Tier set bonuses - still a work in progress

If you know me well at all, you know I feed on the tears of those that nerd rage about things that I consider to be inconsequential, or at the very least - not worth raging about.  Near the top of this list are rants about changes on the PTR, especially in the early days of the PTR.  

All Paladin healing has been reduced by 25%, and mages will now spontaneously combust and take 3456 damage per second of being within 100yds of a Warlock - friendly or hostile.

Now if that was a real patch note, what do you think the odds of it actually going live are?  You can bet money though that a handful of folks would read that and set the proverbial forums on fire.

Love those people.

Legitimate theory-crafting

Now it's certainly permissible, and encouraged even, to put forth some solid theory-crafting and speculation towards anything you happen to see - that's the beauty of having a public space to talk.  Having said that, let's look at the two set bonuses that I really care about.

First, the Paladin.  The new 2pc bonus is similar to all the other healers - 25% reduction in mana costs to all healing spells cast for the next 15 seconds.  This is really sweet for us, because it's triggered off of Divine Favor, which increases our haste and crit - so when we really need to pump out the heals, they're cheaper.  This is a lot nicer than the Druid or Shaman bonus - they have their cost reduction tied to their mana return talent.

The 4pc bonus is a little iffy, though it will depend a lot on how the proposed changes to Holy Radiance pan out.  Right now I generally cast this on CD anyway, so 20% more healing isn't something I'll say no to.  With the new changes making this a concious choice to switch into an AoE healing mode, I think this will be even better (especially with BoL transfers and Mastery hits).

And the Warlock.  When I first looked at the Warlock bonuses, I had a small fit.  First even though the Doomgaurd is pretty powerful, it's still a 6 minute CD with the bonus.  Now if the fights are long enough that you can get two full uses out of him, well then that makes this a pretty amazing CD.  If not, it's pretty lackluster.  Sure the demon does some great DPS, and it's nice that it's a fire and forget type buff (cast the demon and keep doing your thing) - I just think it's kind of unimaginative.

The 4pc bonus is a nice DPS boost every 45 seconds, and the recent change certainly makes it better.  Soulburn an instant Soulfire, and you get a shard back with the 4pc set.  Affliction locks may want to still use Seed of Corruption if they have the talent, since this will reapply Corruption when it detonates, and gives you some AoE damage as well.  It's not an instant cast though, so casting a fire spell may actually be a DPS increase - that's something we'll have to sim out later.

In the end


I expect to see a few more changes to the set bonuses between now and when the patch goes live.  As much as I would have liked to see the patch go live without a PTR, this is one of the big reasons why they exist.  A lot of little tweaks and changes will take place between now and the go live date, though I do hope they don't draw this out too long.

If I was a betting man I'd count on at least one more round of changes to the tier bonuses, and 2 or 3 balance changes to the notes already posted.