Well I have decided to create Paladin yesterday (I played Prot Pala a lot in SLs3) and I was so emberassed when I have seen that they got almost every Juicy Legendary Power from SL into Talent Tree without Bad Choices and Smart Builds - u can just take em and be happy about it.
What have VDH atm in Talent Tree?
Only Damage Legendaries from SL like Collective Anguish and Hunt (FAE Ability) - both are so useless for tanking and thats it aktually. Our DPS is one of the lowest in the game btw…
Lets speak about how did we play in SL?
We have played with Fiery Soul Legendarie (consuming Soul with Soul Cleave reduce CD of ur Fiery Brand on 2 second) - there is an unreachable talent in last tier that just gives us 2nd Stack of theBrand and reduce CD by 15 seconds wich is absolutly not the same and absolutly unreachable cause our Baseline Abilities are in other Last Tiers.
We have played with Darkglare Medaillion (40% chance that Fel Devastation coldown is not incur) - we can find this garbage talent in our tree completely nerfed to the ground - we are spending 2 points to get 20-40% CD Reduction - which is absolutely not the same - Designer dou play on VDH at all?
We have played with Blind Faith - 20% versa after u use Elysian Decree,
Elysean Decree is atm garbage cause we have not recieved the Conduit that have made this ability so strong - 2nd Cast of it after u have casted it.
Moreover we have to Choose between 2 strongest abilities for VDH - FOdder of the Flame and Elysean Decree.
We v played with Rezelicks Defilement - Soul Cleave reduce coldown of ur Sigils by 8 seconds and by 2 for Elysean Decree. We can find this talent nerfed to the ground again - after u use a Sigil reduce CD of ur Sigils by 3 Seconds. Doesnt affect on Kyrian Sigil - hidden Nerf .
We had a strong Tier Set bonus in SL - we cant find this bonus in our Talenttree at all. Our Tier set Bonus in DF is an RNG Garbage.
Our Standart “must go” Talents, are now unreachable in our Talent Tree - and we can take only half of them.
I m wondering why have we recieved so huge Troll Designer for our Talent Tree? We are just UNPlayable atm and we need to be reworked ASAP.
Why should we choose between our Baseline Ablities?
You have to do something Blizzard. We need completely different Design to the way we tank cause right now - as Tank - we are Dead and we wont play high keys at all till u give us many different things. We have one of the lowest DPS among Tanks, we are very weak against Magic and Phys Damage, we have Threat Problems, we have no utility for the group at all - 5% magic Damage is not OKay for Melee Meta, we have an external that i d rather not use at all - huge RNG troll machine… Yes we can play - we can survive if we are very focused and understand what we and the whole group is doing - but comparing to other tanks - they just facerolling and all good - Groups dont want to play with VDH - Groups has 0 possibilities for Mistakes. With VDH 1 Mistake is almost always RIP Key.
Comparing to pala with BoPs, LoHs, Sacrifices, Strong Healing, Spell Blocks, so many kicks, -50% speed reduction and Kite Possibilities, strong burst DPS, strong Tankiness and Combat Ress, This all is too good for the group and cant be compared with what VDH brings. Ofc noone wants VDH - they are just nothing.
I feel our dps is fine but agree there definitely could be some tweaks made to the tree to allow us the buttons back that we had in the first place last expansion.
VDH was the spec with the sigils and its a bit of a gut punch to watch havoc gain them while we lose misery and chains as well as elysian decree only really being worth taking over fodder if it had the conduit/blind faith legendary. Chains is so far out of reach there is 0 viable build in where you can pick them.
Also agree we could do with a little help on snap threat, (maybe more threat gen on immo aura, or a wider range would help) we are weakest on pull and we have enough on our plate dealing with our survivability without having to claw back threat from the dps as well. We are probably the only tanks that actively needs to think about holding CD’s like fel dev and pooling resources for spirit bomb for the sole reason of keeping threat on you. I am very reliant on taking rogues and hunters in my key and often decline warriors/devo evokers for no fault of their own other than I know I cannot handle their threat.
On the bright side, sigli of silence is awesome, purge is very useful, especially in keys like Nokhud and RLP, throw glaive having a perma snare is super useful too. Our demon spikes uptime feels good and the damage reduction talent is a very nice improvement over the gaps we had before. Cage being one of the only cc’s (other than sap) that doesn’t put you in combat while you walk past is nice (though sometimes lacking in what categories you can use it on with all these ghosts and elementals in this expac!) 10 yard range on our interrupt I also genuinely notice and appreciate. Having a mass stun on a relatively short cooldown feels good to have as well, you have a lot of AoE control on the pack as a VDH. When things are going good its going great, you can get the dungeon moving very quickly and can just keep the flow up into the next pack with resources ready and feel like you never need a healer.
All in all, I think we are okay, no great, not terrible. A solid 3.6/5. We can still do it just maybe not with as much ease as the plate bois can.
The Utility that u have described brings every other class like ROgues, Boomie and Enh with mass CC. Sigile of Silence ofc is awsome yes but it s just 8 seconds of silence. Not perma Silence as on Prot Pala. Dispel/purge - a lot of classes can do this.
We have atm no unique Utility for the group. On 24+ u have almost no time to give mass CC cause if u miss 1 global not spaming bombs or soul cleave - u might be very easy dead. And one of the biggest problem is when u mass CC that u can be easily one shoted cause all NPCs will insta autoattack u in the same time. Demon Spikes doest help here.
VDH is one of the weakest tank atm. Lets accept it. Even Guardian have much more atm then we.
Let’s not talk about what we’re missing, that’s obvious - and half of what we’re missing is fine:
DGB as casino spec was utterly terrible. You couldn’t know whether you could tank a certain pull or not ahead of actually pulling. In its lows you were forced to kite 10s into the pull when BDK was busy dummyparrying and blasting or you died even through meta, in its highs you ended the pull with +20s of Meta left that you didn’t even need. Current DGB is far superior to that.
Elysian Decree was good because of Mikanikos + Repeat Decree buffing it. Blind Faith was just the icing on the cake. We have nothing of that now. ED itself is just that. Pretty barebones.
What did we get instead?
a significantly worse version of Soulmonger
Soul Barrier still unplayable
Lost in Darkness, a PvP conduit, in the class tree
Concentrated Sigils, a macro with barely more
Ruinuous Bulwark, utterly useless
Fel Flame Fortification, utterly useless
Feast of Souls not working with Spirit Bomb
Last Resort still being a freaking 8 min cd
no CDR to our major defensive while every other tank has that
Symbol of Hope not doing anything at all for VDH atm because of the switch to the charge system even if you don’t play Fiery Demise
Frailty which, while it carries us currently via Soulcrush alone, being targeted DR which is the same error as Fiery Brand, as it doesn’t help is at all vs n targets
Revel in Pain not working with Fiery Brand spread (unchanged to before)
Bulk Extraction utterly useless
Roaring Fire utterly useless
Retaliation so undertuned, it would be bad with a 300% buff
Sigil of Chains in narnia
Sigil of Misery blocked behind talents that take away player choice
leading to the sigil spec, literally spec defining abilities, having only 2 sigils