Nerub-ar Palace: Don't Do Trinkets Like This Again Please

Community General Discussion
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One of, if not the most experimental item type in the game are trinkets. They come in a very wide variety: Some are stat sticks, some are on use, and some have pretty wild effects. In BfA you could even, kind of, make your own through the Mechagon patch which I thought was pretty neat.

Because of this, trinkets have the potential to be the most important items a character receives. They’re not often as flashy as a shiny new weapon but the effects can drastically change how you play.

Which brings me to the topic at hand. Neru-ar Palace, as a raid, is one I will say is ‘okay’. No glaring flaws except for how drab everything looks but that’s a Nerubian problem. However, the trinket design is verging on too experimental.

Many of these trinkets are more complex than some character rotations. I got the Aberrant Spellforge for my SPriest. It gives Intellect and then the description reads like a novel. Basically, a spell in your spec is empowered to do more damage ever 15 seconds. SPriest case, it’s Mind Blast which isn’t really part of my rotation: I go Archon so my big damage nuke is Mind Flay: Insanity which hits like a monster truck. I only use MB on instant cast for Insanity filler.

Now, it has a Use effect as well, and this when things get a bit wacky.

You can use the Spellforge to amplify it’s extra damage by 125%, stacking up to five times. The use has a .5 sec cast time but isn’t on the GCD, so you need to use it in-between GCDs or risk interrupting your rotation. The amplify effect rapidly fades out of combat (15 seconds) so if you don’t pull anything within that timeframe you lose all stacks. The use has a 1 minute CD.

If, by some miracle, you make it to five stacks you get a minor Haste buff every time you empower your spell in addition to a nice chunk of bonus damage. The fight needs to last, minimum, four minutes if you’re being real optimal to get to that point.

There’s one more caveat: The last line in the description is, “Beware of glimpses of the Unseeming.” Now as an SPriest, I thought this was just flavor text because as you gain stacks, you start seeing little Unseeming things running around.

It’s not flavor: Touching one of these silences you for several seconds, and sometimes they can just run into you, or spawn on you. You actively have a chance to just flat out kill your DPS because of a trinket.

I’m not arguing risk vs. reward: I think that’s a great mechanic. The Corruption mechanic from BfA is one of my favorites because of this. I am arguing that you already have a trinket that actively disrupts your rotation, and you need to keep using it to keep building it up, and while focusing on that you can just kill off your DPS provided you can even complete the mechanic in the first place.

This isn’t the only trinket like this. Spymasters you can build 40 stacks of an Intellect buff but the use has a 10 sec CD so you need to decide, mid fight, when to best use it. You have the Egg that requires you to balance movement with standing still mid-fight, provided the game gives you that luxury.

I will admit I’m a simple player: I value simplicity over any kind of skill ceiling. If you can be 100% upkeep with less issue and more margin for error I consider that more valuable than the opposite, even if potential numbers are lower. So throwing in a whole song and dance minigame with your trinkets to get the most out of them while trying to play your class to the most of the ability isn’t the way to go.

Have a risk with trinkets, sure: The Ritual-Bound Dagger from Delves is one of my favorite trinkets in S1. More stats but a slight cost to stats sometimes. The Lantern is another one: It’s just free, consistent DPS.

S2 is right around the corner and I know goblin tech isn’t exactly known for it’s consistency. I’m just hoping this mindset of making trinkets their own game while playing the game stops. Have some wacky flair or at least one extra mechanic to worry about, not three, and the chance to completely gimp your character besides.

The game has become much more complex than it ever has been, the answer isn’t more complexity.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy your Wednesday. :slight_smile:

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the experimentation really shows when you have some trinkets nobody wants, and some trinkets that even if you get them from lfr are unmatched by anything you could pull in mythic. Who looked at trinkets and said that a stat stick was too boring? Who sat down and spent the time coding Sikran’s Endless Arsenal only for nobody to want it because it contributes garbage stats and next to no damage? Did you apologize to them later for wasting their time? Why was spymasters web left overtuned all season?

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NP trinkets were ridiculous. Like, I need 3 degrees, an LLM and SimCraft to figure out if its even an upgrade.

a man with a beard is surrounded by mathematical equations on his face .

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Mean while for casters…

Spymaster 24/7 BiS :laughing:

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No, these trinkets are great. Blizz should do more trinkets like these.

Have a risk with trinkets, sure: The Ritual-Bound Dagger from Delves is one of my favorite trinkets in S1. More stats but a slight cost to stats sometimes. The Lantern is another one: It’s just free, consistent DPS.

These aren’t interactive.

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I don’t see why that matters. It has a plain effect, it has a plain cost. It’s way better than a ton of fluff text on a clunky mechanic while leaving out ‘by the way, you can get CC’d by your own trinket’.

I want to interact with the fight I’m currently engaged in, not doing math homework on the side while avoiding very little shadowy creatures that blend with the terrain while interacting with a fight and it’s mechanics.

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Because trinkets can add a new dimension to the character. And if you don’t optimize stuff, you can continue not optimizing stuff. It doesn’t affect you.

You don’t have CE or KSH.

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Uh huh. I didn’t run high end PvE content this season so my opinion is null and void. Got ya.

You went for that instead of providing any kind of counterargument as to why it’s a good thing. :slight_smile:

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I already listed one, it adds a new dimension to the character.

We already have boring items with stats, trinkets don’t need to be like that.

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I don’t mind weird trinkets as long as they don’t outright take you out of the fight.

Transmitter, while workable because it’s quick, is a bad design. Actively stop playing the actual game to do a little simon says for a second. Gross.

Spellforge seems okay to me. It shouldn’t be a cast time (oGCD or not), but that’s the biggest issue with it. It is simply not STRONG enough to warrant the “risk” part of it. Transmitter is strong but there’s a risk of missing out on the buff entirely due to mechanics forcing you out of the area you need to do your simon says in (or the orb flying off a ledge or whatever). Spymaster is blatantly OP and has 0 risk.

Seems to me like Spellforge should have no risk, no cast time, and Spymaster’s Web (under a different name probably) should be the thing to spawn the little stun ghosts and it spawns more of them the higher the stacks are when you use it or something.

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Okay. What does that mean? Why is character complexity tied to a trinket and not, y’know, the character? Why is this extra dimension usually hyper conditional and distracts from actually playing the character?

I’m of the opinion that the fastest way to a point is a straight line. Anything that throws a curve, bump, or hill only slows things down. You can add as many artificial ‘dimensions’ as you want, heck, make an addon to randomize your rotation buttons while you’re at it.

It doesn’t add anything, it just makes the class more complicated to play for a situational gain.

That’s kind of what I’m talking about. I put in Spymaster as a case of using it optimally, but even suboptimal use is still a net gain. You have no risk except for buildup. Meanwhile Spellforge can require rotation changes and the use being a cast time and spawning little silence ghosts is just…confusing.

Kiss of Death was mentioned recently, and I really like that trinket. Stat boost and the cost is jumping 25-29 seconds after use. You can play around that, you don’t have to swap your entire rotation or do some real silly movement things for that.

I just really dislike complexity for the sake of complexity.

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You don’t need to run said trinket.

It’s called fun? You have your boring trinkets still.

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I always liked trinkets with fun proc animations, like Leviathan’s Lure from Eternal Palace or Deathbringer’s Will from Icecrown Citadel

:dracthyr_shrug:

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I’m trying to think of trinkets I used that had neat animations. Lemme look up a list and see if anything stands out…

Oh, this one stands out. Apparently I have BfA on the mind today. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing yet.

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I skimmed, but one of your main problems “rotation disruption” might be a Spreist-only problem? Because no one on the dev team probably plays Spriests to know they don’t use Mind Blast regularly?

Anyway, I find this line disingenous:

You’re complaining about one trinket. Simple trinkets exist. Go get one of them.

We are getting some wild trinkets. And I say bring 'em on. I might not use many or any of them, but I very much appreciate they exist. As long as there are simpler alternative for the smooth-brained of us (among whom I count myself; I could never get the hang of jumping to avoid the stun of the poison trinket thing), you really have no room to complain about high risk/high reward/high skill floor trinkets.

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That’s hilarious, I never even tried to see how Abberant Spellforged worked because it simmed badly. Silencing mid combat is brutal.

I wish treacherous transmitter was a little easier to activate. Having to jump 3 times as opposed to 1-2 times mucks up the way my rotation feels mid-fight. Also the orb should be reactive enough for me to simply run through it, instead I have to run over and stand on top of it in case the trinket doesn’t register that I touched it. Should be able to run over the plate on the ground as well.

Love the amount of control Spymaster’s web gives you. Do you want a 10/20 or 40 stack burst? Passive stats vs popping it now. Adds a good amount of flavor to the combat.

I move even when I could be standing still in combat to get a rhythm going :drum: so it’s hard to maintain standing still stacks of the egg. Still like the trinket though.

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I mean, a trinket with a .5 sec cast time is going to interrupt anything unless you are exact in your GCD timing, which can change with Haste. The Spellforge uses Arcane Barrage on my Mage which is just there, so maybe it’s less impactful on other specs. Still the cast time and the fact all stacks up and vanish with any downtime with minutes worth of ramp up is a bit silly.

It’s not one trinket, it’s been slowly creeping in over several expacs this idea that trinkets should be a whole song and dance. The complexity should be with the class, spec, talents and the big boss you’re trying to down. Pretending it doesn’t exist doesn’t make the creep up and vanish.

I often avoid such trinkets, but sometimes one doesn’t have the luxury of choice. Doesn’t make it good.

I didn’t either. My SPriest is an alt so I don’t care about gearing them too much, especially now, but when I was messing around with it against a training dummy and suddenly my character was holding her head and my all my bars were greyed out I was like, “What just happened?!” Another SPriest was next to me and probably just confused as to what I was doing.

It’s so clunky and weird to use. Not a huge fan.

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Lol, the concoction trinket from delves requires you to jump once and if you don’t get prepared to eat a 5s stun.

:woozy_face:

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Good.
There are 2 trinket slots, they shouldn’t even have to be both on-use since those cds are going to collide.

Not in the Nerubar loot table they don’t. THAT’S the problem. No passive procs, and no stat stick trinkets in the raid. Only from obscenely RNG sources like delve vault slots.

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5s is harsh asf

BRING BACK SOUL CAPACITATOR

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