Feedback: Class Sets in Embers of Neltharion

Embers of Neltharion features all new Tier Set armor for every class. We’re excited to share them with you today.

  • Please note that the designs and values below are a work in progress. When these sets are ready for testing, the Embers of Neltharion PTR may include values other than what you see here, and values may be updated on the PTR with changes to these sets via hotfix at any time.

Class Set Design

Set armor bonuses in Season 1 had relatively low impact on gameplay and rotations, because we wanted to give the new talent system room to shine. In Embers of Neltharion, set bonuses can have more impact on your resources, cooldowns, and talents. Some bonuses are enhanced by playing certain talents, and some build on popular talents in the middle sections of trees. Throughout these designs, we intend for players to feel able to play the overall build or strategy they prefer.

Set Bonuses

Death Knight

Blood

  • (2) Set Bonus: Heart Strike and Blood Boil deal 20% increased damage and have a 10% chance to grant Vampiric Blood for 5 seconds.

  • (4) Set Bonus: When you would gain Vampiric Blood you are infused with Vampiric Strength, granting you 10% Strength for 5 seconds. Your Heart Strike and Blood Boil extend the duration of Vampiric Strength by 0.5 seconds.

Frost

  • (2) Set Bonus: Howling Blast and Frost Fever damage increased by 10%. Your Rime-empowered Howling Blasts reduce the cooldown of Frostwyrm’s Fury by 2 seconds.

  • (4) Set Bonus: After consuming Rime 15 times you call down Frostwyrm’s Fury on your target at 100% effectiveness.

Unholy

  • (2) Set Bonus: Death Coil and Epidemic damage increased by 10%. Casting Death Coil or Epidemic grants a stack of Master of Death. At 20 stacks, Master of Death is consumed and you gain 15% Mastery for 20 seconds.

  • (4) Set Bonus: When Death Coil or Epidemic consumes Sudden Doom gain two stacks of Master of Death or increase the Mastery bonus to 25% for 5 seconds.

Demon Hunter

Havoc

  • (2) Set Bonus: Every 200 Fury you spend, gain Seething Fury, increasing your Agility by 8% for 6 seconds.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Each time you gain Seething Fury, gain 15 Fury and the damage of your next Eye Beam is increased by 12%, stacking up to 5 times.

Vengeance

  • (2) Set Bonus: Soul Fragments heal for 10% more and generating a Soul Fragment increases your Fire damage by 2% for 6 seconds. Multiple applications may overlap.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Shear and Fracture deal Fire damage. After consuming 20 Soul Fragments, your next cast of Shear or Fracture applies Fiery Brand to its target for 6 seconds.

Druid

Balance

  • (2) Set Bonus: Sunfire radius increased by 2 yards. Sunfire, Moonfire and Shooting Stars damage increased by 18%.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Shooting Stars has a 20% chance to instead call down a Crashing Star, dealing (72% of Attack Power) Astral damage to the target and generating 5 Astral Power.

  • Developers’ Note: The damage of Crashing Star is about 4 times the damage of a Shooting Star.

Feral

  • (2) Set Bonus: Your auto-attacks have a chance to grant Shadows of the Predator, increasing your Agility by 1%. Each application past 5 has an increasing chance to reset to 2 stacks.

  • (4) Set Bonus: When a Shadows of the Predator application resets stacks, you gain 5% increased Agility and you generate 1 combo point every 1.5 seconds for 6 seconds.

Guardian

  • (2) Set Bonus: When you take damage, Mangle and Thrash damage and Rage generation are increased by 15% for 8 seconds and you heal for 6% of damage taken over 8 seconds.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Maul/Raze damage increased by 20% and casting Ironfur or Maul/Raze increases your maximum health by 3% for 12 seconds, stacking 5 times.

Restoration

  • (2) Set Bonus: Rejuvenation and Lifebloom healing increased by 15%. Regrowth healing over time increased by 75%.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Flourish increases the rate of your heal over time effects by 40% for an additional 16 seconds after it ends. Verdant Infusion causes your Swiftmend target to gain 15% increased healing from you for 6 seconds.

  • Developers’ Note: The duration of the 4-piece Flourish bonus is halved if Flourish is cast by Convoke the Spirits.

Evoker

Devastation

  • (2) Set Bonus: Disintegrate and Pyre pierce enemies with Obsidian Shards, dealing 12% of damage done as Volcanic damage over 8 seconds.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Empower spells deal 8% increased damage and cause the Obsidian Shards to become supercharged, dealing 200% more damage for 5 seconds. During Dragonrage, shards are always supercharged.

Preservation

  • (2) Set Bonus: Spiritbloom applies a heal over time effect for 40% of healing done over 8 seconds. Dream Breath’s healing is increased by 15%.

  • (4) Set Bonus: After casting 3 empower spells, gain Essence Burst immediately and another 3 seconds later.

Hunter

Beast Mastery

  • (2) Set Bonus: Cobra Shot and Kill Command damage increased by 15%.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Cobra Shot, Kill Command, and Multi-Shot reduce the cooldown of Bestial Wrath by 1 second.

Marksmanship

  • (2) Set Bonus: Arcane Shot/Chimeara Shot and Multi-Shot deal 10% increased damage and have a 8% chance to grant you the Deathblow effect.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Kill Shot damage increased by 15%, and Kill Shot reduces the cooldown of Rapid Fire and Aimed Shot by 0.5 seconds.

Survival

  • (2) Set Bonus: Wildfire Bomb damage increased by 10% and throwing a Wildfire Bomb increases the damage of your next Kill Command by 50%.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Every 25 Focus you spend reduces the cooldown of Wildfire Bomb by 1 second.

Mage

Arcane

  • (2) Set Bonus: Arcane Surge increases Spell Damage by an additional 5% and its duration is increased by 3 seconds.

  • (4) Set Bonus: For every 20,000 mana spent during Arcane Surge, your spell damage is increased by 1% for 12 seconds after Arcane Surge fades, stacking up to 30 times.

Fire

  • (2) Set Bonus: Phoenix Flames applies Charring Embers to all enemies it damages, increasing their damage taken from you by 6% for 10 seconds.

  • (4) Set Bonus: When your direct damage spells hit an enemy affected by Charring Embers 30 times, gain Hyperthermia for 6 seconds.

Frost

  • (2) Set Bonus: Flurry and Frostbolt damage increased by 20%. Flurry causes an explosion on impact, dealing 50% of its damage to nearby enemies, damage reduced beyond 5 targets.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Casting Ice Lance on a frozen target has a 8% chance to trigger Brain Freeze.

Monk

Brewmaster

  • (2) Set Bonus: Blackout Kick damage increased by 20%. You have a 10% chance to not reset your Elusive Brawler stacks on a successful dodge.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Rising Sun Kick grants a stack of Elusive Brawler. When you dodge, damage and critical strike chance of your next Blackout Kick or Rising Sun Kick is increased by 5%, stacking up to 5 times.

Mistweaver

  • (2) Set Bonus: Renewing Mists has a chance to grant Soulfang Infusion, granting 5% of your maximum Mana over 6 seconds.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Drinking a Tea or gaining Soulfang Infusion increases the healing of your Vivify and Renewing Mists by 40% for 6 seconds.

Windwalker

  • (2) Set Bonus: Rising Sun Kick deals increased damage and has a chance to go nova, dealing Fire damage to all enemies within 8 yards.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Your melee auto-attacks have a chance to launch a Shadowflame spirit at your enemy that duplicates your next 3 abilities at X% effectiveness.

Paladin

Holy

  • (2) Set Bonus: Holy Shock’s critical strikes heal for 15% more and reduce the cooldown of Light’s Hammer by 2 seconds and Holy Prism by 1 second.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Light’s Hammer heals 100% more frequently and generates 1 Holy Power every 4 seconds. Holy Prism’s healing is increased by 80% and it generates 1 Holy Power if cast on an enemy target, or 3 if cast on an ally.

Protection

  • (2) Set Bonus: Avenger’s Shield causes targets struck to burn with Heartfire, dealing an additional 20% of damage dealt over 5 seconds. Heartfire heals you for 100% of damage it deals.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Judgment critical strikes can trigger Grand Crusader.

Retribution

  • (2) Set Bonus: Judgment and Hammer of Wrath deal 10% increased damage and 20% increased critical strike damage.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Judgment increases the damage enemies take from your Holy Power spenders by an additional 5%. Hammer of Wrath applies Judgment to enemies.

Priest

Discipline

  • (2) Set Bonus: Casting Penance on an enemy also heals a nearby injured ally at 20% effectiveness. Casting Penance on an ally also damages a nearby enemy at 35% effectiveness.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Every 3 casts of Penance grants you Shadow Covenant for 5 seconds and converts that Penance to a Shadow spell.

Holy

  • (2) Set Bonus: Prayer of Mending has a 20% chance to duplicate to another nearby target when it jumps.

  • (4) Set Bonus: When Prayer of Mending jumps, it increases the damage and healing of your next Holy Word by 4%, stacking up to 15 times.

Shadow

  • (2) Set Bonus: When consuming Shadowy Insight, Mind Blast deals 60% increased damage and generates 4 additional Insanity.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Every 400 Insanity spent summons Shadowfiend/Mindbender for 5 seconds.

Rogue

Assassination

  • (2) Set Bonus: Rupture and Crimson Tempest deal an additional 33% damage as Nature.

  • (4) Set Bonus: When Deathmark expires, Nature damage you deal is increased by 40% for 30 seconds.

Outlaw

  • (2) Set Bonus: Damage you inflict applies a Soulrip, dealing 5% of all damage you deal as physical damage over 8 seconds.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Between the Eyes unleashes all Soulrips, dealing 200% of all remaining damage and granting 7% Agility for 15 seconds.

Subtlety

  • (2) Set Bonus: Shadow Dance grants you Symbols of Death for 10 seconds and extends the duration of Rupture by 4 seconds.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Symbols of Death increases the critical strike damage of Eviscerate and Black Powder by 15%.

Shaman

Elemental

  • (2) Set Bonus: Gain Stormkeeper every 40 seconds.

  • (4) Set Bonus: For 8 seconds after you consume Stormkeeper, your Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, Icefury, and Frost Shock generate 100% more Maelstrom, and your Chain Lightning, Lava Beam, and Earthquake critical strike damage is increased by 20%.

Enhancement

  • (2) Set Bonus: Sundering increases your Mastery by 12% for 15 seconds.

  • (4) Set Bonus: When Sundering hits a single target, you deal 30% increased physical damage for 15 seconds. When Sundering strikes 2 or more targets, your next Chain Lightning deals 50% increased damage and refunds 100% of Maelstrom Weapon stacks consumed.

Restoration

  • (2) Set Bonus: when you cast Healing Rain, all allies with your Riptide on them are healed by Tidewaters for (140% of Spell Power).

  • (4) Set Bonus: Each ally healed by Tidewaters increases your haste by 1% for 6 seconds and increases the healing of your next Riptide by 10%.

Warlock

Affliction

  • (2) Set Bonus: Vile Taint cooldown reduced by 5 seconds and Phantom Singularity cooldown reduced by 12 seconds. Vile Taint and Phantom Singularity damage increased by 60%.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Enemies damaged by Phantom Singularity gain Infirmity for its duration and enemies damaged by Vile Taint gain Infirmity for 10 seconds, increasing damage taken by 10%.

  • Developers’ note: The (4) Set Bonus technically applies Infirmity for 2 seconds every time an enemy is damaged by Phantom Singularity. Phantom Singularity deals damage every 2 seconds, so this has the effect of keeping Infirmity on targets for its duration.

Demonology

  • (2) Set Bonus: Demonbolt damage increased 15%. Consuming a Demonic Core reduces the cooldown of Grimoire: Felguard by 1 second.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Grimoire: Felguard deals 40% additional damage and empowers your active demons, increasing their damage done by 20% while active.

Destruction

  • (2) Set Bonus: Channel Demonfire bolts, Immolate, and Incinerate have a 20% chance to fire an additional Channel Demonfire bolt.

  • (4) Set Bonus: After casting 15 Demonfire bolts, your next Demonfire bolt deals (103% of Spell Power) Shadowflame damage to the target and (35% of Spell Power) Shadowflame damage to enemies within 8 yards.

Warrior

Arms

  • (2) Set Bonus: Deep Wounds increases your chance to critically strike and critical strike damage dealt to afflicted targets by 10%.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Deep Wounds critical strikes have a chance to increase the damage of your next Slam by 25%, stacking 10 times, and cause it to strike up to 4 additional targets for 50% damage.

  • Developers’ Note: The chance for the (4) Set Bonus to trigger its effect increases at a diminishing rate for each target beyond the first. This is similar to the effects of spells like Agony and Shooting Stars.

Fury

  • (2) Set Bonus: Rampage damage and chance to critically strike increased by 10%.

  • (4) Set Bonus: Rampage critical strikes against your primary target cause your next Bloodthirst to deal 50% increased damage and generate 2 additional Rage, stacking up to 4 times. It also has a 100% chance to critically strike.

Protection

  • (2) Set Bonus: Shield Slam deals 15% increased damage and reduces the cooldown of Last Stand by 0.5 seconds. During Last Stand these effects are doubled.

  • (4) Set Bonus: For 10 seconds after Last Stand ends, Shield Slam unleashes a wave of force dealing damage to enemies in front of you and reduces damage they deal to you by 5% for 5 seconds.

Playtesting and Providing Feedback

The bonuses above will become available for testing in the Embers of Neltharion PTR over the coming weeks. We expect the first few sets you’ll see on the PTR to be Death Knight, Havoc Demon Hunter, Druid, Mage, Brewmaster Monk, and Holy and Protection Paladin. Look for Setzertauren near the current PvP and Professions vendors in Orgrimmar and Stormwind City. Please share bugs you find via the in-game bug reporting tool and your feedback about the bonuses in this thread.

Thank you!

2 Likes

First? Here’s my feedback on this set!

2 piece: Holy Priests currently have 7 talents built around Prayer of Mending and making a tier set built around that isn’t really interesting. Since we’re not able to test this tier set I have no idea how the duplicate works (is it a brand new PoM or does it have less charges, etc).

This bonus looks very underwhelming compared to Resto Druids who get a +15% healing bonus to three of their main spells when this only impacts one? This set bonus is basically just another level of RNG like Say your Prayers because you could have literally just have it give PoM +20% more healing or more charges and called it a day.

4 piece: Seems fairly neutral and uninteresting: once again it’s dependent on PoM bouncing around.

Both set bonuses are only going to be useful in raid because PoM doesn’t bounce that much in dungeons unless its Grievous or Bursting week. I do 4-5 times more healing in dungeons with Flash Heal/Heal than I do from PoM.

So focusing on Heal, Flash Heal, Prayer of Healing, Renew, Holy Word Reduction, healing/damage bonuses, etc. would be more useful.

7 Likes

Sounds extremely weak, the version on the PTR currently sounds okay (160 fury, not 200, and 20% damage, not 12). Considering Havoc’s pain point is its priority damage and not the free cleave we get this seems a bit funky.

5 Likes

resto druid 4pc is way too strong… this is the strongest healing tier bonus since Extend Life… nerf it IMMEDIATELY

9 Likes

I think there just has to be a fundamentally wrong idea on how resto shaman works in practice. Otherwise its just inconceivable.

Also, now that we’re all going chain heal heavy, the bonus pushes the other way around. I just don’t understand how erratic initial designs are. Help me out here, Blizzard.

3 Likes

Edited to elaborate more on why the Destruction tier set needs to be changed entirely.

Destruction

  • (2) Set Bonus: Channel Demonfire bolts, Immolate, and Incinerate have a 20% chance to fire an additional Channel Demonfire bolt.
  • (4) Set Bonus: After casting 15 Demonfire bolts, your next Demonfire bolt deals (103% of Spell Power) Shadowflame damage to the target and (35% of Spell Power) Shadowflame damage to enemies within 8 yards.

Destruction tier being so centered around Channel Demonfire has two issues for me:


Synergy with other Destruction Talents

Madness of the Azj’aqir is pretty universally used by any variations of the Destruction spec, both Single Target and AOE, due to how much it increases the damage of our soul shard spenders. With the short timer of 4 seconds and the nature of how many soul shards we regain via stuff like Diabolic Embers, Soul Conduit and Inferno (in the case of Rain of Fire), we are pretty consistently spamming Chaos Bolt or Rain of Fire depending on the situation.

This leaves very little time to use Channel Demonfire, as we want to abuse the bonus on Madness of the Azj’aqir as much as possible.

Yes, the tier set DOES function without Channel Demonfire, but without the spell (which triggers the exact 15 bolts required to trigger the 4-piece), it does take much longer to cast enough bolts to trigger the 4-piece, heavily reducing the tier’s effectiveness.


Destruction and Movement

Destruction has had movement issues for a long time now. Having to stand still to build soul shards and casting Chaos Bolts has been a problem for a very long time, as this is a very significant portion of Destruction’s damage profile.

It doesn’t help that most of the recent Destruction buffs have targetted Soul Fire, which is… a 4 second baseline cast. Even though Soul Fire is already much stronger, it is still a talent most players who still play Destruction actively avoid, because the damage it deals is often not enough when compared to how long you need to stand still to cast it.

Channel Demonfire is a spell that requires you to stand still and channel for 2 seconds baseline to get all 15 bolts. Having the tier’s effect heavily tied to Channel Demonfire worsens considerably the already poor movement that Destruction has.


Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything that I can recommend here besides a solution that has been brought up time and time again by the Warlock community: allowing Channel Demonfire to be cast while moving.

Since this is a solution that I believe will never happen, it might be time to simply scrap that entire tier set bonus and start over.

20 Likes

The Unholy DK bonuses are not good. This is not how Unholy works. Unholy does a majority of its damage in 30 second windows every 3 minutes.

Needing to cast 15-20 Death Coils just to get a buff that occurs outside of our cooldown windows is bad. Like extremely bad.

Not trying to be super negative. But this is just not how Unholy functions at all. Unholy does very little damage outside of 3 minute cooldown windows. We are Venthyr Boomkin.

This is giving us jet fuel when our damage engine during these Master of Death windows will be a Honda civic.

Please fix this asap to be more controllable.

Also the debuff lasting 20 seconds doesn’t match any of our large cooldowns at all. Army of the Dead lasts 30 seconds and Gargoyle 25.

20 Likes

(4) Set Bonus: Your melee auto-attacks have a chance to launch a Shadowflame spirit at your enemy that duplicates your next 3 abilities at X% effectiveness.

For the windwalker set. PLEASE change this to tiger palms or like, any other ability besides auto attacks. We do not auto attack during Fists of Fury OR Spinning Crane Kick, and with the datamined 2H Polearm from aberrus, will likely end up using that as well, decreasing melee swings. The spec fundamentally gains so little power from auto attacks, please change the way that the 4-set is granted.

the 2-set looks amazingly fun.

11 Likes

I feel like WW monk is getting trolled.

None of those bonuses are in the theme of being a WW monk… at all! Even both of their sets are RNG based, no build up involved or synergy. And yet you look at BM and MW and they seem to get bonuses within their theme, and they’re actually interesting!

9 Likes

no way this should go live like this holy

5 Likes

Resto Shaman does not really want haste. We had a similar issue with the first iteration of our tier bonus in Sepulcher (which was later changed) and lots of feedback about the Primordial Wave talents that gave haste (which we dont have now thankfully). Any other stat would be wonderful.

Now onto how it works - I like the effects, the main downside here is you’re forcing talent choices because up until this point we weren’t actually going to lean into Riptide talents very much and were actually going to take Flow of the Tide, which consumes Riptide. This completely goes against that build, so now you’re either taking those talents and getting very little from your tier set, or you’re talenting into a lot of Riptide talents and things like Primordial Wave and Primal Tidal Core only? Not really a fan of how forced our talent choices become with this set bonus.

26 Likes

Only played 2 classes at max level so far so only commenting on those (and unfortunately, not a fan of any of them lol)

Not a fan of the fact the Warlock bonuses force you to play specific talent.

Not every Demonology Warlock will choose Grimoire: Felguard and not every Destruction Warlock will choose Channel Demonfire. Hell, Demonfire isn’t even a talent we grab right now. Felguard is if you min/max, but again, not everyone does.

The entire point of these new talent trees was about player choice, right? So why are you forcing warlocks to spec into specific talents to get decent use out of their tier?


Marksman and Beast Mastery are both very meh. One will just result in more bestial wrath (which is great, yes), and the other more Kill Shots. (Which would be fine if Kill Shot did more damage than it does, but it rarely accounts for much damage in my logs, even using it on every proc and every CD when it’s useable)

This will also force Marksman into talents that boost Kill Shot - similar to my issue with Warlocks.

Also not a fan of Survival - I thought you guys heard the feedback in Sepulcher that Survival hunters don’t enjoy throwing a ridiculous amount of bombs. That’s all this tier bonus is going to do again. :confused:

16 Likes

The 4 set bonus might make me change from TA echo spread to TA empower cd reduction.

It’ll probably end up serving an emerald blossom spam build better than an Echo spread, but time will tell.
Because right now using emerald blossom costs 3 essence and echo costs 1, so using an essence burst on an echo “wastes” 2 essence.

If the set 4 was changed to be essence regen for X% for Y seconds, you’d probably get better build variety out of it.

Guardian

  • (2) Set Bonus: When you take damage, Mangle and Thrash damage and Rage generation are increased by 15% for 8 seconds and you heal for 6% of damage taken over 8 seconds.
  • (4) Set Bonus: Maul/Raze damage increased by 20% and casting Ironfur or Maul/Raze increases your maximum health by 3% for 12 seconds, stacking 5 times.

hey, you managed to remember guardian druids exist I guess.

These bonuses aren’t very exciting. If you’re not going to give us any sort of DR or solve our magic damage mitigation, just change the health bonus into a damage reduction (4% per stack up to 5) instead.

2 piece should be a bit stronger as well.

3 Likes

After the ret rework it’s the only idea you guys had? It’s so lame.

13 Likes

Unfun and boring, Hammer of Wrath spamming wasn’t fun in WoD and i’t going to be even less fun now. Also just being FORCED to build crit is gross.

4 Likes

Arcane set bonus sounds like a really cool idea. However with the current rotation, 4pc doesn’t help our burst window. It helps AFTER it’s over. This may be intended to smooth out our damage which is appreciated but I just don’t see it helping us much where we really need it, like in M+.

Please give Arcane some additional tuning and consider shortening our ramp times rather than lengthening them. Thank you!

13 Likes

Not a fan of Unholy DK’s tier set at all. You pretty much have to stop pressing buttons and wait for your CDs to be ready, then proc the tier bonus…

3 Likes

Frost DK is hilarious and fun. I hope that gets turned into a talent in the future lol.

As a REALLY dumb request for the sets that has nothing to do with tuning; Could you darken the armor for the Normal DK set? Just feels like a DK set should be dark metal colors with the glows.

4 Likes

100% This is boxxing us into a riptide only build.

7 Likes