Current tiers sets are bad and lazy. Yes it is possible that both conditions can be met because they are categorized as lazy as they are copy and paste. They are bad because it will require addons to keep track.
3 Likes
After testing this today, initial impressions were spot on that this tier set bonus does not feel too exciting or impactful in PvE.
Losing the WFB bonus feels bad when Winning Streak falls off and the replacement buff (a single KC amplifier and max Tip of the Spear stacks) does not feel satisfying or powerful enough to warrant losing the 2pc buff.
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Kill Command is a very weak and single target ability, so buffing it by 200% leaves it feel still very weak compared to the 2pc bonus
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The extra Tip of the Spear stacks are wasted and end up being spent on filler (raptor strike) because we already have more than enough Tip stacks.
Any chance the 4pc could be reworked entirely?
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I have now done some testing of the Feral tier set.
It is shockingly bad. The four piece set bonus is currently tuned so poorly that, over roughly four minutes of DPS, it accounted for 0.8% of my overall damage. It would have been my lowest damage ability if it were not for a couple of random Citrine procs.
Worse than that, nothing about it feels good, fun, or interesting. In fact, I don’t even notice when it procs. It feels like I’m being trolled by the fact that it is called “Big Winner” when in no way does it feel like I’ve won anything. There is nothing at all satisfying about it. No cool sound, special effects, or animation, no big numbers on my screen, no ‘whoop’ from me as it procs. It fails miserably at concept, execution, and tuning.
2 Likes
RE: Feedback for class sets.
These class sets are almost all boring, and very undertuned, to the point, if an equivalent Item s1 set is available for both fury, havoc, ret, and enhance, I’d rather wear that.
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Class: Druid
Specialization: Balance
Content: Mythic Plus
Usefulness: Primarily cleave and area-effect scenarios. The 2-set bonus is going to improve both our burst and cooldown windows. The 4-set bonus is going to improve our sustain.
Thoughts:
Wild Mushroom deals respectable damage in short windows against a significant number of targets, and the sequence of gaining Astral Power from the talent and set bonus procs, thus feeding into more spenders, feels incredible.
This tier set bonus will make for a great Mythic Plus season.
Concern 1:
Because the periodic damage doesn’t “ignite” or pandemic, there is a significant amount of wasted damage when multiple procs occur back-to-back from the set bonus and/or the talent (passive or active) .
This is primarily an issue with the talent.
Concern 2:
Although my preference is Mythic Plus, I expect this set bonus is going to feel somewhat weak in a Raiding environment or in any encounter with only one target.
Wild Mushroom has not been taken in single-target encounters because their damage is fairly low (likely due to no target cap) and they generate minimal amounts of Astral Power when not dealing damage to multiple enemies. The talent will only ever be taken to increase uptime on the 4-set bonus.
Since the tier is completely designed around Wild Mushroom, I recommend the talent be buffed to increase Wild Mushroom damage to one target by 100% so that it earns its place on the meters.
Conclusion:
I generally enjoy how these set bonuses play out. Despite being largely passive, the Astral Power gain creates quicker gameplay loops that become more apparent the more targets are present.
3 Likes
The Marksmanship tier set and the Destruction Warlock tier sets never procced for me.
Even when I’d use my CD which is supposed to guarantee Jackpot!
Incredible that Blizzard decided to increase the price for AUS players by 20% and these tier sets are what we get.
You can thank your parliaments and prime ministers for that. And I do believe they are duly elected. So you can basically thank yourself.
Your currency isn’t worth as much as it used to be. Anyways.
The people to blame are the investors trading dollars between countries to earn a buck for themselves.
There wasn’t a price drop at all in 2020 to 2021 when the AUD went from .58 USD to .8 USD and then it’s stayed around .7 for a while since with only a recent downtrend due to it’s interlinking between CNY and USD.
So technically China and the USA are to blame somewhat if you’re going down that route economically.
Testing has emphasized an issue with this implementation: due to the nature of the tier set, every Ele Shaman will take the Primal Elementalist which replaces the Elementals with Primal Elementals. One problem that has existed for awhile is that it means you cannot have a Fire/Storm Elemental and an Earth Elemental active at the same time since they both count as pets: summoning one removes the other.
The 2p, however, can summon an Fire/Storm elemental at any time and kill the Earth Elemental. Which is bad.
Two solutions are a) remove the Primal Earth Elemental and give the talent a CD reduction on the normal Earth Elemental instead or b) have the 2p summon a normal Fire/Storm Elemental.
ret paladin tier set feed back
2pc isnt much of a dps gain and frankly the shared tiersets is very boring and uninspired especially when it was stated in the past that some tiersets will push different hero trees ahead. we have to stop trying to make everything equal, its okay for some builds and some hero trees to be better than others.
4pc: this is just very weak and unimpactful. ret spenders do very little damage overal especially FV and we generate way to much holy power to make this engaging. we almost already spam spenders for 4 seconds and frankly we’re probably going to weave in our generators like boj to refresh expurge in our “Reward” window
also a side of ret paladin feedback
divine hammer is just very pitifully weak, it does less than empyrean hammers on a 1min cd. i highly suggest buffing this or scrapping it, or reworking it again into something else
i wish to see seraphim again and we can remove divine hammer and put divine arbitor in its place, with seraphim as a new capstone in DA’s place
Did some testing in the 11.1 PTR for the tier sets, here are some observations:
- The tier set bonus synergizes with the Raging Demonfire (12 bolts > 14 bolts reflected in tier set tooltip) and Demonfire Mastery talents, will extend Immolate/Wither duration which is great.
- Proc rate of “Jackpot!” ranges around 25 - 45% during dummy testing (Single Target).
- This results in CDF to surpass CB/SB in total damage, at 24% of total damage (15% from tier, 9% from hard cast CDF) in ST situation.
- The proc’d Demonfire does not need to be channeled and will not interrupt any casting.
- Boring tier set but is quite powerful (subject to final tuning of course).
New talent Demonfire Infusion (passive DF bolt from Immolate/Incinerate) proc rate seems like a little low in ST situation and potential be good in AoE situation with F&B. This talent does not synergize with Raging Demonfire, no extra 2 bolts when proc’d, but will extend Immolate/Wither.
Talent build played for the dummy testing (disregard the class tree): CsQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAgAAAgNDzMzsY2AzMAAAAwMzMbLzMbAAABAIWAAAAAAAAzMzYAA
Feedback is focused on Raiding and M+.
The set bonuses are useful both in single target and AoE due to the guaranteed Jackpot! occurring on Touch of the Magi. Getting a guaranteed Aether Attunment proc entering each Touch of the Magi window also feels really good, as it interacts nicely with Magi’s Spark. Aether Attunement is, in general, just a visually cool and powerful effect. The set bonuses are simple but potent and interacts nicely with (almost) all the existing Arcane talents and the expected strengths of Arcane.
However, there are several issues when talented into Aether Attunment. If Jackpot! happens while Aether Attunment is already active, then the 4-set proc is munched. The player has no control to avoid this on the random Jackpot! procs. As for the guaranteed Jackpot! on Touch of the Magi, most of the time after getting a natural Aether Attunment proc you will not have any Clearcasting (because you need to consume Clearcasting to proc Aether Attunement). Therefore, it is unrealistic to expect the player to try and spend the Aether Attunement to avoid munching it when casting Touch of the Magi. Regardless, Arcane operates on strict 45-second intervals revolving around Touch of the Magi so it is most of the time simply not feasible to delay Touch of the Magi to avoid munching the 4-set proc. This whole interaction feels bad and is counterintuitive to how Arcane is designed. I suppose this falls into the “Being flooded with resources faster than they can be spent” category.
A simple solution that avoids almost all munching is to allow Aether Attunment to stack two times.
1 Like
Survival Hunter Tier
The Survival Hunter tier set does not feel fun nor rewarding and the main issue is primarily the 4pc portion.
When your Winning Streak! ends, your next Kill Command deals 200% additional damage and generates 3 stacks of Tip of the Spear.
Kill Command is NOT a hard hitting spell for Survival. Currently, this 200% buffed Kill Command barely hits harder than our filler spell (Raptor Strike). It is also entirely useless in AoE, as Kill Command is unable to cleave AT ALL.
Not only this, but the extra Tip generation is flooding us with something we cannot always use. We are running into focus issues and having to Kill Command to generate MORE tip stacks (and over cap them), or other passives in the SV tree are ALSO generating extra tip stacks which can result in these being wasted. This clashes with Relentless Primal Ferocity generating 3 Tip stacks every Kill Command or the new Pack Leader talent that generates an extra tip when Kill Command summons a beast.
Suggestion for Improvement
One suggestion would be to replace the buffed Kill Command with a buffed Kill Shot proc (that doesn’t cost focus!).
Kill Shot is an ability that scales well with both Single Target and multiple targets due to Sic 'Em allowing it to cleave. This also would lean into the new Kill Shot talents that Survival received this patch.
It feels fun to press, it’s powerful, and doesn’t flood us with resources that we may not want.
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Class: Warlock
Spec: Demonology
Test: Realized in January, 7th of 2025.
Talent Interactions
It’s good that Greater Dreadstalkers interact with Talents that work with Dreadstalkers.
It’s interesting that Dreadlash makes it AOE and Dreadbyte can apply Wicked Maw, even more interesting now that with [4] Hand of Guldan triggers another Dreadbyte refreshing it.
BUG: Sadly the Greater Dreadstalker does not seems to benefit from the Houndmaster’s Stratagem a 50% damage buff to Dreadstalkers while Vilefiend is active.
I also wonder about Dread Calling, as while i believe it buffing Greater Dreadstalkers makes some sense i question some of the consequences and text descriptions:
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Any stack used to buff 1 Greater Dreadstalker is a stack not buffing 2 Dreadstalkers, end of result being worse as 1 Greater Dreadstalker is only 65% stronger than 1 Dreadstalker, and 35% weaker than 2.
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Dread Calling Talent specifically says “Damage of your next Call Dreadstalker” and not “Next Dreadstalker” meaning it specifically associates with the Spell the warlock Cast.
In that sense, i could see either it being intended to buff Greater Dreadstalkers (as its a Dreadstalker) or not (as the text says Call Dreadstalker)
Interactions
I have noticed that Greater Dreadstalkers can’t be extended by Demonic Tyrant, and in that sense i can understand the feeling.
As Greater Dreadstalkers from procs during Tyrant Setup would be massively stronger than the ones who exist outside of the proc thanks to the +15s duration and +15% damage buff Tyrant provides.
But i do wonder about the one who is guaranteed with the Demonic Tyrant, could it be possible for it to at least have the effect of the +15% damage increase and last for the 15s duration of tyrant instead of the 12s it normally does?
I Can understand not wanting synergies between tyrant and proc based Greater Dreadstalkers, after all it could seriously create some heavy RNG swings as Greater Dreadstalkers.
But i also think it would make sense for the Guaranteed Greater Dreadstalker when you summon Tyrant to at least be covered by its damage amp and last for the full burst window of Tyrant (15s).
A Small Annoyance i have noticed is that as Diabolist during your rotation the existence of Ruination does mean for a brief moment you are locked out of spending shards on hand of guldan to trigger Dreadbites.
And this can be noticeable/annoying as Dreadstalkers are vanishing.
Overall This tierset is a rly solid 10/10 Tierset or 5 Demonic Healthstones out of 5!
I congratulate the people involved in making it and i say, they truly understand what Demonology is about.
Shake the heavens has tons of uptime on live, and accounts for a good chunk of Rets damage.
It would be “poor sport” by Blizz to create a set bonus that inadvertently sabotaged optimal play. Hoping this gets more attention.
Update to my initial post of feedback, three additional notes:
#1 - This proc is SHORT and it wants to be used immediately. I have a hard time reacting to it, when I’m already intending to press another button. This can munch part of the proc duration and feels bad as a result.
To allow for more flexibility when this procs, it could act similarly to Divine Purpose.
Ex. When you lose your winning streak, grants X (two or three) stacks of All In!
All In! Would allow a free Holy Power spender and increase its damage by Y%. The buff could last ~8-10 seconds.
This would allow spenders to be used in a slightly more flexible window, but produce the same overall result of more spenders in a short window.
#2 - I’ll reemphasize that this floods us with resources and makes our decisions regarding builder use less important.
#3 - The Unholy DK 4pc is an excellent example of adding a layer of protection to the Winning Streak! buff I think it should be present to some degree in all of the ‘Winning Streak’ 4pcs because with current tuning, it feels bad to lose the 2pc buff. The tradeoff has to be worth it.
Closing Thoughts
The direction of a casino like bonus is novel and fun, but it still needs more work.
One of the cool things we have seen historically was having tier sets that influence talent choice or rotational priority. That isn’t happening with this set. It was fun to have and kept gameplay different from season to season.
Brewmaster:
This 4piece is just awful. You’ve taken the one thing that was static about Brewmasters (Press Blackout Kick every 4th GCD) and turned it into Press Blackout Kick every other global, which means that you don’t keg smash, breath of fire, celestial brew or anything else during this period. It feels awful.
2 Likes
Any word on when these tier bonuses are going to be changed?
1 Like
All PvE content types.
The “on damage taken” proc effect inherently makes this bonus better in content where the player is being damage consistently, while Death Strike hitting up to 2 additional targets make its peak performance on 3 target situations (getting weaker with more or less targets and being weakest with only a single target). The random proc defensive cooldown is technically better in M+ over raid, since incoming damage profiles are more consistent in M+.
- (Negative) “On damage taken” procs have issues achieving full uptime even in dungeon content on tanks due to a lack of consistent triggers (since you need a trigger every 3.5 seconds for full proc efficiency) and, if the benefits were high enough, would encourage going out of your way to take extra damage for better proc uptime for all tanks (with the possible exception of Brewmaster given Stagger’s ability to proc it). This also leads to different effective buff uptimes depending on the content type and (for raid) the exact encounter.
- (Indifferent) A random 4 second Icebound Fortitude proc is not something that can realistically be played around. The random proc Vampiric Blood from the Dragonflight Season 2 tier set was a bit more interactive due to talent synergies and how it interacted with the defensive already being active.
- (Negative) The Icebound Fortitude proc can potentially override a pre-existing and longer duration Icebound Fortitude buff, which can feel bad for obvious reasons.
- (Indifferent) After the Death Strike nerfs removing healing from the same damage instance twice, RP reduction on Death Strike is a lot less valuable; before it used to be a direct and very impactful quality for overall survivability, while now its benefits to survivability are only indirect and heavily diminished.
- (Indifferent) Three target Death Strike cleave is underwhelming even in dungeon situations, where its effectiveness at regular AoE target counts is still very limited while it has no impact when only damage to one target matters.
Just note the inconsistency of “on damage taken” RPPM procs and the reduction in value of Death Strike RP discounts in light of the recent Death Strike nerfs.
Again, the value of the Death Strike cleave is very dependent on number of meaningful targets, where it does nothing when only one target matters and has variable performance with higher numbers of targets. Pure single target situations are surprisingly relevant even in M+ content. While likely intended, it should also be noted that this bonus doesn’t provide any meaningful amount of defensive value, given that RP cost reductions on Death Strike don’t effectively do that anymore and it is difficult to make productive use of the Icebound Fortitude procs.
These bonuses are not impactful enough to change player cast priorities, though it does allow for a higher proportion of casts to be Death Strike, which replaces some proportion of Blood Boil and Heart Strike casts. Depending on the exact talent build, Blood Death Knight already has the capability to be flooded with resources with or without this tier set.
Given a larger proportion of Death Strike casts and (potentially) a higher number of targets hit per Death Strike, this tier set bonus has obvious synergies with any talents increasing Death Strike damage (or further increasing the amount of Death Strike casts). That being said, the synergy is low enough that it is very likely to have no impact on talent builds whatsoever. It should also be stated that San’layn has more modifiers on Death Strike and Icebound Fortitude than Deathbringer, so, while the effect isn’t large, it would marginally tilt the scales more towards San’layn.
Identified Bugs
- This tier set has several tooltip bugs; the 2 piece tooltip duration is increased when you have the 4 piece equipped, you actually gain 10 runic power reduction instead of the advertised 2, and the tooltip says Death Strike can cleave 15 additional targets when it only cleaves 3.
- Icebound Fortitude procs from the 2 piece bonus can override longer duration pre-existing Icebound Fortitude buffs.
5 Likes