wow Updated: Trinket Tuning, Crusade Nerf Specifics

[Starym 3,800]

 

Update 2: Blizzard have posted actual numbers for the Convergence of Fates changes. They have been incorporated into the first blue post here.
Update 1: There have been some new blue posts going even deeper into detail on the matter, check at the bottom of the article for them or click here.

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We get specific details and numbers for the upcoming trinket changes, as well as an explanation and specifics on the Crusade nerf, both coming tomorrow with the reset. Still no exact stats for Convergence of Fates, but we get an idea of how it will end up in relation to specific specs and talents. You can check out the previous announcement of the changes here.

Lore (source)

In general, we’ve found that our tuning on trinkets which relied on a direct damage or healing effect (as opposed to their raw stats) have come up a bit short this expansion. To help address that, we’re making the following changes:

• Claw of the Crystalline Scorpid: Damage increased by 30%.
• Arcanogolem Digit: Damage increased by 30%.
• Entwined Elemental Foci: The amount of Critical Strike, Mastery, and Haste granted by this item’s proc has been increased by 5%.
• Might of Krosus: Base damage reduced by 25%, but is now always a critical strike.
  • The tooltip for Might of Krosus will display the amount of damage that will result from the critical hit, not the base damage.
  • Also fixed a bug where the cooldown was incorrectly being reduced if Might of Krosus damaged at least 3 targets.
• Draught of Souls: The Use effect of this trinket now respects the global cooldown.
  • The damage of this trinket is now reduced by 30% for Unholy Death Knights (was reduced by 40%).
  • Designer Notes: Since Draught of Souls deals Shadow Damage, it’s increased by Unholy’s Mastery, which means we needed to reduce its base damage to keep its overall value similar to other classes. It’s currently a little too low, however, so we’re increasing the damage it deals for Unholy.
• Icon of Rot: Damage increased by 40%.
• Pharamere's Forbidden Grimoire: Damage increased by 85%.
• Fury of the Burning Sky: Damage increased by 40%.
• Star Gate: Damage increased by 30%.
• Aluriel's Mirror: Healing-over-time amount increased by 140%. Detonation effect reduced by 35%.
  • Designer Notes: Aluriel’s Mirror’s detonation effect is strong when it activates, but hard to rely on. We’re increasing the heal-over-time effect significantly to improve the up-front value of this trinket, and reducing the detonation effect slightly to compensate.
• Perfectly Preserved Cake: Absorb amount increased by 140%.
• Etraeus' Celestial Map: The amount of Critical Strike, Mastery, and Haste granted by this item’s proc has been increased by 5%.

As for Convergence of Fates, we’re spending a little extra time to make sure our changes here are as comprehensive as possible, so we don’t have final numbers yet. However, we can share our overall plan for the changes we intend to make. We intend to reduce its base effectiveness (before talents) for Windwalkers, and increase its base effectiveness for Retribution Paladins and Frost and Unholy Death Knights. Separately, we plan to adjust its effectiveness individually for the following talents:

• Serenity (Windwalker)
• Crusade (Retribution Paladin)
• Incarnation: King of the Jungle (Feral Druid)
• Hungering Rune Weapon (Frost Death Knight)
• Dark Arbiter (Unholy Death Knight)

 UPDATE:

Here's the changes we're looking to make for As for Convergence of Fates interaction with some of the throughput cooldowns it affects. These numbers are compared to the trinket's current performance on live, and are not additive with each other.

• Frost Death Knight
  • with Empower Rune Weapon: +10% proc rate
  • with Hungering Rune Weapon: -23% proc rate
     
• Unholy Death Knight
  • with Summon Gargoyle: +68% proc rate
  • with Dark Arbiterr: no change
     
• Feral Druid
  • with Berserk: no change
  • with Incarnation: King of the Jungle: -45%
  • Note: Incarnation was not properly working with Convergence, which has now been fixed. The number given here is relative to Convergence's proc rate with Berserk.
     
• Windwalker Monk
  • with Storm, Earth, and Fire: -62% proc rate
  • with Serenity: -75% proc rate
     
• Retribution Paladin
  • with Avenging Wrath: +250% proc rate
  • with Crusade: +25% proc rate
  • Note: This change should bring Convergence back to roughly its original effectiveness for Ret Paladins who are not using Crusade.

Additionally, on the topic of tank trinkets, we'll be increasing Animated Exoskeleton's maximum shield amount by 33%. We're continuing to investigate tank trinkets, but that change will make it in for this week's hotfix.

We’re planning to make these changes with the next weekly restarts, alongside the release of Mythic Nighthold. Overall, this should make the trinkets in Nighthold more competitive with other trinkets available elsewhere in the expansion.

And the Crusade nerf explanation:

Sigma (source)

We are definitely keenly aware that people feel better when we fix a problem by buffing something, rather than fixing it by nerfing something. If you look across classes and talent rows in 7.1.5, you'll see the great majority of balance issues were addressed by buffing underperforming talents. There are a few factors that go into this decision though, and it generally has to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

One issue when balancing a lopsided talent row is whether we want the overall power of the spec to go slightly up or slightly down in the process. In the case of Retribution during our tuning adjustments for the opening of Nighthold, we intended to slightly nerf the topend performance of the spec (essentially, the performance of players stacking trinkets/relics/legendaries that all build around Crusade). I know there's no easy way to deliver that message, but hopefully it's at least worth clarifying that it's not some accident of how we chose to balance the L100 row. Players say "why couldn't we buff Divine Purpose instead of nerfing Crusade", for the very understandable reason that the former wouldn't have resulted in a slight DPS nerf. But we were conscious of the slight DPS nerf when we decided to do it this way.

Another factor is that there are sometimes limits on how powerful we want an individual talent to be, regardless of balance within the row. Divine Purpose and Crusade are both very strong talents, that have a significant impact on the rotation and playstyle of the spec (and as mentioned, on gear/talent/relic/etc. decisions), even at their current strength. Balancing Retribution L100 at an even higher point would start causing more issues--Divine Purpose would allow strings of multiple free finishers very often, Crusade would continue to represent a majority of the spec's damage within a cooldown, and Holy Wrath would have to get even more bursty to try to compete with the other two. Sometimes we have to be careful about addressing all balance problems by buffing two talents up to match the highest one, because it can lead to a lot of power creep on the importance of a single talent to an entire DPS rotation.

 
Draught of Souls and Nightblooming Frond details:

Lore

We'll look into Draught of Souls and its effect for Warriors a bit more. Worth noting that the change to have it on the GCD does mean the trinket will be a bit weaker after these hotfixes for most classes (Unholy DK being the exception, due to the damage increase).

Regarding the Unholy damage reduction for Draught, again, that's only there to counteract the fact that Unholy's Mastery increases Draught's damage. Either way, its damage is going up by ~17% with this hotfix, which is pretty substantial.

We'll also take another look at Nightblooming Frond.

Tank trinkets are on our to-do list, but not for this round of trinket tuning. We agree that they need some help.

[aladris 2]

so for my havoc DH should I switch out my 870 BTI for the 875 entwined elemental foci... the extra 5% is great but It didn't seem to proc at all... especially compared to the BTI which I swear procs constantly

[PatrickHenry 293]

As a lifelong Ret, I was easily noticing the creep into "you better take Crusade, or else" a while ago.  I was not surprised when this change came about.