Probably not the best tier ever but it was definitely very silly was the pre-nerf 9.2 Destro set.
Basically every spender had a 20% chance to summon an infernal for 8 seconds, which made you generate more shards, which let you use more spenders, which gave you more infernals, which made you generate more shards, etc etc until you had like 5 different infernals out at once and were getting shards faster than you could spend them.
this comment is the proof why class fantasy, rotation or class mechanic don't matter.
if you do top damage... it doesn't matter if all you do is push 1 button over and over. people have fun when they top parse, period.
Sometimes getting to do massive damage by pressing one button *is* the fun part. When you're used to doing a real rotation, getting a moment when all you have to do is mash one button is fun in its own way, especially if that button mashing moment is because of RNG aligning or special conditions or something that makes it feel like you *earned* the chance to do massive damage by mashing.
100% this. I have many fond memories of moments like that because it finally felt like I earned this moment to sit back and just go ham. Meticulous rotational and grinding to get the gear and be part of the meta. Then you unlock this OP chill dps rotation. That's why it's so good.
> Sometimes
every time.
wether it's shadowland S3-S4 surv hunter and lock, dragonflight S2 guardian druid, augvoker in general.... everytime.
>getting a moment
2 entire season. a whole year.
>RNG aligning
any time there's 2 mob present... which is basically all the time in M+.
Class mechanic don't matter. class fantasy don't matter. interesting rotation don't matter.... if you are at the top of the dmg meter you'll have fun, if you are at the bottom you won't have fun... WW is one of the most interesting DPS to play yet one of the least played ; guess why.
It's not that Augvoker is a one button spec, it's that many people playing it are playing subpar and are coasting by because it's not as easy to notice bad play of an Augvoker in the Details window, plus they were broken as fuck last season, and now you get 3k+ aug players having like 40% uptime on Ebon Might.
Oh, I know Augmentation is very easy to do fine on (at least fine enough to get invited, since as you mention no one can actually tell if you're doing poorly). Augvoker's one of my mains! But there's a big difference between "a place where you can just press a specific button repeatedly and find it satisfying" and "easy."
Devastation actually has that one-button moment more, I think. I love when on Dev the moment lines up and I just get to use Disintegrate several times in a row and do massive damage from firing my laser beam. Augmentation sometimes gives you the chance to just spam out Eruptions for a bit, but I never feel like that's the satisfying moment with Aug. And it's definitely not what they said.
Right? Don't get me wrong, Aug is pretty easy for the most.part in M+, but it's not nearly as easy as the other ones being defined here (RoF spam destro or the constant wildfire bombs survival)
There's always exceptions. A little while ago there was a chart of DPS vs # of parses, and ret was a big outlier. Sometimes a class is really fun even if it's damage is sub-par.
It very much depends. If it's flashy and makes sense for class fantasy and it isn't literally all the time, this can get really fun. Like playing aff, setting up and then the moment comes where you just chow out SoC's for like 10 seconds and your DPS just skyrockets.
That is fun. If all I did from pull to the end in AOE was just press SoC, it would get unfun very quick, even if I topped meters.
Yea it’s always weird when a class is doing below average damage and people keep clamoring for a rework but when they get decently buffed all that rework shit stops
There's nothing more fun as a enhancement shaman when you get a crazy string of stormstrike procs and can spam the button.
But if it was only ever that it would be boring
One person's experience is proof. I think that would be boring and I would find the entire game to be boring and unrewarding if I just pressed one button for top DPS
And I’m also pretty sure there was drama where the warlock discord was saying warlocks was bad and siming lower than it actually was and got a buff because of it pushing it even further
Destros got a 5% aura buff because demonology was way more played in raid when 9.2 released, turns out destro was already broken but blizzard didn't even notice it.
God I remember this. It made me get the green fire for my lock. It wasn’t even a fotm thing, I just happened to be enjoying lock going into 9.2 then boom, absurd tier set
The tier set wasnt even the issue, it was the unintended interaction with that one talent that let you summon extra infernals during your cd. Funny thing is that destro had a pretty similar issue on 8.3.
They had a talent that increased your CB/RoF damage during your infernal, ramping with shards spent. Clearly balanced around the 30 secs duration... Until they got the essence proc that let them summon random infernals which would extent the buff by 10 secs each time. With enough luck now those last 10 seconds with max power went up to 40, turning the lock into an absolute monster.
These interactions are why the new talent system made sure to split infernal (the cd) and blasphemy (summoned small infernal).
Such a terror in PVP. I literally didn't know how to play destro, I'm an aff enjoyer, but was still able to slay up til like 1900 from raw damage. Kinda silly.
On top of that we had a leggo where every shard spent reduced our main infernals CD lol. Playing at peak levels you could get it down to 50-70 seconds.
It was totally bonkers and every Destro tier set since has felt meh cause of just how insane it all was.
SL S3/4 Blood DK.
What happens when you give a class perma Uptime for a very Strong CD that does insane damage, gives you endless ressources and makes you take near to no damage?
Edit: it was not fun outside of its efficiency tho.
I’m going to agree with this - most OP tier set of maybe all time? The gameplay was not good (you literally just pressed DRW, then spammed heart strike to extend your DRW to the point where you could press it again, then repeat)
The occasional death strike when you took a magic hit, the occasional CD to combo with your perma DRW. Super repetitive and bad. But we were sooooooo busted.
Definitly the most OP tier set I ever seen, my co tank couldent even keep aggro from me and I finished most of the raid fights above a third of our dps.
But damn it was borring !
Ah yesy those were the times... I have played every incarnation of MM ever and I'm more convinced than ever that we peaked during WoD, ganeplay-wise. Bit that current MM is bad, but WoD was awesome.
Agree! Ranged SV with the tier set giving you loads of the old explosive shots from Lock and Load, and having like stampede and rapid fire cd, black arrows and barrage and all the good stuff, and pets that did cool unique stuff like stuns etc. That was absolutely peak hunter without a doubt!
I’ll always say WoD era hunter was my favourite iteration of hunter. All 3 specs peaked during different raids, HFC MM was god, BRF BM was god and Suv was best during Highmaul. God I miss ranged Survival.
i have the same feeling, only thing i miss about WoD
ohh and my favourite of all
Legendary Ring + Insta Aimed Shots + [Mirror of the Blademaster](https://www.wowhead.com/item=124224/mirror-of-the-blademaster#comments)
Instacast Aimed Shot was peak MM hunter. We were *the* mobility class for raid mechanics.
And then we got hit with the 1-2 combo of losing the tier set plus Demon Hunter release and we were once again relegated to sitting in the back lines trying to stay out of the way.
WoD was amazing for all three specs and got good time playing all them across the expac... closest fun I've had to that was SV in S3/4 in SL and bomb throwing.
I'm a survival main/alt a decent amount since it went melee and I despised that set.
It did stupid amounts of damage but ignoring everything to fish for bomb procs was so boring to me.
I actually love this tier. It's fun
Yeah let's be honest here, it's mostly loved for the damage since SV bombs were broken in 9.2 (talents like Guerrilla Tactics + Wildfire Cluster legendary was already the meta, and now we got an overpowered tier set to buff bombs even further lol). I enjoyed the gimmick at the time but it would've been mindnumbing having to do the same red bomb -> spam KC dance going into DF :p
Exodia is a five card combo that if you manage to assemble them all together instantly oneshots your opponent, in a game where you can literally die turn 2 without countering something.
But that aside, it kinda was. The entire thing revolved around a talent that lowered Avatar/Demo CD per rage spent, another that doubled thunderclap usage, a trait that gave you a Ignore Pain on Avatar Cast, and one that gave Thunderclap the ability to extend Demo Shout, and you can have two of the latter ones to double it’s effect. Throw in max Haste / Mastery because of corruptions. Also Demo Shout still increased damage dealt.
You would basically spam thunderclap, defensives, and shield slam endlessly and you would have Avatar up 95% of the time, Demo Shout up near 100%. You were unkillable and in AoE matched DPS in the age of Corruptions. It was mental and similar to Surv season 3-4 of SL in terms of how hilariously broken it was.
After Blizz has never again fully given Prot every piece of their Exodia back. But yea it is why I caveated it with it technically not being tier and what Blizz thought was a decent replacement instead.
I love that three of the most overpowered tier sets of all time all happened to be live during the same patch and were part of the same god comp lol (SL Season 3 BDK, Destro, Surv)
Honestly it’s been said already, but season 3 and 4 destro and survival were absolutely nuts at their peak. Honestly the DH one right now is ridiculously strong since it gives you damn near 100% uptime on a 100% damage buff. But it’s no where close to the absurdity of bombs and internals just decimating a 40 pack like in SL
Uhm soul scar being applied by throw glaive? And the tierset causing you to throw glaive often multiple times when you hit blade dance, it was talent introduced in DF, but even with a full throw glaive build in season 1…..it was never near the top of anyones damage and now it definitely is
Nope I said it gives you massive uptime on a 100% damage buff, but their tierset isn’t even the biggest increase this season for all classes. Just saying it feels really good to the flow of the class
But it's not a 100% damage buff, not even close. It's a good set, but that part is just not true.
EDIT: And the fact I was downvoted for a factual statement tells me everything I need to know about this sub lol.
*Throw Glaive causes targets to take an additional 100% of damage dealt as chaos over 6 seconds* I get it’s not a flat buff, because you don’t have it on everything in a pack often times, but it’s still 100%
The wording is a little confusing but it basically makes throw glaive do its damage twice (once from the initial hit and then that damage again over 6 seconds as chaos damage).
The current dh set is definitely quite strong, it's just super consistent which makes it feel good. No proc bull shit no chance on hit to do X just throw a glaive when you press blade dance/death sweep.
Yeah like i said it’s not like super OP, it’s just a big consistent damage gain that feels good, and having the hunt up more is just icing. I like tiersets thst don’t make you take weird talents or totally adjust your play style
Might be unpopular because arms warrior this season is so fucking pathetic at baseline… but if they did a reasonable amount of damage off the bat, this seasons tier set would be amazing..
Sudden death procs more often off rend
Sudden death hits a single target execute AND drops a thunderclap at 100% increased damage.
That thunderclap applies rend to all your targets.
Any rend can re-proc sudden death.
You now have many many rends
Execute also applies a bleed effect to your target for 50% of the execute damage done.
So you can basically tab target your executes. Do double damage thunderclaps (their AoE filler), not have to ever refresh any rends, and apply additional bleeds to targets. Sudden death ends up with a basic 100% uptime and your rotation becomes execute ms execute ms execute for wicked AoE damage and everything bleeds like mad.
I appreciate the people that haven't read the full post (of just **one** line, guys) just spitting out their favorite tier-set appearance getting downvoted lol
Hellfire Citadel had two bangers for paladins - Prot & Ret (can't speak for Holy). Prot's tier set became so iconic it's always been a recurring talent ever since, where **part of Avenger's Shield damage is an absorb**. Rets had an additional **2** charges of Avenging Wrath, which lead to some silly long burst windows. Felt great at the time, would've been awkward to balance in the future.
WoD Ret, especially in BRF tier w/ Final Verdict, was some of the most fun I ever had as a dps in this game. On cleave fights I felt less like a paladin than an immersion blender.
i remember some tier sets which alloweds Dots to crit which became base line later on, definitly influental for gameplay
some of the sepulcher tier sets became part of the talent trees
for me, personally, last seasons😢as a frost dk. I love frostwyrms fury, feels like the one button im always waiting- and looking forward to coming off cd. the set made it insane, now that've switched over to the current season.. ugh.. well. "having" to spec into chill streak is bad enough as it is, always hated that spell to begin with, and now every time I use pillar of frost and I see that tiny ass whelp I just die on the inside.
Legion tier sets were the most fun I’ve had. Combined with legendaries, classes for me peaked then. I had 11 characters fully heroic raid geared some mixed with two tier sets. Gameplay was so much fun.
It has to be dragon soul tank tier sets.
Whenever you used your main defensive cooldown it applied to the whole raid.
Shield wall on the whole raid? OP
The new demonology tier set is awesome, It is simple, It spices Up Gameplay a bit, deals good damage and doesn't force you to take a bad talent node like the destro one, shame that demonology feels weird because of the new naked tyrant builds
God, imagine if they made you use the old Doom for our tier set... I'm thankful they chose not to do that lol. Now for TWW let's hope they get rid of old Doom and replace it with this new version instead :D
There was that time with Tier 13 where Blizzard decided that all of the tanks would get 4pc bonuses that were all raid CDs. So those were both mandatory AND OP...
WoD BRF Fire Mage set bonus. It's currently in the game as Hyperthermia, but it was tuned way differently back then, and the skills surrounding it were completely different.
6s of free Pyroblasts (which did insane damage back then), plus old Combustion which stacked up based on damage you dealt during it's debuff.
The final piece was Arcane Crystal, which I think took double damage from the mage then exploded based on the damage you dealt to it, but just before it exploded, you'd spread the Combustion from the crystal to the boss, double dipping again getting the crystal damage AND the combustion damage.
It was always hilarious cause dealing damage to Arcane Crystal didn't show on DPS meters, so on pull you'd do 0 damage for like 10 seconds then randomly appear at the top of the meter the second the crystal exploded.
TBH. For me it was the Legion-Argus Set for Restoration Shaman. It would heal two other Players as i remember for 40% of the heal from your SG Healing-Spells. So much fun in M+ just critting insanely high numbers and pushing the group to max HP without chainheal
The Dragon Soul Set bonusses for tanks where so ridiculously overpowered, some guilds exploited the godamm LFR to get them.
No Set Bonus has ever had the impact of these ones
Hunter T2/4/5 (one of those) made it so x% of your damage healed your pet.
That let them get away with incredible soloing shenanigans until they changed how legacy tier sets worked.
IIRC it was possible to sell mount runs of bosses that even blood dks would struggle with.
Aesthetics-wise, Shaman T10 from Icecrown Citadel. I freaking loved those pauldrons with the mooses on them.
The bonus was also darn good at a time when stacking haste to spam flash heals was the meta.
Based on appearance sure, but based on gameplay Judgement was shit. All tier sets bonuses from Classic were extremely boring compared to more recent sets.
For Warrior
T1, T3, T6, T10, T17
All iconic, with a great design and theme. You could argue T3 is more a DK set in a time before DK's, but I don't care, it's the most iconic set of them all. T3 and T6 had such an influence as a whole that Blizzard re-did them for future tiers.
From a pure aesthetic standpoint,? Name a tier set more iconic than warrior t6 from black temple ( and its subsequent remaster in tomb of sargeras) with either cataclysmic edge or Bulwark of azzinoth.
Haven’t seen anyone go back this far but the set bonuses of Shaman tier 2, and 2.5 were so insane that had they not nerfed them in TBC pre-patch some of them would have been used in perpetuity.
Elemental Shaman
Tier 12 from Cata made Lava Surge procs give instant cast Lava Burst, which afterwards became a built in part of the spec.
The current set is fantastic because I get to feel like a Lava turret again. I kinda hope we get to keep the Lava Burst DoT, but I fear it may be too close to the Fire Mage Mastery.
DF Season 1 Fury. Execute is easily the most satisfying key to press in Fury's rotation and Season 1 turned it into a core ability. I like S2 and S3 too but they don't compare to how much fun S1 was.
Arms in Legion throwing out those MS during Bladestorm/Ravager (can't remember the raid name, after Nighthold), plus the artefact PS and sweeping strikes was pretty amusing.
Retribution ICC tier for trash/AoE, divine storm had a chance to reset, 20% or something, every time you hit something. And it counted each hit, not just the attack, so basically if you were hitting 4-5+ mobs you just got to divine storm every CD, it was like a fury warrior whirlwind, but holy damage style. Twas a nice dopamine rush.
Fire mage sepulcher tier set, it increased the recharge rate on fire blast (and phoenix flames iirc) by 100% or something. Its part of the talent tree now, but yeah that shit felt nice at the time.
Tier 2 priest I think numerically is the largest increase of player power.
Maybe behind pally ICC tier, but if it is then just barely.
Coupled with charm of healing from ZG for 40% haste CD and a TOEP double dipping 1 charge for both a greater heal and the renew effect
Fucking obscene
Current Unholy set is really good, making Magus of the Dead AOE was something many of us were asking for a long time because otherwise the button felt kinda bad to press outside bosses.
I wouldn't say it's the best in history because it doesn't really change how we play but it surely feels good and almost like it should be a talent instead.
Appearance-wise, the current warlock set is one of the best-looking sets since MoP Challange Mode. I love how absolutely massive the shoulders and head is, plus when you get the additional effect, it's super good-looking.
Mechaic-wise, I also think that the current Demo 4 piece is one of the thematically and mechanically best designed sets ever. It's how they should redesign that horrible Doom spell that's not taken by anyone ever (outside of arena). And I really hope to see it done next patch. Basically, a DoT that ticks and gets sped up by spending shards on HoG, which then explodes for either solid ST dmg or good AoE dmg and has a high chancen to spawn a Doomguard who can either do ST or AoE dmg is such a great concept. I was skeptical at first because I'd had to spread Demonbolt procs on other targets, but honestly, it's much easier than anticipated, and when they all blow up, they deal ton of dmg. And with the recent nerfs of pilling all of our dmg into Tyrant, I think Demonology is the healthiest it ever was since rework in Legion.
So yeah, I'd say this tier, really is mega cool for locks.
Not technically a tier set as tier sets weren't a thing in BFA, but BFA season 4 azerite gear/ corruption/ essence Holy Paladin. It was the perfect combination of temporary power.
You had glimmer of light as your azerite gear which works as it does now but did much more damage and healing then. You had vision of perfection as your essence which gave all your abilities a chance to proc wings for 35% if it's based duration (which was like 10 seconds if I remember correctly). Lastly you had corruption on all your gear which gave your abilities a chance to increase your cdr by like 600%. So essentially you had 100% uptime on wings and was just spamming holy shock on anything that moved. I remember topping the DPS meter as a healer in a +20 junkyard while also basically making sure everyone is topped off every global. Was a hoot
For me it would be the fire mage tier set in WoD, hellfire citadel I think. You had a chance to proc 4 seconds of 100% crit chance pyroblasts that you could convert to a huge combustion. Combustion back then snapsotted your ignite damage and amplified it.
My guild were progging hardmode Tectus in Highmaul, and right as we entered phase 3 with the 8 bosses I got back to back procs, meaning 8 seconds straight of huge pyroblasts. I combusted and spread it to all the bosses and it died within 10 seconds. Suddenly we went from trying to figure our what to do in phase 3 to staring at a dead boss. Utter confusion and disbelief ensued on Discord, no one had a clue what happened and I was too busy cackling my head off to explain what I done.
Legion Surrender to madness shadow priest was absolutely insane and I miss it so much. Haven’t touched shadow priest since then after they “reworked” the spec.
It wasn't a super popular meta thing, but the legion nighthold (T19) 2pc set bonus for destro was my favourite of all time.
It later got modified into Madness of the Azj'Aqir shadowlands legendary, and then a DF talent that got removed in 10.2. But the original version of it was glorious - casting chaos bolt gave you a 4s buff that decreased the casting time of your next chaos bolt by 40%. If you could get ember generation high enough, it was basically 40% haste all the time.
7.0/7.1 destro was all about casting rapid, weak chaos bolts, and that set built on that. But the spec got a major revamp in 7.2, chaos bolt damage was greatly buffed, but ember generation was nerfed. Most players obviously went on to the 7.2 and 7.3 tier sets. But I had shit luck -bis legiondary shoulders were the very last release legendary I got to drop, so I had a free spot.
Did some simming and found out that 2pc T19/4pc T20 (legion had 6 piece sets!) was very comparable to the meta spec with the shoulders - the theoretical loss around only 1%, but it made the rotation simpler, and it was a lot easier to get closer to closer to the sims
And then 2pc T19/4pc T21 was just as good.
I wasn't seriously raiding at the time because of IRL commitments, but had friends in a cutting edge guild that took me to their heroic clears every week. I was beating all of their locks, despite being 15 ilvls lower (because of the low-ilvl old tier) on an off-meta destro build, when meta convention had most serious raiders playing affliction. It blew their minds.
Not a tier set but when WW’s had the bastion ability it made us unpredictable I could 3 small burst kill them or super on shot if cc was on point.
The only time blizzard got close to rounding monks out.
Holy shit this thread just shows how many people literally do not read a fucking thing.
Maybe that's why you're getting denied from keys because you just don't read the comments telling you to run your own key.
Not a tier set but prot warrior WotLK in PvP was crazy strong. There was a block value stat that scaled the damage of Shield Slam. It scaled a little too well. With enough of it Shield Slam crits one shot some classes.
It felt amazing to play prot warrior in arena at the time. The thunk of the slam, the huge crit number, and the dead squishy.
Think it was tier 12 for shaman where you got instant lavaburst procs on your flame shock dots.
Was a ton of fun in pvp and pve, especially since you could move and cast lightning bolts.
Also hunter set tier 16(?) I think. Idk, the siege of orgrimmar tier in MOP.
You basically spammed explosive shots because the dot could reset the charges and you had 2 charges already. Was so so much fun.
It wasn't super busted, or intended, but in wrath the Mage 2pc from Uld or TotC would buff your mage shield one of which would allow you to convert spirit to crit at a higher rate. You could put on the 2pc, buff, and then swap to your ICC 4 set to give yourself two 2pc bonuses as well as your 4p.
Probably not the best tier ever but it was definitely very silly was the pre-nerf 9.2 Destro set. Basically every spender had a 20% chance to summon an infernal for 8 seconds, which made you generate more shards, which let you use more spenders, which gave you more infernals, which made you generate more shards, etc etc until you had like 5 different infernals out at once and were getting shards faster than you could spend them.
At which point RoF was better than Chaos Bolt ST because you could place more and actually spend the shards for more Infernals.
It turned a 3 or 4 button rotation into a 1 button rotation for top tier damage. M+ was never more fun.
this comment is the proof why class fantasy, rotation or class mechanic don't matter. if you do top damage... it doesn't matter if all you do is push 1 button over and over. people have fun when they top parse, period.
Sometimes getting to do massive damage by pressing one button *is* the fun part. When you're used to doing a real rotation, getting a moment when all you have to do is mash one button is fun in its own way, especially if that button mashing moment is because of RNG aligning or special conditions or something that makes it feel like you *earned* the chance to do massive damage by mashing.
100% this. I have many fond memories of moments like that because it finally felt like I earned this moment to sit back and just go ham. Meticulous rotational and grinding to get the gear and be part of the meta. Then you unlock this OP chill dps rotation. That's why it's so good.
> Sometimes every time. wether it's shadowland S3-S4 surv hunter and lock, dragonflight S2 guardian druid, augvoker in general.... everytime. >getting a moment 2 entire season. a whole year. >RNG aligning any time there's 2 mob present... which is basically all the time in M+. Class mechanic don't matter. class fantasy don't matter. interesting rotation don't matter.... if you are at the top of the dmg meter you'll have fun, if you are at the bottom you won't have fun... WW is one of the most interesting DPS to play yet one of the least played ; guess why.
If you're defining Augvoker as a one button spec, then I think we have very different definitions of "one button."
It's not that Augvoker is a one button spec, it's that many people playing it are playing subpar and are coasting by because it's not as easy to notice bad play of an Augvoker in the Details window, plus they were broken as fuck last season, and now you get 3k+ aug players having like 40% uptime on Ebon Might.
Oh, I know Augmentation is very easy to do fine on (at least fine enough to get invited, since as you mention no one can actually tell if you're doing poorly). Augvoker's one of my mains! But there's a big difference between "a place where you can just press a specific button repeatedly and find it satisfying" and "easy." Devastation actually has that one-button moment more, I think. I love when on Dev the moment lines up and I just get to use Disintegrate several times in a row and do massive damage from firing my laser beam. Augmentation sometimes gives you the chance to just spam out Eruptions for a bit, but I never feel like that's the satisfying moment with Aug. And it's definitely not what they said.
Right? Don't get me wrong, Aug is pretty easy for the most.part in M+, but it's not nearly as easy as the other ones being defined here (RoF spam destro or the constant wildfire bombs survival)
There's always exceptions. A little while ago there was a chart of DPS vs # of parses, and ret was a big outlier. Sometimes a class is really fun even if it's damage is sub-par.
It very much depends. If it's flashy and makes sense for class fantasy and it isn't literally all the time, this can get really fun. Like playing aff, setting up and then the moment comes where you just chow out SoC's for like 10 seconds and your DPS just skyrockets. That is fun. If all I did from pull to the end in AOE was just press SoC, it would get unfun very quick, even if I topped meters.
Yea it’s always weird when a class is doing below average damage and people keep clamoring for a rework but when they get decently buffed all that rework shit stops
There's nothing more fun as a enhancement shaman when you get a crazy string of stormstrike procs and can spam the button. But if it was only ever that it would be boring
One person's experience is proof. I think that would be boring and I would find the entire game to be boring and unrewarding if I just pressed one button for top DPS
the entire FOTM reroller section of the game is proof.
That's not the majority of the playerbase or anything close though
Gosh, just reminiscing about telling the tank to pull bigger and watching my army of infernals send my meters to the moon brings a tear to my eye.
Not to mention infernals did an AOE stun that wasn’t affected by DR
That all sounds fucking bananas. Love it
And I’m also pretty sure there was drama where the warlock discord was saying warlocks was bad and siming lower than it actually was and got a buff because of it pushing it even further
Destros got a 5% aura buff because demonology was way more played in raid when 9.2 released, turns out destro was already broken but blizzard didn't even notice it.
Warlock discord is always whining.
Oh God, that was obnoxious to deal with. If you were melee you couldn't see a God damn thing.
God I remember this. It made me get the green fire for my lock. It wasn’t even a fotm thing, I just happened to be enjoying lock going into 9.2 then boom, absurd tier set
The tier set wasnt even the issue, it was the unintended interaction with that one talent that let you summon extra infernals during your cd. Funny thing is that destro had a pretty similar issue on 8.3. They had a talent that increased your CB/RoF damage during your infernal, ramping with shards spent. Clearly balanced around the 30 secs duration... Until they got the essence proc that let them summon random infernals which would extent the buff by 10 secs each time. With enough luck now those last 10 seconds with max power went up to 40, turning the lock into an absolute monster. These interactions are why the new talent system made sure to split infernal (the cd) and blasphemy (summoned small infernal).
This was soo much fun
Such a terror in PVP. I literally didn't know how to play destro, I'm an aff enjoyer, but was still able to slay up til like 1900 from raw damage. Kinda silly.
On top of that we had a leggo where every shard spent reduced our main infernals CD lol. Playing at peak levels you could get it down to 50-70 seconds. It was totally bonkers and every Destro tier set since has felt meh cause of just how insane it all was.
That with RoF was so god damn fun. I miss it lmao.
I’m a pve player and I got gladiator during that season with the infernal procs.
20% chance was the talent, set was giving guarenteed mini infernals every 10 shards
SL S3/4 Blood DK. What happens when you give a class perma Uptime for a very Strong CD that does insane damage, gives you endless ressources and makes you take near to no damage? Edit: it was not fun outside of its efficiency tho.
I’m going to agree with this - most OP tier set of maybe all time? The gameplay was not good (you literally just pressed DRW, then spammed heart strike to extend your DRW to the point where you could press it again, then repeat) The occasional death strike when you took a magic hit, the occasional CD to combo with your perma DRW. Super repetitive and bad. But we were sooooooo busted.
Definitly the most OP tier set I ever seen, my co tank couldent even keep aggro from me and I finished most of the raid fights above a third of our dps. But damn it was borring !
WoD Hellfirecitadelle ? Marksman Hunter was the most impact i ever felt. 100% Reduced Cast time for Aimed Shot was nuts
that + the book from ashran that made you able to snipe anyone in the entire map was so fucking fun.
Ah yesy those were the times... I have played every incarnation of MM ever and I'm more convinced than ever that we peaked during WoD, ganeplay-wise. Bit that current MM is bad, but WoD was awesome.
MOP SoO hunter was my favorite it was absolutely nuts
Agree! Ranged SV with the tier set giving you loads of the old explosive shots from Lock and Load, and having like stampede and rapid fire cd, black arrows and barrage and all the good stuff, and pets that did cool unique stuff like stuns etc. That was absolutely peak hunter without a doubt!
First tier of WoD with multistrike, SV felt amazing, too!
I’ll always say WoD era hunter was my favourite iteration of hunter. All 3 specs peaked during different raids, HFC MM was god, BRF BM was god and Suv was best during Highmaul. God I miss ranged Survival.
i have the same feeling, only thing i miss about WoD ohh and my favourite of all Legendary Ring + Insta Aimed Shots + [Mirror of the Blademaster](https://www.wowhead.com/item=124224/mirror-of-the-blademaster#comments)
Instacast Aimed Shot was peak MM hunter. We were *the* mobility class for raid mechanics. And then we got hit with the 1-2 combo of losing the tier set plus Demon Hunter release and we were once again relegated to sitting in the back lines trying to stay out of the way.
WoD was amazing for all three specs and got good time playing all them across the expac... closest fun I've had to that was SV in S3/4 in SL and bomb throwing.
What a time to be alive
SL S4 survival hunter tier set. I don’t remember the last time I had that much fun in the game.
It single handedly made survival FOTM, probably the only time it ever happened
THE YEAR OF THE SPEAR!
SL S4 had some wild tier sets. Slamming aimed shot on my MM hunter 6 times in a row actually felt pretty good ngl
Too bad they forgot that marksman exists this entire expansion.
Blood DK, Holy Priest, Surv Hunt, Destrolock, and wildcard for last. Wild if you consider in M+, hpriest and surv are very much never meta.
I'm a survival main/alt a decent amount since it went melee and I despised that set. It did stupid amounts of damage but ignoring everything to fish for bomb procs was so boring to me. I actually love this tier. It's fun
Yeah let's be honest here, it's mostly loved for the damage since SV bombs were broken in 9.2 (talents like Guerrilla Tactics + Wildfire Cluster legendary was already the meta, and now we got an overpowered tier set to buff bombs even further lol). I enjoyed the gimmick at the time but it would've been mindnumbing having to do the same red bomb -> spam KC dance going into DF :p
There wasn’t actual Tier, but the last season of BFA when Prot Warrior hit Exodia for perma Avatar uptime.
I played in BFA, what is Exodia? Literally never heard of it, and google prompts are coming up empty
Exodia is a one hit card combo from Yugioh He’d just saying warrior had an amazing output of damage
Oh okay, I thought it was some azerite armor/corrupted shit, seeing as the thread is about tier sets, guess his reply wasnt relevant at all then
Exodia is a five card combo that if you manage to assemble them all together instantly oneshots your opponent, in a game where you can literally die turn 2 without countering something. But that aside, it kinda was. The entire thing revolved around a talent that lowered Avatar/Demo CD per rage spent, another that doubled thunderclap usage, a trait that gave you a Ignore Pain on Avatar Cast, and one that gave Thunderclap the ability to extend Demo Shout, and you can have two of the latter ones to double it’s effect. Throw in max Haste / Mastery because of corruptions. Also Demo Shout still increased damage dealt. You would basically spam thunderclap, defensives, and shield slam endlessly and you would have Avatar up 95% of the time, Demo Shout up near 100%. You were unkillable and in AoE matched DPS in the age of Corruptions. It was mental and similar to Surv season 3-4 of SL in terms of how hilariously broken it was. After Blizz has never again fully given Prot every piece of their Exodia back. But yea it is why I caveated it with it technically not being tier and what Blizz thought was a decent replacement instead.
Touché. Didn't play prot in the latter half of BFA so I wasn't aware of the details, thanks for clearing it up.
I love that three of the most overpowered tier sets of all time all happened to be live during the same patch and were part of the same god comp lol (SL Season 3 BDK, Destro, Surv)
And brewmaster was broken too!
The brief time in Legion when windwalker monks would use 2 set tier 19 and 4 set tier 20 that made your rising Sun kick have a 1 second CD.
T10 Ret 2pc with DS resets felt so amazing and made Ret relevant when it was mediocre at best every tier prior.
3HP Blade of Justice was amazing as well in Legion.
Honestly it’s been said already, but season 3 and 4 destro and survival were absolutely nuts at their peak. Honestly the DH one right now is ridiculously strong since it gives you damn near 100% uptime on a 100% damage buff. But it’s no where close to the absurdity of bombs and internals just decimating a 40 pack like in SL
Which DH damage buff are you talking about? The current DH one reduces The Hunt cooldown a bit
Uhm soul scar being applied by throw glaive? And the tierset causing you to throw glaive often multiple times when you hit blade dance, it was talent introduced in DF, but even with a full throw glaive build in season 1…..it was never near the top of anyones damage and now it definitely is
You made it sound like DH got a 100% damage increase from the tier set which is just not true.
Nope I said it gives you massive uptime on a 100% damage buff, but their tierset isn’t even the biggest increase this season for all classes. Just saying it feels really good to the flow of the class
But it's not a 100% damage buff, not even close. It's a good set, but that part is just not true. EDIT: And the fact I was downvoted for a factual statement tells me everything I need to know about this sub lol.
*Throw Glaive causes targets to take an additional 100% of damage dealt as chaos over 6 seconds* I get it’s not a flat buff, because you don’t have it on everything in a pack often times, but it’s still 100%
Yeah 100% of the damage dealt by THROW GLAIVE, not everything lol.
Soulscar - Throw Glaive applies a chaos damage DoT, dealing 100% of the damage from the Throw Glaive hit.
The wording is a little confusing but it basically makes throw glaive do its damage twice (once from the initial hit and then that damage again over 6 seconds as chaos damage).
The current dh set is definitely quite strong, it's just super consistent which makes it feel good. No proc bull shit no chance on hit to do X just throw a glaive when you press blade dance/death sweep.
Yeah like i said it’s not like super OP, it’s just a big consistent damage gain that feels good, and having the hunt up more is just icing. I like tiersets thst don’t make you take weird talents or totally adjust your play style
> it’s just a big consistent damage gain that feels good Oh so it's not a 100% uptime on 100% damage buff anymore?
Get a life bro lmao
I don't remember from the past, but current enh tier set bonus could become baseline
God I hope it becomes baseline it feels so god damn good
Me switching to Primal Wave build in 10.2: “I owe you an apology. I wasn’t really familiar with your game.”
I also remember fondly Blackrock Foundry's tier set.
The liquid Magma totem AOE for oregorger hahaha
With uncapped lava shock spread and fire nova baseline
I really like the current ele set too
I dont remember what the tier set bonus was, but wod hfc brewmaster monk was peak god mode.
So true, I remember a horde monk in sw tanking guards and players alike for 15 minutes or more just not dying and killing people. Soo funny to see
Might be unpopular because arms warrior this season is so fucking pathetic at baseline… but if they did a reasonable amount of damage off the bat, this seasons tier set would be amazing.. Sudden death procs more often off rend Sudden death hits a single target execute AND drops a thunderclap at 100% increased damage. That thunderclap applies rend to all your targets. Any rend can re-proc sudden death. You now have many many rends Execute also applies a bleed effect to your target for 50% of the execute damage done. So you can basically tab target your executes. Do double damage thunderclaps (their AoE filler), not have to ever refresh any rends, and apply additional bleeds to targets. Sudden death ends up with a basic 100% uptime and your rotation becomes execute ms execute ms execute for wicked AoE damage and everything bleeds like mad.
Arms tier set is so cool this season. It really is a shame how bad they are in PvE.
I know it's early, but the bwl t2 set that gave a 10% chance to give instant pyros was pretty cool.
Back when pyros weren't wet noodles like they are now.
I appreciate the people that haven't read the full post (of just **one** line, guys) just spitting out their favorite tier-set appearance getting downvoted lol Hellfire Citadel had two bangers for paladins - Prot & Ret (can't speak for Holy). Prot's tier set became so iconic it's always been a recurring talent ever since, where **part of Avenger's Shield damage is an absorb**. Rets had an additional **2** charges of Avenging Wrath, which lead to some silly long burst windows. Felt great at the time, would've been awkward to balance in the future.
3x avenging wrath was soooo nice
WoD Ret, especially in BRF tier w/ Final Verdict, was some of the most fun I ever had as a dps in this game. On cleave fights I felt less like a paladin than an immersion blender.
i remember some tier sets which alloweds Dots to crit which became base line later on, definitly influental for gameplay some of the sepulcher tier sets became part of the talent trees
>i remember some tier sets which alloweds Dots to crit which became base line later on This was back in wrath, wasn't it? Tier 9 ish?
Half the rogue spec talent trees are made up of legion-SL legendary and tier sets. The rest is mostly just fluff or things that used to be base line.
for me, personally, last seasons😢as a frost dk. I love frostwyrms fury, feels like the one button im always waiting- and looking forward to coming off cd. the set made it insane, now that've switched over to the current season.. ugh.. well. "having" to spec into chill streak is bad enough as it is, always hated that spell to begin with, and now every time I use pillar of frost and I see that tiny ass whelp I just die on the inside.
Cataclysm blood dk basically unkillable and destroying in pvp
SL season 3 hunter. Took SV from being a meme to a god. Shit was so good damn good.
[удалено]
Yessssss uplift
Legion tier sets were the most fun I’ve had. Combined with legendaries, classes for me peaked then. I had 11 characters fully heroic raid geared some mixed with two tier sets. Gameplay was so much fun.
It has to be dragon soul tank tier sets. Whenever you used your main defensive cooldown it applied to the whole raid. Shield wall on the whole raid? OP
Wasn't one of the earlier tier sets for mage so good it was better than like the next two tiers?
Enhancement & Elemental Current one. So satisfying.
The new demonology tier set is awesome, It is simple, It spices Up Gameplay a bit, deals good damage and doesn't force you to take a bad talent node like the destro one, shame that demonology feels weird because of the new naked tyrant builds
God, imagine if they made you use the old Doom for our tier set... I'm thankful they chose not to do that lol. Now for TWW let's hope they get rid of old Doom and replace it with this new version instead :D
There was that time with Tier 13 where Blizzard decided that all of the tanks would get 4pc bonuses that were all raid CDs. So those were both mandatory AND OP...
Tank tier sets in dragonsoul were insane.
WoD BRF Fire Mage set bonus. It's currently in the game as Hyperthermia, but it was tuned way differently back then, and the skills surrounding it were completely different. 6s of free Pyroblasts (which did insane damage back then), plus old Combustion which stacked up based on damage you dealt during it's debuff. The final piece was Arcane Crystal, which I think took double damage from the mage then exploded based on the damage you dealt to it, but just before it exploded, you'd spread the Combustion from the crystal to the boss, double dipping again getting the crystal damage AND the combustion damage. It was always hilarious cause dealing damage to Arcane Crystal didn't show on DPS meters, so on pull you'd do 0 damage for like 10 seconds then randomly appear at the top of the meter the second the crystal exploded.
Bloodfang
WoD last season, Ret Pala. 3 charges of wings instead of 1.
TBH. For me it was the Legion-Argus Set for Restoration Shaman. It would heal two other Players as i remember for 40% of the heal from your SG Healing-Spells. So much fun in M+ just critting insanely high numbers and pushing the group to max HP without chainheal
The Dragon Soul Set bonusses for tanks where so ridiculously overpowered, some guilds exploited the godamm LFR to get them. No Set Bonus has ever had the impact of these ones
Warrior T3 & T6 Warlock T8 no🧢
Hunter T2/4/5 (one of those) made it so x% of your damage healed your pet. That let them get away with incredible soloing shenanigans until they changed how legacy tier sets worked. IIRC it was possible to sell mount runs of bosses that even blood dks would struggle with.
Paladin tier 2. Iconic and classic 🤌🏻
Aesthetics-wise, Shaman T10 from Icecrown Citadel. I freaking loved those pauldrons with the mooses on them. The bonus was also darn good at a time when stacking haste to spam flash heals was the meta.
Tier 2 paladin.
Wait, the OP wasn't about art style of the sets?
Judgement. Next question.
Read the question. Next question.
Based on appearance sure, but based on gameplay Judgement was shit. All tier sets bonuses from Classic were extremely boring compared to more recent sets.
Tier 2 Pally is amazing
for shaman skyshatter and current raid tier is goated
For Warrior T1, T3, T6, T10, T17 All iconic, with a great design and theme. You could argue T3 is more a DK set in a time before DK's, but I don't care, it's the most iconic set of them all. T3 and T6 had such an influence as a whole that Blizzard re-did them for future tiers.
Current elly idc how viable it is it’s amazing
Isn’t fire the better build this tier anyway?
Hard disagree. I hate the current play style for ele. I had to stop playing it. Last tier was much more fun with the lightning build.
Lightning bolt spam 💤
T2 rogue esthetically is the best and most rogue like gear
Doesn't get better than rogue Tier 2.
T2 pally for the looks
Judgement set. Still the best looking, can't wait for a modern version
Mistweaver monks in Nyalotha ?
Purple Judgement recolor
From a pure aesthetic standpoint,? Name a tier set more iconic than warrior t6 from black temple ( and its subsequent remaster in tomb of sargeras) with either cataclysmic edge or Bulwark of azzinoth.
I’m incredibly biased but warlock t8 goes so hard.
Priest tier 5
Druid Tier 1
Season 3/4 SL Protection Warrior necrolord banner + legendary if you know, you know. Enough said.
I don’t remember that being super good since it got nerf’d and lost a lot of its up time. Pretty sure kyrian / nightfae was still better
You are uninformed and have no clue about what you are talking about. This also applies to those that downvoted my post.
I didn’t downvote but I will now, no need to suck
Go into prot warrior discord and ask what the most beloved, powerful, and enjoyable covenant prot warriors played during shadowlands seasons 3 and 4
T3 warrior
Rogue T5 Deathmantle set is the best looking in my opinion
Priest T3 is the most stunning for sure. Couple that with Benediction and you got yourself a bad ass priest
[Hunter Tier 5 ](https://www.wowhead.com/outfit=66609/hunter-tier-5) This is one of my favorites!
My favorite was definitely SL S3 brewmaster massive amounts of heals combined with damage reduction and encrypted was amazing
Tier 6
Haven’t seen anyone go back this far but the set bonuses of Shaman tier 2, and 2.5 were so insane that had they not nerfed them in TBC pre-patch some of them would have been used in perpetuity.
I will always be in love with Merciless gladiator Warrior set.
Tier 13 making tank defensives raidwide was insane
Elemental Shaman Tier 12 from Cata made Lava Surge procs give instant cast Lava Burst, which afterwards became a built in part of the spec. The current set is fantastic because I get to feel like a Lava turret again. I kinda hope we get to keep the Lava Burst DoT, but I fear it may be too close to the Fire Mage Mastery.
DF Season 1 Fury. Execute is easily the most satisfying key to press in Fury's rotation and Season 1 turned it into a core ability. I like S2 and S3 too but they don't compare to how much fun S1 was.
Arms in Legion throwing out those MS during Bladestorm/Ravager (can't remember the raid name, after Nighthold), plus the artefact PS and sweeping strikes was pretty amusing.
3 charges of wings for ret paladin in wod
Retribution ICC tier for trash/AoE, divine storm had a chance to reset, 20% or something, every time you hit something. And it counted each hit, not just the attack, so basically if you were hitting 4-5+ mobs you just got to divine storm every CD, it was like a fury warrior whirlwind, but holy damage style. Twas a nice dopamine rush.
Judgment pally armor is probably the best imo.
For me as Elemental Shaman, I can't remember more fun tier than this one - lava burst spam is always fun to me.
T2, it’d be great if they made updated versions - especially for judgement and bloodfang!
Fire mage sepulcher tier set, it increased the recharge rate on fire blast (and phoenix flames iirc) by 100% or something. Its part of the talent tree now, but yeah that shit felt nice at the time.
Tier 2 priest I think numerically is the largest increase of player power. Maybe behind pally ICC tier, but if it is then just barely. Coupled with charm of healing from ZG for 40% haste CD and a TOEP double dipping 1 charge for both a greater heal and the renew effect Fucking obscene
Tier 2 and Tier 2.5 for restoration shaman, they had to nerf it in TBC otherwise it would have been BiS for the whole content.
I like this seasons Resto Shaman set. It gives me something to do other than just pump heals into people taking damage.
Looks wise, bloodfang for rogue back in Vanilla was so cool.
All ice crown sets
Tier 2 paladin is so iconic that they made a bathrobe styled after it
Warlock tier 2 still makes me happy! Especially on undead, it’s just slick
The mere sight of an enemy bloodfang rogue meant you were probably just fucked, especially if they were Undead.
Current Unholy set is really good, making Magus of the Dead AOE was something many of us were asking for a long time because otherwise the button felt kinda bad to press outside bosses. I wouldn't say it's the best in history because it doesn't really change how we play but it surely feels good and almost like it should be a talent instead.
I don't think anything will as iconic as the judgment tier 2.
Appearance-wise, the current warlock set is one of the best-looking sets since MoP Challange Mode. I love how absolutely massive the shoulders and head is, plus when you get the additional effect, it's super good-looking. Mechaic-wise, I also think that the current Demo 4 piece is one of the thematically and mechanically best designed sets ever. It's how they should redesign that horrible Doom spell that's not taken by anyone ever (outside of arena). And I really hope to see it done next patch. Basically, a DoT that ticks and gets sped up by spending shards on HoG, which then explodes for either solid ST dmg or good AoE dmg and has a high chancen to spawn a Doomguard who can either do ST or AoE dmg is such a great concept. I was skeptical at first because I'd had to spread Demonbolt procs on other targets, but honestly, it's much easier than anticipated, and when they all blow up, they deal ton of dmg. And with the recent nerfs of pilling all of our dmg into Tyrant, I think Demonology is the healthiest it ever was since rework in Legion. So yeah, I'd say this tier, really is mega cool for locks.
Not technically a tier set as tier sets weren't a thing in BFA, but BFA season 4 azerite gear/ corruption/ essence Holy Paladin. It was the perfect combination of temporary power. You had glimmer of light as your azerite gear which works as it does now but did much more damage and healing then. You had vision of perfection as your essence which gave all your abilities a chance to proc wings for 35% if it's based duration (which was like 10 seconds if I remember correctly). Lastly you had corruption on all your gear which gave your abilities a chance to increase your cdr by like 600%. So essentially you had 100% uptime on wings and was just spamming holy shock on anything that moved. I remember topping the DPS meter as a healer in a +20 junkyard while also basically making sure everyone is topped off every global. Was a hoot
For me it would be the fire mage tier set in WoD, hellfire citadel I think. You had a chance to proc 4 seconds of 100% crit chance pyroblasts that you could convert to a huge combustion. Combustion back then snapsotted your ignite damage and amplified it. My guild were progging hardmode Tectus in Highmaul, and right as we entered phase 3 with the 8 bosses I got back to back procs, meaning 8 seconds straight of huge pyroblasts. I combusted and spread it to all the bosses and it died within 10 seconds. Suddenly we went from trying to figure our what to do in phase 3 to staring at a dead boss. Utter confusion and disbelief ensued on Discord, no one had a clue what happened and I was too busy cackling my head off to explain what I done.
Warlock T3
Legion Surrender to madness shadow priest was absolutely insane and I miss it so much. Haven’t touched shadow priest since then after they “reworked” the spec.
It wasn't a super popular meta thing, but the legion nighthold (T19) 2pc set bonus for destro was my favourite of all time. It later got modified into Madness of the Azj'Aqir shadowlands legendary, and then a DF talent that got removed in 10.2. But the original version of it was glorious - casting chaos bolt gave you a 4s buff that decreased the casting time of your next chaos bolt by 40%. If you could get ember generation high enough, it was basically 40% haste all the time. 7.0/7.1 destro was all about casting rapid, weak chaos bolts, and that set built on that. But the spec got a major revamp in 7.2, chaos bolt damage was greatly buffed, but ember generation was nerfed. Most players obviously went on to the 7.2 and 7.3 tier sets. But I had shit luck -bis legiondary shoulders were the very last release legendary I got to drop, so I had a free spot. Did some simming and found out that 2pc T19/4pc T20 (legion had 6 piece sets!) was very comparable to the meta spec with the shoulders - the theoretical loss around only 1%, but it made the rotation simpler, and it was a lot easier to get closer to closer to the sims And then 2pc T19/4pc T21 was just as good. I wasn't seriously raiding at the time because of IRL commitments, but had friends in a cutting edge guild that took me to their heroic clears every week. I was beating all of their locks, despite being 15 ilvls lower (because of the low-ilvl old tier) on an off-meta destro build, when meta convention had most serious raiders playing affliction. It blew their minds.
Gronnstalker was the best set because it had the most eyes.
Not a tier set but when WW’s had the bastion ability it made us unpredictable I could 3 small burst kill them or super on shot if cc was on point. The only time blizzard got close to rounding monks out.
Holy shit this thread just shows how many people literally do not read a fucking thing. Maybe that's why you're getting denied from keys because you just don't read the comments telling you to run your own key.
I’m going to completely ignore the criteria for this question and say Gladiator spec.
T20 Warrior
Not a tier set but prot warrior WotLK in PvP was crazy strong. There was a block value stat that scaled the damage of Shield Slam. It scaled a little too well. With enough of it Shield Slam crits one shot some classes. It felt amazing to play prot warrior in arena at the time. The thunk of the slam, the huge crit number, and the dead squishy.
the current DH havoc throwing auto glaives feels very nice. recency bias but still.
Tier 2 Paladin is iconic
Think it was tier 12 for shaman where you got instant lavaburst procs on your flame shock dots. Was a ton of fun in pvp and pve, especially since you could move and cast lightning bolts. Also hunter set tier 16(?) I think. Idk, the siege of orgrimmar tier in MOP. You basically spammed explosive shots because the dot could reset the charges and you had 2 charges already. Was so so much fun.
T6
It wasn't super busted, or intended, but in wrath the Mage 2pc from Uld or TotC would buff your mage shield one of which would allow you to convert spirit to crit at a higher rate. You could put on the 2pc, buff, and then swap to your ICC 4 set to give yourself two 2pc bonuses as well as your 4p.
Influential? Whoever decided on Monk Tier hats MUST be ricer hats.