Expurgation

Classes Paladin
1

Retribution question. I liked expurgation in BFA, but in Shadowlands it’s feeling kind of weak. It makes up 1-2% of my total DPS on a boss fight if it procs at all, and most of the time it doesn’t (often depends on the group having heroism). I barely notice it’s there when I have it equipped.

Obviously, it isn’t going to feel like it did in Ny’alotha (expurgation on three good azerite pieces made it really feel like your target was burning), but does anyone have an idea of the haste/crit/ilevel requirements for Expurgation to compete with other conduits like Templar’s Vindication or Virtuous command?

2

Expurgation suffers from excessive filtering.

First, it’s a % of Blade of Justice’s damage.
Second, it only happens on critical strikes.
Third, if my memory is accurate, it does not stack with itself.

Assuming Expurgation hits 45% damage, your critical strike rate is 20%, and BoJ is 20% of your total damage, it means at best Expurgation will be .45*.20*.20 = .018 = 1.8% damage increase or less due to damage not stacking.

Being charitable, it’s safe to say Expurgation will never be anything more than a 2% damage increase.

3

Its too bad, because I like the theme of it and having a dot. But yeah it seems really weak right now. I like that it adds value to crit, but I think it just needs to be tuned up.

4

Yes, but am I just crazy, or was it a lot better than that in BFA?

5

From my experience, it was always a C tier Azerite trait.

However, I took a break from the final tier of Nya’lotha so it might have been good then.

6

They really should just remove the crit component and either give it a flat, balanced procrate, or reduce its damage and make it always proc.

1 Like
7

It’s very unreliable but hits hard when it does. With a 10s CD on BoJ and 6s DoT with Expurgation, they will almost never overlap for stacks, but I don’t think it refreshes if you happen to get a free BoJ in due to Art of War (at least I haven’t got it to).

My opinion: it’s better on longer single target boss fights so you can get a few procs in. It didn’t effect my overall dps for mythic dung runs though compared to virtuous command.

If you like it go with it. I’m sure if you BoW and focus crit secondary, you might come up with something neat.

8

The expurg Conduit is good mostly because it scales obscenely hard with item level. At 184 item level the DoT does more damage than the Blade of Justice, and it gets stronger from there. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes when it’s ilvl 250 for example. 3x the damage of BoJ? Who knows.

9

So, it’s mostly a matter of upgrading the conduit itself. Good to know, although I wish there was a reliable way to do that.

I’ve been doing haste first and crit second to make the most of Zeal and BoW. I prefer it to Empyreal Power because it feels nicer to have more Art of War procs than it does to manage two different proc abilities. The one thing I might have to reconsider is Crusade, which is another feel-good ability for me. The 30% haste definitely helps with triggering Art of War, but I’m wondering if the 20% crit from Avenging Wrath is better for the build.

Does anyone have thoughts on that? I appreciate all of the answers so far.

10

You could pick Seraphim vs Divine Storm for some extra secondary boosts, but your crit chance comes from crit not haste. Haste will just lower gcd, maybe art of war procs but since running zeal. Test it out I don’t know the ratio of haste:crit that will maximize your build.

Right now all the potency conduits are underwhelming maybe 3-5% of overall dmg in perfect conditions.

Edit: Expurgation will reset the DoT if you get another crit w/ art of war during 6s window. Had it happen a few times in these time walking dung. No stack just put the timer back to 6s