This post was written by our Vengeance Demon Hunter guide writer Meyra.
Vengeance is Getting a Massive Overhaul in Midnight
The biggest change to Vengeance Demon Hunter going into Midnight is likely to be the introduction of the new Hero Talent tree Annihilator, which it shares with the newly introduced Devourer specialization. Focusing on generating strong 
Voidfall Meteors through 
Fracture casts and 
Metamorphosis to deal strong burst damage whenever you generate 3 meteors, called down via your spenders. The hero tree focuses a lot on increasing cooldown uptime, dealing large burst damage and increasing your defensiveness passively whenever you call down meteors.
Going into Midnight Vengeance is also seeing a pretty significant shift in defensive profile. Vengeance in The War Within is known for being very frail when entering combat and ramping into a defensive powerhouse once you have spent a fair time in combat. Midnight completely flips the script with practically all ramp-up effects converted into effects you will have available the moment you enter combat. This is likely going to make Vengeance a far more approachable tank for newer players while removing many risks that even experienced players faced.
The Rotation Feels Similar, But Everything Hits Harder
Right now, Vengeance is both very similar and quite different from how it has been in the last few expansions. The offensive rotation is not likely to change much with the exception of both 
Spirit Bomb and 
Soul Cleave dealing increased damage for each Soul Fragment they consume, which will make managing your Soul Fragments more important. Defensively a lot more is changing. Frailty and 
Painbringer, two passive defensive talents which were stackable to the point where Vengeance became extremely tanky without even a major cooldown active, are reduced to weaker versions that apply instantly without stacking, which will reduce overall defensiveness but increase stability when entering combat. Another notable change is that the damage reduction of 
Fiery Brand now applies to yourself and not the enemies affected by it, which means you no longer need to wait 10-15 seconds in large Mythic+ pulls to get 40% damage reduction against everything, you get it instantly. It is also the first time in the almost 10 years since Vengeance was introduced where we have access to a tool that actually mitigates environmental damage. All of this is a very welcome upgrade to Vengeance’s defensive toolkit.
The Apex talents introduced in Midnight will reshape certain parts of how we interact with our kit. It effectively has two separate, strong interactions which will affect our gameplay. The most notable is that whenever we consume souls with either Spirit Bomb or Soul Cleave a second charge of Metamorphosis can be activated, granting Metamorphosis for 10 seconds, activating all connected talents and effects.
Whenever this effect fails to activate we gain a stacking Agility buff that increases the chance to activate the Metamorphosis buff. The second part of the Apex nodes makes both Soul Cleave and Spirit Bomb consume 1 more soul, and increases the damage increase from each Soul consumed. Notably our maximum Soul Fragment go up from 5 to 6, allowing Spirit Bomb to consume 6 Soul Fragments and Soul Cleave 3. This might seem like an issue due to offering random uptime on defensives, however in testing it feels pretty dynamic with the proc chance seemingly going up a lot as you gain more stacks of the Agility buff.
The most notable change to the base rotation will be the classic rotational talent Spirit Bomb being converted to a 25-second cooldown burst ability, with its cooldown reduced by Haste, and our other spender, Soul Cleave, finally returning to an uncapped ability, something it has not been since a brief period during the Shadowlands expansion. By making Spirit Bomb into a cooldown it solves a rotational conflict Vengeance has had for the better part of the last two expansions, where it was often hard to determine which spender to use in which situation depending on tuning.
A new talent that will have a pretty large impact is 
Vengeful Beast, increasing the duration of Metamorphosis by 5 seconds, making it last 20 seconds, and increasing the damage of Fracture, Spirit Bomb and Soul Cleave by 20% during its duration. Coupled with our new Apex talents which grants extra uptime of Metamorphosis and the capstone of the Annihilator tree 
World Killer reducing the cooldown of Metamorphosis whenever a set of meteors are called down we’ll likely see fairly high uptime on this increased damage. This might be a controversial change, as some players have expressed frustration with most of Vengeance’s defensive cooldowns being very offensively loaded, especially as Fel-Scarred during The War Within, which this talent further leans into.
To counteract all this extra uptime on Metamorphosis a very beloved talent in 
Demonic is going away. Without it 
Fel Devastation now feels questionable in our gameplay, and I reckon we will need to see if there will be more tuning to give it a place in our toolkit, since Demonic has been the majority of the power in the spell previously.
One of the last major changes is the removal of the talent 
Illuminated Sigils, introduced in Dragonflight. This talent saw several nerfs across its lifespan and at the end gave access to two charges of 
Sigil of Flame with reduced cooldown granting 12% parry. This is likely to have some effect on our defensive stat distribution. Critical Strike and the Parry it gives have been very potent alongside Haste for several patches, but with this it will likely fall behind Haste and land closer to Versatility. Mastery, despite a buff, will likely remain weak defensively. As usual a very large part of our kit scales well offensively and defensively with Haste, including feedback loops with our Apex talents and Annihilator.
Can These Changes Finally Get Vengeance into Raids?
While it’s hard to say this early in Alpha how a spec will perform long term, a lot of the current changes will amend long standing problems Vengeance has had in Mythic+, while leaving room for potentially dealing good damage in Raid environments.
Historically Vengeance has seen very little Raid usage, and been primarily a Mythic+ tank, and unfortunately all these changes are unlikely to have significant impact on that. Getting a raid slot will likely be hard with the limited slots due to raid buffs, especially sharing a class with the new Devourer spec and the already popular Havoc. It will be dependent on dealing significantly more damage than other tanks and the other two Demon Hunter specs falling behind the competition.
On the Mythic+ side many of the changes might make it a more consistent spec while also dealing really potent damage. Many newer players will find it more approachable and the high defensive uptime should make it fairly consistent against both trash and bosses. A negative change is that 
Sigil of Chains now replaces 
Sigil of Misery, reducing our utility. If tuned well offensively and defensively it might still see some use, however once again, it will depend on how strong the other two specs are, especially with how much focus there is on bringing group buffs in Mythic+.
Blizzard Made Vengeance Simpler, But Not Everyone’s Happy
Blizzard’s main goal with the changes to Vengeance seems to be primarily focused on making the defensive aspects more approachable, intuitive and frontloaded, as well as making the rotation simpler to approach and less confusing to optimize. Overall they seem to have delivered fairly well on these points as well. While the changes will shift vengeance’s profile back towards how it was before the changes we got at the launch of Dragonflight, I don’t necessarily think that is a bad thing.
One major aspect that I do believe a fair amount of players will have complaints about, is that Vengeance still lacks any pure offensive or defensive cooldowns, all of our major abilities somewhat function as both. This has been a core part of Vengeance identity for the last few years, and while many players enjoy this, it makes us stand out compared to other tanks which makes it annoying for players that prefer having them separate, as using your defensive cooldowns aggressively can lead to a frustrating lack of control.
Personally I think the abundance of uptime we will have on both Metamorphosis and Fiery Brand will let you cover most situations anyways, and the extra charges offered by Apex talents and Down in Flames, respectively. But I imagine time will tell a bit more. Although the loss of Demonic might make people feel like they have less control, despite having higher uptime.
The Spirit Bomb Fix We’ve Waited Years For
Going into Midnight, I only really had a couple major things I hoped for. The first was for a clearer relationship between Spirit Bomb and Soul Cleave (including suggesting making Spirit Bomb a cooldown for the last few months prior to the Alpha) and I was pleasantly surprised to see it solved in a way that makes both buttons feel better to use. The second major thing I was hoping for was for Annihilator to be cool, and while I had hoped for a more impactful animation to the meteors the overall gameplay experience with the Hero Talents have, for the most part, been a pleasant surprise.
As someone that has been around since before we leaned so heavily into Sigils I remember the time when Sigil of Flames was just a tool to help set up pulls, and I am probably less sad than many newer players to see it take a bit of a back seat again. But I will likely agree with many that the loss of Demonic will feel bad, despite likely not being that big of a deal power-wise. It was just such an iconic part of Vengeance to press Fel Devastation and enter Demon Form.
Another misgiving is that while they addressed many of our weak talents, giving some, like Perfectly Balanced Glaive, a glow-up, we still have a couple of talents so weak that you can effectively be summarized as having zero value. These nodes, mainly Feast of Souls and Retaliation, are still sore spots in interesting pathing points, which absolutely feels bad to see still in the tree without any changes.
Why This Might Be the Best Version of Vengeance Yet
Overall my personal opinion of the changes are largely positive. Most new and changed talents and interactions are either good, or at least healthy for the spec long term. Annihilator and the new Apex talents synergize well (maybe too well) and feel remarkably smooth to play with. There is something very satisfying getting an Apex proc, resetting Spirit Bomb and getting 3 fresh meteors to further the feedback cycle with your normal Metamorphosis cooldown being reduced.
I will be enjoying Vengeance in this format, hoping that some of the problems I’ve mentioned are being iterated on to fix some of the few holes in the spec. I will still worry that many players will find it harder than necessary to find invites to content despite several good changes and a spec that plays well simply because we are the class with the new spec for the expansion. Granted, we have still not gotten any iteration on Aldrachi Reaver at all, and still lack information about our tier set, so it is probably way too soon to be in shambles because of anything yet.
