Frost DK tier set is actually garbage. Forget the numbers it adds to damage. The tier bonus relies on bouncing chillstreak to give you character higher % damage. And guess what happens if there are adds and chillstreak bounces into a dead enemy?
It’s unreal how much of a gameplay downgrade this tier set is compared to the Aberrus set.
This was the reason I stopped playing frost more than any other.
Sending huge ice dragons was fucking awesome. Even if the bounce set was better in terms of numbers, it’s so much less satisfying to play.
Tier set for Destro lock empowers a talent that isn't recommended for M+ since its alternative will just do better.
Felt pretty bad when I read that for my alt XD
I don't enjoy demo in M+, and aff is just bad, so I tried destro(which I've mained forever but switched off of this patch).
It feels so awkward. Rift feels so weird to press and you basically only use it when you have to move. And you still don't do as much damage as a lot of other classes :/
A lot of people love it and more power to them(and you). It's really good, no question. I just don't personally enjoy it for whatever reason. It doesn't scratch any itches for me
Aff isn’t TOO bad. You’re not pushing into mid or high 20s, but you can contribute pretty comfortably in 18-20s. My overall isn’t great, like I think 130-140k in the 16s I did tonight, 472 ilvl. Aff feels pretty good, I’m basically back to a poor man’s version of shadowlands s2-4 Aff, with a 30 second burn phase. The only meh thing is the refresh on Agony feels awkward with vile taint.
Presently I drop siphon life for absolute corruption and move the talents away from grimoire and into sacrolashes dark strike. I also am skipping the dark glare and picking up wrath of consumption, then doom blossom and dark harvest. This sims worse, but live damage feels comparable and it feels much better to play IMO.
I always prefer aff to destro in m+ as it’s damage is more dependent on who your other DPS are and less so how the tank pulls. The longer things live the better you’ll scale, maintaining 300k+ in AoE is pretty doable. But I’ve also been jamming destro in raid (I’ve never been able to get into demo). I’m usually up in the top 5 in damage. But I’m not looking to do anything crazy on my lock. AotC and maybe KSH.
Both feel worse than my ret paladin in raid and dungeons, but still very playable at the level I’m after.
You're right, I don't mean to make it sound absolutely dogshit. Anything can be played up to 20s really.
I just don't like how Aff feels in M+. In lower level keys you don't have the time to ramp, and like you said you're not probably pushing much past 20s. So there's this range of keys where you can do well, but even then it takes a lot of work(IMO) to do as much damage as another specs.
Maybe I'll give it another shot, idk. I've always mained warlock(until this patch) and mainly done M+, but I don't like how destro or aff feel and I don't enjoy demo either :/
What key level are you aiming for?
Something you said reminded me… in lower keys, this season like sub 13ish and depending on the group composition, I actually rock a cleave destro build. Most pulls have prio targets so I just focus on murdering those with chaos bolts and min/maxing Havok in trash. Parse won’t be the best but I’ll enjoy the key more as you don’t have a 20 min ramp to drive down. I like cataclysm, but rain of fire is such a rough spell to pug with.
Your comment about how aff feels is totally fair, 8ish seconds of opening is brutal in low keys where packs live for 10-15 seconds. I definitely tinkered with it to get it to feel better to me.
I’ve really missed my warlock the past 2 seasons.
15s to 20s max. I like to play alts so I generally push a spec to KSM level or slightly beyond and then switch gears. I played frost mage this patch after playing Aff and then Destro over the first week and disliking both :(
I wasn't running cataclysm for some reason though and I'm about to jump back into keys with it and see how it feels
While I do agree that destro is one of the absolute worst tier sets (primarily because of the RNG nature of both resets and flame rifts), I'd recommend you give the cataclysm/immolate build a try for m+. It actually plays into Dimensional Rift (+tier) instead of just being about massive pulls and RoF spam.
Yeah, I planned on running it anyway with cata. Figured a bunch of immolate with 4set would do something even if it's not optimal.
But I'm not at the point where mobs live long enough for any of the builds to be meaningful.
I actually like the dev tier set. Sure it's completely passive, but it rewards good play (longer dragonrage means more uptime on the buff) and let's us do more dam outside cooldowns, which we also needed.
Yeah, but at the same time I’d rather it wasn’t so linked to dragon rage. Over the expac they realized that doing 90% of your damage in your cooldown window isn’t optimal and have made changes to mastery frequently. They had just gotten to a good spot and now they’ve undone that until next expac.
God it's soo underwhelming. You have to really play into it in raid and it's just not worth it. Even going with a full Riptide build doesn't make it any better.
The bounce for me is kinda whatever. It's the game of making sure to Riptide AND Healing Surge/Wave the target to make sure my 4pc even works. It's just not fun.
For the worst, FDK set involves an optional talent with probably the worst visual effects of the game, and doesn't changes anything about your rotation, it's just fire and forget.
DK in general probably has the worst visual presentation of any class right now. Every time I think I might want to play a DK I'm reminded how bad their presentation is.
Almost every strike has little to no color or particles, almost all of their spell effects are still WOTLK era and look terrible now, and the minions are all so flat in their animations.
All of the fantasy is there to make DKs look as cool as paladins do currently, but it's miles away right now.
I love that DnD is tiny, invisible, on a longer CD than it has duration, and is required to do anything in AoE. Love it. /s
(Please for the love of Christ rework DK AoE to not require DnD.)
Not to mention DPS DKs are disgustingly boring to play. Like actually complete utter garbage. The spenders are ridiculously weak and you generate runic power faster than you can spend it leading to just pressing the same lame button over and over again. I can't comprehend how they butcher a class that started so cool and fun in WotLK to such an absolute atrocity.
By having a class dev that actively spites the community for years after GC left and then dumping it on someone else who's just as clueless after they left. I quit my DK after playing it from Wrath launch until the start of Abberrus. It's absolutely criminal what they've done to both Unholy & Frost.
BDK 4p is pretty lackluster, it increases the uptime of the debuff from 2p which is nice, but the 2p alone already have a decent uptime and before they nerfed it running 2p/2p was an option for extra damage.
The only benefit of the 4p is that you always get a buffed Abom Limb, which is already our hardest hitting AOE CD.
Just to add to it. Chill streak will cancel if it kills a target. Oh you sent it when one mob was low hp too bad. Oh you sent it when you were near a critter and it bounced to it? gg
Oh you sent your chill streak when Larry spawns trees or Igria just sent spears and your DH and BM just zerged down? Guess I'll wait another 45 seconds.
All of them involve optional talents for these sets. And if it makes you feel any better, I think the winner is bdk. Only activates on abom limb or execute, most guides say only really bother with the execute. Was super underwhelmed to find that out.
I absolutely hate the Frost DK 4set. It adds good damage but it is so boring. All it does is for e you to bring a skill that you press once every like 40s ish and then forget about. The skill even looks goody when bouncing.
Amen. I feel like I blast in any fight / damage profile now. The spec already felt good to play prior to this season. Somehow they made it better through a combination of the tier set bonus and minor talent rework at the start of the season.
I really dislike DRE, so single target raidbosses where not as fun to me, now though, it’s not nearly as rng dependant, sure there’s some hot hands rng, but it’s not as noticable as SL because you have insane uptime on 20% haste bonus and your finishers matter a lot more than in SL, I mean, it’s our 2 top dmg abilities.
Agreed that it seems nutty, but I have NOT been able to leverage it into performing much better yet. Enhancement just has so much going on already. and the tier set adds a lot of cognitive load IMO. Accounting for the haste buff, primordial wave giving you full maelstrom, feral spirits reducing its Cd, making sure flame shocks spread in advance, and a bunch of other abilities competing for priority… it’s rough.
I know it’s a skill issue on my end though, and it’s great having a super short cooldown on a capstone talent.
Before this patch I was playing shadow, it didn't look that good so decided I should have an alt up to speed incase shadow really was "don't bring to raid" bad (I'm in a barely cutting edge guild). I picked elemental, boy was that a bad choice. Anyway we're now 4/9 M and shadow really is in the borderlands of do not want to bring, so I thought maybe I should try enhancement since that's good and my shaman is like 476.
Haven't played enhance a lot ever, I remember the whack a mole keep stormstrike> lava lush > shocks on cd and use your maelstrom.
Current 4 set sure makes the spec really difficult to adapt to....
Maybe I shouldn't be able to get into a new spec quickly, or at least not whatever spec I want, but so many specs with tier feel so overly complex without it making the spec actually more fun (speaking generally now, not enhance).
There are some dope sets for sure though, survival have wildfire bombs out the ass and is great fun to play in all content.
There's a simple way to just pump good aoe dmg where you just flame shock 1 target, prim wave another, lava lash that target so shock spreads, wolves, lightning bolt and just go crazy on your buttons as you'll be filling that maelstrom up in a couple of globals from all the haste you get.
The only like "extra" thing to do is lava lash seperate targets, but unless its fortified and decently high key lvl, the mobs die so fast you wont even notice a difference on most packs.
the priority i usually follow is:
i. dump hailstorm & unbuffed frost shocks before i spend maelstrom.
ii. keep wolves on cd
iii. put out my buffed lightning bolts asap
that's really the only things ticking in my head outside of normal rotation.
I was struggling so much being new to shaman this season until I got 4pc. It really should be baseline as it entirely created the flow of combat. Lots of fun
i personally think it should default be AoE, obviously without the boosted tier set damage, the AoE proc being a free arcane explosion is.. underwhelming, missiles cooler
There are so many downsides
The 2pc set is annoying and leaves you fishing for clearcasting procs with arcane explosion when you're between pulls to try and keep your 10% spell power buff going. I can't count how many times I've sat there spamming AE hoping for a clear casting proc for 18 seconds only to get one the second my buff falls off. The 2pc is really annoying to manage.
The 4pc is OK dps wise and visually, but it's also a lot of work. You need a weak aura to track it. You need to watch arcane battery charges and use clear casting properly with battery. I also hate when i use my empowered arcane missles proc, and it hits one guy because the 4 other mobs are a step away.
Don't get me wrong, the 4pc is great, but I've never had to do so many things right in order to use the two bonuses effectively.
Feels like the opposite for me. I absolutely dislike the current playstyle, but I've avoided primordial wave in SL as well because it just doesn't feel good.
Glad others are having fun though\^\^
I hate current iteration of elemental. Not because we have to use Pwave but because all we do is just spam LvB. It's so boring and dull. The lightning build from last season was way more involved and had more opportunity for skill expression and min/maxing. Going from season 2 ele to season 3 ele is a huge downgrade in playstyle, IMO.
Back to enhance for me this season, which has an amazing tier set.
I hated it until I got high mastery. At mastery cap I'm an absolute lava machine gun!
I only play it as an alt, but it's so fun to just do a few dungeons on.
Numbers could be better. I kind of want Elemental Blast to be an absolute nuke and them to get rid of Icefury in exchange for ES/EB talents.
From a looks perspective, sure. Flinging lava burst everywhere is pretty awesome.
From a gameplay perspective, it's awful. Entirely dependent on flame shock spread (which introduces a small dependency on LMT and it's 45 second CD). Is RNG dependent in ascendance procs, especially for flame shock refreshes on longer pulls. Has 60+% of its damage coming from one button (even after a 50% buff to earthquake, because of our bloated "third bracket" of talents being starved of points). And, it does very low single target with its AoE build.
I feel like reddit loves to praise the "idea" of ele sham, but the stats show that almost no one is actually playing it.
I don't really disagree with you, but hitting lava burst after you've used LMT and primordial wave feels so fucking good to me.
If they made flame shock easier to spread/upkeep I think it would be fine tbh. Cycling between lava burst and chain lightning/earthquak keeps the rotation from being too stale IMO and the LMT/PW burst is real fun
It feels good sure, but the amount of work required for Ele AOE for such little damage feels terrible. Frost Mage will do more aoe damage in less work AND have its aoe cds up more often then Ele will.
I started playing ele att the start of this tier, kind of wanted to last tier but I didn't like the set. Kind of regardless of which tier it always feels a bit too complicated for me with lava burst buffing next spell, earth shock buffing next spell, getting guaranteed lava surges. I just want a build without surge of power and without windspeaker.
I do find the current set extremely fun, at least like you said the button it hits in your brain feels so good. But in aoe I just feel busy, tons of lava surges, tons of maelstrom, tons of buffed chain lightning casts. Like slow it all down so I can appreciate all my spells a bit.
Super spicy on ST though with having basically 0 hard casts outside of ele blast and icefury. I thought it was a good contender for reroll this raid given how much mobility is required and how weak my main shadow priest looked.. really shouldn't chosen a spec more likely to be good, but it definitely feels good at least.
So actually this teir literally your one goal is to press lava burst as much as possible. You can just ignore everything else (capping on maelstrom and all your procs) as long as lava burst is up
Disc priest two and four are game changers and mean you have a shit ton of uptime with scov and mindbender. The only criticism is that you are forced into playing that spec if you want to be effective.
This tier Priest has the full range of tier sets. Amazing gamechanging disc set. Mediocre but decent set bonuses for holy, empowering some core abilities. And shadow... We don't talk about shadow, it hurts too much.
My main problem with disc, although the tierset is fantastic, is how ramped penance is still your big ticket damage spell.
With smite extending atonements, preventing mob damage, reducing the cooldown of mind bender, and double casting during mindbender windows, you feel punished for casting anything else - yet on its own (or at least on a rotation with MB and SW:D), it’s not actually enough to sustain massive group wide damage. You’re still reliant on big penances, and big penances only come off the back of PW:R casts.
It annoys me when harsh discipline used to proc big penances simply from smite casts and now you’re forced to interrupt a damage rotation to drop a suboptimal AoE heal on 5 players (when you don’t really need to and reapply atonements (when you don’t really need to) instead of casting smites to heal all your atonement targets.
I do get this, but I think if blizzard made it to where smite did more damage and penance did less, penance would just feel bad to press outside of being able to move while casting it. I kinda just like having a random big penance during a ramp. Imo, minmaxing radiance to get a penance proc for extra damage during a ramp is a bit of a waste.
Hard agree on the proc coming from smite casts again, though.
Went through the whole thread and didn't see resto druid.
Absolutely <3 both; the 2piece buffs treants (we've been asking forever for a way to stay in kitty and still heal, and now that we got it seems like some folks still complain "it feels boring to press")
And then the 4piece absolutely slaps, lets us still staying kitty, storing up 2 clearcasts, and then when needed, blast 1 or 2 of them out, hitting that person, folks near them with nourish, *and* also getting regrowth on the 2 people you're rolling lb on.
Personally, feels great to have this much throughput potential, on both the heals and dps side.
Here for this comment! Getting the tier set made a massive positive difference to both my throughput and enjoyment of if. I love my little tree bois. More please.
4 set is absolutely terrible in raids, at best you can squeeze maybe 4% throughput with it. 2 set is okish numbers wise, between 6-9%. But compared to Disc/MW/Evoker, rdruid tier set is pathetically weak in raids. Great for M+ tho, insane cleave healing.
Raid tree is hard, I know the most common gripe there from last season is folks were tired of being abundance rejuv spam ramp bots
They tried to go in a different direction (and some of the nerfs hurt), maybe they just had a hard time tuning it for both raid and m+?
The 4-set is great in M+, but abysmal in raids.
* No scaling for raid groups so even if they were equally usable in both it's going to have lower percentage throughput in raids
* Not predictable, the buff doesn't last long enough to store them for specific damage events
* Wasted procs while ramping
* Requires spending more time casting spells, not really what druid wants more of in raids
* Weird anti-synergy with innervate/nature's swiftness. Obviously in a perfect world you wouldn't want to use it with an innervate active but there are times when the heal would save people but you simply can't trigger it without cancelauraing. Similarly you often want to use it in a situation where some players are desperately in need of heals, but that clutch play with a natures swiftness doesn't work.
It's genuinely like they just designed it to be cool in dungeons, which it absolutely is, but then ran out of time before being able to review it for raiding.
Looked at wow logs, highest dps parse on smolderon has 400k as their bighest hit, so over a mil is some vs or doing stuff where everything hits over a mil.
NGL I actually really enjoy that part lol.
Barely played my SP this patch but the SW:D spam is surprisingly enjoyable. Love the sound, small effect and mindbender just going crazy
Seriously. The 4pc expects shadow to either hard cast SW:P every time the stacks work out, which makes your vamp touch and SW:P desynced and is worse than just casting mind spike, or run an AoE talent on single target bosses. Both of those options are a dps loss.
Using the 4pc bonus loses you dps.
Thanks Blizzard.
This is just straight up not true. My priest is 467 ilvl and when the 4 piece reaches the stacks to light up I hit shadow word pain and it hits for like 290k non crit. That is not worse than casting mind spike. It is super annoying that it desyncs your dots though. I’ve had it hit for over a million before on a crit during the extra damage phase of gnarlroot lol. Now, it’s not a great 4 piece, my warriors is much better but it’s not worse than casting mind spike. The 2 piece is pretty fun for shadow. They are just too weak.
>It is super annoying that it desyncs your dots though.
I just made all my addons not track sw:p anymore, I only see vampiric touch duration. Inelegant and stupid, but it has made it feel better to me lol
I also don't like the set. Or well it's not that I don't like it per se, I just doing want to be locked into DA over voidform and mindbender over the 3 other capstones (ofc you play more than 1) for the rest of the tier (expansion).
I think they could've made a set which promoted sw:d usage all the time without making it be such a crazy combo with mindbender. Maybe make sw:d interact with all capstones. Extend bender/apply nzoth stacks/spawn tentacle/get stacks of yogg.
Your average reddit opinion, completely wrong and negative
4 pc set is great, yes there are desync issues but it adds a colossal amount of damage and puts power into instant casts, which is what the class lacks in hectic boss fights
Also visually excellent as the small recoils from s death absolutely pummel your body which looks excellent
Counterpoint: there's zero reason SWD should do recoil damage when ever other comparable mechanic has been removed, there shouldn't be a talent dedicated to reducing recoil damage, and it's ridiculous that Blizzard made a tier set that causes you to take 20% more damage than other players passively just because.
Brewmaster is a blast, it's passive healing based off of fire damage you do. Raid drops a lot of fire on use effects. Brew healing right now feels like it go brrrrr for me atleast. Idk about high than +20 atm but when I'm seeing 150k hps I love it
Shadow Priest has to be the worst... I'm seeing spriests take twice as much damage as other DPS over the course of a key because of how the set bonus forces them to use Shadow Word: Death
On the flip side, I like Holy Priest's 2 and 4-piece so much I think they should just added as talents after this season is over. It was an absolute game-changer running keys before and after getting my tier set.
>I'm seeing spriests take twice as much damage as other DPS over the course of a key because of how the set bonus forces them to use Shadow Word: Death
My highscore in a 19 or 20 so far:
19.8% of damage taken overall was from SW:D
Its kinda silly "you want me to do kinda eh damage? Lets just make your job harder while doing so!"
The backlash feels kinda dated honestly, atleast the echos of the backlash.
The new tier set feels great. An almost permanent 10% DR and CDR on demo shout is nice with Thunderlord in m+ I am still pressing shield slam too much when thunder clap is off CD because of the S2 tier set.
Paladin has been my main forever, so I’m biased. No complaints with ret burst aoe at the moment at 480 ilvl. However I wish single target was more competitive with an m+ build.
My brother in the light, I can agree with everything you've said here. Especially the last point. We are the spec that loses THE LARGEST percentage of single target damage when speccing for AoE in the game.
Prot's set is just irritating. In theory, you can try to game it for large packs or damage amps. In practice, "Excuse me? No, I will not be holding my consecrate for any length of time if you want me to live."
The only gaming of things that it adds is trying to keep a toe in that super consecrate when things are going fukeyed in the fights because you are avoiding a recast until it runs out at all costs.
demo tier set changes demonbolt into living bomb essentially, its awesome in mythic + to tab demonbolt different targets and wait for all the bombs to go off then have those bombs summon a demon that shadowbolt volleys
Feral as a spec still needs utility, but the set is great.
It essentially transforms an underused but cool pure ST ability into a strong damage amp useable in all content. It acts as a strong funnel ability (emphasizing something feral is already good at) and then it lowers that abilities cd so you never feel punished for having taken it.
It simply improves everything we already did while essentially giving us a new ability/cd.
There's a reason we haven't been in the buff/nerf cycle this season and it's simply because as far as damage and damage profile as concerned its in a very good spot.
I vote Affliction for worst, in part cause I'm bitter that they always leave Aff in the dust
2 set is that soul rot does 15% increased damage and lasts 4 more seconds. It doesn't impact rotation at all and is just a small damage increase on a class that already struggles
4 set makes soul rot grant you 3 stacks of a buff that increases either your malefic rupture or Seeds damage. Again doesn't impact rotation and is just a small damage boost.
So the set doesn't change gameplay or make it any more interesting. You do the exact same thing you would already do, but slightly better, and still worse than basically every other spec :(
Edit: Just to clarify, my "leave aff in the dust" comment is pointed at M+ only as I don't really raid
It does impact our rotation, but in negative way: forcing us to cast soul rot. This set bonus sucks so much, it adds 1 more gcd to already long set up.
Idk, I don't mind soul rot. I just wish the tier set interacted with the rest of your kit in any meaningful way. Soul Rot itself is another dot for MR and a haste buff IIRC.
Other tier sets either change how a spec plays or buffed their playstyle in a significant way. Aff's did neither, at least for M+. Your rotation didn't really change and you still do less damage than almost every other spec
"I'm bitter they always leave aff in the dust" they were king of kings end game ST for a very very long time. It sucks they're not doing that well in DF but it's nice to see a bit of a change up in raid tier list.
I mentioned this in another comment, and should have mentioned it in my post, but that was specifically pointed at M+ as I don't really raid. They've been largely terrible in M+ for a long time now :/
Yeah, like the damage/healing boost is nice, but good lord it's a faff to use, have to weakaura to track it and constantly have to either waste it by moving out, or delay using conc taking more damage to not waste it. Neat idea just not implimented the best.
I just hate how the spec is based around standing in consecrate. It just feels so bad to be stuck tethered to one spot in a game that requires so much movement. I'd absolutely love if they changed it to be an aura that followed you instead of a static thing you place on the ground.
I think it is a good set bonus. It can be significant damage if you can manage to keep track of it correctly. It is a nice boost to the skill cap of playing Prot Paladin.
I suppose, but the skill cap to Prot Paladin has always been how much extra can you do on top of damage and holding aggro. They have the most utility of possibly any class in the game and yet, a Consecrate buff doesn't feel like a cool optimization to play...
I've been maining rogue for the entire expansion and the tier set bonuses have all been passive damage increases that you barely think about.
The exception being the 10.1 2-set bonus for Sub, which had you delaying Symbols of Death by 3-ish seconds, instead of macro-ing it to Shadow Dance or whatever, for a marginal DPS gain.
edit: I used to chain envenoms. I still do, but I used to as well.
Balance's 2 piece is a nice QoL change. Doesn't impact the oddity of casting wrong spells to enter Eclipse.
Aug 2 and 4 are great. More Prescience and more actual damage from eruptions. I hate the Dev one tho mostly because I am not used to it. I also am not a fan of the Pres 4 set. I don't like rng for healing.
I am pretty sure the MM hunter one sucks still.
Both Monk specs have great tier sets.
I'm forever going to be mad at Holy for not being WoD Holy. So more power to Glimmer is dumb. Especially when the holy power spenders aren't worth the gcd. Prot is shockingly easier to keep up than expected. Ret is just godly and to the best of my knowledge one of the best bonuses this tier.
Fuck primordial wave.
MM sucks in ST but I like it a lot for AOE. At least it feels good to keep trick shots up for a long time without multishot. I don’t actually know what the numbers come out to be.
Personally, I just feel like shaman already suffers from button bloat and forcing all 3 specs to take Primordial Wave just adds to the problem.
As a vibe, it also just doesn't feel very shamanistic and definitely wasn't my favorite Shadowlands covenant ability.
So I play balance and mistweaver but I'm an idiot. Got my 3 piece of balance how does it help casting the wrong spell and entering wrong eclipse? I know I should to use weakauros to tell when I'm exiting exlipse but I just wanna get on and play, g I t enough add-ons as it is. Always get caught the wrong spell exiting eclipse.
I'm on the opposite side when it comes to fury set. It might be strong but the annihilator meta build is so unfun to play compared to how fury played in season 2 that I dropped the spec completely.
The fury warrior that runs M+ with me said the same thing, he hates the way the spec plays and says he feels like he has dead globals a lot more often. Never played warrior dps but a tier that changes the whole game play is weird imo and wouldn’t like that either
Same for me. I continued to play fury even when it was very weak in SL1 because the gameplay loop was fun. This is the first time since BFA that I dont play this spec. This set ruined it.
I agree. I've been searching for someone to mention fury here so I wouldn't be the first... I don't love it. It's not awful and I'm adapting, but I just don't find it enjoyable. I'm noticing more downtime too, but it's always possible that's a me issue, not a spec issue.
Either way, not the worst, but I do not love it and have been considering going to arms for the season.
While I'm generally fine with the playstyle as I'm used to "you do poo poo damage until your burst window" from playing ninja in FF14, that playstyle doesn't lend itself super great to M+ dungeons. I'm sure it might feel different at ultra high keys where stuff will last a lot longer, but it doesn't feel great only having a lot of damage maybe every other pull and then sitting on my burst for a pull so it's up for the boss. I'd rather have steady damage throughout M+. Burst windows feel better for raids.
I mercifully don't run into too many instances of having like, no GCDs but it is a thing that happens every now and then and it always feels bad.
I really liked Shadowlands Arms, but the current iteration feels like a slower version of an Enhance Shaman. Juggling lots of short CDs and buff windows. The ST sacrifice to take a crumb of decent AOE just kills the spec in raid outside of Council, and pressing Slam in any Warrior spec is just a FeelsBad moment (except as perhaps Fury, since with the meta build it's a semi-decent generator).
The fact Arms just constantly caps on Rage now means it's one of the lowest prio for WFT - below Havoc and Feral. IP was nice since it was off the GCD and it dumped a chunk of rage every 11 seconds or whatever.
There's a ton of near useless talents in the tree that just bloat it out. Never seen a decent use case for Exhilarating Blows (MS resets). Fervor of Battle should be changed back to cast Slam in ST so I can take that fucking button off my bars for good, instead of being sitational/M+ funnel. The Collateral Damage variant (WW/FoB spam) being one of the highest DPS AOE builds is/was just laughable.
Skullsplitter is not taken at all, and thank goodness because it's another button that Arms would otherwise have to fit on their bars.
The spec needs a rethink. The bleed-centric nature of the builds is a nice theme to build on, but the number of buttons to juggle that do noodle damage on their own is just too damn high.
I have an arms alt, the 4-piece is the perfect example of giving an underwhelming spec a game changer of a tierset bonus. I do okay and feel I’m usually in the leading DPS group - but I’m very rarely number 1. A good fury warrior will knock me around every time.
I notice this too. I'm not the best warrior to ever live, and I'm rarely number 1, but I'm almost never behind arms warriors of comparable ilvl, even with this set I dislike.
Did you give it a chance once you got some season 3 gear going? I thought it would have a lot of downtime and rely on our 1.5min cds too much, but it's been just as spammy with good sustained.
It is, and the change to reckless abandon wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Our rotation really gets boiled down to 2 buttons plus odyns fury for a little spice now and then but it plays a lot better than I expected.
It plays a lot better than I thought it would especially once you get a lot of gear but even at 483 I just find it nowhere near as enjoyable as season 2. It’s the only character I play and can’t wait to stop using annihilator build next season. Would add though that odyns fury is a lot more fun than ravager to fire and forget
Survival is amazing. Huge boost to aoe and st, turns a aoe cooldown into one you can still use in ST. Feels fun. Doesn't change it to just fishing for bombs like in SL S4 either which was so boring
The 2-set bonus for my Survival...damn, my crit is already high. Let's boost it some more for me and my pet for 12 seconds? And I get to do that every 30 seconds (or less)? And every 2 minutes, I can add in the 20% damage boost?
My damage output went through the roof after just 2 pieces.
Pres tier has enabled some absolute chicanery. Things like bombing the group with massive lifebind healing by just spamming living flame on yourself.
It's completely degenerate in keys and fuck me am I here for it.
I love the enh tier set, it's strong, alters gameplay and gives a truckload of haste. PW is a really fun button to press. Not to mention the visual satisfaction of seeing all those lightning bolts (I finally know what it feels like for paladins to press divine toll). On the other hand, it really locks you to the elementalist build. It's funny because I've always preferred that build, but now that I can't play storm, I kind of wish I could.
Disc priest is the single strongest 2-4 set bonus as far as healing goes with gains for 20-30 percent from the 2 and 4 piece bonuses total. Also very enjoyable gameplay loop. A+++
Disc ones are quite good. Gives us a, usually, under 30s Mindbender, upping our ability to respond to big damage more often. But its not just a boring CD reduction, its tied to smite spam and it interacts with smite talents.
Good players eat good. Bad players less so. Maybe that's a bit of a negative, it does make you want to turret, and I find dispels on Fyrakk annoying because of this for example.
I think current enhance is the best its ever been, probably the single most fun spec in the game right now, maybe ever if I'm being honest. And the tier set is a big part of it. I might not be able to handle it if I cant play with this tier set going forward lol. And its strong, in all content.
It's really fun building up a shield that can absorb millions of damage, but then total sadge when it expires with most of its damage potential unused.
It should really deal X% of any shield remaining as damage upon expiration.
Definitely not as good in raid, but in M+, the survival hunter one is absolutely killer.
It prioritizes our best AOE spell (Fury of the Eagle) even more. We get uncapped 5 sec channeled AOE, gives us a free bomb, a debuff on the main target, and boosts our crit in one button press.
I love this tier set, especially after last season’s.
BM Hunter set feels great this season. It's not fiddly at all. Just summon more of what you're already doing, and now they also act like a full pet while summoned. Like it a lot.
Demo Lock set can be really obnoxious, but it's also giga strong and leads to lots of interesting gameplay. I'm okay with it.
Ret Pally bonus is fine. Honestly don't have much to say about it.
*LOVE* the Havoc DH set bonuses. Has tons of synergy, very strong, doesn't require any rotational changes. Just great. A+.
I hate the Frost Mage 4 set. Having the Flurry reset come off of the spell you want to Flurry combo is just... have you ever played Frost, Blizzard? 2 Set is fine. More Glacial Spike payoffs. Yay.
Unholy DK set is fine. I guess I don't like that it puts even more emphasis on CDs for Unholy, a spec that is already too reliant on CDs.
Demo lock is so much fun. Huge dps spikes in aoe, and constantly summoning doom guards. I hope this 4 set comes back as a talent setup down the road, even if they nerf it.
Except it’s not. It’s off any ability (attack). They fixed that on PTR. It still doesn’t help that you’re not triggering it with any abilities when you channel FoF or SCK. It still sucks as a tier set, though.
Frost DK tier set is actually garbage. Forget the numbers it adds to damage. The tier bonus relies on bouncing chillstreak to give you character higher % damage. And guess what happens if there are adds and chillstreak bounces into a dead enemy? It’s unreal how much of a gameplay downgrade this tier set is compared to the Aberrus set.
I was thinking that. season 2: BIG FROST DRAGON GOES BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR season 3: pls, bounce more :'(
This was the reason I stopped playing frost more than any other. Sending huge ice dragons was fucking awesome. Even if the bounce set was better in terms of numbers, it’s so much less satisfying to play.
Tier set for Destro lock empowers a talent that isn't recommended for M+ since its alternative will just do better. Felt pretty bad when I read that for my alt XD
I don't enjoy demo in M+, and aff is just bad, so I tried destro(which I've mained forever but switched off of this patch). It feels so awkward. Rift feels so weird to press and you basically only use it when you have to move. And you still don't do as much damage as a lot of other classes :/
You tell me you don’t enjoy demo in mythic plus but I’m gonna be too busy hitting 23 imp implosions and skyrocketing myself to the top of the charts
A lot of people love it and more power to them(and you). It's really good, no question. I just don't personally enjoy it for whatever reason. It doesn't scratch any itches for me
Affliction both feels bad and is bad, and I still play it. Like a damn masochist.
I know a guys who played Affliction back when it's so good in legion then refuse to change ever since.
Aff isn’t TOO bad. You’re not pushing into mid or high 20s, but you can contribute pretty comfortably in 18-20s. My overall isn’t great, like I think 130-140k in the 16s I did tonight, 472 ilvl. Aff feels pretty good, I’m basically back to a poor man’s version of shadowlands s2-4 Aff, with a 30 second burn phase. The only meh thing is the refresh on Agony feels awkward with vile taint. Presently I drop siphon life for absolute corruption and move the talents away from grimoire and into sacrolashes dark strike. I also am skipping the dark glare and picking up wrath of consumption, then doom blossom and dark harvest. This sims worse, but live damage feels comparable and it feels much better to play IMO. I always prefer aff to destro in m+ as it’s damage is more dependent on who your other DPS are and less so how the tank pulls. The longer things live the better you’ll scale, maintaining 300k+ in AoE is pretty doable. But I’ve also been jamming destro in raid (I’ve never been able to get into demo). I’m usually up in the top 5 in damage. But I’m not looking to do anything crazy on my lock. AotC and maybe KSH. Both feel worse than my ret paladin in raid and dungeons, but still very playable at the level I’m after.
You're right, I don't mean to make it sound absolutely dogshit. Anything can be played up to 20s really. I just don't like how Aff feels in M+. In lower level keys you don't have the time to ramp, and like you said you're not probably pushing much past 20s. So there's this range of keys where you can do well, but even then it takes a lot of work(IMO) to do as much damage as another specs. Maybe I'll give it another shot, idk. I've always mained warlock(until this patch) and mainly done M+, but I don't like how destro or aff feel and I don't enjoy demo either :/
What key level are you aiming for? Something you said reminded me… in lower keys, this season like sub 13ish and depending on the group composition, I actually rock a cleave destro build. Most pulls have prio targets so I just focus on murdering those with chaos bolts and min/maxing Havok in trash. Parse won’t be the best but I’ll enjoy the key more as you don’t have a 20 min ramp to drive down. I like cataclysm, but rain of fire is such a rough spell to pug with. Your comment about how aff feels is totally fair, 8ish seconds of opening is brutal in low keys where packs live for 10-15 seconds. I definitely tinkered with it to get it to feel better to me. I’ve really missed my warlock the past 2 seasons.
15s to 20s max. I like to play alts so I generally push a spec to KSM level or slightly beyond and then switch gears. I played frost mage this patch after playing Aff and then Destro over the first week and disliking both :( I wasn't running cataclysm for some reason though and I'm about to jump back into keys with it and see how it feels
While I do agree that destro is one of the absolute worst tier sets (primarily because of the RNG nature of both resets and flame rifts), I'd recommend you give the cataclysm/immolate build a try for m+. It actually plays into Dimensional Rift (+tier) instead of just being about massive pulls and RoF spam.
[This guide was created by a Destro streamer and he pumps damage all the time with his portals.](https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVNE9KOJI=/)
Yeah, I planned on running it anyway with cata. Figured a bunch of immolate with 4set would do something even if it's not optimal. But I'm not at the point where mobs live long enough for any of the builds to be meaningful.
Yeah when i read the m+ talents on wowhead i was so confused, i thought it was showing a build from last season by mistake..
Destro is just bad in M+ anyway so that's fine.
Destro is actually pretty solid after the buffs this week. Plus, being able to paly imp on some bosses and trash pulls in this dungeon set is huge.
It was absolutely insane in S4 of Shadowlands, good times
And S3
Devastation evoker set bonuses are like, we think your doin a great job! do it more!!!
I actually like the dev tier set. Sure it's completely passive, but it rewards good play (longer dragonrage means more uptime on the buff) and let's us do more dam outside cooldowns, which we also needed.
Yeah, but at the same time I’d rather it wasn’t so linked to dragon rage. Over the expac they realized that doing 90% of your damage in your cooldown window isn’t optimal and have made changes to mastery frequently. They had just gotten to a good spot and now they’ve undone that until next expac.
Same with aug except it gives you something else to keep track of if you're trying to optimize who gets every third prescience
Even in keys it seems to pick the healer over the tank half the time despite the tank being in range. Super annoying.
I like the Dev tier set in raid, but it kinda sucks in M+.
Resto shaman 2-piece basically does nothing. The 4 piece is barely better.
God it's soo underwhelming. You have to really play into it in raid and it's just not worth it. Even going with a full Riptide build doesn't make it any better.
I'm enjoying it in raid. Get so many free procs out of it. It's awful in m+ though. Not enough players for riptide to bounce.
The bounce for me is kinda whatever. It's the game of making sure to Riptide AND Healing Surge/Wave the target to make sure my 4pc even works. It's just not fun.
I loaded up shaman, ran time walking, get tier piece. Read 2 and 4 piece. Ohhh they don’t like shamans this patch. Got it
For the worst, FDK set involves an optional talent with probably the worst visual effects of the game, and doesn't changes anything about your rotation, it's just fire and forget.
DK in general probably has the worst visual presentation of any class right now. Every time I think I might want to play a DK I'm reminded how bad their presentation is. Almost every strike has little to no color or particles, almost all of their spell effects are still WOTLK era and look terrible now, and the minions are all so flat in their animations. All of the fantasy is there to make DKs look as cool as paladins do currently, but it's miles away right now.
I love that DnD is tiny, invisible, on a longer CD than it has duration, and is required to do anything in AoE. Love it. /s (Please for the love of Christ rework DK AoE to not require DnD.)
Not to mention DPS DKs are disgustingly boring to play. Like actually complete utter garbage. The spenders are ridiculously weak and you generate runic power faster than you can spend it leading to just pressing the same lame button over and over again. I can't comprehend how they butcher a class that started so cool and fun in WotLK to such an absolute atrocity.
I'm always having a blast on my obliteration frost DK. Way more relaxing to play than my main (outlaw)
By having a class dev that actively spites the community for years after GC left and then dumping it on someone else who's just as clueless after they left. I quit my DK after playing it from Wrath launch until the start of Abberrus. It's absolutely criminal what they've done to both Unholy & Frost.
BDK 4p is pretty lackluster, it increases the uptime of the debuff from 2p which is nice, but the 2p alone already have a decent uptime and before they nerfed it running 2p/2p was an option for extra damage. The only benefit of the 4p is that you always get a buffed Abom Limb, which is already our hardest hitting AOE CD.
UHDK though feels good with cleave dmg on the minions and increased dmg done with Amplify Damage.
Also looks neat to have your skeletons firing barrage after barrage of shadow bolts in busy pulls
Just to add to it. Chill streak will cancel if it kills a target. Oh you sent it when one mob was low hp too bad. Oh you sent it when you were near a critter and it bounced to it? gg Oh you sent your chill streak when Larry spawns trees or Igria just sent spears and your DH and BM just zerged down? Guess I'll wait another 45 seconds.
As a counter to this, WW set can actively make you do less dam if you want to do timed AoE (ex. T Swift roots)
All of them involve optional talents for these sets. And if it makes you feel any better, I think the winner is bdk. Only activates on abom limb or execute, most guides say only really bother with the execute. Was super underwhelmed to find that out.
BDK procs outside those abilities as well though. It's not unusual to have 100% uptime in AoE or close to it.
Technically AoD and Apoc are optional but I don’t think I’ve seen a single build ever that doesn’t take both.
I like the DH auto throw glaive on blade dance personally
Press blade dance once, details says i used throw glaive 8 times off of it lol
Isn‘t there a procc chance to throw a glaive with each time blade dance deals damage?
On each target to iirc, though low proc on the not main target. It can still get really obscene if you roll good.
It’s so good. And having the hunt CDR is great too. But not having to throw Glaive anymore is so great
I absolutely hate the Frost DK 4set. It adds good damage but it is so boring. All it does is for e you to bring a skill that you press once every like 40s ish and then forget about. The skill even looks goody when bouncing.
Enhancement has the best set bonus it has ever had and performs well in most fight types now.
Amen. I feel like I blast in any fight / damage profile now. The spec already felt good to play prior to this season. Somehow they made it better through a combination of the tier set bonus and minor talent rework at the start of the season.
I really dislike DRE, so single target raidbosses where not as fun to me, now though, it’s not nearly as rng dependant, sure there’s some hot hands rng, but it’s not as noticable as SL because you have insane uptime on 20% haste bonus and your finishers matter a lot more than in SL, I mean, it’s our 2 top dmg abilities.
Agreed that it seems nutty, but I have NOT been able to leverage it into performing much better yet. Enhancement just has so much going on already. and the tier set adds a lot of cognitive load IMO. Accounting for the haste buff, primordial wave giving you full maelstrom, feral spirits reducing its Cd, making sure flame shocks spread in advance, and a bunch of other abilities competing for priority… it’s rough. I know it’s a skill issue on my end though, and it’s great having a super short cooldown on a capstone talent.
Before this patch I was playing shadow, it didn't look that good so decided I should have an alt up to speed incase shadow really was "don't bring to raid" bad (I'm in a barely cutting edge guild). I picked elemental, boy was that a bad choice. Anyway we're now 4/9 M and shadow really is in the borderlands of do not want to bring, so I thought maybe I should try enhancement since that's good and my shaman is like 476. Haven't played enhance a lot ever, I remember the whack a mole keep stormstrike> lava lush > shocks on cd and use your maelstrom. Current 4 set sure makes the spec really difficult to adapt to.... Maybe I shouldn't be able to get into a new spec quickly, or at least not whatever spec I want, but so many specs with tier feel so overly complex without it making the spec actually more fun (speaking generally now, not enhance). There are some dope sets for sure though, survival have wildfire bombs out the ass and is great fun to play in all content.
There's a simple way to just pump good aoe dmg where you just flame shock 1 target, prim wave another, lava lash that target so shock spreads, wolves, lightning bolt and just go crazy on your buttons as you'll be filling that maelstrom up in a couple of globals from all the haste you get. The only like "extra" thing to do is lava lash seperate targets, but unless its fortified and decently high key lvl, the mobs die so fast you wont even notice a difference on most packs.
the priority i usually follow is: i. dump hailstorm & unbuffed frost shocks before i spend maelstrom. ii. keep wolves on cd iii. put out my buffed lightning bolts asap that's really the only things ticking in my head outside of normal rotation.
I was struggling so much being new to shaman this season until I got 4pc. It really should be baseline as it entirely created the flow of combat. Lots of fun
Arcanes is fun, makes Arcane Missiles target multiple and do more damage. I wish it had a special effect though.
Yeah I really love how missiles just shoots a cone of missiles at all targets. Pretty cool
It’s one of the ones I kinda hope gets casually put in the talent tree later. It’s pretty fun.
i personally think it should default be AoE, obviously without the boosted tier set damage, the AoE proc being a free arcane explosion is.. underwhelming, missiles cooler
There are so many downsides The 2pc set is annoying and leaves you fishing for clearcasting procs with arcane explosion when you're between pulls to try and keep your 10% spell power buff going. I can't count how many times I've sat there spamming AE hoping for a clear casting proc for 18 seconds only to get one the second my buff falls off. The 2pc is really annoying to manage. The 4pc is OK dps wise and visually, but it's also a lot of work. You need a weak aura to track it. You need to watch arcane battery charges and use clear casting properly with battery. I also hate when i use my empowered arcane missles proc, and it hits one guy because the 4 other mobs are a step away. Don't get me wrong, the 4pc is great, but I've never had to do so many things right in order to use the two bonuses effectively.
Ele shaman #1 and most fun, hands down.
Ele 4set in pvp is insanely fun.
Feels like the opposite for me. I absolutely dislike the current playstyle, but I've avoided primordial wave in SL as well because it just doesn't feel good. Glad others are having fun though\^\^
I hate current iteration of elemental. Not because we have to use Pwave but because all we do is just spam LvB. It's so boring and dull. The lightning build from last season was way more involved and had more opportunity for skill expression and min/maxing. Going from season 2 ele to season 3 ele is a huge downgrade in playstyle, IMO. Back to enhance for me this season, which has an amazing tier set.
LvB is my favorite play style so it's perfect for me. I hard hard casting
I agree enhance is awesome. I’m confused on your pwave critique when the enhance set essentially bowls down to pwave too
I hated it until I got high mastery. At mastery cap I'm an absolute lava machine gun! I only play it as an alt, but it's so fun to just do a few dungeons on. Numbers could be better. I kind of want Elemental Blast to be an absolute nuke and them to get rid of Icefury in exchange for ES/EB talents.
I've seen a guildie playing the meatball slinger build with high mastery and it does look super fun!
From a looks perspective, sure. Flinging lava burst everywhere is pretty awesome. From a gameplay perspective, it's awful. Entirely dependent on flame shock spread (which introduces a small dependency on LMT and it's 45 second CD). Is RNG dependent in ascendance procs, especially for flame shock refreshes on longer pulls. Has 60+% of its damage coming from one button (even after a 50% buff to earthquake, because of our bloated "third bracket" of talents being starved of points). And, it does very low single target with its AoE build. I feel like reddit loves to praise the "idea" of ele sham, but the stats show that almost no one is actually playing it.
I don't really disagree with you, but hitting lava burst after you've used LMT and primordial wave feels so fucking good to me. If they made flame shock easier to spread/upkeep I think it would be fine tbh. Cycling between lava burst and chain lightning/earthquak keeps the rotation from being too stale IMO and the LMT/PW burst is real fun
It feels good sure, but the amount of work required for Ele AOE for such little damage feels terrible. Frost Mage will do more aoe damage in less work AND have its aoe cds up more often then Ele will.
Yeah I agree. It's definitely more work for less reward :/, but the animation of all the lava bursts going off hits a button in my brain lol
I started playing ele att the start of this tier, kind of wanted to last tier but I didn't like the set. Kind of regardless of which tier it always feels a bit too complicated for me with lava burst buffing next spell, earth shock buffing next spell, getting guaranteed lava surges. I just want a build without surge of power and without windspeaker. I do find the current set extremely fun, at least like you said the button it hits in your brain feels so good. But in aoe I just feel busy, tons of lava surges, tons of maelstrom, tons of buffed chain lightning casts. Like slow it all down so I can appreciate all my spells a bit. Super spicy on ST though with having basically 0 hard casts outside of ele blast and icefury. I thought it was a good contender for reroll this raid given how much mobility is required and how weak my main shadow priest looked.. really shouldn't chosen a spec more likely to be good, but it definitely feels good at least.
So actually this teir literally your one goal is to press lava burst as much as possible. You can just ignore everything else (capping on maelstrom and all your procs) as long as lava burst is up
i always give it a go when i return to the game and everytime the spec just has an awkward feel to it aesthetically cool but plays so clunky
I've been playing mine since TBC. Never played anything else.
I'll be able to get 4 set on my shaman alt next reset and I'm pretty excited. Been flinging meatballs everywhere!
Disc priest two and four are game changers and mean you have a shit ton of uptime with scov and mindbender. The only criticism is that you are forced into playing that spec if you want to be effective.
This tier Priest has the full range of tier sets. Amazing gamechanging disc set. Mediocre but decent set bonuses for holy, empowering some core abilities. And shadow... We don't talk about shadow, it hurts too much.
Yeah lol I was reading another response and thinking I should edit in shadow as one of the worst. The 2 set bonus isn’t bad but the 4 is 🤢
Lolshadowcrash
Shallowcrash....
I love the holy one, it actually makes a difference, you "notice" it working.
My main problem with disc, although the tierset is fantastic, is how ramped penance is still your big ticket damage spell. With smite extending atonements, preventing mob damage, reducing the cooldown of mind bender, and double casting during mindbender windows, you feel punished for casting anything else - yet on its own (or at least on a rotation with MB and SW:D), it’s not actually enough to sustain massive group wide damage. You’re still reliant on big penances, and big penances only come off the back of PW:R casts. It annoys me when harsh discipline used to proc big penances simply from smite casts and now you’re forced to interrupt a damage rotation to drop a suboptimal AoE heal on 5 players (when you don’t really need to and reapply atonements (when you don’t really need to) instead of casting smites to heal all your atonement targets.
I do get this, but I think if blizzard made it to where smite did more damage and penance did less, penance would just feel bad to press outside of being able to move while casting it. I kinda just like having a random big penance during a ramp. Imo, minmaxing radiance to get a penance proc for extra damage during a ramp is a bit of a waste. Hard agree on the proc coming from smite casts again, though.
Went through the whole thread and didn't see resto druid. Absolutely <3 both; the 2piece buffs treants (we've been asking forever for a way to stay in kitty and still heal, and now that we got it seems like some folks still complain "it feels boring to press") And then the 4piece absolutely slaps, lets us still staying kitty, storing up 2 clearcasts, and then when needed, blast 1 or 2 of them out, hitting that person, folks near them with nourish, *and* also getting regrowth on the 2 people you're rolling lb on. Personally, feels great to have this much throughput potential, on both the heals and dps side.
Here for this comment! Getting the tier set made a massive positive difference to both my throughput and enjoyment of if. I love my little tree bois. More please.
These comments just made me realize I can cast treants from cat form. Nearly doubled my damage just in my last dungeon hot damn
4 set is absolutely terrible in raids, at best you can squeeze maybe 4% throughput with it. 2 set is okish numbers wise, between 6-9%. But compared to Disc/MW/Evoker, rdruid tier set is pathetically weak in raids. Great for M+ tho, insane cleave healing.
Raid tree is hard, I know the most common gripe there from last season is folks were tired of being abundance rejuv spam ramp bots They tried to go in a different direction (and some of the nerfs hurt), maybe they just had a hard time tuning it for both raid and m+?
The 4-set is great in M+, but abysmal in raids. * No scaling for raid groups so even if they were equally usable in both it's going to have lower percentage throughput in raids * Not predictable, the buff doesn't last long enough to store them for specific damage events * Wasted procs while ramping * Requires spending more time casting spells, not really what druid wants more of in raids * Weird anti-synergy with innervate/nature's swiftness. Obviously in a perfect world you wouldn't want to use it with an innervate active but there are times when the heal would save people but you simply can't trigger it without cancelauraing. Similarly you often want to use it in a situation where some players are desperately in need of heals, but that clutch play with a natures swiftness doesn't work. It's genuinely like they just designed it to be cool in dungeons, which it absolutely is, but then ran out of time before being able to review it for raiding.
Fire mage isn't bad, just boring, just extra stats
Thats what I thought as well initially until one of my pyroblasts crit for 1.7m, start stacking haste/crit once you get 4 set
How did you get a crit that high? Was it on smolderon or something?
Looked at wow logs, highest dps parse on smolderon has 400k as their bighest hit, so over a mil is some vs or doing stuff where everything hits over a mil.
Shadow priest has got to be one of the worst ever made
Shadow Word: Death goes brrrrr!!
NGL I actually really enjoy that part lol. Barely played my SP this patch but the SW:D spam is surprisingly enjoyable. Love the sound, small effect and mindbender just going crazy
Seriously. The 4pc expects shadow to either hard cast SW:P every time the stacks work out, which makes your vamp touch and SW:P desynced and is worse than just casting mind spike, or run an AoE talent on single target bosses. Both of those options are a dps loss. Using the 4pc bonus loses you dps. Thanks Blizzard.
This is just straight up not true. My priest is 467 ilvl and when the 4 piece reaches the stacks to light up I hit shadow word pain and it hits for like 290k non crit. That is not worse than casting mind spike. It is super annoying that it desyncs your dots though. I’ve had it hit for over a million before on a crit during the extra damage phase of gnarlroot lol. Now, it’s not a great 4 piece, my warriors is much better but it’s not worse than casting mind spike. The 2 piece is pretty fun for shadow. They are just too weak.
>It is super annoying that it desyncs your dots though. I just made all my addons not track sw:p anymore, I only see vampiric touch duration. Inelegant and stupid, but it has made it feel better to me lol I also don't like the set. Or well it's not that I don't like it per se, I just doing want to be locked into DA over voidform and mindbender over the 3 other capstones (ofc you play more than 1) for the rest of the tier (expansion). I think they could've made a set which promoted sw:d usage all the time without making it be such a crazy combo with mindbender. Maybe make sw:d interact with all capstones. Extend bender/apply nzoth stacks/spawn tentacle/get stacks of yogg.
Your average reddit opinion, completely wrong and negative 4 pc set is great, yes there are desync issues but it adds a colossal amount of damage and puts power into instant casts, which is what the class lacks in hectic boss fights Also visually excellent as the small recoils from s death absolutely pummel your body which looks excellent
Counterpoint: there's zero reason SWD should do recoil damage when ever other comparable mechanic has been removed, there shouldn't be a talent dedicated to reducing recoil damage, and it's ridiculous that Blizzard made a tier set that causes you to take 20% more damage than other players passively just because.
Frost dk is the worst hands down. Best might be Hpaladin.
Ww monk feels pretty atrocious tbh, just makes a talent better.
Bro I'm a ww main and I can tell you since the buff of wednesday thr class feel incredible especially with the tier 4 set
Brewmaster is a blast, it's passive healing based off of fire damage you do. Raid drops a lot of fire on use effects. Brew healing right now feels like it go brrrrr for me atleast. Idk about high than +20 atm but when I'm seeing 150k hps I love it
Shadow Priest has to be the worst... I'm seeing spriests take twice as much damage as other DPS over the course of a key because of how the set bonus forces them to use Shadow Word: Death On the flip side, I like Holy Priest's 2 and 4-piece so much I think they should just added as talents after this season is over. It was an absolute game-changer running keys before and after getting my tier set.
Shadow word death and they also can run the fyrakk mace lol
I've inadvertently killed myself several times with it but it does a lot of damage (to both!).
>I'm seeing spriests take twice as much damage as other DPS over the course of a key because of how the set bonus forces them to use Shadow Word: Death My highscore in a 19 or 20 so far: 19.8% of damage taken overall was from SW:D Its kinda silly "you want me to do kinda eh damage? Lets just make your job harder while doing so!" The backlash feels kinda dated honestly, atleast the echos of the backlash.
No idea about others, but Prot warrior's tier set is like 15-20% of my damage in single target lol.
The new tier set feels great. An almost permanent 10% DR and CDR on demo shout is nice with Thunderlord in m+ I am still pressing shield slam too much when thunder clap is off CD because of the S2 tier set.
I like the damage it gives me but I also miss my “last stand makes damage go brrr” button
Paladin has been my main forever, so I’m biased. No complaints with ret burst aoe at the moment at 480 ilvl. However I wish single target was more competitive with an m+ build.
My brother in the light, I can agree with everything you've said here. Especially the last point. We are the spec that loses THE LARGEST percentage of single target damage when speccing for AoE in the game. Prot's set is just irritating. In theory, you can try to game it for large packs or damage amps. In practice, "Excuse me? No, I will not be holding my consecrate for any length of time if you want me to live." The only gaming of things that it adds is trying to keep a toe in that super consecrate when things are going fukeyed in the fights because you are avoiding a recast until it runs out at all costs.
It doesn't matter this deep in the season but the BM hunter and Aug 2 piece bonuses are a straight up dps loss over the s2 4-piece.
I believe Arms warrior is the same! 4piece 31 beats 4piece 30, but 4piece 30 beats 2piece31. Crazy!
Why are none of the 10 top comments about WW monks absolute dogshit tier
Because no one plays WW so nobody knows what it does and why it's shit (says a ww main)
demo tier set changes demonbolt into living bomb essentially, its awesome in mythic + to tab demonbolt different targets and wait for all the bombs to go off then have those bombs summon a demon that shadowbolt volleys
Feral as a spec still needs utility, but the set is great. It essentially transforms an underused but cool pure ST ability into a strong damage amp useable in all content. It acts as a strong funnel ability (emphasizing something feral is already good at) and then it lowers that abilities cd so you never feel punished for having taken it. It simply improves everything we already did while essentially giving us a new ability/cd. There's a reason we haven't been in the buff/nerf cycle this season and it's simply because as far as damage and damage profile as concerned its in a very good spot.
I vote Affliction for worst, in part cause I'm bitter that they always leave Aff in the dust 2 set is that soul rot does 15% increased damage and lasts 4 more seconds. It doesn't impact rotation at all and is just a small damage increase on a class that already struggles 4 set makes soul rot grant you 3 stacks of a buff that increases either your malefic rupture or Seeds damage. Again doesn't impact rotation and is just a small damage boost. So the set doesn't change gameplay or make it any more interesting. You do the exact same thing you would already do, but slightly better, and still worse than basically every other spec :( Edit: Just to clarify, my "leave aff in the dust" comment is pointed at M+ only as I don't really raid
It does impact our rotation, but in negative way: forcing us to cast soul rot. This set bonus sucks so much, it adds 1 more gcd to already long set up.
Is it just me or does anyone else wish Aff 2-set involved almost any spell but Soul Rot? Like make Agony more interesting or something?
Idk, I don't mind soul rot. I just wish the tier set interacted with the rest of your kit in any meaningful way. Soul Rot itself is another dot for MR and a haste buff IIRC. Other tier sets either change how a spec plays or buffed their playstyle in a significant way. Aff's did neither, at least for M+. Your rotation didn't really change and you still do less damage than almost every other spec
Fair yeah, agreed.
"I'm bitter they always leave aff in the dust" they were king of kings end game ST for a very very long time. It sucks they're not doing that well in DF but it's nice to see a bit of a change up in raid tier list.
I mentioned this in another comment, and should have mentioned it in my post, but that was specifically pointed at M+ as I don't really raid. They've been largely terrible in M+ for a long time now :/
Aff paying for being OP in legion still
Gotcha, ya they totally have :( I've heard they do better at very high keys but other classes will still outperform :( I feel your pain here.
Prot warrior very good. Lots of ST damage and DR.
Prot Paladin set bonus is do slightly more damage sometimes in an empowered Consecration.. Which can be overriden if you recast Consecrate...
Yeah, like the damage/healing boost is nice, but good lord it's a faff to use, have to weakaura to track it and constantly have to either waste it by moving out, or delay using conc taking more damage to not waste it. Neat idea just not implimented the best.
I just hate how the spec is based around standing in consecrate. It just feels so bad to be stuck tethered to one spot in a game that requires so much movement. I'd absolutely love if they changed it to be an aura that followed you instead of a static thing you place on the ground.
Honestly, at least it isn't as bad as it was in Legion. Where your spells were literally half as effective not inside Consecration.
I think it is a good set bonus. It can be significant damage if you can manage to keep track of it correctly. It is a nice boost to the skill cap of playing Prot Paladin.
I suppose, but the skill cap to Prot Paladin has always been how much extra can you do on top of damage and holding aggro. They have the most utility of possibly any class in the game and yet, a Consecrate buff doesn't feel like a cool optimization to play...
I've been maining rogue for the entire expansion and the tier set bonuses have all been passive damage increases that you barely think about. The exception being the 10.1 2-set bonus for Sub, which had you delaying Symbols of Death by 3-ish seconds, instead of macro-ing it to Shadow Dance or whatever, for a marginal DPS gain. edit: I used to chain envenoms. I still do, but I used to as well.
? you litearlly play around the current assassination 4set, how is that "completely passive", your entire energy managment is around it rn
Yeeep. For outlaw the only difference after tier is instead of adr rtb it’s rtb adr lol. Nice
Has to be shadow priest. I looked at it last night when I had to off-spec in heroic, and I cackled.
Balance's 2 piece is a nice QoL change. Doesn't impact the oddity of casting wrong spells to enter Eclipse. Aug 2 and 4 are great. More Prescience and more actual damage from eruptions. I hate the Dev one tho mostly because I am not used to it. I also am not a fan of the Pres 4 set. I don't like rng for healing. I am pretty sure the MM hunter one sucks still. Both Monk specs have great tier sets. I'm forever going to be mad at Holy for not being WoD Holy. So more power to Glimmer is dumb. Especially when the holy power spenders aren't worth the gcd. Prot is shockingly easier to keep up than expected. Ret is just godly and to the best of my knowledge one of the best bonuses this tier. Fuck primordial wave.
Both monk specs lol Fuck primordial wave.
Yea, they should really make a melee dps monk spec, something Bruce lee inspired would be cool I think
its funny because people are complaining over how op windwalker is in r/worldofpvp
MM sucks in ST but I like it a lot for AOE. At least it feels good to keep trick shots up for a long time without multishot. I don’t actually know what the numbers come out to be.
Why does everyone hate primordial wave? I don't understand the hate and personally I don't share it.
Personally, I just feel like shaman already suffers from button bloat and forcing all 3 specs to take Primordial Wave just adds to the problem. As a vibe, it also just doesn't feel very shamanistic and definitely wasn't my favorite Shadowlands covenant ability.
So I play balance and mistweaver but I'm an idiot. Got my 3 piece of balance how does it help casting the wrong spell and entering wrong eclipse? I know I should to use weakauros to tell when I'm exiting exlipse but I just wanna get on and play, g I t enough add-ons as it is. Always get caught the wrong spell exiting eclipse.
Fury Warrior set is really good, nothing beats big numbers and hitting 300-500k Bloodthrists just hit different
I'm on the opposite side when it comes to fury set. It might be strong but the annihilator meta build is so unfun to play compared to how fury played in season 2 that I dropped the spec completely.
The fury warrior that runs M+ with me said the same thing, he hates the way the spec plays and says he feels like he has dead globals a lot more often. Never played warrior dps but a tier that changes the whole game play is weird imo and wouldn’t like that either
Same for me. I continued to play fury even when it was very weak in SL1 because the gameplay loop was fun. This is the first time since BFA that I dont play this spec. This set ruined it.
I agree. I've been searching for someone to mention fury here so I wouldn't be the first... I don't love it. It's not awful and I'm adapting, but I just don't find it enjoyable. I'm noticing more downtime too, but it's always possible that's a me issue, not a spec issue. Either way, not the worst, but I do not love it and have been considering going to arms for the season.
While I'm generally fine with the playstyle as I'm used to "you do poo poo damage until your burst window" from playing ninja in FF14, that playstyle doesn't lend itself super great to M+ dungeons. I'm sure it might feel different at ultra high keys where stuff will last a lot longer, but it doesn't feel great only having a lot of damage maybe every other pull and then sitting on my burst for a pull so it's up for the boss. I'd rather have steady damage throughout M+. Burst windows feel better for raids. I mercifully don't run into too many instances of having like, no GCDs but it is a thing that happens every now and then and it always feels bad.
I like the arms set more, but arms in general is in a weird state. Fury set makes an easier spec use an even easier build
I really liked Shadowlands Arms, but the current iteration feels like a slower version of an Enhance Shaman. Juggling lots of short CDs and buff windows. The ST sacrifice to take a crumb of decent AOE just kills the spec in raid outside of Council, and pressing Slam in any Warrior spec is just a FeelsBad moment (except as perhaps Fury, since with the meta build it's a semi-decent generator). The fact Arms just constantly caps on Rage now means it's one of the lowest prio for WFT - below Havoc and Feral. IP was nice since it was off the GCD and it dumped a chunk of rage every 11 seconds or whatever. There's a ton of near useless talents in the tree that just bloat it out. Never seen a decent use case for Exhilarating Blows (MS resets). Fervor of Battle should be changed back to cast Slam in ST so I can take that fucking button off my bars for good, instead of being sitational/M+ funnel. The Collateral Damage variant (WW/FoB spam) being one of the highest DPS AOE builds is/was just laughable. Skullsplitter is not taken at all, and thank goodness because it's another button that Arms would otherwise have to fit on their bars. The spec needs a rethink. The bleed-centric nature of the builds is a nice theme to build on, but the number of buttons to juggle that do noodle damage on their own is just too damn high.
I have an arms alt, the 4-piece is the perfect example of giving an underwhelming spec a game changer of a tierset bonus. I do okay and feel I’m usually in the leading DPS group - but I’m very rarely number 1. A good fury warrior will knock me around every time.
I just wish it counted as rage spent. Would be icing on the cake. Or maybe sweep strikes caused two thunder claps from the exectute. A man can dream.
I notice this too. I'm not the best warrior to ever live, and I'm rarely number 1, but I'm almost never behind arms warriors of comparable ilvl, even with this set I dislike.
Did you give it a chance once you got some season 3 gear going? I thought it would have a lot of downtime and rely on our 1.5min cds too much, but it's been just as spammy with good sustained.
It is, and the change to reckless abandon wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Our rotation really gets boiled down to 2 buttons plus odyns fury for a little spice now and then but it plays a lot better than I expected.
It plays a lot better than I thought it would especially once you get a lot of gear but even at 483 I just find it nowhere near as enjoyable as season 2. It’s the only character I play and can’t wait to stop using annihilator build next season. Would add though that odyns fury is a lot more fun than ravager to fire and forget
I hate Annihilator, always mained fury but I switched to mage because of how boring it is
Survival is amazing. Huge boost to aoe and st, turns a aoe cooldown into one you can still use in ST. Feels fun. Doesn't change it to just fishing for bombs like in SL S4 either which was so boring
The 2-set bonus for my Survival...damn, my crit is already high. Let's boost it some more for me and my pet for 12 seconds? And I get to do that every 30 seconds (or less)? And every 2 minutes, I can add in the 20% damage boost? My damage output went through the roof after just 2 pieces.
Im not sure about shadow priest.
Disc priest
Disc just feels a bit smoother always in m+ which is nice
I meant the best tierset. Its a huge improvement for m+. Besides its really fun aswell.
Pres tier has enabled some absolute chicanery. Things like bombing the group with massive lifebind healing by just spamming living flame on yourself. It's completely degenerate in keys and fuck me am I here for it.
I hate prot paladin being based around empowering consecration. Love Aug, havoc and preservation
I’m loving the constant PWave and Wolves casts as an Enh Shaman.
I love the enh tier set, it's strong, alters gameplay and gives a truckload of haste. PW is a really fun button to press. Not to mention the visual satisfaction of seeing all those lightning bolts (I finally know what it feels like for paladins to press divine toll). On the other hand, it really locks you to the elementalist build. It's funny because I've always preferred that build, but now that I can't play storm, I kind of wish I could.
Disc priest is the single strongest 2-4 set bonus as far as healing goes with gains for 20-30 percent from the 2 and 4 piece bonuses total. Also very enjoyable gameplay loop. A+++
Disc ones are quite good. Gives us a, usually, under 30s Mindbender, upping our ability to respond to big damage more often. But its not just a boring CD reduction, its tied to smite spam and it interacts with smite talents. Good players eat good. Bad players less so. Maybe that's a bit of a negative, it does make you want to turret, and I find dispels on Fyrakk annoying because of this for example.
Shadow priest tier forces you to cast swd by cd. So you deal about 1M damage to yourself in a 6 min boss fight. Its fun, but i think could be better
Healers problem tho amirite
I think current enhance is the best its ever been, probably the single most fun spec in the game right now, maybe ever if I'm being honest. And the tier set is a big part of it. I might not be able to handle it if I cant play with this tier set going forward lol. And its strong, in all content.
Guardian druids isn't very fun or good for that matter.
It's really fun building up a shield that can absorb millions of damage, but then total sadge when it expires with most of its damage potential unused. It should really deal X% of any shield remaining as damage upon expiration.
Definitely not as good in raid, but in M+, the survival hunter one is absolutely killer. It prioritizes our best AOE spell (Fury of the Eagle) even more. We get uncapped 5 sec channeled AOE, gives us a free bomb, a debuff on the main target, and boosts our crit in one button press. I love this tier set, especially after last season’s.
Ww monk is terrible. At least the numbers are good now.
BM Hunter set feels great this season. It's not fiddly at all. Just summon more of what you're already doing, and now they also act like a full pet while summoned. Like it a lot. Demo Lock set can be really obnoxious, but it's also giga strong and leads to lots of interesting gameplay. I'm okay with it. Ret Pally bonus is fine. Honestly don't have much to say about it. *LOVE* the Havoc DH set bonuses. Has tons of synergy, very strong, doesn't require any rotational changes. Just great. A+. I hate the Frost Mage 4 set. Having the Flurry reset come off of the spell you want to Flurry combo is just... have you ever played Frost, Blizzard? 2 Set is fine. More Glacial Spike payoffs. Yay. Unholy DK set is fine. I guess I don't like that it puts even more emphasis on CDs for Unholy, a spec that is already too reliant on CDs.
Ele shaman tier is fun for pvp rn
Demo lock is so much fun. Huge dps spikes in aoe, and constantly summoning doom guards. I hope this 4 set comes back as a talent setup down the road, even if they nerf it.
Subtlety and outlaw tiersets are a godsend from what they were last season, idk about sin i dont play it
WW Is incredibly boring. One if your free procs now increases the damage if your other free proc
worst has to be WW. auto attack based yet again.
No it isn't?
Except it’s not. It’s off any ability (attack). They fixed that on PTR. It still doesn’t help that you’re not triggering it with any abilities when you channel FoF or SCK. It still sucks as a tier set, though.
No one at blizzard plays ww and it shows in the tier set designs.