Demon Hunter Tank Guide
I recently created a Demon Hunter with the sole intention of being a tank. I had never played the Demon Hunter class before, but I do have quite a bit of experience tanking in World of Warcraft and games of that genre.
My character's name is Shaitan, which comes from Islamic myth meaning demon or devil.
I have to say that the Demon Hunter class is a blast to play and I am really digging the Vengeance spec, which is the tank spec. It does take some getting used to since there are a lot of different spells and nonconventional abilities.
The main stat for a Demon Hunter tank is agility. Demon Hunters don't wear plate armor like most other tanks, but they rely on mitigating damage instead of just taking mass amounts of punishment from the enemies. There is a lot of movement while playing a Demon Hunter tank, so it can get pretty hectic, but fun at the same time. One of the reasons I stopped tanking with the Warrior class was because I felt I was just standing around a lot and pushing buttons.
Vengeance Talents
Their are many different talent builds you can use while playing your Vengeance Demon Hunter, but I have found this one to do quite a bit of DPS while at the same time, having a very high survivability.
Abyssal Strike - This ability gives you an increase of 10 yards to your Infernal Strike ability and it also reduces the cooldown by 8 seconds. This gives you a maximum of 5 Infernal Strikes per minute and allows you a lot more mobility for different scenarios, like when you need to collect adds during a boss fight.
Fallout - This gives Immolation Aura the chance to shatter lesser soul fragments from your enemies. This is important because the more lesser soul fragments that you are able to consume with certain other abilities, the stronger they are. So it is nice to have those laying around and waiting to be consumed while fighting.
Flame Crash - Flame Crash makes your Infernal Strike lay down a Sigil of Flame where you land. This increases your DPS and your threat generation on groups because when you land in the middle of a group, you are already casting some AOE damage and with 5 Infernal Strikes a minute, you can do some pretty decent AOE with this and it should be used quite often.
Fracture - "Rapidly slash your target for [(40% of Attack power)% + (80% of Attack power)%] Physical damage, and shatter 2 Lesser Soul Fragments from them." src
This attack deals a decent amount of DPS and threat and also generates 2 Lesser Soul Fragments, which makes it one of your core rotation abilities.
Sigil of Chains - With the Sigil of Chains ability, it creates a sigil on the ground and all enemies within the sigil will be pulled into the center of it. This allows for easy grouping and keeping all of the mobs under control. There are a lot of times when tanking that you will need to keep things neat and tidy and this is great at doing that.
Spirit Bomb - This ability consumes up to 5 Lesser Soul Fragments and then explodes a radius of 8 meters around your character, dealing a decent amount of AOE damage. The more souls you consume, the higher the damage. This is one of your go to abilities while tanking groups, so make sure to use it often to do the most DPS and generate threat.
Last Resort - This is a must have talent for those that are doing raid progression as it can save your whole party from wiping. If you are going to take fatal damage, this ability will heal you for 30% of your HP. It can occur once every 8 minutes.
Core Rotation
One of the more confusing things about tanking is making sure that you have a good rotation that is able to build up a decent amount of threat, especially when you get a trigger happy DPS that decides to pull a group or DPS that don't know how to focus fire on what you are attacking and they can pull threat from you.
When I am going to pull a group, I start off with Infernal Strike and land in a way that hits the most mobs possible, so that they can be hit by the Sigil of Flame as well. Use Fracture to generate some Lesser Soul Fragments and when you have 5 of them on the ground, make sure to use your Spirit Bomb for a good AOE blast.
When your Fracture charges are recharging, you can use Infernal Strike or Soul Cleave to keep threat on groups. Make sure to use Immolation Aura whenever it is off CD because it does AOE damage and puts a damage over time (DOT) on the enemies as well. Use your Sigil of Flame as well for AOE damage.
Soul Cleave hits all enemies in front of you and also heals you by consuming some Lesser Soul Fragments. This is one of the main abilities for regaining health while doing decent AOE DPS. The Sigil of Chains ability makes this easy to hit all of the enemies because it groups them all together for you.
Throw Glaive is a good way to grab some enemies as well because it generates a lot of threat and also hits multiple enemies. This is a good way to grab a stray mob if your Taunt ability is on CD.
When you are tanking, you need to make sure that you are casting Demon Spikes. This is your main damage mitigation ability and it reduces physical damage and increasing your parry chance while it is active.
That's It
Now you can be a pro Demon Hunter Tank. This is a really fun class to play because you have great mobility and some amazing survivability when running solo. I have been playing as a Vengeance DH since my character was created and have leveled all the way to max level as a tank and I was able to pull some massive groups of mobs and keep myself alive, and usually at full health by the time all of them are dead.
If you are considering playing a Vengeance Demon Hunter, I hope that you learned something from this tanking guide. Even if you don't play Vengeance, you should try out the Demon Hunter class because their story is probably one of the coolest in the game. Illidan is a badass.
Thanks for stopping by and checking out my post. You are awesome!
damn !!! makes me wanna load up my WoW again... i've tried demonhunter however i somehow always go back to my mage. Melee classes don't work well with me ..
Nice. A mage was the first class I ever played in the game. They are a ton of fun. You have some pretty good gear. I just hit 120 two days ago, so I have been trying to figure out all of the new stuff.
took me awhile to get the flying acheivement in BFA and now i can use those damn flying mounts .. however i went on to classic . then decided to stop as you know WoW ... you never run out of stuff to do and it was just eating up so much of my time.
Ya, I am dreading the grind to get flying, lol. I am working on trying to get some cloak everyone is talking about.
It's been years since I played, I had a Warlock named Seductress, yeah a girl.. that way you get more free stuff as a newbie. Being there right from the start I got a great name too, wonder if it's valuable.
Is everyone called Legolas5432 these days?
Ya, trying to get a decent name nowadays kind of sucks. lol
I just paid my subscription to wow classic, when they open fairlines the adventure will begin, very good your guide to demon hunter @derangedvisions
I tried classic for a few days and it was pretty boring and I didn't want to go through that huge grind back to level 60. There is just so much more things I find interesting in the latest version.
Of course it is more boring is the first wow, but my friends are boosters all are mage, and we have a plan we want to farm gold to buy diablo 4 and wow shadow lands.
1 !BEER Token for you
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Out of topic: are you available in discord I've something maybe it is a plagiarism curated by ocd, i dm acid but i think he is busy with stuff.
sure
La verdad amigo es exelente, me agrado, se ve muy entretenido, gracias por compartir.