VDH M+ Guide for Season 2 in TWW 11.1 Tanks and Tactics

My In-Depth VDH Guide for M+ in Season 2 of TWW! (11.1)

Table of Contents

• How good is VDH in high keys?
• Talents
• Which is better?
• Choices
• Spec tree
• Class tree
• Stats
• Trinkets
• Embellishments
• Special items
• Cooldown Overview
• Defensive rotation
• Further min-max
• Souls and healing notes
• How to gather packs
• Offensive Rotation
• Fel-Scarred
• Aldrachi
• Using the tier set (TWW season 2)
• Using your utility
• Random tricks/macros

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Note: M+ tanking is a problem that doesn’t have one unique solution. I highly recommend

looking at what others do as a guide but trying to think of things on your own as much as

possible. Also this guide will probably be updated a lot in the future as we learn things. If

something is wrong here feel free to contact me!

How good is VDH in high keys?

IMO Vengeance DH is positioned as one of the best tanks of the season. It has very good

priority damage with the wounded quarry rework, and some buffs / talent tree changes have

given it a lot more options to work with than previous seasons, including the capability to get all

three capstones (last resort + soulcrush + dif/is). Overall I would say VDH has the highest

damage output, best survivability, and best self sustain of all tanks at the moment which is a

strong combo.

Talents

UPDATED TALENT CHEATSHEET: 🟩 Yoda's VDH builds TWW Season 2

Fel-scarred (easy to start / survive pulls, good for low-stress weeks. Lower self sustain and

DPS.)

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AAAAz2MLzyMzMbLzy00MYmhxG

Aldrachi No brand spread (easiest aldrachi build, missing a decent amount of damage but very

consistent survivability)

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MMDAAAAz2MLz2MzMbLzy00MYmhxC

Aldrachi Last Resort DIF (safeish aldrachi build featuring last resort and DIF). Many answers for

tank busters, high / controllable mitigation uptime, and cheat death. Good for playing without

oracle priest.

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YGAAAAmtZWmlZmZWWmlppZwMDjF

Aldrachi Standard (what most people play in high keys, very good with oracle priest)

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YGAAAAmtZWmlZmZWWmlppZwMDjF

Which is better?

After the reworks, Aldrachi is IMO the superior M+ hero talent due to the increased self sustain

and DPS (especially to the main target with wounded quarry). I’m not sure which exact talent

setup will be best for each key, although I’m leaning towards the last 2 builds shown in the

section above.

Choices

Spec tree

Note - Post rework there are a lot of viable builds. Most of the builds here will have a few

options that can be tweaked:

• Internal Struggle vs Pitch Black vs demon muzzle - internal struggle is worth ~2% damage, but

the other talents can have good defensive value.

• Soulmonger vs Focused Cleave - Focused cleave is a lot more single target and priority

damage. Soulmonger provides a small buffer against 1shots. Don’t look at soulmonger’s HPS

and immediately think it’s good since the way it procs basically guarantees that it will steal

healing from your other healing sources. It’s better IMO to think of it as a conditional 10% max

HP with minimal HPS gain (which is still a good talent)

• Sigil of Chains vs Soul Furnace vs Extended Spikes - With new FtD you most likely don’t need

extended spikes, so the free point has been going to either chains or soul furnace usually,

depending on if you want the utility from chains. Extended spikes can still be taken but is

usually not necessary with one point in FtD.

• Soul Barrier vs Burning Blood + 1 more point - Soul barrier is an OK defensive option especially

for no-bomb builds. I don’t recommend it but if you’re having trouble with tank busters or want

to watch your HP not move in low keys this can help with that at the cost of ~5-8% damage.

• Spirit bomb vs Ascending Flame + 1 point (chains/ext usually) - Spirit bomb is IMO not worth it

most of the time for aldrachi. Costing two talent points means if you need to sacrifice any

throughput talent for it in dungeons it’s going to be at best a very small damage gain overall

(and most likely a damage loss). If you’re taking feed the demon and don’t need chains for the

dungeon, you may be able to spare the point in which case you can use it in massive pulls for a

bit more damage and frailty application.

One common misconception is that you need spirit bomb to consume souls and heal yourself.

You can consume souls just by walking over them or by overcapping - any souls generated

when you have 5 souls are automatically consumed so consuming with spirit bomb is only burst

healing, not more overall (and can result in longer periods where you’re unable to heal yourself).

The main HPS gain from spirit bomb is the fact that it applies frailty in uncapped AOE. IMO this

is not a massive gain since most of your healing in these pulls would come from souls anyway.

Class tree

There are a bunch of utility nodes here that can be swapped around, although personally I

would stay away from live by the glaive and aura of pain as both talents have very low

throughput compared to other choices.

Stats

• Haste - this is our best stat up to ~21k. More frailty stacks, more soul gen, more uptime on

brand/sof, lower cd on immolation aura.

• Crit - This is our best stat against anything you can parry due to the additive bonuses from

deflecting spikes and illuminated sigils.

• Vers - This is our best stat against non-parriable damage.
• Mastery - This was oversimming, not an awful stat but I would not prioritize it over vers/crit.

Trinkets

There will be trinket tuning so these are not final, but the best trinkets so far on ptr are:

Damage:

• Tome of Light’s Devotion (offense mode only, defense mode sucks)
• Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker
• Eye of Kezan (high uptime on 10+ stacks only)
• Absorb:
• Ringing Ritual Mud (really good on fel-scarred since it procs from set fire to the pain)
• Chromebustible Bomb Suit

Recommended: Seaforium Pacemaker + Tome. Bomb suit or Mud are good for absorb trinkets.

Embellishments

For an early season boost you can craft one 675 weapon with symbiosis to guarantee high ilvl

mainhand, though this most likely won’t be an endgame item (and use it with writhing armor

band).

You can put armor band on boots, belt, cape, or bracer - endgame most likely will be cape or

bracer.

If you don’t use a weapon enchant then you should use dawnthread or focusing lens.

Embellishments are also all much worse than previous seasons so don’t sweat it too much.

Adrenal surge clasp is best for damage however agility is worse than secondaries defensively

so I prefer other embellishments.

Special items

Capo’s molten knuckles is bis for damage, though since it comes with no stats it is not great

defensively. Cyrce’s circlet will be good at the start of the patch but most likely be phased out

as you get higher ilvl rings. The Jastor Diamond is good for damage but not as good

defensively since it comes with high mastery.

Cooldown Overview

• Metamorphosis - Go into demon form for 15 seconds, gaining 40% health and a lot of armor.

Unlike previous seasons you can actually die through meta depending on what you’re fighting

so be careful. Generally OK to overlap one spikes on pull but try to avoid it otherwise unless

you have FtD and extended spikes.

• Fel Devastation - This puts us into meta for 6 seconds. It is really good at getting aggro so

using it early on pull is desired. As with meta try not to overlap this with demon spikes except

on pull.

• Fiery Brand - With fiery demise and burning alive this is a super strong cooldown both

defensively and offensively. Generally we want to be using this off cooldown. Try not to overlap

with metamorphosis unless you are playing fel-scarred with fiery demise and have two charges

ready.

• Demon Spikes - Gives us 10% parry and some armor. Generally try to combo this with fiery

brand or sigil of flame if talented into illuminated sigils. Try not to overlap this with

metamorphosis more than once per pull or you will run out, unless you have both extended

spikes and FtD in which case just spam it off cd.

• Darkness - With pitch black this is a 3-minute cooldown, almost always used for yourself on

trash pulls. Usually good to use if you don’t have meta or brand and spikes is not enough to

tank the pull. On bosses this is usually more useful when used on the group. Note that it casts

around you so you need to position near the group if you’re using it on them.

• The Hunt - This is used off cd for damage as fel-scarred, and used to proc reaver’s glaive as

Aldrachi. Make sure you don’t use it with reaver’s glaive already available.

• Sigil of Spite - This generates 4 souls and does some damage. We don’t need to worry about

spirit bomb combos as much anymore so this is usually just used off cooldown for souls with

Aldrachi, or can be saved for a heal as fel-scarred (or used for damage immediately).

• Immolation Aura - This is an overlooked cooldown a lot of the time. With normal haste and no

lust usually this has ~11 seconds cd and 9 seconds duration - make sure the downtime is as low

as possible and be wary during that downtime if you don’t have meta or brand rolling.

Defensive rotation

• Demon Spikes - If you have one point in FtD or extended spikes, you’re usually going to want

100% uptime on either this or meta, which means don’t overlap it with meta other than the first

one. If you have both extended spikes and FtD then you can just afk brain and 100% uptime no

matter what. Any time you’re taking melees without spikes or meta you are in trouble.

• Illuminated Sigils - With IS we’re accepting that we can tank most packs with just spikes + sigil

of flame (no meta or brand). In this case the opener looks something like:

(gather globals) -> fiery brand something (if you have brand spread) -> feldev + spikes -> sof

the pack -> maintain spikes + sof for the whole pack, use meta if scared and feldev/brand are

not up.

• Down in Flames - With DIF our goal will be to have either meta or brand up for most of the

fight, using darkness + externals + trinkets to fill in the gaps.

(gather globals) -> fiery brand something -> feldev + spikes -> meta when brand falls off ->

feldev to extend meta -> brand + spikes -> external or darkness (or tank with spikes only if it’s

an easy pack) -> feldev -> brand + spikes.

You don’t have enough brand / feldevs (especially without darkglare) to have 100% uptime on

your strong defensives, so feeling out which situations you can coast through with just spikes

will be crucial to regain brand cooldown. Also note that in season 2 your tierset can randomly

proc 4 seconds of meta, so try and use that to your advantage to save fiery brand when

possible.

Further min-max

Don’t forget that you (most of the time) have demon muzzle and felflame fortification, so having

sof/immolation aura up can be very useful against certain magical tank busters. If you are at

world first key level, occasionally you will have to min-max calcified spikes in order to survive

certain tank busters (aka, use spikes 8-10 seconds before every buster hits). You can also

min-max painbringer stacks, consuming souls when you are about to take a lot of damage (sigil

of spite / soul barrier are both really good at this since they result in consuming a lot of souls at

once).

Souls heal based on your recent damage taken, so if it doesn’t cause you to die due to lack of

painbringer you want to consume souls after taking a lot of damage (although if you just do a

normal no-bomb rotation then you will be consuming souls regularly anyway).

Also note that in lust (or pi if you randomly get that) your uptime is higher on sof/brand, as well

as generally higher frailty stacks / soul gen so you should be able to save on defensive

resources (most commonly, metamorphosis).

How to gather packs

One of VDH’s biggest struggles is gathering packs. Not only are half of your abilities bugged

and sometimes don’t generate aggro, you are also very weak on pull. Add on to that the fact

that aldrachi has to do 3 globals before it can even use hero talents, and on-pull is by far your

weakest point. Generally my advice would be to try and tag everything from range - don’t jump

in. You can use fiery brand, the hunt, reaver’s glaive (or throw glaive which is less ideal) to tag

packs, but keep in mind that these are not reliable sources of aggro. The goal is to tag

everything and then have it all run in at the same time, at which point you can pre-sof into fel

devastation, which hopefully gets aggro on everything. Anything that you didn’t tag yet

hopefully gets hit by either your fury of the aldrachi (best uncapped damage) or subsequent

sigils. If you’re still struggling, self-cast infernal strike can also help in a pinch.

Offensive Rotation

Fel-Scarred

Cooldowns - Fel-scarred changes our feldev and meta to be offensive cooldowns. During these

we want to use one of each empowered ability (soul cleave and spirit bomb for feldev, and immo

aura + sigil of flame + feldev as well for meta). If you are spending a fiery brand for damage

here then you ideally also want to get all your demonsurges off in the fiery demise window.

Generic Rotation - Other than that we want to be using sof, immo aura, and felblade off

cooldown for fury gen. Also we are playing a “fury dump” rotation which means you want to use

all of your fractures together then dump all fury into soul cleaves until empty rather than

alternating uses of both buttons.

Aldrachi

Cooldowns - The major cooldown we get from Aldrachi is Reaver’s Glaive. After using The

Hunt or consuming 20 souls, throw glaive becomes empowered and allows you to proc a few

buffs, most notably Thrill of the Fight. To actually use it, gain reaver’s glaive then use it and

then fracture. The next time we soul cleave it will proc Thrill of the Fight (though you can use

different skills in between that are not soul-cleave).

On single target you will usually want to soul cleave before fracture as we value the stronger

debuff over the extra hits from fury of the aldrachi.

Generic rotation - Aldrachi is all about optimizing uptime on the Thrill of the Fight buff which

means unlike fel-scarred we are playing a rotation to maximize soul generation. Which changes

our priorities - we are still using immo aura off cooldown, however since we care more about

souls than frailty dumps we are prioritizing not capping on fracture charges then prioritizing not

capping fury - which results in alternating fracture/soul cleave somewhat often. Felblade is

mostly dropped from the rotation except on single target, or to get fury quickly in the opener.

Two major mistakes to avoid with Aldrachi are:

1 - Never use the hunt with reaver’s glaive available. This basically sets you back 20 art of the

glaive stacks if you ever do it. You can cancel the hunt cast with escape if you notice you

accidentally started casting hunt and have reaver’s glaive ready.

2 - Don’t re-proc Thrill of the Fight until it’s run out or about to run out. This usually means don’t

use reaver’s glaive unless the buff has 3 or less seconds remaining. Note that if you are

talented into spirit bomb, you can throw reaver’s glaive early and spend on spirit bomb instead

of soul cleave, then use soul cleave to proc thrill of the fight on time.

Exceptions can be made for this in season 2 since your tierset has a chance to reset the hunt at

any time, which means you really want the hunt to be on cooldown at all times. So you can

re-proc Thrill of the Fight early if you have a reaver’s glaive in the chamber and hunt coming off

cd soon. Fury of the Aldrachi is also a big source of your uncapped AOE / funnel so you should

be more willing to send it early on big pulls (although it will result in less uptime overall

throughout the key).

Using the tier set (TWW season 2)

You don’t play around the tier set much, other than being more willing to throw your reaver’s

glaive whenever you get a luck of the draw proc and occasionally being able to hold defensive

cooldowns for longer. Of course, if you get a hunt reset then you will want to use it ASAP

especially as aldrachi.

Using your utility

Sigil of Silence - We still have one charge of this. Try to use it after people put interrupts on

cooldown. Good combo with Evoker’s Oppressing Roar. Worth noting that every time you use

this it picks one target in the radius as the main target - it will interrupt the main target even if

that target is immune to CC so with clever placement this can be used as an interrupt in a pinch.

Sigil of Misery - This has three main uses.

1 - As an AOE stop. This has super long cd so only use it this way if other things are on

cooldown

2 - As a skip. If the whole pack is not immune to cc, you can misery it and have everyone go

past then use shadowmeld (night elf only - can’t do this as blood elf).

3 - To stall mobs. This lasts for a pretty long time so in situations where it won’t be broken you

can use it to cc mobs for a while (last set of boss adds, or someone ninja pulls something and

you need to make time).

Sigil of Chains - This has three main uses:

1 - Grouping. Enemies are not moving to you because they aren’t programmed to focus the

tank (casters/shooters/fixates etc) and you want them to be pixel stacked - sigil of chains is

perfect for this.

2 - As an AOE stop. This pulls everything near it so it will stop casts if they can’t cast while

moving.

3 - Kiting. If you’re about to run away this applies a pretty strong slow and also keeps mobs

stacked while you’re not tanking them.

Chaos Nova - AOE stun around you, used to stop casts. With chaos fragments this is also nice

to use if you’re short on defensives for a couple seconds as it also refunds spikes with FTD.

Darkness - Don’t forget that you can use this for yourself. It is also quite effective for the group

in TWW since most bosses deal ticking damage rather than 1-shot bursts.

Imprison - This has three main uses:

1 - As a stop. This ccs whatever you use it on so it will stop them from casting.

2 - Skips. Imprisoned enemies will not aggro when you walk past them (unlike some other ccs)

so you can use this for certain skips.

3 - As an actual cc. Some packs feature a high concentration of mobs that you don’t have tools

to deal with (such as double caster or double shooter type mobs). A useful tactic against double

casters could be to imprison one, pull the pack away, then fight the imprisoned caster once the

first one dies.

Mobility - VDH is the most mobile of all tanks (and probably all specs). You can use this to your

advantage to get ahead of the group to set up pulls (really useful against aggro bugs - they can’t

pull aggro if they aren’t there yet), do certain skips, pull from a different location, kite, etc - the

sky's the limit.

Random tricks/macros

1. Moving with glide - You will want to bind Glide to an easy keybind. This is because when

moving, it is better to do jump-glide-jump-glide than jump-doublejump-glide as it’s more

glides per second (and as a result more distance moved per second).

2. Canceling fel devastation - If you try to use normal movement keys while feldev is active

it won’t cancel the cast since casting feldev just slows you and you can move while

casting (really weird). For that reason I play with this macro:

#showtooltip fel devastation

/stopcasting

/use fel devastation

This will cancel the feldev cast if you double tap it.

3. Playing around aggro bugs - sigils and throw glaive are bugged and sometimes don’t

generate aggro. Make sure you consider this when you’re setting up gathers - don’t try

and pull mobs that are super far with just sigil unless you’re ready to either use another

sigil or hit them with feldev, immo aura, infernal strike, or torment (taunt). This also

extends to reaver’s glaive even if you talent preemptive strike.

4. Felblade movement - There is a certain minimum range where felblade won’t charge you

to the target anymore. Knowing and playing around this range is crucial for dodging

certain attacks - make sure you know it.

5. Self-infernal strike. This macro is used to cast infernal strike at your current location. It

can be used for more aggro or damage, or to cancel knockbacks. Be careful when

cancelling knockbacks as due to ping/server ticks the game will sometimes count your

jump as happening before the knockback when you don’t expect it and knock you

anyway. You can also cancel knockbacks with glide but sometimes that can propel your

character forward which results in taking back attacks.

#showtooltip

/cast [@player] Infernal Strike

Make sure you don’t unbind normal infernal strike as most uses will not be cast at

yourself.

6. You can cast while using The Hunt (though it will put you on global). The best uses for

this are usually to throw reaver’s glaive midair and/or to cancel your hunt movement with

either infernal strike or vengeful retreat (which effectively makes it a 50yd ranged skill to

aggro packs).

7. Reaver’s glaive has an extremely long range - you can use this to aggro packs too (it

won’t generate any threat though).

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