Vengeance Demon Hunter Tank Spec, Builds, and Talents — Shadowlands 9.2.5

Level	Choices
15	✓ Abyssal Strike	✓ Agonizing Flames	✗ Felblade
25	✗ Feast of Souls	✓ Fallout	✓ Burning Alive
30	✓ Infernal Armor	✓ Charred Flesh	✓ Spirit Bomb
35	✗ Soul Rending	✓ Feed the Demon	✓ Fracture
40	✗ Concentrated Sigils	✓ Quickened Sigils	✓ Sigil of Chains
45	✗ Void Reaver	✓ Demonic	? Soul Barrier
50	✓ Last Resort	✗ Ruinous Bulwark	✗ Bulk Extraction

Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area (such as an inn or a capital city). Moreover, Tome of the Still Mind and Codex of the Still Mind can be used to temporarily allow players to change talents anywhere, as long as they are out of combat.

1. Level 15: Agonizing Flames or Abyssal Strike
2. Level 25: Fallout or Burning Alive
3. Level 30: Spirit Bomb
4. Level 35: Fracture
5. Level 40: Sigil of Chains or Quickened Sigils (for Kyrian)
6. Level 45: Demonic
7. Level 50: Last Resort

1. Level 15: Agonizing Flames or Abyssal Strike
2. Level 25: Burning Alive
3. Level 30: Charred Flesh or Infernal Armor
4. Level 35: Fracture
5. Level 40: Sigil of Chains or Quickened Sigils (for Kyrian)
6. Level 45: Demonic
7. Level 50: Last Resort

For more in-depth detail about Mythic+ or raiding, please visit the links below.

✔ Abyssal Strike

✔ Agonizing Flames

✘ Felblade

• Abyssal Strike reduces the cooldown of Infernal Strike by 8 seconds and creates Sigil of Flame at the players location.
• Agonizing Flames increases your movement speed by 20% while Immolation Aura is active, and also increases its duration by 50%.
• Felbladeis an active ability with a 15-second cooldown (reduced by Haste) that charges your target and deals Fire damage to them. It generates 40 Fury, and using Shear or Fracture has a chance to reset Felblade's cooldown.

Abyssal Strike is the go-to talent for all situations where movement is the highest priority. It provides the highest mobility for pulling trash or kiting.

Agonizing Flames coupled with Charred Flesh will increase the duration of Fiery Brand by an additional 1.5 seconds. This is the go-to talent for a pure defensive Mythic+ build. While using the Vengeance DH 4-Piece bonus from the Sepulcher of the First Ones, the extension of Immolation Aura may not be needed if enough souls are consumed while actively tanking.

Felblade is the weakest choice in this tier. It is gap closer that generates 40 Fury. Vengeance is not normally constrained by Fury, which makes this ability not very enticing.

In summary, Abyssal Strike will be taken in the majority of situations requiring movement. Agonizing Flames is the go-to talent in all other situations prior to obtaining the Vengeance DH 4-Piece bonus. If the uptime of Immolation Aura is near 100% from the 4-piece, the value of this talent is greatly diminished.

✘ Feast of Souls

✔ Fallout

✔ Burning Alive

• Feast of Souls causes Soul Cleave to also place a 6-second HoT on you in addition to the instant healing it provides.
• Fallout causes the initial damage burst of Immolation Aura to have a chance of shattering Lesser Soul Fragments from enemies.
• Burning Alive causes your Fiery Brand to spread to another nearby target every 2 seconds. Note that only the initial application of Fiery Brand can spread to other targets.

Fallout is generally the best talent in this tier. It provides the most healing and DPS out of the row, as well as scaling with mob count.

Feast of Souls provides a very small amount of self healing, as well as not having an amazing uptime due to Soul Cleave being used only as a Fury dump.

Burning Alive is the go-to choice for the Mythic+ survival build.

In summary, Fallout will be taken in most situations. Burning Alive will be used in the Fiery Brand survival build.

✔ Infernal Armor

✔ Charred Flesh

✔ Spirit Bomb

• Infernal Armor is a passive ability that causes your Immolation Aura to increase your armor by 20% and causes Fire damage to attackers.
• Charred Flesh increases the duration of Fiery Brand by 0.5 seconds for each tick of Immolation Aura.
• Spirit Bomb is an active ability that consumes all Soul Fragments in a 25-yard radius around you, causing them to also explode and deal damage to nearby enemies, affecting them with the Frailty debuff for 20 seconds. You heal for 10% of the damage you deal to enemies affected by Frailty. This will do reduced damage to any targets over 5.

Charred Flesh is the go-to talent for the Mythic+ Fiery Brand build.

Spirit Bomb is the go-to talent when the extra survival from the Fiery Brand build is not needed. Spirit Bomb is soft capped at 5 targets and causes Fire damage that is not mitigated by armor. Besides damage, this talent absorbs up to 5 soul fragments at once, which is a large burst heal.

Infernal Armor scales based on your current armor when Immolation Aura is cast. It does scale with Demon Spikes and Metamorphosis. This talent is interchangeable with Charred Flesh in Mythic+ for defensive builds.

In summary, Spirit Bomb will be taken in most situations where the extra survivability for Mythic+ is not needed.

✘ Soul Rending

✔ Feed the Demon

✔ Fracture

• Soul Rending is a passive ability that grants you 5% Leech passively and 25% additional Leech while Metamorphosis is active.
• Feed the Demon is a passive ability that reduces the remaining cooldown of Demon Spikes by 0.5 second for each Soul Fragment you consume.
• Fracture is an active ability that deals Physical damage to your target and creates 2 Lesser Soul Fragments. Fracture generates 25 Fury and has 2 charges, with a 4.5-second cooldown. (Reduced by Haste)

Fracture is the go-to talent for DPS as well as being decent for survival. It is very good at on-demand Soul and Fury generation, providing slightly more "control" to your gameplay.

Feed the Demon is the best for overall damage reduction and if you need more Demon Spikes uptime. This is the go to pick in Raid for survival, but is lackluster in dungeons compare to Fracture.

Soul Rending is the weakest option in the row and will never see play.

In summary, take Feed the Demon for raid or Mythic+ survival, otherwise use Fracture.

✘ Concentrated Sigils

✔ Quickened Sigils

✔ Sigil of Chains

• Concentrated Sigils passively causes all your Sigils to be targeted at your location, and increases the duration of their effects by 2 seconds.
• Quickened Sigils passively causes all sigils to activate 1 second faster, and also reduces their cooldowns by 20%.
• Sigil of Chains is an active ability with a 90-second cooldown. It places a sigil at the target location, which activates after 2 seconds. Any enemies located in the sigil area at that time are pulled to its center and snared, having their movement speed reduced by 70% for 6 seconds.

Sigil of Chains is a very strong utility for Mythic+ as well as certain raid encounters. It is the go-to in Mythic+ and any boss where the grip can be utilized. It allows you to group up enemies and can be used to interrupt casts, including some of those you cannot interrupt with Disrupt.

Concentrated Sigils is taken when you want to maximize DPS with Sigil of Flame, and are not interested in the utility provided by the other sigils. This is for Raid DPS when Kyrian is not the Covenant choice.

Quickened Sigils will lower the cooldown of Elysian Decree when using the Kyrian Covenant. This provides a good damage increase and should be the default choice when running as Kyrian.

In summary, take Sigil of Chains for dungeons or bosses where you want to utilize the grip. Otherwise use Concentrated Sigils for DPS in raid.

✘ Void Reaver

✔ Demonic

? Soul Barrier

• Void Reaver provides a 6% damage reduction for 12 seconds when you hit an enemy with Soul Cleave.
• Demonic is a passive ability that triggers Metamorphosis for 6 seconds after channeling Fel Devastation. This talent will give a total of 8 seconds in Metamorphosis, due to the 2 seconds worth of channeling from Fel Devastation.
• Soul Barrier is an active ability with a 30-second cooldown. You place a damage absorption shield on yourself that lasts for 12 seconds. Each time you consume a Soul Fragment while the shield is active, more damage absorption is added to it. Using Soul Barrier consumes all Soul Fragments within 25 yards.

Void Reaver is an alright defensive ability. This talent provides a consistent 6% damage mitigation with almost an 100% uptime. The issue with the talent is that 6% damage reduction is normally not enough to make a difference in the overall picture. A well timed Demonic proc can save your life, whereas Void Reaver cannot.

Demonic is the best choice in this tier. A 6-second on-demand Metamorphosis is very strong in both Raids and Mythic+.

Soul Barrier is a hard talent to use efficiently. This talent has the potential of being strong if you are able to feed extra souls into the shield prior to it breaking. In challenging content, this can be very difficult. With a 30-second cooldown, it is possible to use this talent in very creative ways to improve survivability.

In summary, Demonic will be taken in M+ and raids in almost every situation.

✔ Last Resort

✘ Ruinous Bulwark

✘ Bulk Extraction

• Last Resort passively triggers Metamorphosis and returns you to 30% health if you take fatal damage (up to 200% of your total health). This effect can only occur once every 8 minutes, and it is not affected by the cooldown of your Metamorphosis (it will still trigger if Metamorphosis is on cooldown, and it does not trigger the cooldown when it procs). If Metamorphosis is active when Last Resort procs, its duration will simply be refreshed.
• Ruinous Bulwark makes Fel Devastation heal for an additional 15% and 50% of its overhealing is converted into an absorb shield for 10 seconds.
• Bulk Extraction is an active ability with a 1.5-minute cooldown that deals Fire damage to nearby enemies and extracts a lesser soul fragment from each enemy up to 5 and instantly consumes them.

Last Resort is the go-to talent for all content. It can save wipes and avoid using a combat res. You can also use it to avoid abilities, in some cases. It is also a nice choice when you are not familiar with the content.

Ruinous Bulwark is the weakest choice in this tier. Fel Devastation normally will not overheal in challenging content, which makes the shield not exist. Assuming you are able to get a good shield from the overheal, the go-to talent from tier 45 is Demonic, so you will have a shield for when you are already in Metamorphosis, which is when you are at your strongest defensively. Overall, this is a bad talent.

Bulk Extraction is also a weak talent, because it is on a 1.5-minute cooldown. It does not do enough damage or healing for the cooldown it is given. This may become a good choice if the cooldown was lowered to 45 seconds.

In summary, take Last Resort for all content.

For an in-depth guide on the rotation and how these talents fit into your priority, please visit the rotation page using the link below.

In Battle for Azeroth, there will be the option to go into "War Mode". Enabling War Mode provides the following benefits:

• Grants access to PvP talents in the open world.
• 10% increase in World Quest rewards at max level.
• 10% more experience gained while leveling.
• Earn Conquest Points which can reward gear every week.

With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will enable yourself for open world PvP and the possibility, so be aware of hostile enemy players who could interfere with you, and this is a risk you will have to take.

Generally, the selections are made to optimize your ability to kill enemies faster, increasing your pace when moving through content.

1. Everlasting Hunt is a passive ability that increases your movement speed by 15% for 3 seconds when dealing damage. This ability is designed to move from pack to pack quickly and more efficiently.
2. Jagged Spikes reflects damage back to the attacker for 30% of the damage received when Demon Spikes is active.
3. Illidan's Grasp crowd controls 1 target for 6 seconds. If the ability is activated again, throw the target at a location within 40 yards and stun everything in the target area for 3 seconds. This ability provides additional crowd control and is fun to use.
4. Tormentor debuffs the target when taunted, applying the Focused Assault debuff, which increases the damage received by 3%. Your melee attacks refresh the duration of Focused Assault. Each unique target up to 5 that hits the target will stack Focused Assault by an additional 3%. This ability will provide a decent single-target damage buff in a party.
5. Detainment increases the duration of Imprison by 2 seconds and makes the imprisoned target immune to damage and healing. This talent is amazing for arena and battlegrounds, but it should not be picked for leveling. Imprisoning a target while using this talent will put you into combat and prevents monster skipping in PvE content.
6. Unending Hatred increases Fury generation based on magic damage received. Larger attacks will increase Fury generation. This talent is quite situational and should not be used in normal content.
7. Cleansed by Flame removes all magical effects when you cast Immolation Aura. This talent is situational but it can be very strong depending on the situation.
8. Demonic Trample transforms you into a demon and increases your movement speed by 175%. Any enemy hit with the trample will be knocked and receive physical damage. You are immune to snares while trampling. Demonic Trample shares cooldown with Infernal Strike. This ability is very strong in battlegrounds to remove snares and for a pseudo crowd control with the knockdown.
9. Sigil Mastery reduces the cooldown of sigils by 25%. This talent should not be used.