On live right after the prepatch dropped, I like many others tested out my new class changes, some I’d been expecting and had seen on the PTR… others I either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t had the time to test on the PTR. Today however I’ve discovered something rather confusing. An odd interraction and some information not listed in the tooltip.
Inevitable Demise reads as follows: “Damaging an enemy with Agony increases the damage of your next Drain Life by 15%. This effect stacks up to 50 times.” Now this should be straightforward. More Agony ticks = Big burst of Drain Life damage. But this is only part of what this talent does.
First the ‘hidden’ information: Each stack of Inevitable Demise you have reduces the mana cost of your next drain life by 1% per stack (up to 50% of course). Okay… small power boost to an otherwise straightforward ability, nothing game changing considering the fact that we live in a post Life Tap world where our mana only matters for super high end “we broke the class” content.
The strange interraction arises when you look at the tooltip of Drain Life.
Drain Life NORMALLY reads “Drains life from the target, causing (some number) shadow damage over (some number) seconds, and healing you for 500% of the damage done.”
Upon selection of this talent, nothing changes, but checking the tooltip after gaining some number of Inevitable Demise stacks shows you that the healing you will receive is reduced by some amount (it seems to change per stack). An understandable change seeing as if that wasn’t the case I’d heal for just under 90% of my max health with one cast if I was at full stacks.
Now here’s something I didn’t know. This applies to the Azerite Trait Inevitable Demise as well… and the healing reduction STACKS WITH ITSELF. At 50 stacks of both the azerite and the talent I was only getting healed for 39% of the damage dealt… which was actually LESS than the healing I would have recieved without the talent or the trait. The Azerite Trait by itself at max stacks reduces the healing to 154% of damage dealt, while the Talent by itself reduces healing to 125% of damage dealt.
Each trait at max stacks gives you up to ~650 extra damage while the talent gives you 750% extra damage. I haven’t tested if the talent applies the % damage increase to the traits damage, but if it does, stacking them still results in a net healing gain, but it’s nowhere near the healing you would get purely from taking the talent.
Some Math using the damage my character deals with Drain Life:
Base damage of Drain Life: 502
Inevitable Demise Azerite trait damage at max stacks: 500
Inevitable Demise Azerite trait healing % at max stacks: 154%
Inevitable Demise Talent damage at max stacks: 750% increase
Inevitable Demise Talent healing % at max stacks: 125%
Stacking Trait and Talent Healing % at max stacks: 39%
No Talent, No Trait: 502 damage: 2510
Only Talent: 3765 damage and 4706 healing
Only (one) Trait: 1002 damage and 1543 healing
Both, Talent affects Trait: 7515 damage and 2931 healing
Both, Talent doesn't affect Trait: 4265 damage and 1663 healing
TL;DR: Don’t try to stack the Inevitable Demise Azerite trait with the Inevitable Demise talent unless you want to severely shoot the healing you receive from it in the foot. Though depending on how they interact, you might get a decent damage boost from doing so. Though an Int boost does the same thing without gimping your healing.