New WeakAuras for Brewmaster and Vengeance

I’ve been iterating on my auras for both my characters to be more useful to me. The old auras are still available if you look at the WeakAuras.online change log, I just won’t be updating them.

The biggest changes you might see if you import these are:

  • Health and reactive mitigation:
    • Soul Cleave prediction is now a bar that displays your estimated Soul Cleave compared to your max health. It’s designed to sit on top of the health bar so you can easily compare the two.
    • Stagger is still a bar, but it’s no longer color coded (since you typically don’t decide when to Purify based on color in Legion). It’s designed to sit on top of the health bar so you can easily compare the two.
    • I made these changes because in my experimentation, I found it incredibly useful to see the abilities whose relative importance depends on my current or max health displayed in the same way.
  • Proactive mitigation:
    • Ironskin (& Purifying) Brews are now displayed as “pills”, one icon per charge.
    • Demon Spikes, Empower Wards, and Soul Barrier are now grouped and displayed as “pills”, with Demon Spikes getting one icon per charge.
    • I made these changes to emphasize when I am full on charges of active mitigation, or when I am about to run out completely. Charges having their own icons emphasizes the psuedo-resource state of these abilities.
  • Item cooldowns have been moved to their own group (trinkets, artifact spells). I did this because the main defensive cooldown group was getting too busy, especially on the demon hunter. Also, since this group is made up of mostly trinkets, I can easily share it between my tanks.
  • Changes in style and position.

Vengeance Patch 7.0 Survival Guide

The Legion is returning to Azeroth, and demon hunters are coming to hunt it down with Vengeance.

This is a guide for the first few weeks of Vengeance, before we unlock level 110. As demon hunters unlock their talents between 99 and 110, they only get to experience two talent rows while stuck at 100. This simplifies the class significantly, so we’ll be playing a very different class between August 9th and August 30th than we will soon after Legion launch.

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Vengeance and Brewmaster Comparison

Vengeance and Brewmasters are two vastly different tanking specializations. Everything from their active mitigation to their fantasy are at odds, but despite that, many brewmasters are thinking of trying the new cool thing, so here is how they compare.

(This is not a guide that’s going to tell you what class is objectively best. That changes with balance tuning, and I’ve always encouraged people to play what they want. You’ll do the best playing the class that you’re motivated to master. This guide is just to help you figure out what that class might be.)

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Healing by Shear Force: Another Vengeance Update

[wowheadrename] There was a fairly significant rotational shakeup in the last alpha build. And a couple minor things. In summary, the important changes are:

  • Shear no longer reduces the cooldown of Felblade. Instead, it is the primary Pain generator.
  • Felblade is now a talent, which acts as a cap closer and Pain generator.
  • Immolation Aura now generates Pain over time.
  • Soul Cleave now heals you for a baseline 10% and also heals you with nearby Shattered Souls, which appear on the ground and heal for 25% of your health.

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Initial Thoughts on Vengeance

[wowheadrename] There’s something poetic about contemplating vengeance.

I’ve spent the weekend playing with Vengeance on the Legion alpha, and I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re great. If I had to draw a comparison, I’d say it’s similar to the protection warrior. They generate resources similarly (through damage taken and rotational abilities) and spend them on similar active mitigation. They both have a cheap, maintenancy ability (Shield Block, Demon Spikes) and a expensive powerful ability (Ignore Pain and Soul Cleave). The Vengeance resource, Pain, is the same as Rage, except it doesn’t decay (yet). After that, they two specs are very different.

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