Vengeance Demon Hunter Tank Stat Priority — The War Within (11.1.5)

The defensive stat priority for Vengeance Demon Hunter is as follows:

1. Agility;
2. Haste/Critical Strike;
3. Versatility/Mastery;

Your stat priority extends to enchants and consumables, as well as gear. For an in-depth look at the best gear for the current tier or enchants, consumables, and simulations, please visit the links below.

There are not any set stat numbers to shoot for. You do not go for a certain percentage of anything. For DPS, it is recommended that you simulate the gear you have to help figure out which stats gives you the most damage.

For survival, you will want to prioritize item level beyond all, with a rough priority of secondary stats as above while still maintaining a roughly equal spread of stats.

Entering season two of The War Within, you will still have significantly lower amounts of secondary stats available compared to previous expansions, but you may still reach diminishing returns if you have gear which only focuses on one stat. Diminishing returns for each stat starts at the points in the list below.

• Haste: 19800 Rating
• Critical Strike: 21000 Rating
• Mastery: 21000 Rating
• Versatility: 23400 Rating

As you should not simply go based on the stat priority above; instead, here are a few general rules for stats versus item level.

1. You cannot get universal stat weights for survivability.
2. A 5+ item level increase almost always means the new item is worth equipping.
3. At a 3-item level difference, choose the item that better fits the stat priority or just go for item level; the difference will likely be very small.
4. Rings/necks, tier sets, and trinkets do not follow these rules outside of big gaps in item level.
5. Always gem/enchant for your best stat.

These statistics have been obtained by combining common sense, in-game testing, and simulations using SimulationCraft.

Agility increases your Attack Power, Dodge chance, and Baseline Armor of Demon Spikes, as well as Armor via Mastery: Fel Blood.

Haste reduces the global cooldown (until you reach 100% Haste) and also reduces the cooldown of Demon Spikes, Immolation Aura, Felblade, and Fracture. Scales well, with many of our talents gaining significantly more value from having higher Soul Fragment generation. It also increases the rate of your Auto-attacks, which is relevant for Aldrachi Reaver since it increases the amount of souls generated by Wounded Quarry.

Mastery: Fel Blood increases your Attack Power and the amount of Armor you gain from Demon Spikes based on your Agility. Will increase your Armor by half the amount when Demon Spikes is not active.

Critical Strike increases the chance for your damaging abilities to be twice as effective. Your Critical Strike rating is also converted into Parry rating. Shattered Souls can not critically heal for twice the amount, but some other minor self-healing effects can. Critical Strike interacts with the talent Volatile Flameblood to generate extra Fury from Immolation Aura. Critical Strike scales incredibly well defensively with flat Parry effects such as Demon Spikes and Illuminated Sigils. If you are playing Down in Flames instead of Illuminated Sigils the defensive value of Critical Strike reduce marginally.

Versatility increases all your damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken.

Most encounters have abilities that cannot be mitigated or avoided. Also, you need to have a decent amount of health, in order to give yourself the chance to be healed before a subsequent attack kills you. As such, you need a minimum amount of Stamina. This amount will, in most cases, simply come from the Stamina found innately on your gear. Therefore, item level is the determining factor in keeping your health pool growing.