Vengeance Demon Hunter Tank Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Shadowlands 9.2.5

The rotation for Vengeance Demon Hunters is based on the following priority, and it is very straightforward, but keep in mind that this does not account for your active mitigation, which we discuss below.

For beginner players who want an easier guide to get started, please visit the Easy Mode page linked below.

The rotation is centered around keeping your strongest abilities on cooldown while maximizing your Soul generation and spending for damage and healing.

1. Sinful Brand if Venthyr.
2. The Hunt if Night Fae.
3. Fel Devastation on cooldown.
4. If Kyrian, use Elysian Decree. If a wave is almost dead, the best practice is to save it for the next pull.
5. Spirit Bomb if 4 or more Souls are active, or if 3 or more Souls are active and you have Metamorphosis up.
6. Immolation Aura if you will not cap on Fury/Souls. With the Vengeance DH 2-Piece this will generate more souls based on targets hit. Maximizing uptime will greatly increase healing and damage if using Spirit Bomb.
7. Fracture if you will not cap on Fury/Souls (also make sure not to cap on charges) and you have Fracture talented. Use Shear if Fracture is not talented.
8. Soul Cleave after Spirit Bomb if you have no means to generate more Souls, or when you need to dump Fury while not playing with Spirit Bomb.
9. Use Sigil of Flame to fill globals with nothing else to use. If you are Kyrian and you are using the Razelikh's Defilement Legendary Power, do not ever use Sigil of Flame
10. Shear as a filler/if you will not cap on Fury/Souls and you do not have Fracture talented.
11. Throw Glaive as a filler.

In addition to these abilities, you should also make use of Infernal Strike (which is off the global cooldown) to deal additional damage. We recommend always keeping at least 1 charge in reserve, however, unless the fight requires no movement whatsoever, in which case you can use up both charges.

Keep in mind that Fiery Brand is, above all, a defensive cooldown and it should not be used offensively unless you can afford to do so.

As a Vengeance Demon Hunter, you have one active mitigation ability, Demon Spikes, and one defensive ability Fiery Brand. We will look at them very briefly here before going into more detail later on in the guide.

• Demon Spikes should be used frequently to avoid big Physical damage, even simply against auto-attacks. Always keep at least one of its charges rolling.
• Fiery Brand should be placed on the target when you anticipate that they will deal high damage to you, or when you simply want to reduce the damage you take (whether Physical or Magic).

As a Vengeance Demon Hunter, you have two defensive cooldowns.

Metamorphosis increases your current and maximum health by 50%, and your Armor by 200% for 15 seconds. It also enhances your Shear and Fracture to generate 1 extra soul and 20 extra Fury. It has a 3-minute cooldown and no cost.

The talent Demonic will make Fel Devastation grant 8 seconds of Metamorphosis when you press it, making it a very potent defensive cooldown, especially when paired with Vengeance DH 4-Piece to allow frequent usage.

Metamorphosis works best proactively to increase your health in preparation for damage, and should not be used reactively as an emergency cooldown if possible.

Torment is your only taunting ability. It only works on a single target and has an 8-second cooldown. It forces the target to attack you for 3 seconds, and also increases the threat you generate against that target for the same duration.

The above rotations and ability usage will allow you to perform very well as a Vengeance Demon Hunter. However, there are several concepts that deserve further explanation.

The guide as a whole provides the keys to a mixed style of both offensive and defensive gain. This section is if you want to forego any offense for defense.

There are 2 main things that can be changed to maximize defense. We explain these strategies below.

The first involves taking Feed the Demon. This increases your active mitigation uptime, while decreasing your "burst healing" (that you would gain through Fracture 2 Souls at a time).

It is overall smoother, though how much smoother is heavily fight-dependent. This style is heavily reliant on Soul consumption and Haste. It will scale very well with Haste as it double dips via lower global cooldown and Demon Spikes cooldown reduction. So, this may not be heavily relevant at the beginning of the expansion, but may be later on, after more gear is acquired.

An optional thing you can do is to spam Shear. If you do this, you will reduce your DPS and threat generation by a large amount, but will have a slightly higher possible survival output. This allows you to generate maximum Souls for maximum Demon Spikes uptime and maximal healing from Souls. This is not recommended for general use, and only when you do not need to worry about DPS or aggro.

Demonic replaced Gluttony in Shadowlands. Demonic will trigger Metamorphosis for 8 seconds when Fel Devastation is cast. Fel Devastation should be used on cooldown to make full use of the Vengeance DH 4-Piece set bonus.

Vengeance Demon Hunters use a resource called Fury. It is very similar in functionality to Warriors' and Guardian Druids' Rage. For you to properly master your Demon Hunter, you must understand how Fury works.

The Fury bar has a maximum capacity of 100, and is empty by default. Fury decays at a rate of 1 per second when out of combat. In combat, Fury does not decay. Fury comes from a variety of sources, as follows.

• Immolation Aura generates 20 Fury over its 6-second duration.
• Shear generates 10 Fury per cast.
• Successfully interrupting a spell with Disrupt generates 30 Fury.
• Purging a target with Consume Magic provides 20 Fury.

Mastery: Fel Blood increase the Physical damage reduction provided by Demon Spikes and also increases your attack power. The actual increase amounts depend on how much Mastery you have.

Soul Fragments are a unique Vengeance Demon Hunter mechanic. The baseline ability comes from the Shattered Souls passive.

When you kill a target, there is a chance that a Soul Fragment will be created. This is an orb that is placed on the ground at a nearby location, which persists for up to 20 seconds. If you walk over it, you will consume the Soul Fragment, and be healed for a certain amount (348.075%% of your attack power in health). Only you can see and interact with your Soul Fragments.

Moreover, if a Soul Fragment comes from a Demon target, consuming it will also increase your damage done by 20% for 15 seconds.

In addition to these Soul Fragments, there are also Lesser Soul Fragments. These have a chance to be created when you damage targets with Shear, or with Immolation Aura (provided that you have the Fallout talent), and using the Fracture talent also generates 2 Lesser Soul Fragments each time it is used. They work in exactly the same way, but they heal for 6% of damage taken in the last 5 seconds, or a minimum of 1% of your Maximum Health.

It is worth noting that each Soul Fragment or Lesser Soul Fragment you generate if you already have 5 active will be instantly consumed. Moreover, Spirit Bomb will consume all Soul Fragments within 25 yards.

In this section, we will go into more detail about some of the abilities mentioned above, as well as cover a number of other useful Vengeance Demon Hunter abilities.

Infernal Strike is off the global cooldown, and deals damage on impact. It should be used on cooldown as much as possible, though charges should be saved if movement is required.

Throw Glaive is a ranged attack that deals a small amount of damage and generates a high amount of threat on its target, and which can bounce to up to 2 additional targets within 10 yards, damaging them as well.

Normally, this ability is not worth using in your rotation, however when you take the Fracture talent, you will use this ability as a filler. The only reason to use Throw Glaive otherwise is to pick up new targets (such as adds that have just spawned) from afar.

Consume Magic simply purges one buff from an enemy and provides you with 20 Fury if you successfully do so.

Disrupt is a simple ranged single target interrupt with a 15-second cooldown. Successfully interrupting a spell generates 30 Fury. It should be used as often as possible to benefit from the Fury it grants.

Sigils are abilities that you cast a targeted location on the ground, and which produce an effect at that location 2 seconds later.

Sigil of Flame deals Fire damage to all enemies in the Sigil, and places a 6-second Fire damage DoT on them as well.

Sigil of Chains pulls all enemies to the center of the Sigil and snares them, reducing their movement speed by 70% for 6 seconds. Note that this is a talent.

Sigil of Misery causes all enemies in the Sigil to cower in fear, being disoriented for up to 20 seconds. This acts as an interrupt against non-boss targets, since being feared will cause them to stop their cast.

Sigil of Silence silences all enemies in the Sigil for 6 seconds.