Vengeance Demon Hunter Gearing Guide

The War Within Season 1 Tier Set Bonus for Vengeance Demon Hunter:

• (2) Set Bonus: Soul Cleave deals 10% more damage and has a 25% chance to create a Lesser Soul Fragment.
• (4) Set Bonus: Consuming Soul Fragments increases the damage and healing of Fel Devastation by 2%, stacking up to 30%.

The 2-piece set bonus is mostly a passive bonus, since it does not increase the damage of Soul Cleave enough to make it stronger than Spirit Bomb in general gameplay, however you still fill with it occasionally.

The chance to spawn a Lesser Soul Fragment will sometimes affect your rotation by letting you set up a stronger Spirit Bomb more easily, however due to the random chance it is mostly something you have to react to and not something you actively play around.

The 4-piece set bonus leads to 30% more damage from Fel Devestation, an okay amount in AoE but a fairly pitiful increase in single target. It is entirely passive, very boring, and not very strong.

You should still prioritise the gear you use by running a sim for your character, but the lists below will give you a good idea of what items are considered good for Vengeance Demon Hunter, and help you target the right content for each piece of loot.

Worth noting that as a tank, most items on this list will only be your best option defensively if they are the highest item level piece available for you.

• Overall
• Raiding
• Mythic+

The first season of The War Within brings with it a new collection of trinkets to strengthen your character, however one thing that stands out is the current power of these trinkets.

As of current tuning most trinkets are very underwhelming, with the best trinkets usually only being in the 2-3% power range when compared to Dragonflight where many trinkets are several times stronger. Below are a few of the least bad trinkets and what they bring.

Swarmlords Authority

One of the only active trinkets that provide a noticeable defensive benefit. On a 1 minute trinket this offers a fairly sizable shield scaling with your haste. You also occasionally spawn extra small scarabs that deal a small amount of damage and give you a minor shield. The shields absorb 50% of all damage taken making them slightly more favorable with our strong self healing being able to take care of the damage which leaks through. In line with all trinket tuning the shield is much smaller than similar trinkets from previous expansions, but can still be a fairly useful tool.

Empowering Crystal of Anub’Ikkaj

Conceptually a trinket that is not very interesting. A few percent of random secondaries for 20 seconds that activate on average every 40 seconds. But the total amount of stats and the fact that raw secondary stats have both offensive and defensive value makes this one of the better trinkets this season.

Ara-kara Sacbrood

Another passive stat trinket, this one with baseline Haste and a frequent Agility proc with a minor offensive component when the 1 minute stat proc runs out a small spiderling spawns and does a small amount of damage. Overall about the same power as Empowering Crystal.

Bottled Flayedwind Toxin

A trinket that applies a 1-hour duration poison to your weapon. It does a decent amount of damage in single target situations but scales relatively bad into multiple targets. A solid option for a damage trinket in raid situations.

Ovi’nax’s Mercurial Egg

A passive trinket that shifts between giving agility and your highest secondary stat depending on if you have been moving around or staying still recently. Using the trinket lets you lock it in place for 20 seconds every 2 minutes.

Balanced perfectly this trinket is roughly the same value as Empowering Crystal or Ara-Kara Sacbrood but constant instead of on a random proc. However if you do not make sure the stacks are balanced perfectly it quickly loses power compared to the other options.

Treacherous Transmitter

A 1.5-minute cooldown, haste baseline trinket that gives you a task to complete, such as standing on a small platform for 3 seconds, or jumping 3 times. If you complete the task you get a 15 second buff granting a significant portion of Agility. Takes some effort to use but lines up with The Hunt for a nice portion of damage.

Throngus’s Finger

A passive trinket with a 1 minute cooldown that activates when you dodge or parry an attack. Once activated this trinket gives you a significant amount of Dodge for 20 seconds making it a strong trinket against multiple enemies, which makes it shine in Mythic+ in large trash pulls.

Elemental Focusing Lens uses your socketed gems to proc bonus magic damage when using abilities. Deals competitive damage in single target, it does however require you to have at least one gem on your gear, so make sure that you do.

Blessed Weapon Grip has a chance to grant your highest secondary stats, decreasing slowly over time. Currently our strongest embellishment for Mythic+ and Raid, however long term you only want to run one of these in combination with an Adrenal Surge Clasp or an item with an Elemental Focusing Lens, since having a 639 weapon in your Main Hand slot is more overall value.

Adrenal Surge Clasp has a chance to grant main stat and reduce your Mastery. Since Mastery is somewhat weaker than other stats even after the buff just before 11.0.5. It does however only activate from taking damage, meaning the value somewhat diminishes in raid since several bosses feature tanking downtime. Your best embellishment in Mythic+ combined with a weapon with a Blessed Weapon Grip.