Undocumented Sigil Changes - Vengeance Demon Hunter Class Changes and Tier Set Review
Our Vengeance Demon Hunter writer, Itamae, discusses some of the undocumented changes for Sigils, and how it's unclear what the vision is for this spec.
Class Changes
As of the time of this article, the following changes have been made on the PTR for Vengeance.
- Fracture and Soul Cleave now require equipped Warglaives, Axes, Swords, and Fist Weapons.
Healing Changes
- Charred Warblades heals you for 5% of Fire damage you deal (was 4%).
- Soul Cleave healing increased by 25%.
- Fel Devastation healing increased by 25%.
- Frailty causes you to heal for 10% of damage dealt to afflicted targets (was 8%).
- Feast of Souls healing increased by 25%.
- Revel in Pain causes 6% of your Fire damage to shield you (was 5%).
Talent Tree Changes
- Sigil of Chains is now learned at level 35 and is no longer a talent.
- Roaring Fire has moved to Sigil of Chains' old location (was a choice node with Sigil of Silence).
- Sigil of Silence and Feed the Demon have swapped positions in the talent tree.
- (Undocumented) Sigil of Silence (instead of Sigil of Chains) now replaces Sigil of Misery.
- (Undocumented) Improved Sigil of Misery still affects both Sigil of Misery and Sigil of Chains, but not Sigil of Silence.
The weapon change is simply to prevent Demon Hunters from chasing after Agility daggers rather than our current weapon options, since they are not in our loot pool regardless. Meanwhile, the healing changes exist only to balance out the global 25% increase in health and damage taken. These changes are not particularly interesting since they're attempting to preserve the status quo.
The talent tree changes, on the other hand, are somewhat positive, but at the same time rather questionable. While making Sigil of Chains baseline is greatly appreciated and brings back some of our previous control without needing to spend an extra talent point on it, we've nearly gone full circle on Vengeance utility sigils:
- Originally, Sigil of Misery and Sigil of Silence were baseline, while Sigil of Chains was an optional talent.
- In Dragonflight, Sigil of Silence was also made into a talent.
- At Midnight launch, Sigil of Chains replaced Sigil of Misery rather than being a separate spell, reducing our CC capabilities.
- In 12.1, Sigil of Chains and Sigil of Silence have been effectively swapped, but we gain an extra talent point.
This forces us to choose between having an AoE stop that works on non-interruptible abilities and one that allows us to bring in casters more easily. While it's not always the worst choice, there are occasions when an enemy cannot be displaced with Chains, but cast a non-interruptible physical spell where Misery would come in handy. Additionally, while we were far too powerful with double utility sigils when we first got Illuminated Sigils, that has now been removed. In combination with that, we've had Misery getting replaced by another Sigil and Silence repeatedly nerfed to the point where we have the least control we've ever had since we were added to the game. With this change, it's possible that we may choose to drop Silence entirely in certain dungeons. The undocumented change for Improved Sigil of Misery is also a bit odd, especially given the name of the talent. On the PTR, it continues to reduce the cooldown of both Misery and Chains, making them 1.5 and 1 minute respectively. However, once talented into Silence, it loses half of its power, since Silence is not affected at all. I'm not sure whether this is intended, or an oversight due to Chains previously replacing Misery.
Sigil of Silence and Roaring Fire being separated is an odd decision, but somewhat understandable. Roaring Fire was essentially a 0% pick rate talent point, since Fel Devastation has never healed enough to get value out of the talent, while Sigil of Silence does have multiple uses both in Mythic+ where it's a staple talent, and in Raid when extra add control is needed. I would like to see Roaring Fire replaced with an entirely new talent, since it's still essentially a dead option.
Finally, the swap between Feed the Demon and Sigil of Silence is quite nice. It means that we aren't forced into pathing through Silence for Raids if we want to take FtD for better uptime, while maintaining the ability to take both talents as is common in Mythic+ builds. It also means that we can drop Retaliation entirely in Raid builds, since it is an extremely lackluster talent and was taken only for pathing.
All in all, I'm not sure what Blizzard's vision is for Vengeance, as it has never been a strong tank choice in Raid, and our utility is continually reduced in Mythic+.
Tier Set
The Set bonuses for 12.1 Vengeance are as follows:
- 2-Set Bonus: Sigil of Flame's damage over time is increased by 50%. Soul Cleave increases the duration of Sigil of Flame on your primary target by 2 seconds.
- 4-Set Bonus: Immolation Aura and Sigil of Spite deal 100% increased damage against targets affected by your Sigil of Flame.
This completely misses the goals that Blizzard appeared to set in their blue post:
- Create set bonuses that are more complex than the Season 1 set bonuses.
- Create cool, impactful set bonuses that introduce a variety of gameplay in Season 2.
- These set bonuses should increase consistency of damage. Alongside our larger burst damage reduction initiative, we didn't want to reduce your burst damage and then immediately reintroduce significant burst damage with the new set bonus effects.
Blizzard also asked for feedback on:
- How bonuses may not have their expected value, given how the class is often played.
- How bonuses could have very different value in single target and AOE situations.
- How bonuses help or don't help in specific situations that are relevant to players.
- Likely degenerate or unintended impacts on rotations, including:
- Using single target abilities in AOE or vice versa.
- Being flooded with resources faster than they can be spent.
- Being encouraged to use core abilities repetitively, or not at all.
This does appear to be an issue across nearly all of the tank specs, but compared to the Season 1 set bonuses, this bonus is roughly the same in complexity. It is neither cool, nor impactful and does not really change our gameplay at all once acquired. At most, we would slightly prioritize casting Sigil of Flame slightly higher in priority compared to now to ensure the bonus damage on Immolation Aura and Sigil of Spite. Damage-wise, the 2 piece bonus is negligible, since Flame deals less than 2% of our damage on average, and we're not getting too much extension value from Soul Cleave since the duration is generally not long enough for us to cast very many of them. The 4-set bonus also breaks point 3. Rather than increasing damage consistency, it is increasing our burst damage with the double value on Spite. While most of our damage comes from Hero Talents rather than our baseline spells, Spite is one of the highest value abilities based on execution time, and doubling it runs contrary to their design goal. Unfortunately, due to current design making over 50% of our damage come from Hero Talents, anything affecting our baseline spells is essentially negligible.
Meanwhile, as a tank set, these bonuses are utterly worthless. They only provide damage (and not very much, at that), while offering near-zero defensive value. The only defensiveness from these bonuses is from the damage to healing conversion of leech. Again, this seems to be an issue across most of the tank specs, so it's possible that their goal is to make sets that don't affect defensive capabilities while tuning tanks defensively around baseline abilities only. However, that conflicts with their goal to make things impactful and cool. Personally, I'd like to see them go back to the drawing board on this and give us something that actually gets us excited.
