Jak lists Baleful Branch as the best, or at least an S tier trinket. Myself, I have been using an Epic Version of the Haste + Int pvp trinket at 476 and wonder at why a Mastery + Int trinket would beat a Haste + Int trinket that probably has a lot more Int uptime.
Also, I am looking at replacing that pvp trinket with the crafted Alacritous Alchemist’s Stone, which resembles the Pvp trinket but can be easily obtained vs the Pvp trinket which only scales to 476 unless you do a lot of Rated pvp and get a higher one in your vault (I believe). Coincidentally Jak calls the crafted Alchemist’s Alacritous Stone a B level trinket and does not even include a rating of the Pvp one.
I think Haste is far superior to Mastery because you can pound out a lot more hits with your pet if you run Mindbender, and that translates to more healing AND damage, which mastery does not.
I would add that I just did a run and got a 92% damage parse and think haste has a lot to do with that. Would mastery have helped or hindered that parse? I’d bet the damage and healing I’d have done would have been lower, but have no way of knowing. Is Baleful improperly balanced or really that good? I dont get it.
I am just curious about what others think. I have farmed the Baleful trinket and have it, so could easily upgrade it, but I think Jak is waaay overrating that trinket.
Thoughts anyone?
I don’t know if they label it as such on wowhead (honestly for priests I find the icy veins guides much better, and certainly more in line with the info in the priest discord) but balefire branch gets that high rating in a raid setting when you can sync it up with a huge ramp and are healing 20 people.
It’s much less valuable in a five man, where mathematically pip’s, gennesaur blood, and the sea star are the best bets (there may still be situations when you want an on use trinket for a specific mechanic or what have you).
I ditched the branch for dungeons as it just didn’t seem strong enough to keep as a click trinket. I much prefer blood/tyrstone though I might try blood/sea star this week. But, I am not a super fancy disc players like others and play mostly what feels fun for me and not necessarily what is the best so take that with a super grain of salt.
I haven’t decided what I am doing for raid as holy yet. I like that we have all of these nice options this season.
Balefire is way better than anything else in raid, because our healing is entirely our ramp - and you can use it on every other ramp meaning you’re boosting about 50% of your healing with a huge int boost. And mastery is one of our best secondaries in raid, too.
If you’re just an M+er, then no. Int + Stat stick trinkets are generally the best for more consistency, and your preference on healing trinket/damage trinkets.
Balefire is still good in M+ though, basically just tie it to your mindbender and it’ll be fine.
I use Nymue + Music Box for M+.
The Nymue trinket is honestly pretty good. It gives you +20% mastery (i.e. +20% extra hps from atonement) for 18s and does over 1mil damage an activation.
I use it like a staggered cd or just for the dps.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/RZtMNz7nyavb1pAL#fight=1&type=damage-done&source=8
The Seedling trinket is also pretty good and does 1-1.5 mil healing in dungeons per activation.
I have mixed luck with drops…good I guess in that I have gennesaur and sea star and those are mathematically solid. Bad in that none of the on-use trinkets have dropped for me, and I wouldn’t mind trying them or having them in an emergency—last week a guild mate with ~100 more io than me told me the trinket from AD was his go to for the double crushing depths pull, which is rough in fortified weeks.
I see a lot of high players on IO running trinkets that do not max out haste. And even some of you are not stacking haste on other gear. Is haste no longer the best Disc secondary stat?
It does seem to me that when we had corruption in BFA (was it?) you could really stack high haste but that at some point (maybe over 32% or so) you started getting mana issues and diminishing returns on your output. Myself, I am currently at 41% but am having no issues with mana in good groups (bad groups are another story).
Edit: I just read about secondary stat caps at Icy Veins. Hmm… Perhaps stacking haste above 5100 is overdone.
It’s more that we’re still early in the season where we’re just taking whatever upgrades we can get. iLvl trumps everything. Also, with tier pieces you end up getting stats that aren’t your best.
I’m also a Holy main for raid so I have to balance my crafted pieces around more neutral stats like Crit/Vers that can be used on Disc as well.
I’m trying to aim for 25-30% haste on Disc then pump the rest into crit. Versatility and avoidance really matters in keys, especially if you want to push high because everything hurts bad.
I think my disc key set is sitting at 5100 or 5200 haste right now. According to sites that show diminishing returns, I am almost touching the haste cap for my disc set and the mastery cap for my holy raid set. I need to mess around with my gear a tad.
I got the nymue trinket from the heroic weekly chest today. Going to play around with it at some point this week I think. I have been running coagulated blood/tyrstone but might swap out tyrstone for it. That or wait to try is in raid as holy at some point. I don’t know. Gaining quite the collection of trinkets over here lol. Might need a randomizer just for funsies.
I have run a few dungeons near the haste cap (about 5100 or so), and it felt bad, tbh. The casts are so slow and so much can happen when your casts are slow. I much prefer higher haste and so have swapped out to my haste trinket, even though it puts me at about 5900 haste–meaning I am paying a small penalty. The thing is, if you run mindbender then you want the haste.
In season 2 Moad, whom I think of as the best M+ disc priest, was running very high haste–around 40%–meaning there was a lot of penalty, but so it went. I am convinced it has to do with your pet and how mindbender relies on it heavily and how haste somehow gets you your pet faster and/or doing more hits. Currently, if you look him up, you’ll see his haste is at almost 7000, implying the haste penalty maybe is a small sacrifice for various reasons.
Eh they’re still recommending lightweaver for holy as the go to M+ build.
Are they more up to date for disc?
At least for disc and shadow IV seems generally more in alignment with the priest discord. I’ve honestly never tried holy so I can’t comment there.
Interestingly, Moad currently has haste at 39.5%. This interesting because of these numbers.
| Stat from Rating |
Rating Penalty |
| 0 - 30% |
No effect |
| 30 - 39% |
10% penalty |
| 39 - 47% |
20% penalty |
| 47 - 54% |
30% penalty |
| 54 - 66% |
40% penalty |
| 66 - 126% |
50% penalty |
| 126% |
No stat gain |
Again, I see a lot of advantage to running haste trinkets over others. That is, all depending on what your gear/gem/enchant sources are for haste. Maybe your haste is already high and so haste trinkets are not a boon for you.
The branch didn’t sound all that great to me. You lose the intellect when you take damage, which feels like all the time. Especially with all the unavoidable AoE damage pretty much all bosses do