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Anfauglith

Early analysis on new talents

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Hello guys, 

 

I was hyped about all the announcements about Legion, and I had a bit extra free time so I decided to take a closer look at the new talents. I know it's early and there is not much point in looking at the numbers since the balancing is not complete, but I was curious to see what the rotations might look like in Legion.

 

(link to the talent calculator : http://legion.wowhead.com/talent#Mkx)

 

FROST

 

Tier 1: 

 

  • Sub-Zero: This looks awesome, and sounds like something Frost DKs have been asking for a long time. At a glance, it means that Obliterate will finally benefit from Mastery. But the other 2 choices in this tier are not to be ignored. So, it makes Obliterate do 30% of the damage done as Frost damage. For this consideration, I won't take into account mitigation or extra bonuses from Mastery (I won't go into that much detail). This amounts to  ~300% AP bonus damage as Frost damage on every KM.
  • Icy Talons: With this being moved to talent, it is safe to assume that Frost DKs lost the passive Haste bonus they had. Which means this talent is not to be so easily dismissed. Icy Talons don't stack, so ideally you will FS once every 3 seconds to have 100% uptime. Increased attack speed will net you more attacks, and by extension more chances to proc KM and Rime. Not taking Haste into consideration, most 1H weapons have a 2.60 speed (1 attack per 2.60 s). Over the course of 3 seconds, having 25% increased attack speed won't gain you much, so it is obvious you will need to maintain a solid uptime in order to get the most out of the talent. Taking a window of 10 seconds with 100% uptime on Icy Talons, this will amount to 4 additional auto attacks. These 4 attacks also increase your chances of proccing KM and Rime. The % chance of triggering KM is not available, but I still like the odds that at least 1 out of 4 will make it proc. All this said, Icy Talons looks like a better option if you lack Mastery.
  • Without Remorse: Enables you to go back to the standard DWF rotation.Considering only raw damage gain, making KM affect Frost Strike only will result in 264% AP lower damage than Obliterate (again, not considering mitigation or Mastery). The talent does increase the chances of proccing KM, however, so the real picture is better. Whatever the case may be, I think this talent begins to shine when you start stacking more Mastery. An exact comparison between Sub-Zero and Without Remorse is almost impossible at this stage, however, so I have no idea what might be better as the gear scales.  

 

Tier 2: 

 

  • Frozen Pulse: A straightforward talent, can really shine in AoE intense fights, or even in ST paired with Icy Talons.
  • Biting Winds: Increasing the chance of a Rime proc by 25% is more important than it may look, because Rime now makes HB deal 300% additional damage. Taking a window of 10 KM, roughly 7 should proc Rime, as opposed to 4-5 without the talent. That amounts to ~70% AP per KM proc per target.
  • Soul Asylum: Hungering Runeblade is a new ability, functioning rather similar to the T17 set bonus. It steals fragments of souls every second for 20 seconds, and if you reach 25 souls, the cooldown is reset and it deals 200% AP damage to all nearby enemies.The amount of fragments taken is not mentioned, however. In any case, starting with 5 fragments can make the accumulation process quicker, resulting in more frequent use of the ability and an added 15% damage increase on the explosion. It is hard to evaluate without more details about Hungering Runeblade.
  • Overall: All three are solid AoE options. Icy Talons synergizes well with Biting Winds and Frozen Pulse, so have that in mind when choosing a talent.

 

Rune Regen

 

  • With FS costing 20 RP, I think that both RE and RC are not an appropriate choice for Frost. 1 in 5 chance of proccing them does not seem worthwhile, but these talents cannot be evaluated without sims.

 

The next three rows are focused on survival, and as such, the choice will depend on the encounter.

 

Tier 7

 

  • Glacial Advance: The total number of spikes summoned is not mentioned, but as long as there are at least 2, it should do roughly the same damage as Defile. The fact that it has a lower cooldown than Defile may make it a better choice, but it is too difficult to predict without more data.
  • Defile: Nothing to add here, the talent is not changed from what it is currently.
  • Breath of Sindragosa: With the removal of Frost Presence and Plague Leech, I don't think Frost DKs will have an easy time maintaining BoS in Legion. It still contests heavily with Frost Strike as well, so overall I think BoS will be even worse for Frost than it currently is.
  • Overall: Even though Defile and Glacial Advance both cost a rune, thus possibly decoupling your runes (for more Obliterate/Hungering Runeblade), the talent Runic Longevity can address this issue.

 

UNHOLY

 

Scrapped, because I don't have much more to add to what simpetar already said. Good job, mate xD

 

I'd appreciate your own views regarding the talents, the implications on the rotation and stat weights. Feel free to correct me if I've made a mistake.

Edited by Anfauglith

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Unholy

 

Tier 1:

  • Lil' Stinker looks like a strong option for persistent AoE of stacked 4+ mobs. If the gaseous cloud deals shadow damage, we will probably see some interesting scaling with mastery. On the other hand, it is unlikely that the cloud will stack with itself, so if Timmy uses claw more often than once 6 seconds, overlapping will diminish its usefullness.
  • Shadow Infusion, now this one is interesting. Dark Transformation will have 20 seconds duration and 1 minute CD. That leaves 40 seconds downtime that can be reduced to 0 by merely 5 Death Coils. Some of the Death Coils will surely come from Sudden Doom procs. Looks very powerful for 2-3 targets (transformed ghoul cleaves 3), unless there is some number tweaking.
  • All Will Serve: removal of the CD is an instant cure to one big UH DK problem in PvP. Other than that. it looks decent, doubled fun. Just wondering how the technical aspect will work - when you have 2 pets at once, one is usually considered real pet (with action bar etc.) and the other just guardian (and really dumb). Due to this dumbness of guardians, probably best suited to single target fights (no confusion about what to attack).

Tier 2

  • Pestilent Pustules this talent looks great for setting up great burst. More festering wounds per use of FW mean we will have more runes for (higher damage per rune) SS. Also we get more RP for triggering festering wounds and in return more runes regenerated via regeneration talents. Overall very solid choice.
  • Blighted Runeblade seems good for early game when rune regeration is likely to be slow (due to low ilvl) using 2 runes for average of 2 festering wounds little cumbersome. More data of the actual proc chance and / or PPM would not hurt :)
  • Boiling Rot not exactly sure what to think about this one. The only situation where I could see this talent viable is when we can apply festerding wounds faster than we can trigger them. FS costs 2 runes and hits only 1 target - due to this high cost it is unlikely that we apply FS to multiple targets, unless some sort of insane cleave is required. It is only unlikely that single tick of DnD or Defile is higher on the priority list for triggering festering wound than a single SS cast.

Tier 3

  • RE and RC work in a similar manner as on live. Their chances are reduced to 1% down from 1.5% per RP, which is quite a significant hit. RE will probably get more interesting, because when we have only 1 generic type of runes (instead of BB/UU/FF or Death), we will not have to wait to pair that one with something else and we will ALWAYS be able to use that rune for something rotationally useful.
  • Runic Longevity will probably be the right choice at higher ilvls, where our rotation always tends to get GCD locked. More runes regenerating mean more wiggle room and less danger of resource capping.

Tier 4

  • Obviously very situational, but who doesn´t like stronger AMS from Spellbreaker :) The other two talents look like they wandered here from PvP section.

Tier 5

  • Personal choice: Purgatory will keep your healers on their toes, Death Pact will keep you on your toes and Improved IBF will be active FOREVER! (unless they fix the tooltip)

Tier 6

  • Nothing changed here and still situational While other classes will get access to Death Grip-ish abilities, Mass Grip is still DK specialty.

Tier 7

  • Tortured Spirit very much looks like single target version of Defile: dealing increasingly more damage to one target and completely screwed if the target moves away too fast. Might get interesting if its attack speed scales with haste.
  • Defile - nothing changed.
  • BoS - in addition to live version also restores energy to Timmy. The burst will therefore come from 2 or even 3 sources, making it even more scary.

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Blood

 

Tier 1

 

  • Bloodworms - love this talent and think it may be the go to. Overhealing from death pact or BOS turns more or less into DK healing spheres. Great for survival.
  • Feeding Frenzy- a good newer tank talent or passive talent. Basically makes Death strike heal more.
  • Rune Tap: Interesting talent that can give on demand death strikes due to them requiring runic power now. Especially powerful when paired with BOS. However, burning 2 runes could cost other survival issues. More advanced play talent, potentially crazy strong though.

Tier 2

 

  • Rapid Decomposition - makes defile/death and decay heal you. Passive, doesn't sound too bad.
  • Ossuary- interesting talent. Similar to rapid decomp but gives chance for extra bone shields. Good proactive talent
  • Consume Vitality- 25% heal of your missing health every 20 seconds. Very strong reactive talent. This tier will likely be between ossuary and consume depending on fight.

Tier 3

 

  • honestly everything said by previous posts in this thread answers this. longevity probably best later on, empowerment likely better than corruption

 

Tier 4

 

  • Situational but as tank stronger AMS is really the best most useful option

 

Tier 5

 

  • Purgatory in case you derp. Death Pact so you don't derp. Exhume very interesting. Basically you get free boneshield charges on a regular basis. What you do for tier 1 and 2 talents would impact the viability of this. I think paired with consume vitality it would be a very strong reactive proactive combo. However, death pact is such a strong heal. So this tier will be very interesting to test out. Usefulness will depend on other talents. I am a big fan of death pact but with a slew of other self healing options available now, Exhume may pull ahead.

Tier 6:

 

  • Mostly situational but as tank, gorefiends is love gorefiends is life

 

Tier 7:

 

  • SomeInteresting changes
  •  Defile is all but the same.
  • BOS however now triggers your blood shield in addition to healing like death strike. However, it costs runic power so you can't death strike while its up. Plus the heal is less then death strike. The only difference though is it is cheaper then death strike 15 runic power vs 40. so for 30 runic power you get the same heal as a death strike and save 10 more runic power. Interesting decision to be made. It can play both as an emergency heal or as a big blood shield build up before a huge attack. I believe this will likely take the tier
  • Bonestrike is a decent to moderate heal depending on how many enemies are near by. As it stands it feels very underpowered for single target. It could be good in council fights or aoe but BOS just seems better overall.

 

Blood Tanks looking very good to be honest. Very strong talents and some good talent synergy. I think there are some pretty strong builds. Some good choices between reactive or proactive builds or even hybrid ones. I think the raid encounters will determine what is best at a given time. However, I do like that there is a lot of options now for preactive and reactive mitigation. WoD blood tap just didn't feel that active or strong to me. Blood feels more complete now. Also just a lot of opportunities to build stupid strong blood shields. Terminator tanking will definetly still be DK's strong point. 

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  • Bloodworms - love this talent and think it may be the go to. Overhealing from death pact or BOS turns more or less into DK healing spheres. Great for survival.
  • Feeding Frenzy- a good newer tank talent or passive talent. Basically makes Death strike heal more.

Bloodworms look well suited for players new to blood tanking, but in hands of skilled players I can see some serious cheese coming Blood DKs are known for :) Especially when used in tandem with Purgatory - you prepare with tremendous overhealing stored in bloodworms, then soak a mechanics you aren´t supposed to survive, trigger Purgatory and let bloodworms heal you back up. ZOMG nerf Blood DKs :D

 

@Feeding Frenzy: The wording is not very clear on this talent, but I believe it refers to the lvl 78 perk of Death Strike mimicking current Will of Necropolis: when your health drops below 35%, all your RP is consumed by next DS and it will greatly increase its healing. It seems like Feeding Frenzy will further increase this emergency healing by 15% rather than flat bonus to every use of DS. (the tooltip mentions "excess RP")

 

@BoS: BoS is channelled and it ticks every 1 second, while DS triggers GCD. If you have, say 100 RP (capped), you can use 2 DS and then have to do something else to gain more RP, or use BoS for (at least) 6 straight seconds and gain more RP while channelling it to extend it further. It looks like BoS will be a very powerful CD to survive agressive ongoing damage like DoTs or enrage mechanics, more efficient than simple DS spam. Not to mention that its offensive part is noticeable as well (100% AP every second)

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      Single Target Rotation
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      Using Battle Cry
      Depending on whether or not you have your Tier 20 4PC bonus depends on how you handle your Battle Cry window. In either situation, however, you will want to make sure Colossus Smash is applied to your target prior to using Battle Cry.
      With your Tier 20 4PC: Make sure Colossus Smash is applied then cast Rend -> Battle Cry + Bladestorm -> Continue normal priority.
      Without your Tier 20 4PC, Make sure Colossus Smash is applied then then cast Rend -> Battle Cry + Mortal Strike -> Continue normal priority.
       
      Execute Priority
      Your Execute priority (sub 20% HP) is relatively simple and straight forward. If you don't have Shattered Defenses up, use Colossus Smash / Warbreaker to obtain it. With Shattered Defenses available, your priority is
      Mortal Strike (with x2 Executioner's Precision and Shattered Defenses) Colossus Smash if you don't have Shattered Defenses Execute Overpower (if talented)  

      Multiple Target Rotation
      It's important to note that if you are doing a multiple target rotation you should have changed talents from the ones recommend above if the targets are able to be stacked together. You will change the Tier 1 / Level 15 talent from Dauntless to Sweeping Strikes. If the targets are spread out or cannot be stacked for a duration of time then Dauntless will still be your talent of choice.
      Depending on the amount of time the multiple targets live depends on how much you deviate from the single target rotation as well as if they're stacked or not. If you have 2 - 3 targets, your rotation stays the same with the adjusted talent change to Sweeping Strikes.
      If you have 4+ targets, however, your priority changes to the following:
      Warbreaker Bladestorm Cleave Whirlwind Take note of the improved Cleave. For each add you hit with it, up to 5 maximum, it'll increase your damage of your next Whirlwind by 20%. (5 adds hit = 100% increased Whirlwind Damage).
       

      With the release of 7.2, things have changed for your Artifact Weapon. With a series of quests, you are able to imbue your weapon with power from the Council of Six making it stronger to deal with the incoming threat of Kil'Jaeden in the Tomb of Sargeras.
      Below I have listed two leveling paths for the Strom'kar; the first one being if you haven't leveled your Arms weapon yet and the second path being once you have the extra traits unlocked.


      Initially you unlock the weapon by placing your first 100 Artifact Power in Warbreaker. Once that's unlocked you should continue your progression into the weapon in the following order:
      1. Shattered Defenses
      Thoradin's Might Crushing Blows Will of the First King Exploit the Weakness Shattered Defenses 2. Corrupted Blood of Zakajz
      Tactical Advance Precise Strikes Corrupted Blood of Zakajz 3. Focus in Battle
      Many Will Fall Focus in Battle 4. Deathblow
      5. Unending Rage
      6. One Against Many
      7. Void Cleave
      8. Touch of Zakajz
      9. Defensive Measures
      10. Unbreakable Steel

      Once you complete this path, you will receive a quest that will start a small series to empower your weapon. It will start with the quest The Broken Shore: Investigating the Legion in which you will need to find a randomly-dropped item: Mysterious Runebound Scroll. Once you find this item you will begin a short quest chain:
      1. Arms: The Thieving Apprentice
      2. Professionally Good Looking
      3. Order of Incantations (The order is Arcane -> Frost -> Fire -> Shadow)
      4. The Archmage Accosted
      Once you complete these, you'll be asked to go back to Dalaran and receive the power from the Council of Six. Strom'kar will empower and you will have access to the new traits.
      Important Note: The following path can be simplified, for general purposes, as such: Get the new golden trait (Executioner's Precision). Once that's done you can chose whatever talents in the weapon you wish. The differences in numbers are literally so close and variable based on your personal character there is no 100% definitive path to take. If you're looking for definitive choices, you can sim your warrior to find the best results.
      If you're looking for a direction to take because you do not want to sim yourself or whatever reason, you can take the following path. The steps that have multiple choice is, again, a choice completely up to you. Just make sure all choices are filled before you move to the next step.
       


      1. Executioner's Precision
      Arms of the Valarjar Storm of Swords Soul of the Slaughter Executioner's Precision 2. Exploit the Weakness
      3. Deathblow / Crushing Blows / Precise Strikes
      4. One Against Many / Unending Rage / Many Will Fall
      5. Touch of Zakajz / Tactical Advance
      Once you have these traits filled in, the last trait will become available. It has 50 points to dropped into it and it's my belief that Blizzard does not want us to cap it out this expansion. According to the Wowhead Calculator it would take a total of 865,842,644,766,330 Artifact Power to fill 100%.
       
       

      The only addon that I really deem significant is Weak Auras. You can use it to track literally everything in the game if it's trackable. Use this for boss encounters and, more specifically, monitoring your buffs / debuffs for your Arms Warrior. Important things to track include, but are not limited to:
      Shattered Defenses Colossus Smash Executioner's Precision Rend Battle Cry Potion of the Old War ____________________________________________
      Change Log:
      7/17/2016: Original Post
      7/19/2016: Updated Post to reflect similarities in IV's Guide on Talents and Stat weights where needed.
      7/31/2016: Updated for recent simulation results in talent choices and stat priority. Also updated Addons.
      8/27/2016: Added Artifact path information.
      9/4/2016: Updated Stat Priorities, Rotation, Artifact Path, and Macros.
      9/18/20126: Updated Links of Interest, Stat Priorities, & Rotation Priority sections.
      9/27/2016: Updated FAQ and Macros sections.
      10/26/2016: Updated Macros section.
      12/08/2016: FAQ, Talents, Rotation, Macro sections updated.
      3/30/2017: Artifact Path updated for 7.2 changes.
      6/15/2017: Talents, Stats, & Rotation sections updated due to 7.2.5 changes to the Arms specialization.
      8/2/2017: Talents & Rotation sections updated to Rend Build. Included Fight Specific Talent choices. Addons updated. Removed Macros section.
    • By WindowsSeven
      I'm not entirely sure what I am doing wrong that is getting me this result, but I am getting about a 30k dps difference on training dummy when I use a defile, clawing shadows, shadow infusion build than when I use the recommended talents. I left the rest of my talents unchanged and I have yet to see where the dps difference is coming from (arbiter or clawing shadows), but I'm very confused as to how this could happen. Links to armory and mrrobot below.
      https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/character/wyrmrest-accord/goragi
      https://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/simulator/report/f3a7a9c5f88e4d10b5cb45224684a073
      Defile damage breakdown, Arbiter damage breakdown
      I felt like I had a harder time keeping my disease up and using coldheart on cooldown (or rather whenever at max stacks) with the arbiter build. Am I missing some key thing or do I just need to git gud? Thanks in advance for any help.
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