T18 Set Bonus, Class Trinket, and Changes Discussion

[Estarriol 167]

Fury:

• 2P: While Bloodsurge is active, your Wild Strike critical strike chance is increased by 12% and Wild Strike critical strike damage is increased by 12%.
• 4P: Your Wild Strike critical strikes reduce the cooldown of Recklessness by 20%
• Trinket: Autoattacks increase haste by 2.87% for 6s stacking up to 10 times. Resets if you switch targets.

 

Arms:

• 2P: Your Rend periodic damage ticks have a 30% chance to reset the cooldown of Mortal Strike.
• 4P: Your Rend ticks 30% faster.
• Trinket: Your autoattacks have a 40% chance of resetting the CD on Colossus Smash.

 

Protection:

• 2P: While Shield Block is active, the cost of Shield Barrier is reduced by 55%.
• 4P: While Shield Barrier is active, magical damage taken is reduced by 25%.
• Trinket: Shield Block reduces magic damage taken by 23%. Shield Barrier increases armor by 23%.
• Changes: Improved Defensive Stance: Now also reduces damage taken by 5%.

 

I'll leave the start of the Arms/Fury discussion up to Rage and Saj, but I really like the possible interplay between the DPS specs' set bonuses. It really seems like they're pushing for everyone using the 4P because of the synergistic effects.

 

For Prot, the trinket and set bonuses are the bandaid we desperately need. Will they put us on top? Highly unlikely. Brewmasters are getting massively more heals and a huge CD reduction on Guard. I think they'll still be firmly on top, but warriors might actually be playable. I'm getting teary-eyed here. I think our 2P is especially a bandaid. We need the cost reduction far more when Shield Block is down. However, it plays well with our trinket bonuses. Essentially, it makes it possible to benefit from the magic damage reduction from both Block (via trinket) and Barrier (via 4P) for a reasonable amount of rage. This means we may want to value Unending Rage a bit higher, but also means that it won't be 100% required.

 

The two things I'm rather disappointed with are the 23% armor increase on Shield Barrier and the cost reduction tied into Shield Block. With the current size of our Barriers, we'll still only be reducing slightly more than one melee swing with our SBars, so will the armor bonus still only last that one hit? I need to get on the PTR and try this out, but if the armor bonus lasts 6s regardless of whether or not SBar lasts that long, then we need not change our play. If not, we may want to switch to using smaller Barriers more frequently. By this I mean, that we may want to try to use only 20-30 rage Shield Barriers (not counting the ones during SBlk with reduced cost) in order to maximize our benefit from the armor bonus. Additionally, will this armor bonus also count for bonus armor (the stat)? If so, that means we'd get a small bonus to attack power from it, though it would likely be small enough that we wouldn't want to refresh our Barriers.

 

My problem with the SBar cost reduction being tied into SBlk is that during SBlk, we're already fairly well covered and don't need to be spamming Barriers. The only reason that this is alright is that interplay between the 4P and the trinket as discussed before. Still, I'd prefer to have a 28% cost reduction at all times in order to better compensate for when SBlk is down. Ultimately, this method does make us much, much, much more capable of dealing with magic damage and while I may still lament the pitiable size of SBar, the ability to spam the smaller SBars while SBlk is up does give us precious seconds of independence that we currently do not have.

 

Will we be amazing? I think not, but I think we may have our niche and may actually fare better against magic damage than monks and perhaps be competitive overall.

[tuvarkz 0]

According to latest notes, Glad Stance now increases the warrior's mastery by 30%. Mastery now a decent stat?

[ragebarr 153]

I can't really answer that atm. I personally haven't touched gladiator since it got nerfed in early Highmaul progression. The best info I can find right now is that it should put Mastery close to Glad's best stats, but still not quite as good as Crit or Haste.

 

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Anyways... on to set bonuses. It'll be more of a subjective analysis here since I don't have the time to go through sims and whatnot atm. If you find something that proves - or disproves - what my intuition says, please correct me :)

 

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Fury: 

 

The 2pc is pretty nice. Much better than the "X spell does Y% more damage" route we used to see a lot of in the past. It is however going to emphasize even more on not wasting Bloodsurge charges. Also, it should increase the value of haste slightly, to a point where all our secondary stats might be exceptionnally close to each other.

 

The 4pc, oh man, does it look nice. To give me an idea of how much exactly we're talking about, I looked at one of my Gruul parses. In a 5 minutes fight, I ended up casting Recklessness 3 times, and Wild Strike 72 times, of which ~35%, or about 25, were crits. If I had had the T18 4pc, I would have been able to cast Recklessness about every minute to minute and a half. Stat wise, this is going to push crit even farther ahead for Fury than it already is imo. Also, it very well could push Furious Strikes that far ahead of Sudden Death, since casting Wild Strikes will be close to our top priority at all time.

 

Personnally, I really like these tier bonuses, because they are far more creative and actually affect the way you play a lot more than previous set bonuses would.

 

As far as the trinket goes, it looks pretty plain. Should be pretty nice against single target, since more haste = more BTs = more rage = more WS = more 4pc procs, but it is nowhere near as interesting as the set bonuses.

 

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Arms:

 

I'm going to be pretty biased here as I think that at the moment, Arms is absolutely boring and horrid to play. The T18 set bonus and trinket however, is (hopefully) the bandaid Arms needs to be somewhat fun to play again. Before I go farther though, I would simply like to point out that what's being added to Arms here is only stuff that was removed from it before. The Rend ticks resetting CD of mortal strike is simply the Overpower mechanic from way back then, though simplified a lot, and the CD resetting on Colossus Smash is something they took away from Arms just a couple months ago.

 

The 2pc is interesting, and as I said above, might actually make the spec a bit more lively. ++bonus to haste, and should be pretty nice in 2 targets cleave situations. However, the set bonus will be pretty worthless once you add a 3rd+ target to the enounter since MS isn't really worth casting at that point.

 

The 4pc ties in nicely to the 2pc, but it is pretty boring. It is going to be a nice DPS increase for up to 3-4 targets, and will actually help you a lot in this situation with the rage income from Taste for Blood.

 

The trinket is, as I previously said, simply the old sudden death mechanic back. Good on single target and cleave, worthless on AoE.

 

Overall, I'd switch the 2pc and 4pc, since I always prefer to see the more interesting bonuses on the 4pc, though, to be honest, I'd rather just have the 2pc and trinket effect baked in to Arms (just like they never really should have been removed) because while they might make the spec interesting to play again, they are only a temporary band aid.

[Amputate 1]

Arms:

 

I'm going to be pretty biased here as I think that at the moment, Arms is absolutely boring and horrid to play.

 

You do realise that after we get 4 pieces we'll all be playing 2 button fury right?

Obviously we'll spec furious strikes and wild strike for days.

I really don't want to go to a play style where your rotation is: BT > Wildstrike > More Wildstrike.

 

I don't even see the point in using Raging Blow at that point.

[Estarriol 167]

 

Personnally, I really like these tier bonuses, because they are far more creative and actually affect the way you play a lot more than previous set bonuses would.

 

Although I have my qualms, I think the same thing about the prot set bonuses. It's giving and incentive to make inventive changes to rotation instead of flat or passive buffs. It's something I'd really like to see more of in general. I like having a method of taking advantage of my set bonuses instead of them just being there in the background. I'm happy these set bonuses are for the final tier, though. If I had to give them up for the next tier, it would hurt.

[spartiate 2]

Hi guys here is a simple question:

How do you get the class trinket?Is it just a loot like every other loot or is it a quest reward?

I don't go to ptr so i don't really know much about this trinket

[Estarriol 167]

The class trinkets will drop from the final boss in Hellfire Citadel.

[Vespasian 1]

How valuable do you think these 4-sets will be in terms of dropping stats to get them? As in dropping a higher item level piece with better secondaries to get the bonus? I'm currently experiencing this problem with BRF tier and was wondering if it was something you could guess at or would need to sim to really know.

 

The fury one looks good, like, really good, but I don't know how it would stack up against flat stats.