barrier have been reworked to a passive talent which gives a shield based on Soul Fragments consumed by Spirit Bomb.
• Our offensive toolkit has also seen some changes.
  
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  • Spirit Bomb is now on a hasted 25-second cooldown, and deals flat damage which increases based on the amount of Soul Fragments consumed by it.
  • Soul Cleave is now uncapped and hits more than 5 enemies, damage is also increased based on the amount of Soul Fragments consumed.
  • Vengeful Beast increases the duration of Metamorphosis and increases the damage of some of our core rotational abilities while it is active.
• There have been some changes to some of our Utility Spells.
  
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  • Sigil of Chains now replaces Sigil of Misery instead of being a separate spell.
  • Focused Ire brings a longer stun to our main target.
  • Burn It Out and Soul Cleanse offers ways to dispel ourselves from Diseases and Curses respectively.
  • Wings of Wrath increases our Glide speed when talented, which could potentially enable us to do certain skips or reach places we would not be able to without it.