Being a melee class, it made sense for Blizzard to give Demon Hunters a tanking option - frankly, I think that if they could do it all again, they'd give Rogues one as well. Demon Hunters will be the third Leather-wearing tank class - which is kind of crazy when you reflect on it. Tanks are really the only people who actually care about armor, and so it always made sense that Warriors and Paladins, and later Death Knights, would tank. Druids were the kind of funny exception, but got around the weirdness of it by turning into freaking bears. But now, with Monks and Demon Hunters, there will actually be just as many Leather-based tanks as Plate ones, and still not a single Mail-wearing tank specialization, despite the fact that Mail is a step up in armor from Leather.
I'm not complaining - it's just kind of weird when you think about it.
With the Havoc DPS spec, they'll have a lot more flexibility on style - DPS is a role that can be performed in many very different ways, and while there are subtleties like making sure that single-target and AoE are balanced and that you can have some burst but not be built entirely around burst damage, essentially as long as you're putting out the same average damage per second as other classes, you're golden.
Tanking is a narrower role to fill - one's damage style can vary basically as much as DPS (though all tanks need solid AoE skills) but the way that one increases one's survival requires some clever invention, and it's here that I think distinguishing Vengeance as a spec will be the most challenging.
Blizzard did give themselves a new outlet for distinguishing specs in Mists by introducing the idea of Active Mitigation - something that I was very worried about at first but quickly grew to like, even if I still haven't been able to feel comfortable with Rage-based tanks since then. But even active mitigation abilities kind of fall into the same categories:
Flat Percentage Mitigation
Avoidance
Absorbs
Self-Heals
Now, there are some ambiguities here - the block mechanic is somewhere between Flat Percentage Mitigation and Avoidance, and Brewmasters' Shuffle is a pretty novel mechanic that maybe defies categorization - but it's a good place to start when thinking about how tanks work.
Generally, you'll need more than one of these to make a solid tank. While FPM (yep, it's already abbreviated) works basically in any situation, it's also kind of boring - it's basically Armor, which is a stat that all tanks like.
Focusing on the others too much can lead to big problems. A tank who is entirely based on avoidance runs the risk of getting an unlucky string of hits and going down like a lead balloon. Self-heals are potent, but you need a lot of health to guard against dry spells. Absorbs are great until they're gone.
To go through the existing tanks:
Death Knights use Self-Heals and Absorbs (the absorb mainly being from Blood Shield, the mastery.) Death Knights, I believe, actually do wind up taking more damage than other tanks, but they heal themselves significantly and also boost their HP, giving them more margin for error. DKs were kind of the first real active mitigation tanks (sort of - Shield Block and the old version of Holy Shield were around before them.)
Paladins have significant FPM (both Shield tanks do) but Paladins supplement this with self-healing, and depending on talents, absorbs as well (Sacred Shield is my default talent - an Eternal Flame build would be more focused on self-healing.)
Warriors, as I alluded to earlier, get a lot of FPM and quasi-Avoidance out of their shields, but while Paladins focus more on self-heals, Warriors really focus on boosting the power of their blocks, kind of doubling down on the FPM/Avoidance mechanics, plus some Absorption through Shield Barrier.
Druids historically relied almost entirely on strong FPM with super-high armor rating thanks to the multiplier for Bear Form. These days it actually looks like they get a decent amount from all categories. They can choose between Savage Defense for avoidance and FPM or get self-heals out of Frenzied Regeneration, and their mastery as well as Tooth and Claw procs give them some absorption.
Monks are, I think, built the most as an avoidance tank - they have very high parry and dodge, and that dodge can pretty easily be pushed over 50% with Elusive Brew. They also have a strong absorb in Guard and decent self-heals through Expel Harm and Gift of the Ox. Oddly, the one thing they don't really have is very strong FPM. They manage to achieve this thanks to the Stagger, mechanic, which functions as a quasi-FPM, smoothing out damage that would otherwise be incredibly spiky.
So what about Demon Hunters?
Well, it looks like most tanks pretty much get to use all of these survival techniques. I do think that Monks (who are both the newest tanks and the only ones build from the ground up to use Active Mitigation) have the strongest identity as the "avoidance" focused tank.
Much like the Monk, Demon Hunters are not just mechanically, but flavorfully based on agility. Demon Hunters are going to be leaping around and dashing all over the place, which could suggest more of an avoidance-based tank.
Clearly, actually forcing a tank to jump around everywhere would be freaking terrible (especially for your melee DPS, but also any boss where positioning was important.) You also run the risk of stepping on Monks' toes - not that there aren't big overlaps between, say, Paladins and Warriors, but with a new class, you want it to feel pretty new.
We still really don't know what role Metamorphosis is going to play for either Demon Hunter spec, but while I expect it will be somewhat similar to current Demonology for Havoc, it's a really big question how it will work for Vengeance.
The Vengeance Demon form, at least in these pre-Alpha days, looks very bulky, which could actually imply that Demon Hunters do wind up getting some strong armor boost (which to be fair, every tank other than Monks gets, either through a passive or a shield on the off-hand.)
Drawing from the flavor of the class, it would make sense for Demon Hunters to draw upon their enemies for survival (though perhaps it's more that DHs draw upon their inner demon instead.) One could imagine building their kit around absorption shields - perhaps they use demonic energy to create Fel Bulwarks around them, or slashing away with their glaives in such a dizzying display that they create some kind of Blade Barrier around themselves.
Starting with this idea of strong absorbs (and I vaguely recall some talk about that being a focus for DH tanks - though I really can't remember if that was speculation on some website or something an actual Blizzard person said,) you could supplement this with high avoidance - essentially, the few hits that do land get absorbed.
Self-healing doesn't really seem like the DH kit (if anything, they're more likely to harm themselves, the poor guys,) but I think a combination of absorbs and avoidance might be the direction to go.
The key, though, is to emphasize the former over the latter, as Monks already kind of do the opposite. So what this means is that they wouldn't have the insane avoidance of a Monk chugging Elusive Brew, but in return, they'd be tossing up absorption shields almost as often as Monks refresh Shuffle with their Blackout Kicks.
The point is that there are a lot of dials to turn here, and some might just be left off. I wouldn't be surprised, and in fact I kind of expect that Blizzard will come up with some new, inventive mechanic like Stagger to further distinguish the tank style - just off the top of my head, you could have some kind of evolving scale of partial absorbs - build it up big to absorb a greater percentage of the damage you take, but at the cost of resources so that you can't always maintain that level.
I'm excited for the Legion beta to begin for many reasons, but maybe the biggest is getting my hands (assuming I'm invited) on the Demon Hunters to see how they play. Given my typical predilections (and my hatred of long dungeon queues,) I fully expect that my Demon Hunter will be Vengeance main-spec, but I'll need to see how they play and whether I'll find it fun before I can be sure.
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