Talents

Abyssal Strike improves the range and frequency of our signature movement ability, Infernal Strike. This talent works best when you use Infernal Strike rotationally as an AoE ability, though it also has uses whenever you need to cover large distances very quickly.

Agonizing Flames is a strong talent whenever you’re constantly moving, like in an encounter where there are many dangers on the ground to avoid. Immolation Aura is used rotationally, so the movement bonus is up most of the time and the damage boost is never wasted. This isn’t the highest damage choice in the tier, but it’s the easiest one to use to the fullest effect.

Razor Spikes is one of the few ways Vengeance can snare enemies, though that’s not the main reason why you might pick this talent. The most important aspect of this choice is the damage potential and the way it synergizes with Fracture, another strong dps talent. To make the most of this talent, time your harest hitting physical abilities, Soul Cleave and Fracture, while Demon Spikes is active. If you’re looking for pure damage without much need for movement, Demon Spikes is your top choice.

Feast of Souls has the clear benefit of increasing your healing with a strong heal-over-time effect, no strings attached. Frequent, reliable, and small heals. The HoT does not stack, so for best use, stagger your Soul Cleaves so that you’re not refreshing it too early.

Fallout is one of the few options we have to generate Soul Fragments. It’s not a guaranteed chance to proc Souls, but you’ll almost always get a few in AoE. It works best when Immolation Aura is activated near many enemies.

Burning Alive improves Fiery Brand by letting it spread around a large group instead of being limited to a single target. At 2 seconds, it spreads slowly, and it won’t spread to enemies that have already been debuffed by it, and only ticks of the original Fiery Brand can pass to other enemies. That said, it still fills the niche of being our only AoE damage reduction cooldown. Use it proactively when you pull a large group. It also increases damage slightly by adding a DoT to Fiery Brand.

Felblade is the kitchen sink of talents, where it adds a lot of things to the Vengeance rotation. When selected, it should be used ahead of Shear in the rotational priority. It’s also a medium range charge, and a small dps boost over the baseline rotation. Since it increases pain generation, it also influences your sustained healing through Soul Cleave or other pain-consuming skills.

Flame Crash excels at AoE damage. To maximize this talent, you should use Infernal Strike rotationally for AoE, in addition to its traditional pulling use.

Fel Eruption is a rather minor stun, since it only works on one target for two seconds, but it’s effective as an interrupt on lesser mobs, it’s ranged, and it deals a lot of damage. However, it’s primary attractiveness is in the damage against unstunnable targets, like bosses. Combined with Fiery Brand and Fiery Demise, and that makes it the highest damage dealing talent in this tier.

Feed the Demon shores up your Active Mitigation uptime and flexibility by allowing you to use Demon Spikes more frequently. It works especially well with abilities that grant some control over Soul Fragment generation, like Fallout and Soul Carver. It’s also a consolation prize for having to use Soul Cleave at full health and pain.

Fracture is an extra rotational ability that costs a small amount of pain and spawns two Lesser Soul Fragments. It’s primary use is for trading healing (in the form of Soul Cleave) for damage and Soul Fragments. It can also be used to burn off extra pain when a full Soul Cleave heal would not be effective.

Soul Rending applies a leech effect to Metamorphosis, which means that 50% of the damage you deal is turned into self-healing. Especially powerful when combined with other Metamorphosis-proccing abilities like Last Resort and Fueled by Pain.

Concentrated Sigils removes the ranged and ground-targeted aspect of Sigils, which isn’t a tradeoff to be taken lightly. However, if you only need to place Sigils at your feet, removing the overhead cost of clicking on the ground is not something to take for granted. That simplification can make the difference between Sigil of Fire being a single target damage increase or not. In addition, it increases the damage over time of Sigil of Flame, and increases the silence of Sigil of Silence to 8 seconds, which is brutal for any casters caught by it.

Sigil of Chains is a powerful crowd control tool that acts similar to a death knight’s Gorefiend’s Grasp, though of notably lesser range. It pulls all the enemies inside the rune (8 yards) toward the center, then snares them. Useful for positioning, interrupting, or kiting. Some fights benefit from having all targets very close together so the group can kill them more quickly.

Quickened Sigils is a solid buff to your sigils, making them activate in 1 second instead of 2, and allowing you to use them more often. That means more ranged pulls, more damage, more frequent silences, and more crowd control.

Fel Devastation heals for a very large amount as long as it hits one target and is a suitable panic button if your health drops low. It also deals a significant amount of AoE dps, so it can be useful if you need to burn a group down quickly. Finally, all that damage is fire, which means this talent synergizes well with Charred Warblades and Fiery Demise. Pick this talent if you favor burst healing and damage.

Blade Turning is passive and grants a small boost to Pain generation, which means more Soul Cleaves. Generates even more pain in AoE because you’ll get more parries with more mobs hitting you. With this talent, after each parry Shear becomes the highest priority pain generator. Pick this talent if you want to keep things simple.

Spirit Bomb allows you to sacrifice one Soul Fragment for healing via leech that lasts 20 seconds. It scales well in AoE situations where you can hit multiple targets and deal lots of damage, and therefore generate more healing. It’s also good for plain old sustained AoE damage, allowing you to convert all your Soul Fragments to damage if you wish. Pick this talent if you favor sustained healing and damage.

Last Resort only comes into play if you die (or with this talent, almost die), but that makes it a great tool when attempting difficult or new content. It gives you a free Metamorphosis when it’s needed, which increases your maximum health and your Pain generation, giving you lots of extra resources to spam Soul Cleave and hopefully recover all that health you lost. The downsides are that you aren’t always going to activate it and that sometimes when it activates, a mere 30% heal isn’t enough to save you from the next fatal blow. Use it for simplicity or when you’re regularly in situations where you die to recoverable mistakes.

Demonic Infusion fills a niche we dearly needed, which is control over our active mitigation resources. Pick this talent when you’re facing physical damage, or if you prefer higher uptime on Demon Spikes.

Soul Barrier is a Soul Fragment consuming Active Mitigation ability that converts souls and pain into an absorb shield instead of the heal you’d get from Soul Cleave. Importantly, there is a minimum absorb on the spell that you cannot drop below for the duration (8 seconds), which makes it especially strong against frequent, small hits, like AoE trash or damage-over-time effects. Its duration of 8 seconds is short for an absorb, so it has to be timed wisely. It is also ranged, making it a decent tool for reducing damage while out of range of your enemy. Finally, it works well against predictable damage events where a proactive absorb will be more useful than reactive healing.