Gear
Tier Set
- 2-piece: Soul Fragments heal for 10% more and generating a Soul Fragment increases your Fire damage by 2% for 6 seconds. Multiple applications may overlap.
- 4-piece: Shear and Fracture deal Fire damage. After consuming 20 Soul Fragments, your next cast of Shear or Fracture applies Fiery Brand to its target for 6 seconds.
The 2-piece bonus is a strong, passive effect, scaling well into large target counts with increased Soul Fragment generation from the Fallout talent. The 4-piece bonus is significantly trickier than it might first appear to be. Converting Fracture to fire damage is a pretty decent damage boost at low target counts since it no longer gets reduced by armor and scales with fire damage talents.
The Fiery Brand from the bonus works alongside any talent that modifies your normal Fiery Brands and will spread via Burning Alive and extend from Charred Flesh. Applying the Tier Set buff to any target will apply a 6-second Fiery Brand to the target or add 6 seconds to a target with a previous Fiery Brand.
Gear
There is one item you want to keep an eye out for as a Vengeance Demon Hunter beyond trinkets this season.
Bile-Stained Crawg Tusk is a weapon that drops from the Underrot dungeon. It gives your melee attacks a chance to apply a stacking nature debuff dealing significant damage at the cost of losing secondary stats. Weapons already have a very small amount of secondary stats, and the large amount of damage is worth it in most situations.
You will want at least one of these for your off-hand, and a max item level version from the Great Vault is very likely to be the best weapon available to you in the 10.1 patch.
Gear can easily be upgraded up to as high as 441 this season, my recommendation is to prioritize high value items like Bile-Stained Crawg Tusks, or trinkets mentioned below. After that you simply want Hero gear to upgrade to item level 441, since item level is your best value over any specific stat.
Embellishments:
Crafting a weapon with one of your first sparks at item level 447 will likely be a very large early upgrade. I recommend crafting one if you do not already have a weapon at item level 447.
Shadowflame-tempered Armor Patch is an embellishment attached to any armor slot that causes your attacks to apply a stacking damage over time effect on the target which deals competitive damage with other embellishments. It will likely be hard to get access to early on in the patch without a large investment since the recipe drops from the Aberrus raid, however if gold is not an issue, two of these will be your best bet until you have more sockets for Lariat.
Slimy Expulsion Boots + Toxified Armor Patch is a combo of two embellishment items. The Boots offer a strong damage proc at the cost of a small amount of haste, while the armor patch doubles the effect of the boots. An alternative combo to the Shadowflame-tempered Armor Patch that may provide more damage for you, they are however fairly close in performance.
Elemental Lariat - Jewelcrafting Neck gives you up to ~1% worth of secondaries on average dependent on how many sockets you have on your gear. Offensively it's about equal to or even slightly worse than the other embellishments. However, as secondary tank stats also come with some defensive value, most other embellishments only provide pure damage. Starting in 10.1 the lariat duration is dependent on the amount of sockets that you have on your gear, which means that it will not be your best embellishment until later on in the patch when you have sockets on most items.
Trinkets:
There are a handful of potentially strong trinkets from Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible, as well as a few contenders from the new Mythic+ season. Patch 10.1.5 also includes a new trinket that may be of interest!
Prophetic Stonescales
Prophetic Stonescales is a new trinket introduced with the Mega-dungeon, Dawn of the Infinites. This trinket offers a cheat death effect on an 8-minute cooldown that will heal for a significant amount any time where you would have died, as well as reducing damage enemies deal to you by 20% and granting a large amount of haste for 12 seconds. This trinket is not necessarily a stronger option than already existing defensive trinkets, however it is the only cheat death trinket available which might make it worth using in certain situations.
Beacon to the Beyond
Beacon to the Beyond drops from Sarkareth in Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible. It is a 2-minute 30-second cooldown trinket which casts for a short duration, followed by a large blast of damage split between your target and any nearby targets. It provides massive burst damage and performs very well overall, while also interacting really well with any phases where your target takes extra damage.
Dragonfire Bomb Dispenser
Dragonfire Bomb Dispenser drops from Zkarn in Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible. It is a 10-second cooldown trinket that builds up a charge every 30 seconds while also slowly accumulating extra charges by dealing critical damage to your target. When you use it you apply a 7-second debuff that explodes when it expires dealing single target damage. If your target dies during the debuff it instead deals damage split between all nearby targets. It’s a competitive offensive trinket for raid, unfortunately you lose any stacks for extra charges upon leaving combat making it lose significant value in Mythic+.
Ward of Faceless Ire
Ward of Faceless Ire drops from Echo of Neltharion in Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible. It is a 2-minute cooldown trinket that applies a large shield to your target, if the shield is broken the enemy dealing the damage takes a small amount of damage. It is a decently strong defensive trinket for usage on yourself, but the real value comes from being able to save other players from dangerous mechanics, especially in Mythic+.
Treemouth’s Festering Splinter
Treemouth’s Festering Splinter drops from Treemouth in the Brackenhide Hollow dungeon. It is a 1 minute 30-second cooldown trinket that deals a small amount of damage to yourself and applies a large shield for 15 seconds that will absorb 50% of all damage taken. A very strong defensive trinket on a short cooldown.
Harlan’s Loaded Dice
Harlan’s Loaded Dice drops from Harlan in the Freehold dungeon. It provides random procs of Haste, Crit and Mastery on separate procs, meaning they frequently overlap. It is a solid stat trinket that offers both offensive and defensive value.
Onyx Annulet and Primordial Stones
Note: In Patch 10.1.5 the Onyx Annulet was nerfed by 40%, which now makes it a downgrade in most content once you get rings of relatively high item level.
Patch 10.0.7 introduces the new Onyx Annulet ring that you will fill with Primordial Stone Sockets to gain new and powerful effects. You can find more information on how to get the Annulet and Stones over at Primordial Stones, Onyx Annulet Ring and the Zskera Vaults in Patch 10.0.7 and a list of all available stones and their powers over at List of All Primordial Stones and Condensed Magic.
For Vengeance Demon Hunter right now, there are a few interesting combinations. Overall you want to socket Stones for offensive value. The option exists to socket defensive Stones; however, currently they are weaker than a normal ring at the cost of offensive value.
Going into Embers of Neltharion, the Onyx Annulet still looks to be the best performing ring offensively for Raiding. Defensively, the loss does likely not warrant running it in Mythic+.
Combinations:
For Single target you want to run a combination of the Prophetic Twilight Stone, the Desirous Blood Stone and the Freezing Ice Stone. This is due to Desirous Blood Stone being coded as a Healing Stone and therefore activating a Freezing Ice Stone proc through the Prophetic Twilight Stone.
Single Target: Prophetic Twilight Stone + Desirous Blood Stone + Freezing Ice Stone
For AoE, you want to use the same combo as before, but switch the Freezing Ice Stone for a Storm Infused Stone. Do note, that Storm Infused Stone currently has a bug that sometimes causes it to pull mobs far away that you are not in combat with. This will likely be fixed, however it is worth taking into account.
AoE: Prophetic Twilight Stone + Desirous Blood Stone + Storm Infused Stone