The 2pc I don’t think favors one hero spec to the other, but if I had to guess I’d say maybe totemic because of it’s capstone. Stormbringer gets the extra crash though so in AOE that might put it over the top.
The 4pc, assuming it applies to the Stormbringer wolf, it heavily favors the the stormbringer hero talent. Stormbringer will have multiple wolves out where Totemic won’t, so it gains much more benefit from the 4pc. This is definitely a thumb on the scale towards stormbringer.
The set bonuses force players into taking talents. Every single thing except stormstrike(it is but it can’t be avoided) is a talent you have to take. It’s entirely possible to have a build where you only have stormstrike. Don’t get me wrong, you’re more than likely to have at least Ice strike and Feral spirit because our talent tree is in desperate need of a rework and those talents are part of the central core of required talents, but some builds don’t utilize ice strike, lava lash, and/or crash lightning and it would suck to lose 3/4 of your 2pc bonus.
It’s also good to note that elemantlist build does not really use stormstrike so they lose 1/4 of the 2pc right off the bat and if you’re taking Ice Strike it really influences taking Hailstorm. It’s never fun being forced into talents even if you were going to pick them anyway.
Can the restoration druid 4 piece icon be changed a bit, currently i hit swiftmend, get soul of the forest and then get the same icon for the 8% heal bonus after consuming it. Make me think i still have soul up everytime i see it.
Besides that its a perfectly boring but well balanced tier set with no particular leaning for KoG or WS.
They have very low impact at all times, neither affecting gameplay, nor meaningfully impacting damage output.
That feels pretty bad, if I’m honest. I assume that even if they’re not supposed to add mechanical complexity, they’re supposed to still produce a measurable change in output, but even the napkin math doesn’t work out - and it’s worse than that in reality when you play it.
I don’t know what the damage output goals for this tier set are, but if “more negligible than most talent nodes” is the sweet spot, these hit it. The outlaw rogue 2pc bonus has a 20% proc rate for 15% bonus damage on builders that only account for 15% of our damage output - all up, that’s around +0.4% damage. That number is borne out in play - Ethereal Rampage has a pretty sweet visual effect, but just about no change in damage output. The 4pc bonus is only a tiny bit better. At only a 20% proc rate, you can expect to get a bit less than one rampage stack for each between the eyes you cast on average. In reality, it’s worse - outside crackshot windows you’ll actually often overcap these stacks and waste them, and you can’t do anything about it - btte has a CD after all. Being generous, a 6% boost to every btte, when btte only makes up, generously, 20% of the class’s damage output, puts it at only a ~1% change in output, on the generous high end. In reality it’s much lower. All up, both tier bonuses matter less than the difference between capstone talents. If that’s a goal, then… good job? They certainly can’t affect gameplay patterns with benefits tuned that low, anyway. Though even with an order of magnitude higher damage bonuses, I wouldn’t see these tier bonuses affecting outlaw gameplay - between the eyes is already cast on CD (at least if you take improved between the eyes, which everyone does for a number of reasons), and builders are already cast constantly. This tier set very much just gives you a bonus for playing the spec the only way the spec plays - it’s just a bit clunky in so doing and doesn’t actually change the numbers very much.
But hey, as I said, the shadow clone vfx for the 2pc proc looks cool, at least. Get to pretend I’m playing subtlety rogue.
(2) Set Bonus: Tidal Waves increases the healing of affected spells by 10%.
(4) Set Bonus: Tidal Waves is 80% more effective and reduces the mana cost of affected spells by 8%.
It’s fine I guess. Plays into chain heal build, which makes sense for Totemic, and slightly for Farseer, but it’s not exactly engaging gameplay.
I think chain heal works best as an “oh damn I need an aoe heal right now” rather than something to rely on constantly. The pwave healing wave cleave is much more fun as it has a “prep for damage and then execute” style, but currently(and clearly in TWW) chain heal is just too powerful.
I think I would have preferred seeing a set bonus that leaned more into different builds/abilities than further buffing chain heal. As it stands, there’s really nothing for Resto Shaman that changes how they play in any meaningful way in S1 of TWW.
I for one am pleasantly surprised with the restoration shaman tier. I love that chain heal gets buffed, because chain heal as a key shaman healing ability and has been for almost 20 years. It’s one of my favorite things about restoration shaman, and after I got my original shaman high enough and got it I was so amazed that I mained a shaman until MoP (when I swapped to monk, and shaman always stayed just behind my monk in gear).
The iterations of resto shaman that leaned away from chain heal (especially ones that leaned into primordial wave, which I hate) always drove me insane. It was saddening to watch my beloved spell with one of the coolest healing animations (originally and even currently) get gutted in healing/mana cost. So anything that urges its return is a perk to me.
That said, this tier set also buffs the heck out of Healing Wave for a fast, inexpensive, large ST heal (or multi target with PWAVE). I haven’t enjoyed pressing Healing Wave in a while, but it feels decent to press in S1 TWW.
Please keep the tier set! My only complaint is the dangly water thing on its helmet… other than that, keep on!
2 set - This is fine and provides a similar +dam and DR to other tanks
4 set - This seems to be 5% in game for bleed damage, not 8%.
Also, the 4p feels like it will not give nearly as much damage to Druid of the Claw as it does to Elune’s Chosen. Neither of them seems like it will get nearly the bonus that some other tank specs are getting from their sets (up to 12% for BDK and 20% buffs to portions of BrM that are similar in damage breakout to our Arcane and Bleed damage).
The set bonus should be functional, but it feels very boring and tilted towards Elune’s Chosen. Given that the argument for boring bonuses was that the hero talents were adding complexity, it would be nice if the hero talents actually added anything to the bear rotation.
Neither Elune’s Chosen or Druid of the Claw change the bear rotation at all. They proc more arcane damage or super mauls without affecting the exact same rotation we’ve been doing for years. Elune’s Chosen will get to hit Lunar Beam every 30sec or so, so I guess there is that, but its very low impact as its damage is pitiful.
Being able to take advantage of this buff is fine for an M+ or small raid setting. However, its problematic for raid encounters. The activators for the buff (Smite/Penance) are cast after you cast mind blast. You’ll have this buff at the start of your ramp but it will get used on PWS with little optionality to even use it on Mind Blast.
I think it should be changed to either:
Buffs Mind Blast AND PWS. This will make it significantly less awkward for a standard raid ramp.
Buffs Penance instead of Mind Blast. Penance as an activator wouldn’t be missed, because I can cast 3 Smites within the time that Penance is on CD.
This 4pc is really bad for Fistweavers and directly counters our playstyle in TWW.
Based on the current set, we would be opting out of the 4pc and opting in for 2pc + two haste/crit pieces
The 4pc is basically the exact same thing that our Rising Sun Kick does for us when talented in to Rising Mists, and also contributes to the same issues that MW monk is already experiencing with a few of their hero talents.
That being the talents directly stop you from dpsing and causes you to stop and cast in order to take advantage of the spell effects.
The 4pc does the same thing, causes you to stop dpsing in order to cast vivify to extend the duration of of an ability that already gets extended via rising sun kick.
I’m sure it’s been said already but the CDR applied to eternity surge isn’t really necessary with the change to animosity. The essence burst is nice though.
And every time something changes accelerates the cooldown of one empowered ability and not the other i feel like i gotta relearn my spell priority, and i gotta be honest… i’m tired of relearning my spell priority. Feels like every patch that happens to devastation.
Only thing i can argue against you is that, rising mists and the 4pc are independent. if you increase the duration via the 4pc, rising mist can extend it ever further (up to 100% of its durection. example; if you have enveloping mist at 7 seconds with mist wrap, you can get enveloping mist to 11 seconds which means you can extend to 22 seconds. (unless i am misreading and my feelycraft testing isnt getting accurate resolves.
I would argue that i wish it procced of our mastery, this would allow things like crane style to extend it.
My arguement is more so that it disrupts our playstyle, it forces vivify into our rotation, which is why I was saying for spell weavers its great.
For Fist Weavers not so much, literally disrupts our dps in order to stop and cast vivify, on top of already haveing to cast enveloping mist, in order to proc the black ox after xuen’s attack.
Which is why I was saying the 4pc isnt worth getting for Fist Weavers.
The current tier set available in the beta is a bit problematic.
The 2pc bonus is just a damage buff to Rampage with extra steps, while the 4pc bonus will hardly get used as Bloodthirst is a much higher priority ability than Raging Blow, and our Raging Blows will not reset their own cooldown often.
I suggest revamping the tier set to something similar but different:
2pc bonus: Bloodthirst increases the damage of your next 2 Raging Blows by 15%.
Affliction: I’ve never been a huge fan of randomness (truly random % proc chances, I know crit is random) in tier sets, I think affliction could use something similar to destruction where the 4pc interacts with the 2pc a bit more.
Maybe make it so that each time Rapture critically strikes it increases your dot damage by X% and stacks but does not refresh. It’s simple, but also makes the increased critical strike chance make more sense, while also incentivizing rapture windows!
example:
(2) Set Bonus: Malefic Rapture damage increased by 5% and its critical strike chance is increased by 10%.
(4) Set Bonus: Each time Malefic Rapture critically strikes, it increases the damage dealt by your Agony, Corruption, and Unstable Affliction by 5% for 10 seconds. This effect stacks but does not refresh.
You could make it be all dots by X% for Xs if it makes it feel any better.
(before people complain that this makes damage have an exceedingly high variance during rapture windows, since you might not crit and somebody else might, it will average out over time IMO)
EDIT: adding more info after reading the first blue post
Having a completely random chance, almost feels like an upkeep buff with the current set design in all forms of content. Is it worth it to spam rapture to keep the buff up, or is it best to hold rapture and be happy when it procs?
It’s difficult to determine when to rapture if we are meant to maintain this buff, or to hold shards and use in rapture windows. This is particularly more relevant in raid, as we have a more strict rotation, and makes the current affliction set unintuitive since it’s more difficult to determine whether it makes more sense to rapture more outside of our shard dump windows. This might impact newer players, particularly those using the soul harvester talent tree.
Regarding Holy Paladin’s set bonus, I would unironically rather have the Protection Paladin set bonus and heal using Shield of Righteousness + Lightforged Blessing. A 10% increase to Holy Shock is woefully unengaging.
You still Vivify when you are Fistweaving otherwise you are severally gimping your HPS for no particular reason. Vivacious Vivification is always taken because its an instant cast Vivify that is increased by 20% every 10s. The extension from the 4p stacks with Rising Mist. I agree the tier set is just okay, but to say Fistweaving doesn’t use Vivify isn’t accurate.
Balance Druid PvE: mundane boost that meets your goal to keep it simple. Not sexy but I get you want Hero Talents to shine in S1. A thought about future Tier:
BLUF - Add dynamic/changing Class Set bonuses based on content played.
You touched on something with generic bonuses as a base for Class gear. Class gear bonuses change with spec, why not add content switching as well?
Specifically, add “…and xxxx…” to the Class set bonus you already created. These are active in the given content & can be separate tuning knobs for classes in each type of endgame. Off-the-cuff, no theory example:
M+
(2) and Twin Moons becomes Quad Moons
(4) and ‘Affix benefit’
Raid
(2) and Innervate applies to your AP for 4 sec
(4) and ‘raid benefit’
PvP
(2) and Solar Beam applies ME/UV to affected targets
(4) and ‘PvP benefit’
Delve
(2) and get 1 free Class talent point
(4) and ‘Affix benefit’
Open World
Pick your unlocked poison
And/Or mimic things like what is on Covenant gear
Do the content to unlock the ‘ands’ with no RNG, make (4) organically progressive with tiers/levels, and perhaps add appearance nuances with each unlock.
This will help for tuning classes independently in each content type, give PvPers a reprieve, add depth/power without forcing choice, and provide soloers with a path.