Devouring the Void: Further Thoughts on WoW's Newest Spec

 The Devourer Demon Hunter is honestly a bit weird on a conceptual level.

Demon Hunters had only two specs for the first ten years of their existence, and they both sort of operated in a similar conceptual space: fel fire, demonic transformations, and sucking up soul fragments (whether as a bit of soloing sustainability for Havoc or a central healing mechanic for Vengeance). Interestingly, the two specs originally had different resources, with Havoc using the purple Fury that they now all use and Vengeance having the ultimate edgelord resource, Pain, which was colored more kind of orange. They honestly worked basically the same, and so it made sense that they consolidated it into the resource that also more or less shared the class color.

But we haven't really dealt with demons as a major threat since Legion. Demon Hunters work pretty well as one of the major "cosmic warrior" classes given the kind of space-alien theming of Warcraft demons, and so it sort of makes sense that, as we have an expansion with void-based villains that are if anything even more space-alien-coded that it would be Demon Hunters who develop a new technique to deal with them.

This comes hand-in-hand with adding Void Elves to the list of races that can play Demon Hunters (the only real downside is that they don't have quite as many unique customization options as the Night Elf and Blood Elf ones, and don't get unique voice lines. I did, however, discover that they have evidently added the ability to give at least Void Elf Demon Hunters glowing blue eyes rather than green).

Anyway, I leveled up a Void Elf Demon Hunter to stick pretty religiously to Devourer as a spec, while my original Night Elf one remains committed pretty firmly to Havoc (he dabbles in the other specs, but I also have a Blood Elf who I think is committed to Vengeance. Does this make sense in this day and age of extremely simple spec-switching and where most gear works for all your class's specs? Maybe not. But it helps me kind of organize the way I think about a character, and also lets me try out new looks and feels).

Devourer as a spec has always felt a little weird to me: looking at it without any kind of external guidance, it feels like the point is to cast Collapsing Star as often as you can, which means first building up the Void Fragments you need to activate Metamorphosis, and then racing to generate and gather as many more as you can to get as many casts of Collapsing Star in there as possible.

But it has always been quite difficult to get Metamorphosis to actually last long enough to get the spell off, even just casting it once (we'll address Apex talents in a moment).

The weird thing is that, at least according to Icy Veins, this isn't actually how the spec plays, or at least how it plays most effectively. Instead, what seems to be more ideal is to basically ignore Collapsing Star - instead of trying to extent your Metamorphosis as long as you possibly can, you instead want to get it as frequently as possible to take advantage of Voidsurges from the Void-Scarred hero talent (is the Demon Hunter the only class where one of its Hero Talent trees changes names depending on your spec?)

I am of two minds here.

See, I actually like the version of the spec that I had in my head, and I do think that building around it, which would involve actually picking up the Apex talents, could be fun, but it seems that this Voidsurge-focused build is considered more effective.

And actually, once I released my attachments toward that Collapsing Star-focused version of the spec, I started to enjoy the version I had. It's zippy (I don't think any spec has as much movement built into it, even Havoc) and bursty in a fun way.

The other major change I needed to make was that I think at least early in the expansion, you could take talents that made Soul Immolation a passive proc rather than an activated ability. Perhaps in 12.1 they changed this so that you do really need it to be a button on your bars.

Well... while I was leveling my Voidy DH up, I was not aware of that, and I will tell you, now that I am actually hitting that button, it's smoothing out the rotation a bit and also helping a lot with survival (given that you get healed for 30% of your HP over the course of it).

I still think I probably like Havoc best, but I do find myself enjoying the increased speed and flow of Devourer.

Baseless Speculation on the Demon Hunter Ranger

 The Death Knight and Demon Hunter were World of Warcraft's first two "hero classes," which is a somewhat ironic name.

In fact, in WoW's entire 22-year history, the game has only added four full classes to the original 9-class roster: the Death Knight in 2008's Wrath of the Lich King, the Monk in 2012's Mists of Pandaria, the Demon Hunter in 2016's Legion, and the Evoker in 2022's Dragonflight. In fact, of these four, only the Monk was not a "Hero Class." Hero classes required you to have a character of a certain level (usually the previous expansion's level cap, though Death Knights only started at level 55 when Wrath raised the cap to 80). The logic here was that it would be weird to have a low-level Death Knight going around in low-level areas doing relatively low-stakes quests, and so they wanted to start them off with a fair degree of power.

The game has changed significantly since 2008, of course, including the introduction of level-scaling, so you can, in fact, now level up a low-level Death Knight in regions like Westfall (traditionally the second zone human characters go to when they move on from their starting zone in Elwynn Forest).

While Evokers were basically unprecedented in the lore prior to this, the Death Knight and Demon Hunter were both the classes of iconic characters from Warcraft III, specifically Arthas Menethil and Illidan Stormrage, respectively. WCIII had a sort of vague RPG system within its real-time-strategy campaigns, where you'd have kind of hero unit that would be leading your units in all the base-building and such, and would be a formidable force. These hero units were the major characters of the story.

While the Death Knight has plenty of precedence in lots of fantasy RPGs (and I'd argue also in fantasy media in general, with figures like the Ringwraiths from Lord of the Rings and Darth Vader both occupying that archetype,) the Demon Hunter is a bit weirder.

To be clear, there certainly are Demon Hunters, or monster hunters in general in fantasy media. Indeed, one of the classes in Diablo III is also called a Demon Hunter, but I think that it adheres much closer to the way that such a character class is usually portrayed: in Diablo III, the class is more like Diablo II's Rogue (and I guess also Diablo IV's,) with a flavor of having lots of cool gadgets and traps to fight demons, but basically being your black-clad, acrobatic, kind of Solomon Kane-like figure.

WoW's Demon Hunters have an entirely different aesthetic, strongly informed both by WoW's Night Elf culture and also the aesthetic of its demons.

In WoW, a Demon Hunter is not just someone who hunts demons. Indeed, there's actually a Hunter class, which is much closer to D&D's Ranger, typically fighting with ranged weapons and/or an animal companion, with a lot of "nature survival"-themed abilities along with their weapon attacks.

The premise of the Demon Hunter is that it's a highly specialized path that fundamentally changes you on a physiological level. Demon Hunters don't just use fel magic - they literally absorb a demonic soul into their own, becoming half-demons themselves. Demon Hunter characters typically have horns, and might have scaly skin or cracks where the bright-green Fel energy shines through.

 Part of the ritual to become a Demon Hunter involves gouging out one's own eyes. The fel energy inside replaces them, allowing Demon Hunters to see, and even see through disguises and invisibility. Thus, as a cosmetic option, Demon Hunter characters can select a number of blindfolds, or they can just let the bright glow of their fel-filled eye sockets shine unencumbered.

While the current expansion, Midnight, introduced a third specialization (WoW's version of a subclass) that both allows them to act as a ranged spellcaster and channel Void, instead of Fel magic (which is color-coded in blues and purples, as opposed to Fel's neon green and occasionally deep red,) for the most part, Demon Hunters fight in melee, dual-wielding weapons - most iconically, Warglaives, which are massive, double-bladed weapons. They are absolutely fantasy BS kinds of weapons, because A: they would weigh a ton each, and B, it would be hard not to slice your own thighs while swinging two of them around at your foes. But in a video game, they look really cool.

Anyway, the motive of Demon Hunters is to use the power of demons to fight demons - in WoW, basically all demons are part of a massive interstellar army called the Burning Legion that seeks to conquer and destroy the universe - the conflict that started the series was caused by the Burning Legion manipulating the orcs into acting as a proxy army to invade Azeroth, which they had failed to conquer 10,000 years earlier thanks in part to people like Illidan Stormrage, who basically invented Demon Hunters and was the first one.

I do think there's some logic to building Demon Hunters on the bones of the Ranger, conceptually: while very different in aesthetic from your typical Ranger (again, WoW's Hunter class is the clear equivalent,) the Demon Hunter does have a focus on taking down monsters (even if in WoW, they've obviously got to be fine at fighting any type of foe. We haven't really had demons as a major threat since Legion, which ran from 2016-2018). Ironically, this might have made them a better fit for the 5.0 Ranger, with its Favored Enemy mechanic (naturally picking "Fiend" as your first favored enemy type).

As we talked about with the Death Knight being represented by the Oath of the Ebon Blade subclass for Paladins, I suspect that Demon Hunter Rangers will also see some significant changes to the level 1 and 2 class features, as hinted at in that James Wyatt interview.

Oddly, I almost think you'd need more distinct features than the Death Knight - DKs in WoW do have some cosmetic differences, such as glowing blue eyes (at least starting with Wrath of the Lich King, the power of necromancy is often represented with a bright, icy blue, though this was more specifically the color associated with the Scourge and the Lich King, as there are several colors of death magic when we went to the realm of the dead in 2020's Shadowlands expansion) and a few partially-rotten skin textures you can pick, but it's not nearly as dramatic as the Demon Hunter customizations (which was maybe just because of 8 years of development).

There are various aesthetic things I'd really suggest should be part of the Demon Hunter subclass, and represented mechanically:

First, the missing eyes. It might be too powerful to give them a baseline 30-foot blindsight, but perhaps they can activate blindsight in a reasonable range a certain number of times per day. This could upgrade to Truesight at higher levels.

Next, their tattoos: the Demon Hunter aesthetic is classically one with a lot of skimpy clothing: Illidan would typically go shirtless. In WoW, your armor is a huge part of your character progression, but when designing Demon Hunter-specific sets, they've often made them more revealing. Demon Hunters have magical tattoos that help protect them, and thus, I think giving the subclass Unarmored Defense would make a lot of sense - Dex+Wis would work fine, just like it does for a Monk.

Then, we've got their wings. In WoW, Demon Hunters can double-jump and also pop out wings to glide down and prevent falling damage. Maybe this is a Slow Fall-like feature, or maybe we set this one aside.

Then, we have Warglaives. In WoW, this weapon type is available only to Demon Hunters (and thus is always statted-out to be ideal for them, with the addition of the spellcasting Devourer spec adding Intellect to all Warglaives in addition to the usual Agility). There's not really an obvious equivalent to them in D&D. I might be tempted to make them d8 Light weapons, though perhaps for balance they need to be d6s. The other issue is that, thanks to Weapon Mastery, we'll want to either have two types of Warglaives (one with Nick and one with something like Vex or Sap,) or Demon Hunters will, weirdly, find themselves probably not dual-wielding them, which feels wrong. (Fun fact, in the expansion that Demon Hunters were made playable in, every spec got a single weapon or set of weapons for the entire expansion that simply got upgraded over the course of it, so Demon Hunters naturally only used Warglaives the whole time. It was only later that they started to use the axes, swords, and fist weapons that they were also capable of using the whole time). (Also, ironically, when we fought Illidan in 2007's Burning Crusade expansion, he had a small chance to drop his legendary Warglaives of Azzinoth, but because that weapon type didn't exist yet and the class that could use them wouldn't be there for 9 more years, those actually just count as one-handed swords. Illidan kind of got handed the villain ball in BC, but Legion did a lot to rehabilitate him as the rash but ultimately well-intentioned anti-hero he was always supposed to be).

Now, how much of this is going to be stuff we get at level 3? No clue. I actually have far less of a sense of what Demon Hunter features will be subclass features and what will be spells we can pick up. Even more than the Oath spells for the Ebon Blade Paladin, I feel like Demon Hunters have to get more than the typical "one per spell level" subclass spells that Rangers typically get. We know Demon Spikes will be one of them (a defensive ability used by Vengeance Demon Hunters, the tank spec for the class).

Still, I think that mobility has to be a major theme - Demon Hunters have a ton of mobility features in WoW, and a big part of their overall vibe is being "speed demons," so to speak (one of the major rotational AoE abilities for Havoc, their melee damage spec, called Blade Dance, has them rushing faster than you can see in a kind of X pattern, slashing all foes in the surrounding area.)

I will say, I'm far less enamored of the Ranger class in D&D than the Paladin one, so I'm a little more concerned over whether the Demon Hunter will be appealing to play in an Azeroth-set game. But we shall see.

Speculating on the Demon Hunter in D&D

 The Demon Hunter was introduced ten years ago as a playable class in World of Warcraft with the Legion expansion. Established in the lore in Warcraft III way back in 2002, the original Demon Hunter was the Night Elf Illidan Stormrage, who was actually twin brothers with Malfurion Stormrage, the first Druid. Illidan had begun his career as a Mage (basically Warcraft's version of a Wizard). While not Highborne (the ruling caste of the Night Elf society, under Queen Azshara, the most powerful mage in the world,) he consorted with their ranks thanks to his aptitude for arcane magic.

When Azshara was contacted by the Dark Titan Sargeras, the fallen god-like being who created the demonic Burning Legion in an effort to burn the universe to prevent the eldritch power of the Void from claiming it, she decided she had finally found a worthy partner to rule alongside her, and opened the way for the Legion to invade Azeroth.

While Malfurion and his and Illidan's childhood friend/the woman they were both in love with, Tyrande Whisperwind, led a resistance against the invading Legion, Illidan feigned loyalty to Azshara in order to learn all he could about the demons, ultimately learning how to use their Fel magic. Granted communion with Sargeras himself, the Dark Titan showed him such awesome terrors that the fel power burned Illidan's eyes out, but granted him a second sight.

While Illidan fought the Legion behind the scenes, his methods were extreme, and after the Legion was defeated, he was imprisoned for his demonic consorting. And that imprisonment lasted for ten thousand years. (It's notable that elves naturally over a thousand years in Azeroth, but the Night Elves in particular were blessed with immortality for those ten thousand years, so none of them aged in all of that time).

When the Legion returned (in the events of Warcraft III) Tyrande grew desperate for those with the knowledge of how to combat them, and raided the vault where Illidan was kept, releasing him. Illidan took his fight to the Legion, and consumed the poweran artifact called the Skull of Gul'dan (Gul'dan being a powerful and very dead orc warlock who died in Warcraft II). Doing so gave him the power to defeat Tichondrius, one of the most powerful Dreadlord demons, but transformed Illidan into a half-demon.

Later, Illidan left in exile to Outland (the shattered fragments of the Orc homeworld of Draenor) and gathered up loyal Night Elves and Blood Elves to train them in his ways. Playable Demon Hunters in WoW are members of this group, the Illidari.

In gameplay, Demon Hunters wear Leather (the equivalent of Light armor, if you consider "no armor" to be the equivalent of those who wear Cloth) and all dual-wield weapons. Until the current expansion, they only had two specializations (basically subclasses,) Havoc and Vengeance. Havoc was the damage-focused one while Vengeance was the tanking one. The new expansion added Devourer, which uses void magic instead of fel magic, and is more of a (very mobile) ranged spellcaster, though unlike all other spellcasters, they also dual-wield weapons.

Ok, all that background aside:

How do we make this into a Ranger subclass?

First off, we need to strip this down to its iconic essentials. That means probably making it feel more like the Havoc spec than the other two, which I consider the most "quintessential" Demon Hunter spec.

I actually think the Ranger does make decent sense as the chassis upon which the Demon Hunter is built, even if the class itself can sometimes struggle. I also wonder if the subclass is going to be flexible enough to allow for a ranged version. (In WoW, Rogues are all dual-wielding melee damage dealers, so it was honestly kind of weird when I first saw D&D Rogues using shortbows).

Naturally, as a Ranger, the Demon Hunter is going to primarily be making weapon attacks. I imagine, like the Hollow Warden, we might see some mechanics that nudge you toward playing in melee. One such thing might be Immolation Aura.

This is an ability in WoW that causes the Demon Hunter to deal pulsing fire damage to every nearby creature for a few seconds (it also generates Fury, their resource, though we're sure not to carry that over in D&D). Now, this could, for sure, just be a spell that they get, but if it's on the subclass spell list, it'd probably push them a little toward melee.

The next thing to consider is their eyes.

Like Illidan, all Demon Hunters have to, as part of their initiation, gouge their eyes out. The Fel magic they take into themselves lets them sense the world around them. In gameplay, this is really just cosmetic, but you get an ability called Spectral Sight that allows you to see invisible creatures and sense creatures and treasures through walls for a few seconds.

I think it would be cool if the subclass gave you Blindsight out to a short range at level 3 - like 10 feet, but that maybe at higher levels (14, or whatever the Ranger subclass capstone is) you'd get to make that into Truesight with perhaps a larger range for a certain amount of time some reasonable number of times per long rest.

One thing all Demon Hunters get is Metamorphosis - while they have demonic features like horns and cracked skin all the time, they can sometimes turn into hulking demons (this is your major "cooldown" ability in WoW, though Devourer does it a bit differently). Now, this could be a spell (probably at a higher level) but I could also very much see this being the main capstone feature for the subclass. The transformation might allow you to make more attacks, or add damage to the attacks you do, and/or perhaps give you some defensive benefits.

Eye Beam is one of the most iconic Havoc-specific abilities, where you shoot a beam of fel energy out in front of you. It's almost exactly a line-shaped spell. I think this could be done as a spell, or it might be a subclass feature.

Fel Rush is another ability you get early on, which shoots you forward and deals some damage to any enemies you pass through. I think this could be done either as a low-level spell (maybe 1st or 2nd level) or, if it's a subclass feature, maybe you get this at level 3 and get to use it, like, Wis mod times per long rest (or short rest, if they're feeling generous).

The only reason I'd find it unlikely a lot of these are made into spells is that it would be weird to see a Beast Master using spells like them. Might they be classified as Warlock spells that are then on the subclass-specific spell list? Perhaps.

We haven't seen a UA for this (indeed, other than the revamped/returning subclasses, I don't think we've gotten a playtest version of any of the brand new ones, unless that Oathbreaker one was sneakily the Oath of the Ebon Blade,) so we'll probably have to wait until November (or at least until we get the next season of Dungeon Masters) to really get a sense of how it will work.

Devourer Tuning in Recent Hotfix

 I've got to say, the Midnight pre-launch event is pretty underwhelming - just a few world quests and spawning rares in Twilight Highlands (there was some announcement that it would be "across Azeroth," but I don't think they're showing up anywhere else. As such, the pre-patch has largely been about tinkering with the various class changes, and the biggest change of those is the existence of the third Demon Hunter spec, Devourer.

I've made multiple posts about the spec and its issues, mainly that it's surprisingly difficult to actually get off Collapsing Star, the headliner spell that requires a lot of build-up to get to. Something you'd expect to do every Void Metamorphosis multiple times (given that there are talents that trigger off multiple casts in a single Meta,) it's pretty common to be unable to even get one cast of it off - you need to have a bit of luck, honestly, for there to be enough soul fragments for you to gather up 30 before your window runs out.

Now, I will say that I have, on occasion, been able to get two off in a single go, though that's very, very rare. Generally, I have to go against the talent build guidance I've found online in order to do so - rather than Soul Glutton, which lets you go into the metamorphosis at 35 soul fragments rather than 50, but which speeds up the fury loss while in Metamorphosis, I take the one that just buffs you with Haste for each fragment you pick up. Naturally, this means you're entering the metamorphosis less often, but you won't have to fight the time limit as hard to get off at least one Collapsing star.

Evidently, the final Devourer Apex Talent allows you to cast a free Collapsing Star right when you get into Void Metamorphosis, which not only gets you that free cast, but also gives you another spell that delays your Fury degradation (a key, I think, to buying yourself the time to gather another 30). I'd hope as well that other Apex Talents might increase the rate of fragment generation, but none of those are available here during the pre-patch.

However, Blizzard sent out a hotfix last night (around the time they seemed to be hit with a DDOS attack that shut down both my Alliance and Horde servers) that made a few changes. The changes do, I think, increase your soul fragment generation overall, though weirdly there's also a nerf - basically, Consume is going to create more fragments, while I think other abilities are going to generate fewer.

In practice, I haven't noticed a huge change - partially I think I'm just getting better at timing my abilities, so I'm getting off more Collapsing Stars. But I still think this is not tuned well for anything other than max level.

And sure, we spend most of our time in WoW at max level, so by the time I get a Demon Hunter to 90 (more likely my old Night Elf one, who will be sticking primarily to Havoc, but I figure I'll keep around some Intellect gear for when I want to futz with Devourer) I can check in again and see if the spec feels good.

Damage-wise, I do think that hotfixes worked out ok - naturally, my Void Elf has been getting better gear, which helps. But while balancing damage is certainly important in a game like this, I do think the spec needs to feel good to play too, and too often with Devourer I feel like I'm failing to do what the spec is meant to be doing.

Devourer Still Not Quite Working at 80, And How I'd Redesign It

 The problem with class design focusing on max level is that you have to level a class first.

Let me just put my biggest issue front and center, touched on in my previous post:

The promise of Devourer Demon Hunters is that you're going to gobble up a bunch of void/soul fragments like Hungry Hungry Hippos and, once you have enough, you're going to throw a giant ball of void energy (Collapsing Star - which I think I was erroneously calling Collapsing Void in the previous post). It's the cosmic black-hole spec, right?

Looking at Icy Veins, their single-target raid boss talent build doesn't even take that ability. Again, this is for the pre-patch, where we're missing some pieces, like the Apex Talents.

But I think that there are a number of issues with Devourer's design. I truly would not be shocked if we got a major overhaul as early as the 12.0.5 patch, unless those Apex Talents completely smooth over the rotation.

I think at the core of it is this: you need to build up to do anything cool with Devourer.

Let me compare this to another fairly build-up heavy spec, Demonology. Demonology of course also got its own simplification and redesign, such as making your Dreadstalkers never cost Soul Shards nor have a cast time, but even if we rewind back to before the Midnight pre-patch, let me tell you what I would do as an opener (which I think was at least close to optimized):

Starting with 3 soul shards, I'd summon my Dreadstalkers (down to 2) then summon my Vilefiend (down to zero) then Shadow Bolt four times to get my Grimoire: Felguard and a 3-shard Hand of Gul'dan out, and then I'd summon my Demonic Tyrant, which would then extend the duration of all those demons (7 total, not counting the tyrant themselves) by 15 seconds and give me my really powerful burst of damage at the start of the fight. All of this takes, I'd guess, around 10 seconds or less, and by this point I've cast my big, showstopper spells.

The problem is that for me to get to the showstopper on Devourer, I have to generate so many soul fragments just to get into the state where I can cast Collapsing Star, and then it's this insane race once I am (something that I'm going to generously say I can do in 30 seconds if I'm lucky in a sustained, single-target fight where there's no downtime) to build all the way up to the 30 I need to cast Collapsing Star before the accelerating Fury decay pulls me out of that state. Void Metamorphosis lasts, I think, maybe 10 seconds, and I can maybe push that to 15 if I'm timing my Void Beams, Voidblades, and such well. If it takes me 30 seconds to get 50 soul fragments, I'm getting to around 25 fragments in metamorphosis, which you'll note is not enough for a single Collapsing Star.

There are talents that expect you to get multiple Collapsing Stars off in a single metamorphosis. Surely, they jest.

So, here is what I'd propose:

First, a less extreme redesign:

Make Void Metamorphosis last a set duration. Your challenge is now to generate as many soul fragments as you can in that time as possible. Fury can still be used on Void Beam to generate more fragments (and do damage) but works as normal. Cut the cost of Collapsing Star to, like, 10 fragments, and nerf its damage if necessary to make that work.

Now, a more radical redesign:

Decouple Void Metamorphosis entirely from soul fragments. Just make it a normal cooldown like Metamorphosis is for Havoc and Vengeance. The ability can enhance your damage and alter abilities like it does for Havoc, and maybe have it increase soul fragment generation. Then, the only thing you spend soul fragments on becomes Collapsing Star, which you can cast in and out of Metamorphosis form and is its own separate button.

I think that either of these changes (though I'd prefer the latter) would make the spec far, far more satisfying to play. Collapsing Star looks cool as hell. Indeed, the spec's visuals are fantastic. I just wish that it wasn't so damned frustrating to play.

Devourer Doesn't Seem to Work While Leveling

 Oh boy.

I've been putting in a lot of hours on my new Void Elf Demon Hunter. I've basically quested through the main campaign of each of the four main Dragonflight zones and gotten her up to 56.

Conceptually, there are cool ideas here. The problem is tuning and pacing.

Here is how, as I understand it, your Devourer is supposed to work:

You cast Consume as your primary filler. This generates Fury, does damage, and spawns a little void-y soul fragment. You can cast it while moving, and you're meant to, I think, be moving around to grab the fragments as you go (this is not a gameplay style I love, but it's a valid choice). Walking over a soul fragment heals you (though for an incredibly tiny amount - just 1% of your max HP) and also grants you some Fury and fills a bar under your Fury bar. You can also pop out soul fragments on any other damage you do, but you get one guaranteed from Consume.

Reap is an ability with a fairly short cooldown that does a bit of instantaneous damage and sucks up to four fragments near you.

Voidblade has you charge at the target and strike them, generating a fairly big amount of Fury as you strike them with damage.

Your first goal is to build up to 100 Fury, which you then unleash with a Void Ray - basically Devourer's equivalent of Eye Beam. This carves off a bunch of soul fragments, and with some talents, it resets your Reap cooldown and I believe has it suck in all nearby fragments, not just four.

Now, once you hit 50 fragments (you'll get this talent early, but you need Metamorphosis for it to work. I don't even know why this is a talent given that I think this is the only version of Metamorphosis you get,) you will be able to hit Void Metamorphosis.

This (I believe) sets you to 100 Fury and will enhanced the damage of your other abilities (Consume becomes Devour) and notably resets your soul fragments to zero. Your Fury will begin to drain, and drains faster the longer you're transformed, until you hit 0 and pop out. While channeling Void Ray or casting Collapsing Void, the fury drain is paused.

If you get to 30 fragments after transforming, you'll be able to cast Collapsing Void, essentially tossing a black hole at the target.

The goal, basically, is to try to get Void Metamorphosis to last as long as possible and to gather as many soul fragments as you can while it's going to shoot out as many Collapsing Voids as possible.

I have cast, in 56 levels of playing this spec, I think three or four Collapsing Voids.

It's rough. Basically, if you aren't gathering fragments and managing your Fury perfectly, your metamorphosis ends before you get to cast the spell. I've had several instances where I got 29 fragments right as the thing ended, but more often than not I'm under 20 before this happens.

It just feels like the tuning is off - and I'm not talking about damage (though I think I'm struggling - the NPCs in follower dungeons often out-damage me) but rather the pacing of the spec.

I think the Fury drain is far, far too punishing, and also, I think that Fury generation is too slow, and that we need to massively cut the number of soul fragments you need to gather. (Or we need a radical redesign of the spec, which I honestly could see happening early on in Midnight if the high-level talents don't fix and smooth this all out).

Unless I'm doing something terribly wrong here (and it's a new spec, so I could be - though given how they've redesigned old specs to be more approachable, I'm shocked at how complex the rotation is on this one) this feels just broken.

I feel like - and this should be true by like level 15, or 20 at least - that played reasonably, you should be able to get at least two Collapsing Voids off per metamorphosis. It certainly shouldn't be a struggle to get a single one off (there is apparently a talent later on that lets you do it immediately after using metamorphosis, but that's not going to be available until we can go past the current level 80 cap).

There's an interesting idea at work here: there aren't any long cooldowns in the spec. Metamorphosis could theoretically be used very frequently if you could somehow suck in tons of soul fragments, and likewise, Void Ray can be used as long as you have 100 or more Fury (except in Metamorphosis, when it doesn't cost Fury but instead does have a cooldown).

But it's just so frustrating to me that you can barely ever do the really cool thing the spec is supposed to do, and instead are juggling just like four abilities (Consume, Void Blade, Reap, and Void Ray) for the vain hope of being able to pull it off next time.

It does feel like the spec is built for the endgame, which, sure, is where most of gameplay in WoW takes place, but the leveling has been a slog.

Also, given that it's an Intellect class, it has become shockingly apparent how few one-handed intellect swords, axes, fist weapons, and warglaives there actually are in old content.

Aesthetically, the spec is cool as hell. But I think they need to really get in there and do some serious fixes, because right now it just feels like it is not working. My main DH is going to stick to Havoc (which he was probably going to anyway).

Devouring the Void: Planning out My Void Elf Demon Hunter for Next Week

 As the name of this blog implies, I have a lot of Alts.

This September, I'll have been playing WoW for 20 years, which will also be half my lifetime at that point, which is, frankly, insane (I'm anxious about the 4-0 milestone, though the terrifying state of the world is beating it as my primary source of anxiety, so that's... fun.)

Anyway, horrifying descent into totalitarianism aside, let's talk Demon Hunters!

Tuesday marks the release of the Midnight pre-patch. We know there's a stat-squish incoming (boy, remember when that was, like, a huge deal? Now it feels like it happens every other expansion. I doubt we'll get a level squish until after The Last Titan, though, where I assume we'll hit 100 and that feels like a reasonable time to go back down to 60 afterward).

There's no new class in Midnight, but we're getting roughly a third of one, finally granting Demon Hunters their third spec (I suspect Augmentation was always intended for Evokers in Dragonflight, but given how weird it is they needed more development time, hence its later launch). This will once again push the average specs per class out of a precise 3.

I haven't actually followed the development of the spec very closely, but I know that it's a short-ranged DPS spec like Devastation Evokers - you'll have some moves (and I think be able to build around them) that take you into melee only to hop back with Vengeful Retreat. It also appears that there will be a system somewhat akin to the Legion-era Shadow Priest, where you will ideally try to stay in your transformed Metamorphosis form as long as you can. I believe it will be something like a "long-term" rotational ability rather than a big damage cooldown like it is for Havoc (in fairness, Havoc has talents that allow Eye Beam to extend the duration, but you'll never get enough haste and cooldown reduction to keep it going indefinitely).

With a new spec, though, we're also getting a new Race option. Technically, there were only two playable races for Paladins and Druids in Vanilla, but Paladins got Draenei and Blood Elves in BC and then Druids got Worgen and Trolls in Cataclysm. Until the single-race Evoker (which remains the case for them) in Dragonflight, Demon Hunters were the most limited-option class in the game, with only one race per faction (similar to how Druids started out).

Now, Void Elves are getting their chance. You have to do a quest chain in K'aresh to unlock this (the spec is available immediately). I know you can start the quest line now, but the final part of it that actually unlocks the option becomes available on Tuesday.

I have two max-level Demon Hunters, my Night Elf Havoc one and my Blood Elf Vengeance one (though the latter more or less just hit 80 and has been chilling, while the Night Elf is kind of my tertiary main, after my Paladin and Death Knight).

Anyway, rather than leaping into a new spec at max level, my plan is to create a Void Elf Demon Hunter and spec them (likely her, as I already have a male Void Elf Rogue) Devourer so that I can figure out the spec over the course of leveling.

It isn't quite getting a whole new class, but it is pretty fun to get something like this. WoW has been much more generous with playable races, which makes sense given the relatively simpler balancing task (racial bonuses are usually minor enough to make them somewhat marginal except in extreme min-maxxing situations). We are, of course, getting the Haranir in Midnight, like we got the Earthen in War Within. That means, I believe that means that Warlords of Draenor and Shadowlands are the only expansions to give us no other major character options (as in, Race or Class). Even without Devourer, Midnight would count given that we're getting Haranir. Though it is notable that there are more and more "neutral" races - which reflects both an in-lore reconciliation between Alliance and Horde as well as, you know, probably being easier on the developers if they only have to worry about a single new race.

Future Races and Hero Classes

Allied races are increasing the options for playable races at an explosive rate. Announced races in BFA alone are going to give us just as many as the original World of Warcraft had, and Blizzard has explicitly said that more will be coming (though not explicitly in BFA itself.)

This actually means that some old sacred concepts are starting to change: Druids, for example, have been mirror-image balanced between the factions since Vanilla, but as the Horde gets both Highmountain Tauren and Zandalari Troll druids, the Alliance is only getting Kul Tiran Humans (who, in my opinion, have by far the coolest druid forms, though I can also appreciate the appeal of the Zandalari dinosaur forms.)

We don't know if the "Allied Race" term will always refer specifically to these variants on existing races, or if we'll get brand-new races that follow a similar pattern, starting at level 20 and not really having a starting zone.

But one issue that seems to arise is the question of hero classes.

Hero classes, of course, are a bit different than the other classes. Generally, the way I'd define them is that most classes in the game are something that an ordinary person, perhaps with certain talents, but none that go beyond natural ability, can pick up, and with enough training and willpower, can grow more and more skilled in the techniques of the class.

A Hero Class, by contrast, requires a fundamental change to the character's physiology. Their class is not like a job or lifestyle that they can quit and just become a regular person when they're done adventuring - it's ingrained in their very being. Death Knights are straight up undead. They literally start to suffer from withdrawal symptoms if they stop hurting living things. Demon Hunters have become half-demons, with a demonic soul sharing their body, and if they ever stop struggling with that demon within, they will become its instrument.

It's a big commitment, basically, and not always one taken by choice.

The fact that it's a physiological change sort of justifies the fact that you start at a higher level. So much of your power was imbued into you that you do sort of emerge from the process far more powerful than some guy who just took up a bow and decided it's time to be a Hunter.

But I think another aspect of Hero Classes is that they have a far more specific story. Of the non-hero classes, I'd say Druids and Paladins had had the most specific backgrounds and traditions. Yet we're seeing the mololithic nature of these class traditions break down, even as Legion had them join together in class orders. In Vanilla, all Paladins were Knights of the Silver Hand, because you only had Humans and Dwarves. Then you got Vindicators and Blood Knights (Blood Elf Paladins even got a different ability that Alliance Paladins during BC that pushed them more toward Ret while Alliance ones got a better ability for Prot,) and then Sunwalkers. While these all boiled down to using holy magic to fight off evil monsters like demons and undead, the source of that tradition varied widely. (A Draenei Vindicator who hears Uther the Lightbringer described as the "first paladin" would, very respectfully, call that absurd.)

Druids have been more explicitly a single tradition, but we're seeing that break down as well. In Vanilla, you only had Night Elves and Tauren, and the latter, while they claimed an ancient and vaguely-remembered period of having practiced Druidism long in the past, ultimately learned the tradition from the Night Elves, before the Alliance and Horde turned them into adversaries. While Gilneas had Harvest Witches who practiced a rudimentary form of druidic magic, it wasn't until they were afflicted with the Worgen curse and taught by the Night Elves that they learned true Druidism. The Darkspear are a little trickier - Blizzard has gone back and forth on whether the tradition had existed earlier or if they had mostly learned it from the Tauren.

Well, there's none of that ambiguity in the new druid races. Sure, the Highmountain far more explicitly are connected to Cenarius and Malfurion (Huln was blessed by Cenarius with those moose antlers,) but the Zandalari connection to their dinosaur Loa looks like it has nothing to do whatsoever with Malfurion, and one even wonders if the tradition long-predates Malfurion or even the existence of Night Elves. Meanwhile, the Kul Tirans' Thornwatchers almost certainly derived their form of Druidism by learning the magic of the Drust, which makes them unique amongst Druids as mistrusted outcasts amongst their people.

But if there used to be a specific origin for Druids, the two existing hero classes are way more specific. Because they have a unique starting experience, both classes have a specific time in which they start, within a specific organization, regardless of race.

And the fact that the time period is specific makes adding new races complicated.

Death Knights begin right on the eve of Wrath of the Lich King, when Arthas has left the Frozen Throne to begin his campaign. Demon Hunters actually begin a little before that, literally during the raid on the Black Temple (like, literally the Raid where you might have fought Illidan during BC) before having a ten-year time jump.

That means that adding new races is complicated, especially if they're literally new races. The Void Elves, for instance, seem like they'd make perfectly good Demon Hunters. They clearly have no qualms with experimenting with dangerous magic, and as former Blood Elves, they have just as much of a reason to hate demons as any son or daughter of Quel'thalas. But, you know, there were no Blood Elves when Illidan was training his demon hunters. Similarly, Nightborne existed, but they were trapped in their bubble while Illidan was traipsing through the Tomb of Sargeras, just across the narrow waters from their city.

The only time either hero class got new races was in Cataclysm, when they decided to give them Goblins and Worgen (DKs are even the default class for Worgen when you start a new character.) Goblins were easy, as they had been plentiful in WoW since vanilla (though the connection to the Bilgewater Cartel and the Horde specifically was less obvious.) Worgen had been in the area, for sure, though generally in Silverpine, where the Scourge was less of a threat. Still, despite the fact that the Worgen of Shadowfang Keep (for those who came into the game in Cataclysm or later, SFK used to be "the Worgen dungeon") were all feral, the notion was that some had escaped Arugal's abuses and been taken by the Scourge, and that the process of Death-Knighting a Worgen calmed the rage enough to make them useful soldier for the Scourge.

But Blizzard hasn't done this since, and they've even backed down on ideas of adding things like Dark Iron Dwarf Death Knights.

Now, one reason is that this makes the earning of heritage armor sets way easier if you can do it on a hero class, to the extent that people might feel pressured to play a DK or DH in order to earn this achievement.

Still, the prospect is that these classes might not get any new race options for the rest of WoW's lifetime, even as the other classes get more and more.

Personally, I think that as long as new races are getting added, every class ought to get a new option or two. So how would you do that?

First, I think you could just think logically:

Illidan had more than Night Elves and Blood Elves in his employ. With Naga and Broken Draenei NPCs within the Demon Hunter class hall, it would make perfect sense if either were to be added to make them an option for the class.

Death Knights could really encompass anyone who might have been in Lordaeron prior to Wrath. Kul Tiran humans, for example, would not become isolationists until after the Third War, meaning you could easily have some Kul Tiran death knights dating back to those early days. There was, after all, a rather prominent Kul Tiran mage who was fighting the Scourge in the very early days. If we ever get an Undead allied race, they would probably fit this too.

But another option would be to change the way that these classes start:

Allowing the story to move forward for these classes, you could craft a different starting experience - maybe a shorter one, more like the allied races, who more or less get a welcome package and boot in the ass.

While the threat of Demons specifically is probably far smaller than it was during Legion, Demon Hunters could easily start training new recruits in their methods, perhaps offering a path to revenge against other supernatural threats.

And with the way that Bolvar is acting, we've seen three very prominent new Death Knights created during Legion - there's absolutely nothing preventing them from raising new DKs from amongst the other races, and the Ebon Blade doesn't seem to worry too much about whether people want to become Death Knights either.

I don't know if either of these are likely to happen, though I think the former is more likely, as it would require less content design work.

But it also remains to be seen how Blizzard is going to keep implementing new races.

Some Specs That Aren't Changing a Ton

It is, granted, possible that these are awaiting changes, but I've done a bit of testing with Frost and Blood Death Knights and Havoc Demon Hunters and I can say that they feel mostly unchanged.

Starting with Havoc:

One welcome change is that Eye Beam will now deal double damage against a primary target, which should allow one of the most iconic Demon Hunter abilities to be used in single-target encounters. There are some new talents and some that have been shifted around. You can still opt for Fel Blade and then make Demon Bite into the passive Demon Blades talent, which is how I currently run my DH.

Demon Hunters also now place a debuff with their attacks on the target that increases magic damage taken by 5%. This ought to apply to all your Chaos Damage abilities, and is essentially the raid buff you bring.

Now Frost:

Frost is almost entirely unchanged. The one thing that makes it feel a bit different is that, now that most cooldowns are on the GCD, if you're running Obliteration, you'll need to take two solid global cooldowns to get Pillar of Frost and Obliteration running.

Blood:

Similarly, Blood's changes are very subtle - the main thing is that Bone Shield now increases armor proportionately to your strength rather than simply reducing damage taken. Beyond that, though, it's mostly familiar.

If anything, the main oddity in all of this is going from epic Argus/Antorus gear and artifact weapons to a bunch of green gear. I suspect that when we take our characters into the new zones, even without artifacts, they should feel a lot more powerful than the premade characters available on the Alpha.

We also have yet to see how the Heart of Azeroth - essentially the universal "artifact necklace" of the expansion - is going to work. Currently, certain quests reward Azerite, which levels up the necklace, though for now it's just a boost to item level.

It's pretty early alpha though, so we'll have to see how things develop.

Slayer, Farseer, and Shadowblade Mount Quests

Getting your class mount, in most cases, is primarily about just finishing the Broken Shore campaign, which is unfortunately gated behind champion missions, world quests, and rare spawns such that you might have to just log off and wait to complete them. The worst, however, is the hidden wyrmtongue cache quest. They did reduce this from having to find 10 to 5, but I really think it should be exactly one. Anyway, rant over.

Demon Hunters pretty quickly get a little scenario-like quest where they head to a remote fragment of Mardum and chase down the broodmother of the felbats on that world. You track it down and fight it while fending off its many offspring, but it mostly pretty simple.

Shamans simply get a summons from Thunderaan where you beat the three djinn bosses from Throne of the Four Winds (wait, if they're air elementals and you killed them in the raid, how the hell are they back? And if they can come back, why can't Al-Akir?) Anyway, these are just three tough but not too tough fights that I was able to do without much trouble. Once all three are defeated (not killed,) you get the mount.

And then Rogues.

Holy. Crap.

Rogues have by far the toughest of the mount quests. I was lucky enough to encounter a couple of other rogues working on it, and teamwork definitely helped.

You receive word that the Legion has planted undead homunculi in all the major capital cities now that the Illidari are able to spot demonic infiltrators. To avoid putting the Uncrowned in a tough position, they send you to the opposite faction's cities so that your attacks can be passed off as standard Horde/Alliance aggression.

This is not phased or anything, so other players can make your life a living hell.

My rogue is Undead, so I went first to the Exodar, where you have to use Distract or Blind to keep the target's incredibly tough (basically he one-shots you) arcane golem from attacking.

Next is Darnassus, where the target is throwing a party in the entry area (from inner Teldrassil) and you have to sap her elite priest friend and then use Evasion and Cloak of Shadows while you target her and take her down (there's also a standard elite patroller who can detect through stealth that pats near the target.)

In Ironforge, there's a guy actually in the entryway to the throne room who takes almost no physical damage, so you'll definitely want to go either Assassination or Subtlety (and spec for Gloomblade for the latter) to max your non-physical damage.

Finally, the nastiest one that will never get easier: in Stormwind, you have to kill the guy in the Trade District auction house. So, where every Alliance player is in the city.

With those four killed, you're done, and you can be very, very proud of that mount.

The Crimes of the Illidari

Hey, remember when the Illidari were the bad guys?

While the focus of the expansion eventually shifted to the Burning Legion and its third and ultimately most underwhelming invasion of Azeroth (unless you count the Battle of Undercity as its fourth,) the Burning Crusade was primarily concerned with Illidan's forces and their domination of Outland.

Legion as an expansion has done a lot to rehabilitate Illidan as more of an anti-hero than true villain, but he is a character who has really straddled that line.

I've remarked before that the irony of WoW's "Hero Classes" is that they would be more accurately called "Villain Classes." There are standard classes that deal with unsavory methods (Warlocks in particular, though Rogues probably count too,) but both hero classes are members, or former members, of organizations we have actively fought in the past.

Death Knights, at least until Legion, had a bit more of a black-and-white switch between good and evil. Upon their raising, they served the Lich King directly and slaughtered civilians - there are quests where you actually get sent to kill fleeing humans who are about twenty levels below you (one of the rare times when character level is actually lore-based.) You are a straight up bad-guy, a monster. But at the Battle of Light's Hope Chapel, it's not exactly explicit, but it's pretty clear that your free will is restored, and from that point on, the Ebon Blade fight for the living.

(Yes, things have gotten muddier in Legion, but let's set that aside for now.) The Ebon Blade even attempts to make amends by allying with and bolstering the Argent Crusade, and it's their combined efforts that allow the heroic adventurers to secure victory over Arthas. The Ebon Blade is aware of its sins, and at least at first they were interested in paying their debts.

The Illidari, though, are tougher.

Part of the problem is that the Illidari never questioned that they were the good guys. The Scourge was pretty aware of their own evil. There's actually a really fascinating lore book in Acherus that you only get to read during the starting experience, but it's kind of a political manifesto by Kel'thuzad, who talks about how the Scourge considers itself to be more amoral than evil, but that they use the imagery of "evil" as an intimidation tactic.

But the Illidari have always considered themselves to be the ones who sacrifice everything, including their reputations, for the greater good. Their goal is to keep Azeroth safe from the Legion. It's not about their goals - it's their methods.

But let's talk about those methods.

First off, there's the use of fel magic. Now, most Demon Hunters do really seem to use this power for good - fighting demons. But we've seen multiple cases of Demon Hunters going over to the dark side - Varedis and Calia Felsoul, and that one in Azsuna. It's surprisingly easy for a Demon Hunter to just flip and join the Legion. On top of that, every Demon Hunter (with the exception of Illidan, who's kind of his own thing) actually has a demonic soul bonded to them, and if they ever let go of their vigilant control over that demon, they will be taken over and, you know, just become a demon.

In the long run, that seems kind of inevitable. Granted, if a Demon Hunter can kill a bunch of demons before they lose control, it might be worth it as a sort of net effect, but only if they can really, truly kill the demon, not just kill their physical bodies.

We've also got to go back to BC and look at what they did in Outland. Now here, there is a little leeway we can give them, as the Illidari were a somewhat fractured faction, with Kael'thas' forces allying with the Legion in secret. Likewise, Vashj may have been pursuing her own goals on the orders of Azshara.

But Illidan himself did some pretty nasty things. For one thing, he created a whole new Fel Horde, installing Kargath Bladefist as their Warchief. The Orcs, who had on Azeroth finally escaped the Blood Curse, were on Outland being pushed back into this old habit. And it's clear that a lot of Orcs were being forcibly infused with Magtheridon's blood.

The Orcs in turn enslaved the Netherwing dragonflight - the off-shoot of the Black flight that seems to have escaped the Old God corruption the rest of Neltharion's brood had been afflicted with (and the Orcs sold many of those Nether Drakes back to Sinestra, which led to the Twilight Dragonflight.)

The Draenei had managed to retake the ruins of Shattrath City, but Illidan sent his forces to attack them. Why? Just so he could consolidate power on Outland.

Now, yes, Illidan was working on a plan to invade Mardum and then Argus, and killing him might have had seriously bad longterm consequences (which we're in the process of correcting by fighting to his body in the Nighthold) but the thing is that he never told anyone what he was doing, or even that he was actively trying to fight the Legion.

There was no reason for any of us in Burning Crusade to think Illidan was anything other than a tyrant who needed toppling.

And player Demon Hunters were totally complicit in this.

The Demon Hunters were locked up in the Vault of the Wardens for ten years, but they've never really owned up to any of the bad things they or their boss did. Or even if they've owned up to them, there's never been any sense of remorse. Much like Illidan, the Illidari are basically entirely self-centered and self-righteous.

But they're a really fun class to play!

2.5 Months In: Demon Hunters

Legion is a great expansion. In fact, as I've been saying for a while, if they keep things up, we might finally see Wrath of the Lich King dethroned as it were (I know that "best" is a very subjective term, but personally I think the amount of content, accessibility, new gameplay and story were all precedent-setting in Wrath.)

Obviously one of, if not the biggest feature in Legion, and the one that is likely to have the biggest longterm effects (PvPers might cite the new Honor system instead) is the new class, the Demon Hunter.

Having now gotten to a point where players might actually have well-geared Demon Hunter mains, or at least high-priority alts (mine has more or less become a solid number 3 behind my Main Paladin and Chief Alt/Vice Main Death Knight) I think we can talk a bit about how well they're working out.

Story, Flavor, and Lore:

Obviously as a Hero Class, Demon Hunters have a lot going for them. While Death Knights had a very big presence in Wrath (though they shared center stage with Paladins and arguably Mages,) the Illidari are a big presence, but not a ubiquitous one. They've managed to feel important without really hogging the spotlight, but I think that's more about the wonderful focus on class content: in effect, every class feels important in Legion. Demon Hunters just get a few areas to help establish important Demon Hunter characters.

So, speaking of characters: There are a lot of DH characters who pop up as recurring names and faces. Demon Hunters of course have these as class champions. That being said, I don't know if they've done a great job of really introducing them.

Death Knights basically had three NPCs that everyone knew and interacted with. Darion Mograine was the Death Knight counterpart to Tirion Fordring and was the public face of the Ebon Blade as a force for good in the world. Then you had Thassarian - a man of honor with a family to protect and loyalty to his friends who was somehow kind of a good guy even when he was part of the Scourge (he saw undeath as an escape from racism and prejudice, sending you to rescue Koltira.) And of course you then have Koltira, who represented a somewhat colder and callous attitude, but backed it up with great competence and knowledge.

I can't really say that any of the Demon Hunter NPCs have made such an impression. We have yet to find out what the consequence of choosing Kayn or Altruis at the end of the starting experience will mean, and most of the characters are kind of generically broody. I'd like to see more of Korvas, the woman whom you fight alongside on Faronaar and who is the subject of the Illidan Harbinger video.

Really, I think this is one of those situations where they had to create a number of characters to give you enough champions, but a lot of them aren't terribly fleshed out.

There's also a big question, which is what will happen if and when Illidan makes his return. Demon Hunters are part of the Illidari, and so one imagines they'll be working closely with him if he returns to the world of the living. But I also wonder if that will then make the Illidari story really just the Illidan (and some friends) story.

Gameplay: Havoc

Havoc feels very different from any melee spec that has existed before, largely due to the power of Fel Rush. An ability that you'd expect to be a kind of utility spell, this instead is a serious part of your DPS - though I don't know if that's true for all talent builds.

See, the thing about Havoc is that the talents you choose make such a big difference that I don't know whether there's a lot of flexibility. For example, while I've gotten used to it now, I wasn't really crazy about Bloodlet - a talent that makes your Throw Glaive ability apply a very strong bleed. But combining Bloodlet and Momentum (which gives you a damage boost for a couple seconds after Fel Rush or Vengeful Retreat) has such incredible synergy (Bloodlet's damage is based on that of Throw Glaive, so the short-duration Momentum damage boost gets effectively extended over the course of the whole bleed) that I don't know that you can choose any other talents in either row. Then you get Fel Mastery and Prepared to further boost the use of these Momentum-activating abilities, and it starts to feel cookie-cutter.

Synergy is pretty cool with talents, but when it's too strong, or there isn't a competing synergy, you might wind up stuck with one "right" way to play the spec.

Now, I haven't done a bunch of theorycrafting research recently, so maybe there are other options out there, but for now, it seems as if there is one good way to spec Havoc.

Of course, thankfully, it's a lot of fun.

I guess the only other problem is on-demand AoE. You can have nearly unlimited cleave thanks to Bloodlet, but for true AoE, basically everything is a cooldown - Fel Rush, Blade Dance, Eye Beam, Fury of the Illidari - all of these are tied to cooldowns.

Still, they're so powerful that it's not really that much of a problem.

Overall, Havoc is tons of fun, and these are only nitpicks.

Gameplay: Vengeance

I remember people worrying that Vengeance wasn't tough enough, but I'm not finding that to be much of an issue. Being used to playing my Paladin and Death Knight, I do notice the lack of a stun, but it's not that much of a problem.

Vengeance does a lot more self-healing that I figured the DH tanking spec would. It's probably not quite up at the level of Blood Death Knights (where self-healing is basically their primary tanking strategy,) but it's very high.

One thing that can sometimes be frustrating is that the amount of self-healing varies significantly. You're really at the mercy of Soul Fragments - getting a couple of those elevates a Soul Cleave from a significant, but really just moderate heal into something almost like a rotational Lay on Hands.

Sigils are cool, but honestly, the one that I'm least happy about is Sigil of Flame. It's not quite like Death and Decay, which creates this nice persistent AoE that is great at catching streaming adds (though nothing beats Consecration for that!) and one could make a pretty solid argument that between Infernal Strike and Immolation Aura (and Throw Glaive for cleave situations,) Vengeance doesn't really need Sigil of Flame. I have the talent that causes Infernal Strike to create Sigils of Flame, meaning that a lot of the time I don't have to manually cast it.

I suppose the one other issue is that sometimes, the rotation kind of falls into a section of "spam Shear." Both DH specs are GCD-locked, with a no-cooldown generator ability. But Havoc can really break up its Demon Bite spams with things like Fel Rush - in fact, I sometimes forget to use Demon Bite given how much Fury I can generate with Fel Rush and Prepared-talented Vengeful Retreat.

Still, while there are other sources of Pain, sometimes you want to spam Shear anyway to get some Soul Fragments.

Still, in terms of tanking capabilities, I'm pretty happy with Vengeance. You have a very reliable (long duration, relatively short recharge and low cost) active mitigation ability. There's plenty of threat coming from your Immolation Aura and Soul Cleave is not bad for snap-threat. Throw Glaive is practically always available to get distant adds, as is Infernal Strike.

There aren't a ton of big damage-reduction cooldowns, though I honestly don't find myself hitting Metamorphosis that often (I do have a talent that sets it off automatically if I'd otherwise die, and of course there's an artifact trait that gives it to you for short durations periodically in combat.)

As someone who plays a Paladin and a Death Knight tank, Vengeance's mobility is really exciting, though I wonder if people who play more with the other tanks feel that as much. Vengeance doesn't zip around the battlefield as much as Havoc, but that's probably for the best, as melee DPS would hate you.

Aesthetics:

Demon Hunters make my Death Knight jealous. DKs, mind you, were unprecedented in having things that distinguished it from other members of that same race. You got glowing blue eyes (less impressive on my Draenei,) your voice got pitched down (making the clattering sound effects in that one male Draenei joke sound super weird) and you got some special rotten-looking skin and face options (unless your race is Undead, who, well, already look like that.)

Demon Hunters are practically a different race (well, two.) Not only to you get horns, a blindfold, glowing green eyes (if you don't go with a blindfold - but this glow goes way beyond the standard Blood Elf glow) as well as scaly or fel-lesion-pocked skin, but you also get a somewhat different face (Night Elf males all get a kind of sneer) and even a bonus hair color (I don't think other Night Elves can get totally black hair.)

But the biggest thing is the voice acting. Demon Hunters have totally different voice acting, along with their own jokes and flirts

We have yet to really see a ton of Demon Hunter armor. So far, we've got basically two questing sets from the starting experience, then the class hall set and the first tier set.

But then we also have a totally new weapon type. This is something I really wonder about going forward. With artifact weapons, it's no problem at all to give DHs Warglaives without worrying about if other classes should get to use them. But in the next expansion, are Demon Hunters going to be forced to use simple swords and axes? Warglaives are a huge part of the aesthetic, but when weapons aren't designed specifically for the class, will Demon Hunters who want to use their glaives be forced to transmog to the few models introduced in Legion?

Into the Future:

I'd really have liked to see more races made available as Demon Hunters. The question is whether that can really ever happen. Basically, unless Naga, Broken, or Shivarra (somehow) get added as a playable race, there's no one else who would appropriately be at the Black Temple to start the Demon Hunter experience at the appropriate time.

I doubt we're going to see a third spec added to the class. In fact, I even suspect that future classes will probably have just one spec per group role (I also highly doubt we'll see any new pure DPS classes.) While I think a ranged dps spec for Demon Hunters could have worked (and would have been the first ranged spec added since vanilla) I think having just the two has actually worked out just fine for the class.

Most classes have undergone huge changes over the years, and so I certainly won't count Demon Hunters out on that count. But for now, things seem to be going well.

Tanking Competence and You! A Beginner's Guide

I just ran heroic Neltharion's Lair on my Enhancement Shaman. Our tank was a Vengeance Demon Hunter who seemed perhaps a little inexperienced. We wiped on Dargrul several times, largely due to some mechanics that he was either ignoring or just not dealing well with. Unfortunately, he and our healer were antagonizing each other, and so when we got a new healer and managed to down the boss, he declared in the party chat that it was clearly just the healer. I tried to explain in a polite and helpful way that there were some things he could work on, but he left before I could give him examples (some of which were advice he had ignored after previous attempts.)

Anyway, given that I play four different tank characters, I figured I'd put down a bit of advice.

1. Tanking is not as hard as it seems

First off, tanking can seem difficult, as it's a bit like DPS but with more responsibility, but in fact it's a pretty different set of skills. As long as you can maintain threat (and unless you severely undergear your DPS, you generally can) you don't really need to worry about damage numbers.

Your healer has your back. All you have to do is make sure that the enemies are in the right position and that you do what you can to reduce incoming damage or heal back your own depleted health.

Basically, remember that you're not competing to top meters. If you survive the fight and you don't get your party members killed, that's a victory.

As a tank, it's your job to try to make the healer bored.

2. Situational Awareness

Healers usually just ignore enemies as long as they're not pulsing some AoE that you can't stand inside of. DPS can focus down individual enemies. In general, a Tank can't afford to do this. Any enemy that is in combat with your party needs to get at least a bit of your attention. Thankfully, just about every tank class uses the same ability rotation for single-target and AoE. So just make sure that you get your AoE attacks on everything you're currently in combat with. Sometimes that means moving, because if a party member strays off the path or hesitates long enough to draw some patrol you avoided, you're going to need to pick it up.

Most tanks have abilities I call "snap threat," which are instant-cast abilities that hit multiple targets and that are almost always available. DKs' Blood Boil, Paladins' Blessed Hammer (a talent, but a recommended one,) DHs' Infernal Strike and Throw Glaive, and Druids' Thrash are all good examples. Monks and Warriors might have a little harder time, but while they're less often available, Warriors' Thunder Clap and Monks' Breath of Fire or Keg Smash are also great for picking up adds.

3. Positioning

Because enemies pay attention to you as the tank (assuming you got number 2 above right) you're going to have the power and responsibility to care about positioning.

First, there's the obvious: if an enemy has a big cone-attack that hits everyone in front of it, make sure you're facing the boss away from the group. Likewise, if it has any sort of tail-swipe ability that hits players who are standing at a particular angle, make sure that you're not wildly swinging the boss around. Whenever you can, plant your feet.

However, sometimes you can't. And you'll have to recognize when those situations arise. Some bosses make it obvious - like creating some big pool underneath them that you need to move away from. Sometimes it's less obvious - they might create a pool under one of your melee party members, and while you might be sitting high and dry, you'll still want to move the boss to make sure that everyone has a safe place to stand during the fight.

When moving a boss, be aware of effects that can be exacerbated by your movement. If the boss knocks you back periodically, don't back yourself up to a ledge that you can fall off of. If the boss has a tail swipe or frontal cone attack, make sure that you're not turning it to face your party or spinning that tail right into your friends' faces.

Also sometimes the boss will do something that even you shouldn't be standing in. If there's a frontal cone that they'll do without turning, quickly sidestep out of it, but be sure to get back into your position once the area is safe again to minimize how much your party needs to move.

4. Active Mitigation

Regardless of the fight, you'll always want to use Active Mitigation early and often. This takes a few forms, from increased avoidance to straight-up damage reduction to powerful self healing. In most cases, the effect is good enough on its own to be worth using. On certain bosses, however, there will be abilities that will specifically have extra effects (often doing significantly more damage) they hit a tank that does not have its active mitigation up. For bosses like this, you'll want to pool resources (and cooldowns) to make sure that you have the ability ready for when the thing goes off. (Though you also don't want to cap cooldowns or resources, as you'll still benefit from AM abilities during other parts of the fight.)

I highly, highly recommend using an addon like Weak Auras or something similar to track whether you have these effects up. Weak Auras allows something called "Progress Textures" which will allow you to have an icon that can either fill up or empty out as the buff wears off.

Let's go through each tank's active mitigation abilities:

Warriors: Both AM abilities are self-buffs. Shield Block has a set duration and will increase your block chance to 100%, which effectively causes you to take 40% less direct physical damage during its duration (or more thanks to Critical Block.) You also have Ignore Pain, which is a damage-absorption shield. This can be powerful when dealing with magic damage (that would usually go right through your shield) but can also wear off prematurely if the entire shield is used up. I'd recommend using Shield Block on any boss ability that cares about Active Mitigation, as you'll be guaranteed that it lasts long enough to still be up when the ability goes off.

Paladins: Shield of the Righteous is your main AM ability, reducing damage taken by a significant amount (based on mastery.) This is simply a 4.5 second buff that reduces incoming damage. Its effect (both the damage it deals and the reduction in damage you take) are increased if you're standing in your Consecration, so you should try to keep that up at all times. Additionally, Paladins have Light of the Protector, which heals you for a percentage of your missing health (again affected by Mastery.) This becomes more powerful the lower on health you have, but even if you're not dipping below 30%, it can still help out your healer. This heal does not grant any real buff, so it won't do anything for boss abilities that care about active mitigation, so make sure to use Shield of the Righteous for cases like that. Note that Shield of the Righteous requires you to be in melee range, as it's technically an attack that grants the defensive buff, so if there's a big hit coming in, make sure you can hit them first.

Death Knights: This one's a bit weird. The only official active mitigation buff you get is Blood Shield. If you're searching your spell book for this, you should stop, because it's actually your mastery passive. Instead, you'll want to be using Death Strike, which heals you for a big portion of the damage you've taken over the last 5 seconds (or 10% of your max health if you haven't been taking more than that amount of damage.) Your mastery will then generate a damage absorption shield that is proportional to this heal, and it's that shield that counts for active mitigation boss abilities. You do have other defensive abilities you'll want to use, but unfortunately these don't count for that type of boss ability. The main one is Marrowrend, which is a melee strike that generates three charges of Bone Shield. Each time you get hit with a melee attack, one of the charges on your Bone Shield will be spent to reduce the damage of that attack. Thus, you want to try to maintain at least one charge of Bone Shield at all times (or 5 if you have the talent Ossuary.) However, if you are sitting pretty on many charges, you'll instead want to use Heart Strike, which generates more Runic-Power-per-Rune-spent (15 for 1 or more if there are other targets to hit instead of 20 for 2) and thus means more Death Strikes.

Monks: Primarily, active mitigation for Monks is handled by your Brews, particularly Ironskin Brew. You can maintain very high uptime on this brew, which doubles the amount of damage you stagger from 40% to 80%. While this doesn't actually reduce the damage you ultimately take on its own, it will significantly smooth out the damage that you get, making the healer's job a lot easier. However, if you start to get a lot of staggered damage, you'll want to use Purifying Brew, which reduces your staggered damage by 50%. Be sure to use Keg Smash and Tiger Palm to reduce the recharge time on all your brews, but also be aware that Ironskin and Purifying share a cooldown, so if you use Purifying a lot it will make it harder to keep Ironskin up at all times. Ironskin Brew will be the buff you maintain in the event of boss abilities that care about active mitigation. I recommend taking the talent Black Ox Brew, which is a cooldown that restores you to your maximum Ironskin/Purifying Brew charges of 3 and also gives you full Energy. Because Black Ox Brew is a brew, its cooldown will also be reduced by Keg Smash and Tiger Palm, meaning you can use it very frequently. Aside from your Brews, you should also use Expel Harm to absorb any nearby Gift of the Ox orbs for a rather sizable heal, but again, the only real "active mitigation" buff you get is Ironskin Brew (actually, Fortifying Brew, your long-term defensive cooldown, might also count, but you can't use that rotationally.)

Demon Hunters: Your primary AM ability is Demon Spikes, which, much like Ironskin Brew, Shield of the Righteous, and Shield Block, is simply a buff that lasts a set amount of time. You get two charges of this and it only costs 20 Pain, so you'll have access to it pretty frequently. It also lasts a long time. However, another big part of Vengeance Demon Hunter survival is the use of Soul Cleave. This not only does a lot of damage to targets in front of you (and thus is good for threat in both single-target and aoe situations) but also heals you for a significant amount. It also draws in any nearby Lesser Soul Fragments generated by Shear, potentially healing you for a lot more than just its base healing. Basically, any time you've already got Demon Spikes up or on cooldown, you want to spend your Pain on Soul Cleave. Do not wait to amass soul fragments - while those will increase its healing by a lot, you'll be better served by getting the base healing of the ability and building up for the next one. Again, Soul Cleave does not give you an active mitigation buff, but its healing is a significant piece of the Vengeance survival strategy. You can pool Pain (though try not to cap it) before using Soul Cleave as it will heal you for more based on how much Pain is spent, I believe from 20 to 60.

Druids: I'll confess that my Druid is still sitting in the Dreamgrove having done almost nothing after getting the Claws of Ursoc, so this one's going to be a bit more sketchy. The primary AM ability for Guardians is going to be Ironfur. Unlike other tanks, there's actually a benefit to overlapping multiple applications of this ability, as you'll get the benefit of each stack (with each stack lasting its own separate duration.) Ironfur increases your armor by 100% for a few seconds, which of course will reduce the physical damage you take by a lot. This is the buff you'll want up when a boss hits you with one of those special attacks. Druids also have Frenzied Regeneration, which heals you for an amount based on the rage spent, but again, while this is a buff (it's a heal-over-time effect) I don't think this counts as true Active Mitigation for abilities that care.

5. Situational Awareness Again

As a tank you'll mostly be worried about enemies. But you'll also want to keep an eye on your party. Before charging on to the next fight, make sure that your healer has enough mana. Some healers will be fine with 50% or less, but if you see them struggling, it's ok to slow down a bit. If you see that the party is basically always at full health, you can pull a little faster or even take on two trash packs at a time (though make sure that these trash packs don't interact in dangerous ways - like having multiple healers or enemies within them that can cast fear on your group.) If instead your party is constantly at 50% health or dying, slow things down and try to employ stuns or crowd control to ease the burden.

Also, make sure that your party hasn't accidentally pulled something. Especially in Legion, there's a lot of dungeon trash that you can and should skip when possible. But all it takes is for one person (or one pet) to stray a little too close to them, or for some errant AoE ability to pull an enemy that normally is neutral, and you'll have some extra stuff to fight. Don't get too far ahead of your group.

6. Keep a Cool Head

Some players are awful. You don't need to do a ready check before every trash mob, but it's ok to take a second or two to assess your next fight. If you have a player who is pulling for you, you have a couple options. You can simply roll with it and pick up aggro on the things they've pulled, or you can politely ask them to stop doing that. If they keep doing it, you can try to get them kicked out of the group. You can also drop out of the group yourself if the party isn't cooperating, though this is definitely a last resort.

Ultimately, regardless of whether you're tanking or doing anything else, try to cultivate patience. Mistakes happen, and sometimes people are really just learning the ropes. Offer advice, but be sure to keep it in a helpful tone. If someone's being an ass, there's not much you can do about that, but if someone just genuinely doesn't know something - like boss mechanics or the optimal rotation for their spec, keep your advice friendly.

Comparing Four Tank Specs

I just got my Monk to 110 (I think this expansion I've been leveling more characters to max quicker than I've ever done before. I think a huge part of that is the class campaigns, which give me something truly new to do with each alt.)

Anyway, while my DK and DH have both been flirting with going mainspec DPS this expansion (on LFR, I've been going primarily Havoc and Unholy) I've been starting to gravitate back toward tanking on both of them, especially as it's a hell of a lot easier to get into a Mythic dungeon group when you're a tank.

My Monk, while he's never been anywhere near as top-priority as the Paladin or Death Knight (or Demon Hunter, who very quickly jumped up to my #3 spot,) has, like the Paladin, always been a Tank as his mainspec. You really cannot ignore the amazing and, well, hilarious flavor of the Brewmaster tank, so while I've played around with Windwalker a bit, it's really undeniable that he's a Brewmaster through and through (often going around with the Brewmaster title, though right now he's going with Crashin' Thrashin', which seems to fit even better.)

Anyway, having now tanked a decent amount on four classes (I did a round of five timewalkers with my guild on my Warrior as Protection, but that's about it) I thought I'd talk about them. As a big caveat, the Paladin is definitely better geared than the others, though that gap is shrinking now that my DK and DH are both only one gear slot shy of Brokenly Epic, and in terms of average gear level are only one or two points away from the Paladin. The Paladin is definitely ahead in terms of artifact traits, though. The Monk, on the other hand, is far behind, not yet even doing heroic dungeons.

Paladin:

Given that I've been playing this class and spec for about ten years, tanking on a Paladin is literally the main way I experience World of Warcraft. I try to make sure to take him into every instance first, before doing so on other characters (actually, I cheated tonight taking my Demon Hunter into Mythic Neltharion's Lair - the Paladin hasn't done that or Vault of the Wardens Mythic yet.)

Paladins are, as I've usually found, feeling pretty strong. The natural damage-smoothing of the block mechanic couples well with fairly reliable active mitigation and potent self-healing in the form of Light of the Protector. Having Judgment and Avenger's Shield really helps when you need to pick up threat on distant enemies, and I've found that taking the Blessed Hammer talent gives you a great tool to help get snap-threat and cover entire areas with at least a little threat now that Glyph of the Consecrator is no more.

Having to stand in your Consecration to get the full strength of your defensive abilities does reduce your mobility a little bit, but I think that fights are being designed with a little less mobility required now, and your Consecration is large enough that you'll usually be able to find a spot within it that's open. Also, with Consecration's cooldown but not its duration reduced by Haste as well as artifact traits that increase its duration, you can often have two Consecrations up at a time.

The charge-based system for Shield of the Righteous does require a little more forward-thinking now, but unless the boss has a specific ability that requires active mitgation, you can basically just use it on cooldown (though I recommend using Weak Auras or something similar to track the duration of the buff so that you don't needlessly overlap them - though I think there's a little bit of overlap protection built-in, so it might not be that much of a problem.)

Death Knight:

I really can't get over how smart it was to make Death Strike the Runic Power spending ability, as previously it always felt like a total waste to use runes on anything else. The Marrowrend/Heart Strike choice keeps you thinking about what to do constantly.

I also love the new Blood Boil, as it's a free and very frequently available AoE burst that also applies your spec's disease. Blood Boil is basically the ideal snap-threat ability, totally untargeted and doing a pretty sizable amount of damage in an area.

Death Knights don't have the best ranged-threat options. You can throw your Death and Decay over to distant enemies (and in fact it's very good for grabbing packs) or you can use Death's Caress. Unfortunately, Death's Caress doesn't really do a lot of up-front damage, and so while it's fine if there an add that none of the DPS is going after yet, it's not going to be all that effective at taking attention away from the Hunter who just pulled it with Barrage. Still, there's always Death Grip, and Gorefiend's Grasp as well.

Survival-wise, you've got to get used to using Vampiric Blood more proactively, and the artifact ability Consumption can be a nice burst heal when you're tanking big packs (on single target it's pretty underwhelming.) Still, with a massive health pool and super-powerful self-healing from Death Strike, Blood's also in a pretty good place for survival.

Demon Hunter:

So here we go from the two least-mobile tanks (Paladins and Death Knights are very much "plant your feet" tanks) to the two most mobile.

While I suspect that Death Knights are the most self-healing-focused tank spec, Demon Hunters can't be too far behind. Soul Cleave, especially when you have a decent number of soul fragments out, draws in a massive amount of healing, and like Death Knight's you're going to see your health bar bounce a bit more than some of the other tanks. For that reason, I wonder if Demon Hunters shouldn't have a bigger health pool. My DH and DK are almost at the same gear level (in fact, I think the only piece either has below 840 the chest piece,) but my DK has about 500,000 more health. Granted, Demon Hunters have Demon Spikes while Death Knights really have to rely almost entirely on Death Strike's healing, but I'll tell you that the heal out of Soul Cleave is usually pretty necessary.

Vengeance is fun, but there are definitely some reliability issues - Shear's chance to grant Soul Shards is very hard to predict, and so while you'll sometimes have three out and your Soul Cleave will totally fill you up, other times you'll be getting "raw" Soul Cleaves that are pretty underwhelming. The artifact ability Soul Carver does really help with this, though the 40 second cooldown means it's in that awkward middle ground between being a cooldown and a rotational ability.

Threat-wise, Throw Glaive is very reliable for snap threat, and of course Infernal Strike is great for that too, assuming that positioning isn't going to need to be too precise. Your Sigils are also pretty great utility spells.

Monk:

With the loss of Guard and a far less reliable Expel Harm, Monks have really focused on the Stagger mechanic. While before Legion, it was pretty exciting to get Stagger above 50%, now you'll spend probably most of your time with a Stagger percentage of 80%. You no longer get any boost to armor or flat damage reduction (which I think would make any bonus armor items extra-powerful for Monks) so Stagger's the thing you've really got to rely on.

Especially with the talent Black Ox Brew (which resets the charges on your Ironskin/Purifying Brew, restores your energy to 100, and is itself a Brew and thus will have its cooldown reduced by Keg Smash and Tiger Palm) you can maintain very high uptime on your active mitigation, Ironskin Brew. This does make fights like Dargrul or Illysanna Ravencrest pretty trivial (unlike for Death Knights, who have to be very precise in timing to make sure their Blood Shield is up.)

Much like Paladins, Monks have to think carefully about their active mitigation abilities, though again, thanks to Black Ox Brew and the ability to actively regenerate your charges, it really only becomes a challenge when you're taking enough damage to start weaving in those Purifying Brews. I've found that from 100 through 109, it was rare that I had enough staggered damage to need a Purifying Brew. Upon hitting the cap, though, running through Halls of Valor again for a class quest saw my stagger bar going yellow and red pretty frequently.

That said, in those cases it was typically my stagger bar that got alarming, and rarely my actual health bar.

So survival is ok, though it'll require a lot more reactive maintenance than it did back when Guard absorbed about a billion damage.

Threat is a little trickier. For enemies in melee range, Keg Smash continues to do massive damage and will keep things glued to you. You also have Breath of Fire as a real part of the rotation, and not just something that you're wasting Chi on. However, while the range on Keg Smash has gotten bigger, grabbing far-away adds is not going to be as easy as it used to, now that Dizzying Haze is gone. You can actually use the artifact ability Flaming Keg to do a big burst of damage at a decent range, but given that it's really more of a defensive cooldown and is also only available once every minute and fifteen seconds, you'll probably want to have other options. There is Crackling Jade Lightning, but the damage it does is pretty pathetic.

In fact, there's really not any AoE ability that doesn't have a bit of a cooldown - Keg Smash and Breath of Fire are both AoE, but won't necessarily be ready when you want them. So there's basically tab-targeting if you get adds streaming in at an inopportune time.

Tanks to Come:

My Druid will probably go Guardian this expansion if I'm not once again torn between that and Balance. My Warrior will probably stick with Arms, but if I decide I really want to take him through Mythic dungeons, I might be inspired to have him go Protection. Hopefully some day my Shaman or Rogue will be able to find Mythic groups that want them (my Shaman in particular is capable of pretty insane DPS these days) but for now I'm pretty happy playing all these tanks.

Legion: Nine Days Out - Demon Hunters

Legion is only a little over a week away, but one of its biggest features - the Demon Hunter hero class - is already available to play. I know that I've been taking my DH around on several demon invasions, I've tanked a few dungeons on him (and DPS'd one,) and I've been taking him through old dungeons and raids as I hunt for transmog pieces (I've actually been able to solo the first two bosses of Throne of Thunder as Vengeance, the first one on 25-player mode.)

We don't really have the entire Demon Hunter arsenal yet - while other classes have their full complement of talents and will only have to worry about their artifact weapons when it comes to progressing through the Broken Isles, Demon Hunters are going to keep unlocking new talents every two levels until level 110. This does mean that they are at a slight disadvantage for now, but it's not a terribly large one. Still, it will be interesting to see how talent builds turn out once we have access to the whole range. Personally I'm really enjoying my Momentum/Prepared "build," though the cooldown on Fel Rush becomes more of an issue when doing heroics and things are dying very quickly.

The Demon Hunter starting experience is quite good - I need to go back and do it on a different character now that I have access to my far newer and more powerful desktop computer, so that I can really search Mardum for all the hidden treasures. It's also pretty cool to get an early look at the Vault of the Wardens dungeon, which is pretty huge.

In some ways, the level of uniqueness that Demon Hunters get makes me almost wish that they had been able to do similar things for Death Knights - like totally new voice acting and additional character customization features. That said, if they had done all that unique model stuff beyond simple additional face and skins, we probably would have been far more limited in race choices for Death Knights - I could imagine them limiting it to Humans, Dwarfs, Undead, and Blood Elves, which would have left my Draenei out in the cold as it were.

Of course, Demon Hunters are only so unique because of the lessons Blizzard learned making the Death Knight and the Monk.

Gameplay-wise, Demon Hunter do seem to embody the new design philosophy - a very simple core rotation, but with lots of things you can add into it with talents. Havoc, for example, before you take talents into account, is basically Demon Bite and Chaos Strike, with Eye Beam on a fairly long cooldown (theorycrafting even suggests that on single targets, Eye Beam isn't even worth it, though I think Blizzard will either buff that or nerf Chaos Strike a bit to make it more attractive.) But with talents you can make Vengeful Retreat, Fel Rush, Throw Glaive, Blade Dance for single targets, and even Chaos Nova a significant part of your rotation.

On the other hand, Vengeance is not so simple - you have a pretty complex set of utility cooldowns and things like Sigil of Flame and Fiery Brand that you've got to work in in the right way. I'm given to understand that they've been a little weak on the beta, but I'd bet this is just a tuning thing (and of course, a lack of experience for those playing the class.)

Demon Hunters have had a strong debut, and there's an interesting story behind them. I'm eager to see the emergence of interesting Demon Hunter characters - there's no obvious Thassarian/Koltira pairing yet.

I'm also eager to see the look of the demon hunter evolve over time - getting our artifacts with all their different appearances will be a big step forward (right now there are only three warglaive models one has access to for transmog) but I'm also really curious to see how the tier sets evolve.

Vengeance Actual Tanking Impressions

While I'm gravitating a bit more toward making Havoc my main spec (again, we'll see about queue times,) I did take my Demon Hunter into a heroic, specifically Shadowmoon Burial Grounds.

Now, of course, given that Demon Hunters come out of their starting experience with 680 gear and with all the invasions I've managed to get up to over 700, one is already vastly overpowered for a dungeon that only even rewards 630 gear.

So surviving wasn't really much of a challenge.

The main thing that I noticed is that you're really going to be using Soul Cleave to burn off Pain, often if not most of the time absorbing less than the max 5 Lesser Soul Fragments. Demon Spikes should be your higher priority for active mitigation (unless your health has dropped low) but its cooldown is going to make it hard to use frequently enough to avoid capping Pain.

In terms of threat, I found that Infernal Strike was a fantastic way to pull - just hop in, pop Immolation Aura, and maybe a Sigil of Flame, and you're going to have your enemies' rapt attention.

You can use Throw Glaive (there's got to be a better name for this. Glaive Toss would have been better) for snap threat if you have something coming after a party member, and if you keep a charge of Infernal Strike at the ready, you can go rescue your healer pretty easily.

Nothing was damaging me enough to really warrant blowing major cooldowns, so no Metamorphosis. I'm still trying to figure out how frequently to use Fiery Brand, but I think with a 1-minute CD it's a "use liberally" kind of defensive ability. And the fire damage is not insignificant.

Overall, I think Vengeance has a ton of great threat tools, so until you're raiding and have to deal with other tanks, you're going to be pretty much set when it comes to that. Your significant self-healing will also make you slightly less reliant on your healer (something I really miss on my Paladin) but I don't think it's quite at Death Knight levels. But I definitely think that mobility is going to be a real strong suit for Demon Hunter tanks.