I get that Raid typically has a stronger trinket or two. It’s incentive to actually farm the raid instead of ignoring it entirely in favor of M+.
But this is absurd. This isn’t “Raid is BiS”, this is broken.
Transmitter is bad enough for big CD specs, and Spymaster makes it look like a joke.
The LFR version of Spymaster is literally better than every single other trinket, other than being roughly tied with Mythic Transmitter.
It was clear from Day 1 that this Trinket would be a problem. Blizzard did a Trinket Tuning Pass early on. They knew. And chose to leave it this strong.
It’s not fun to chase something that defines your performance as much as this thing does. Strong is fine. Not this. It just makes not having it sting HARD. Not to mention trying to get this thing in a pug setting is basically impossible because every single Court group is 80% casters only there for the trinket chance.
BiS Trinkets need to be toned down in the future. This sucks.
7 Likes
I agree
trinkets account for far too much of a players power.
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And unfortunately this is not just theory. I have seen it far enough times in practice. There is just no point even trying to compete anyone who has this trinket on any boss in freaking m+ as a caster.
If it drops in hc, ppl are still willing to fork around 1 million gold for it with ease. That should tell everything you need to know about the trinket balance.
For the record, I do think powerful trinkets are fun, what I dont like is the delta being so big between them and the fact that this is a reoccurring issue.
It not only makes gearing much worse for the affected classes/specs, but also messes up the balancing as many classes are tuned with these kinds of items in mind.
The solution is really simple, just make raid trinkets as well, actually respect their own ilvl when it comes to their performance finally.
If 639 is supposed to be the spymaster power level, then buff everything else. If not, then nerf it finally to be in line with the others.
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one trinket is out performing all others
some by a margin of 50% or more
yea, thats broken all right
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It is definitely strong, there is no denying that. However, to be fair, it’s not like there is that much of a gap for every spec. It’s still noticeably ahead for all specs, but by a smaller margin.
There were definitely some overtuned trinkets in DF as well. It would be nice if there was less RNG around how well you will perform just because you didn’t get lucky enough to win a top tier trinket. I’m fine with some variance, but there should be some boundaries for it.
2 Likes
What game are you playing lol? Spymaster is probably by far the most broken trinket they ever released. Mainly because of how it’s tuned . The fact that at 40 stacks a castor can go from no damage to the absolute top of the chart by a wide margins is insane . No other trinket does that . Not even Queens Mandate hits that hard .
Transmitter doesn’t even compete with spymasters
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I’m not as concerned with one trinket being way too good as much as I’m concerned with 95% of them being absolute dog water.
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This is 100% the entire reason for this utterly imbalanced trinket - Blizz is just increasing token sales in yet another way this expac. Don’t hold your breath for it to change - if anything, it will only get worse.
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Nope, there have definitely been trinkets in past expansions that were even more broken. And depending on the spec, other trinkets can compete decently. Spymasters will still be ahead, but not by that margin.
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Name one of them.
Also goes to show you how broken enhance shaman is that they are the top dps and can’t use a spymaster. If class balance in m+ was even 10% close you’d see Aug, caster, caster.
It is the most broken trinket I have ever seen in the game, and it also sucks for everything but some mythic raids and mythic +
UVLS.
The trinket that was so OP for dot based classes that getting a proc at the start of a fight would mean you do 30-40% more damage over the entire fight. Snapshotting with dots was strong already, and that made it absolutely broken.
Blizzard also removed dot snapshotting not long after that in the same expansion (it was during the same raid tier or the one after). That’s how OP that trinket was.
Edit: I was curious of the timeline but I couldn’t find any specific dates. From what I remember (this was 10+ years ago), I believe they specifically nerfed the trinket for certain classes/specs and then removed snap shotting for the next raid tier. I know it got nerfed for warlocks because that’s what I was playing and I had the trinket.
Do all the trinkets take several minutes to ramp, though
It could just be for Elemental Shamans specifically. While Spymasters is the strongest in optimal scenarios, it only remains so when things are done perfectly. For Devastation, Heroic Spymaster’s is better than everything but Myth-track trinkets from M+ end up being used more frequently, though it isn’t nearly as far of a gap.
Then there’s Demonology Warlocks who has their 2nd best trinket being a Delve trinket, according to that website with a 600 ilvl Candle Confidant beating out every trinket at 626 or sometimes higher, not counting Spymaster’s.
It’s balanced by the fact that you need to slowly stack it up first and if you die, your stacks reset and it’s garbage.
spymasters is only useful once every 4 mins, and even then its for 20 seconds. those numbers are simbait, the sim is assuming your going into the pull with a full 40 stack.
I maybe get 1 full stack before the raid boss is dead, starting from zero, on my shaman.
2 Likes
Yeah, the Candle Confidant trinket is strong for destruction as well, at least in single target fights.
I have Spymaster’s as Disc and I gotta tell ya, popping it at 40 stacks feels like I just popped a major healing CD like Ascendance or Flourish or something, but stronger. No one’s HP moves when I pop that thing, it’s ridiculous.
What sucks is I had to import a WeakAura for it.
See this is the problem with this game. They add crap like this and then the UI is so disconnected from the player that you need an addon to optimize it.
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Snapshotting was removed because of Affliction and Black Blood of Y’shaarj (Garrosh trinket).
UVLS was REALLY good but only for Demo. It was pretty mid for every other dot based spec because they either didn’t have mechanics that interacted with dots critting (and thus wanted to snapshot Haste/Mastery/Int) or their dots didn’t last long enough to make use of it.
No it doesn’t. That’d be a weird thing to sim since Spymaster stacks get wiped on pull.
It is overvalued in sims because of fight duration though, you’re not going to get nearly as much value out of it in most heroic fights.
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“Blizzard removed snap shotting because one spec in the game was taking advantage and this spec is literal garbage for the past 3 expansions, actually barely anyone even plays Warlock”
Mission accomplished?
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It was amazing for demo because of the extended doom, but I believe it also worked with soul swap if you had another target to put dots on, extending the effect. It was a long time ago though, so I might be misremembering.
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