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Even in World of Warcraft Dragonflight, three expansions after Legion, Demon Hunters are still relatively new to the game, being the hero class introduced in the latter. While Demon Hunters have a flashy damage specialization, their tank specialization, Vengeance, is a blast to play and one worth trying, even if you’re not a tank player.

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The Vengeance Demon Hunter has very high survivability and, ironically, pumps out some seriously high numbers on the damage charts as a tank. So, if you’re interested in swapping tank mains or thinking about picking up the role for the first time, this guide covers everything you need to know to help you get started as a Vengeance Demon Hunter.

Why Vengeance?

World of Warcraft Vengeance Demon Hunter metamorphosed

Here are some great reasons why you should consider choosing Vengeance:

  1. If you like the Demon Hunter aesthetic and you like tanking, this is the way to go. As with any other tanking specialization, you’ll lead your party in group content and, depending on the bosses, will deal with different mechanics.
  2. Demon Hunters, in general, are incredibly mobile, and that mobility is a great tool for tanks to have, especially in situations (mainly dungeons) where you have to kite your enemies.
  3. Even though they’re tanks, their damage is absurd, especially on big area-of-effect pulls. Even if you take more defensive talents and sacrifice some more offensive options (more on that in the talent build sections), you’ll still be on par with the damage dealers in your group.

Best Races

World of Warcraft split image of blood elf and night elf Demon hunter character creation screens

Considering there are only two races that can be Demon Hunters, you're only really choosing whether or not you want to be Horde (Blood Elf) or Alliance (Night Elf). However, when it comes to their racial abilities and passives, both are quite good, making your choice come down to preference, but let’s compare the relevant ones.

Race

Racial Ability

Racial Ability Effect

Night Elf

Shadowmeld (active)

A stationary insta-stealth that lets you drop aggro with enemies.

Quickness (passive)

Increases your chance to dodge melee and ranged attacks by two percent and your movement speed by two percent.

Touch of Elune (passive)

Increases your haste by one percent during the night. Increases your critical strike by one percent during the day.

Blood Elf

Arcane Torrent (active)

Remove one beneficial effect from all enemies within eight yards and generate eighteen Fury.

Arcane Acuity (passive)

Increases critical strike chance by one percent.

Blood Elf is the clear winner here when it comes to active racial abilities. Arcane Torrent is not only a second way to remove beneficial effects from enemies (Demon Hunters can already do this with Consume Magic), but it also generates Fury for you, which is great. This is certainly better than Shadowmeld (in PvE, at least), as the last thing you want to do as a tank is drop aggro.

Moving on to the passives, critical strike is decent on Vengeance Demon Hunters, making it nice to have in racial passives. However, Night Elf also offers haste, extra dodge chance, and movement speed, three nice stats for tanks, making them the clear winner here.

Main Demon Hunter Tree For Raids

World of Warcraft Vengeance Demon Hunter main raid tree

For the main class tree for Vengeance Demon Hunters, there is a small amount of diversity for you to play around with. So, while the above talent build focuses more on raiding content with a stronger emphasis on single-target talents, feel free to play around with it as you see fit.

Main Demon Hunter Tree For Dungeons

World of Warcraft Vengeance Demon Hunter main dungeon tree

Moving on to dungeon content, the above talent build places a greater emphasis on area-of-effect talents so you can have a greater impact (and damage and crowd control) in multi-mob pulls.

The primary talents you do not need in raids but will always want in dungeons are the following:

  • Flames of Fury: this is a phenomenal Fury generating tool in dungeons as it causes your Sigil of Flame to generate more Fury per target hit.
  • Improved Disrupt and Disrupting Fury: with more enemy casts to worry about in dungeons, buffing up your interrupt is a massive help to your group and your own Fury generation.
  • Master of the Glaive: another charge on Glaive Throw is great for pulling extra mobs.
  • Chaos Nova: an integral area-of-effect crowd control tool you absolutely need for any dungeon content.
  • Chaos Fragments: since you’re going Chaos Nova, you might as well pick up a talent that buffs it up and increases your survivability.

RELATED: World Of Warcraft: Dragonflight - Havoc Demon Hunter Complete Guide

Vengeance Demon Hunter Specialization Trees

World of Warcraft Vengeance Demon Hunter split image of defensive and offensive spec trees

When it comes to the specialization tree, there are two primary routes: one for survivability that favors your defensive (left) and one for more damage that favors your offensive abilities (right). These builds will be detailed in the next two sections with tables and explanations, including talent swap options within each build, depending on whether you’re doing dungeon or raid content.

Defensive Talent Build

World of Warcraft Vengeance Demon Hunter defensive dungeon tree
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The important talents to go for in a defensive build are the ones straight down the bottom-middle of the tree. You’re going to have Darkglare Boon regardless, but while you would normally stop there in an offensive build, you are instead going straight down the line, all the way to the Last Resort keystone talent. They are:

While the above image and chart is a defensive dungeon-content build, there are two main differences between an area-of-effect and a single-target defensive build:

  1. First is your choice between Roaring Fire and Sigil of Silence in the middle of the fourth row. In dungeon content, you’re going to want Sigil of Silence, while in raid content, you’re going to want Roaring Fire.
  2. Secondly, for dungeon content, you’re going to want two points in Painbringer since there are more targets to get Soul Fragments from, whereas in raid content, you’re going to want two points in Fiery Demise instead. Both of these talents are in the seventh row.

Offensive Talent Build

World of Warcraft Vengeance Demon Hunter offensive dungeon tree
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The important talents to go for in an offensive build are the ones straight down the bottom-right of the tree. You’re going to have Fiery Demise regardless, but while you would normally stop there in a defensive build, you are instead going straight down the line, all the way to your two keystone talents, Fodder to the Flame and Down in Flames. They are:

While the above image is an offensive dungeon-content build, there are two main differences between an area-of-effect and a single-target offensive build:

  1. As with the defensive build, your choice between Roaring Fire and Sigil of Silence remains equivalent.
  2. For dungeon content, you’re going to want Fallout (sixth row) because there are more enemies to get Soul Fragments from. For raid content, you’re going to want Meteoric Strikes instead.

Rotation

World of Warcraft Vengeance Demon Hunter leaping in the air with Infernal Strike onto centaurs

A Vengeance Demon Hunter’s rotation varies heavily depending on what kind of talents you’ve taken. While, as with Havoc Demon Hunters, you want to manage your Fury properly so you don’t miss out on any damage and healing, you also want to manage your Soul Fragments closely, as they are integral to your core abilities. On top of that, you want to make sure to keep Frailty stacks up on your main target (in raids) or as many targets as possible (in dungeons). So instead of a strict rotation, here's a priority list for your abilities:

Priority

Action

Explanation

1.

Fel Devastation

This ability costs Fury and should be used whenever you can.

2.

Spirit Bomb

When it comes to consuming Soul Fragments, you’re going to want to use Spirit Bomb to do so, but try and wait until you can consume three to five fragments.

3.

Soul Cleave

Even though Soul Cleave can consume Soul Fragments, don't use it to do so. Instead, use this to spend Fury and stack Frailty on your target(s).

Some Tips

  • While it is tempting to use The Hunt as your opener, it is more effective when used on a target with five to six stacks of Frailty on them. This goes for the rest of your big cooldown abilities like Soul Carver.
  • Between Immolation Aura, Sigil of Flame, and Fracture, be careful not to over-cap your Fury. Over-capping Fury will not only make you lose out on damage output, but it will also impact your healing and survivability.
  • Don’t forget to use your Infernal Strike for extra damage if you have both charges off cooldown. This rings especially true when you don’t need to actively kite your enemies.
  • Try to avoid using Fracture if you have more than three Soul Fragments lying about or if you have more than 70 Fury. You don’t want to over-cap on either of these resources.
  • In dungeons, don’t use your Immolation Aura too soon after using your Fiery Brand on a big pull. Instead, wait until Fiery Brand has spread to a few targets (thanks to Burning Alive talent), so you get more value out of your Immolation Aura resetting your Fiery Brand on targets it deals damage to (thanks to Charred Flesh talent).

Macros

One of the best macros you can have as a Demon Hunter lets you send an ability to your cursor’s location (like quick cast). Normally, these abilities (like your sigils) need to first be selected, and then you must click where you want to deploy them. This macro combines that into one step, sending your ability to your cursor’s location:

/cast [@cursor] *insert ability name here*

Some examples:

  • /cast [@cursor] Infernal Strike
  • /cast [@cursor] Sigil of Silence

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Stat Priority

World of Warcraft Vengeance Demon Hunter stat profile

The stat priority for Vengeance Demon Hunters can be tweaked around a bit depending on the type of content you’re doing (dungeons or raids), but it generally comes down to this:

  1. Haste
  2. Versatility
  3. Critical Strike and Mastery

Haste is the most important secondary stat for Vengeance Demon Hunters, no matter what. Simply put, higher Haster numbers mean you can use your abilities more often, namely your defensives, which means you’ll be taking less damage on the whole (and giving your healer some breathing room).

Versatility can sometimes be equal to critical strike and mastery, but especially in raids, you’ll want to favor it over the other two. Also, critical strike tends to be better in dungeons than it is in raids because it buffs your parry chance. Since dungeons have far more targets to tank than raids, you’ll get more value from the parry buff because you’re parrying more enemies.

While item level is generally the most important stat to consider, you can be more lenient when it comes to trinkets. So, if you get an item level upgrade for a trinket, it sometimes may not be better than the stats and passive/active effect of the one you’ve currently got equipped.

Gems

Seeing that Haste is your most important stat as a Vengeance Demon Hunter, you’re going to want to go for Ysemerald gems, as the primary stat they provide is Haste. As such, you’ll probably want to go for either Crafty Ysemerald for the extra critical strike or Energized Ysemerald for the extra versatility, depending on what kind of content you’re trying to do.

Depending on what crafting tier level the gem is, it will offer different numbers of stats.

Enchants

There are many enchants to choose from, but below are the most important ones that you should strive for no matter what. And again, remember that the value of the enchant depends on its crafting tier.

Gear Slot

Enchant Name

Weapon

Enchant Weapon – Sophic Devotion for an agility buff or Wafting Devotion for a haste buff

Chest

Enchant Chest – Waking Stats

Feet

Enchant Boots - Watcher’s Loam

Legs

Reinforced Armor Kit

Ring

Enchant Ring – Devotion of Haste

Gear

World of Warcraft Vengeance Demon Hunter metamorphosed

Gearing While Leveling

In general, crafting and world content have made gear accessible in Dragonflight. However, while you’re leveling, just pick up the quest rewards (or dungeon rewards if you’re dungeon grinding) as they improve, and don’t worry too much about your stats or item level. You have the added bonus of being a tank, so gearing matters even less while leveling because you are far less likely to die.

Gearing At Level 70

There are a few key ways to gear up in Dragonflight: dungeons, raids, world content, and crafting. Bearing in mind that if you do group content you will eventually get the necessary crafting materials to craft very high-end gear (it’s like a bad-luck protection system), here are some items from some of the Dragonflight dungeons to shoot for in either their Mythic Zero state if you need it, or in their Mythic Plus state (earnable in Season One) for enhanced item level and stats:

Gear Slot

Gear Name

Dungeon

Boss

Weapon

Stormslash

The Nokhud Offensive

Balakar Khan

Trinket

Granyth's Enduring Scale

The Nokhud Offensive

Granyth

Trinket

Bottle of Spiraling Winds

The Nokhud Offensive

The Raging Tempest

Ring

Unstable Arcane Loop

The Azure Vault

Leymor

Belt

Cinch of Forgotten Duty

The Azure Vault

Leymor

Bracers

Frenzyroot Cuffs

Algeth'ar Academy

Overgrown Ancient

Cloak

Potion-Stained Cloak

Algeth'ar Academy

Overgrown Ancient

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