Vengeance DH Rotation Revision

Serious discussion
1

Hello there!

Over the past couple weeks, I have been throughly reviewing the current default Vengeance DH Rotation and making changes to it to reflect the more nuanced decisions that Vengeance players make when playing their spec. Vengeance is a very complex spec, in my opinion, and I think that the current Default rotation was a bit too simplistic for what the real-world users actually have to deal with.

First off, here is my revised rotation:
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/theory/rotation/6728c7b44c6d4017a171cb31fd329157?spec=DemonHunterVengeance&version=live&share=true

A good majority of the changes I made are related to the use of certain legendaries, but I’ll try to go over all the changes one by one:

  • I changed the use of Fiery Brand so that it will be prioritized to use it only when the time until a big hit is longer than the current CD of Fiery Brand. When it comes to farm content, yes, people use Fiery Brand on CD and primarily as a DPS increase. However, with progression content, Fiery Brand is often saved as a survivability CD instead. I think this forms a happy medium where it’ll still get used if the “Player” knows there is time for its CD to refresh before the next Big Hit, but will save it otherwise.

  • I modified Empower Wards to be used a bit more like Demon Spikes. With the use of the legendary pants, Wards gets a second charge. So I figured it’d be smart to use this more intelligently instead of purely “When a big magic hit is coming.”

  • The way Demonic Infusion was used before did not take into account the fact that it generates 60 Fury as well as recharging all of your Spikes. It also didn’t take into account the Legendary Pants adding an extra charge of Demon Spikes. So it now will only use Demonic Infusion only when below 40 pain and, if the Legendary Pants are equipped, it will still use Infusion even when 1 charge is remaining.

  • I split up the behaviors of how to use Immolation Aura depending on what Legendaries you are wearing. If you are wearing the Back, it will save Immolation Aura for Big Magic Hits, if the time to a Big Magic Hit is shorter than the CD on Immolation Aura. If you are wearing the Legendary Boots, it’ll attempt to save Immolation Aura for AoE situations to make the most out of its CD reduction on Fiery Brand. Otherwise, it just uses Aura normally. Full Disclosure: This is the part I am currently the most unsure about. Primarily because I do not know how exactly this sim works with both the Cloak and the Boots on. I’m still experimenting to see what happens in that situation.

  • Spirit Bomb will now prioritize use at lower Soul Fragment #s if you have the Soul Barrier buff (much like Soul Cleave in the Default Rotation.) When you have used Soul Barrier, it is beneficial to consume fragments as often as possible, even if it does not result in the highest amount of self-healing. Spirit Bomb will also, in general, be used even if there is only 4 Soul Fragments up. It’s generally not necessary to wait until 5 to use it.

  • If the Legendary Hands are equipped, the sim will save Sigil of Flames for AoE events if possible. Additionally, if the Hands are equipped, the sim will also save Fiery Brand for times when health is below 50%.

  • If the player has the Talent Razor Spikes, the sim will save Fel Eruption for when you have Demon Spikes up.

  • Changed Fracture to be used anytime Soul Fragments are <= 4 instead of 3. Now that we auto-consume Fragments, there’s no real point in worrying about going over 5.

  • And, I think the final one, and a very small change. If the player has Prydaz and Archimonde’s on, they will not use Archimonde’s if the Prydaz bubble is also currently active. The Prydaz bubble cannibalizes the Absorb on Archimonde’s if it came first. If both aren’t used up, then the damaging explosion from Archimonde’s will be smaller. This is a super small change, but it seemed to make a marginal difference in DPS, at least. This may lower survivability a small bit, though. This probably requires a bit more testing.

So, I think that’s everything! I’m going to follow up this post with a bunch of comparison sims for you to take a look at. I am still learning the language used in the AMR back-end, so if there are janky ways that I did things, please do let me know!

2 Likes
2

Was just reminded by a DH friend that Fel Eruption is buffed by Fiery Demise not from Demon Spikes. So I’ll fix that.

3

Cool – Swol will take a look at this when he gets back later this week. Thanks for posting your tweaks!

4

Well, I’ve made a bunch of other changes since the original post and I honestly can’t remember them all hah!

I’m on my phone atm, but when I have a chance I’ll try to go through and list the other changes I’ve made.

5

I was going through these changes and I have some comments:

1.) Fiery Brand use - I tried out the changes you recommended… but I don’t see a change in DPS/NPS/Death Chance either way compared to just using it on cooldown. I don’t understand what you are trying to do with this condition:
SecondsUntilBigHit > CooldownSecRemaining(FieryBrand)
This will effectively cause Fiery Brand to be used on cooldown whenever it is available. The only time you can use Fiery Brand is when CooldownSecRemaining = 0, in which case SecondsUntilBigHit will always be > 0 and evaluate to true. I tried out a rotation with what I think your intent was, which is holding onto it for a big hit unless a big hit is far enough away that it will be ready again. It didn’t really change anything, since “big hits” are frequent in the simulations.

2.) The Empower Wards change seemed to be a good one with the legendary on, so I added that into the default.

3.) The amount of pain being wasted with the default rotation’s use of Demonic Infusion was negligible, but I added in a check for it anyway to satisfy our OCD. I don’t understand why you’d use Demonic Infusion with a charge of demon spikes left even with the legendary pants. Seems like a waste of a demon spikes charge to me. I tried it and the results were within margin of error either way, so couldn’t really tell if it mattered or not.

4.) Using Spirit Bomb at 4+ fragments instead of 5+ fragments is a change I had tested before. It results in the same amount of survival and the same amount of DPS. I can change it to 4+ to match what folks are doing in logs better, but it really doesn’t matter either way. You might get a hair more damage by using it at 4+. I also tried the change with respect to soul barrier… but that was yielding far less damage and survival when I tried it. I don’t understand the logic behind that change, so we’ll have to discuss that further and see if there is an improvement to be made.

5.) Using Fracture at <= 4 instead of <= 3 seemed to have no impact on the simulations either way. I can add it in if that is what people prefer.

6.) The change to use Fel Eruption only with razor spikes seems to be a slight DPS increase, just barely out of margin of error range, but I can add it in if that is preferred.

7.) I added in better use for the legendary hands like you suggested. I tweaked it a bit, though. I found that if I focused on getting max use out of the heal component, I got a nice boost to survival. If you are simulating against trivial content, you’ll see a slight DPS decrease because fiery brand won’t get used as many times as it could, but, against difficult content it was pretty solid. Arguably you wouldn’t use that item against trivial content, so I think this is ok.

8.) A change you made was moving the soul cleave much lower in the priority list. When doing sims for content that is tough for the player, I find that the death chance spikes significantly when you don’t have that soul cleave taking priority over fracture. I know a lot of veng players don’t ever use soul cleave at this point… but all the simulations show that you will significantly lower your chance to die if you use soul cleave when you are below 50% health. You lose some DPS by doing this, but, it really matters. 4t20 makes this even more worthwhile, obviously.

Once I push this live, I’ll do another comparison between the new default and your edited rotation. You changed the priority of a number of spells, so I still have to test some of those out.

6

Thanks for Replying, Swol!

I’ll go through one by one again to your points.

  1. This one was one I struggled with. I wanted Fiery Brand to be used more as a defensive ability instead of an offensive one. Essentially like how it is used during the H KJ fight. I sort of wanted it to be a balance between the two, where it would be used if a predictable big hit is farther away than the CD of Fiery Brand, but it would not be used if a big hit was closer than the CD of Fiery Brand. I may have done that incorrectly, so I’d love to see if it makes a difference when actually done well.

  2. Hurray!

  3. Demonic Infusion is generally used more for it’s Pain Gen than it’s Demon Spikes recharges. Part of this is because you do not use Demonic Infusion for a survival increase, generally. If you cared about survivability, you’d use one of the other two talents. So it’s pretty safe to assume that, if someone is going to use Demonic Infusion, they’re likely going to be using it for the DPS increase than the Surv Increase. And more pain == more Fractures == more Spirit Bombs == more DPS.

  4. I spoke to you about this briefly on Saturday I think. A big reason for this is that small niche where, when you use Fracture, the two Soul Fragments that are spawned have slightly different times placed on when they are activated and usable. So let’s say you have 4 Fragments up and you use Fracture, you have a small bit of time to use Spirit Bomb when 5 Fragments are active before the 6th Fragment is activated. So, in the end, you are left with 1 Fragment.

I’ll concede this is a pretty high niche instance, but from looking at logs, it’s something that most pro-Veng players do intentionally and many less-pro-Veng players will often do without even realizing it (the latter of which includes me. :P) It doesn’t make a huge difference, but it does mean something for accuracy’s sake, I suppose.

  1. Not sure if you saw, but it is Fel Eruption with Fiery Brand, not Demon Spikes. I made an error in the original post. Demon Spikes does not affect Fel Eruption under most circumstances.

  2. This is part of why I think it might be idea to create two Veng DH rotations. One to maximize DPS and one for Survival. I was coming across a lot of time where trying to balance DPS and Survival would clash against each other and sometimes actively work against each other. As of right now with current content, Veng players care much more about DPS than Survivability, but when the new tier comes out that priority would change.

  3. Much like the above, I see your point. However, Soul Cleave usage is rare nowadays except in the most serious of progression DHs. It is very rarely used in most content (maybe one or two casts per fight.) I agree that Soul Cleave still has its place in survivability usage, but I think that’s just further to the point that Veng likely needs two separate rotations.

Thank you!

7

Yeah, ideally we want a rotation that can smoothly transition from survival to DPS, so that The Blender works well for picking gear.

One idea I had is that if you are trying to maximize damage… you probably aren’t going to be using the hands, so keeping their use aimed at survival would be ok, since that is what they are better for?

For Fel Eruption, that makes more sense! Fiery Demise is the debuff we care about. I made the update to Fiery Demise that makes it affect Fel Eruption damage and then tweaked the rotation to make sure that every other Fel Eruption occurs with Fiery Demise up.

8

The opposite, actually. The Hands are generally used for a DPS increase, not a survivability increase. The change was mostly just to take better advantage of the heal when you want to use it as one and to primarily use Fiery Brand during AoE events to get the stacks higher, faster.

There’s so many opposing circumstances that I’m not sure that a happy medium exists that isn’t just a mess good version of one or the other. I really think it’d be best to, somehow, have two totally separate rotations for the two circumstances and to be able to switch between the two (DPS focused or Survivability focused) using a similar dropdown next to the Blender.

It’d have the negative result of having to do twice the simulations, but I believe it is worth it and, likely, necessary for tanks.

9

Yeah, I felt like the damage increase from the gloves was really “meh” compared to the healing that it can do. Of course I do most of my tests on fights where you can’t faceroll.

10

It’s Meh either way, really. It’s not a great legendary. But if you’re using it, might as well use it correctly haha

11

I don’t know… when I used this condition:
HealthToMax >= SpellDamage(FieryBrand)

I get a nice reduction in death chance on tough fights.

12

Well, I suppose that’s what simming is for :stuck_out_tongue:

Are you using the H Avatar sim with the dmg multiplied currently?

13

Yeah I was using a really geared veng DH at like 930 and using +7 on the avatar script.