Comments

Comment by zanglang

The 'older' design of course refers to the Lightning Capacitor, which drops in Karazhan.

Comment by Mumpley

"New and improved design!"

Comment by Starfox

Beta build: 8905
Tested it at the target dummies in Dalaran.
Scales with things like Earth&Moon (+13% spelldmg debuff) and Master Shapeshifter - Moonkin (+4% spelldmg buff)
Highest hit: 1604
Highest possible with E&M: 1371 * 1.13 = 1549
Highest possible with E&M + MS: 1371 * (1 + 0.13 + 0.04) = 1604
Highest possible with E&M * MS: 1371 * (1.13 * 1.04) = 1611

Seems scales with every %-spelldmg buff/debuff
Tested for some time, never managed to get over 1604

Comment by 174122

Build: 8926

For the affliction warlocks, this does not gain charges from Pandemic "crits".

Comment by Grizlor

Equipping both this trinket and The Lightning Capacitor at the same time yields some interesting (and sometimes hilarious) results.

Each spell crit will cause you to gain a charge from each, giving you two seperate buffs. You fire a TLC bolt when that stack hits 3, and a TC charge when that stack hits 4. The funny part is though, that having the proc from one of them crit will add a charge to the other. As an elemental shaman with roughly 40% lightning bolt crit with elemental oath up, the sheer amount of lightning bolts you see yourself throwing is comical.

Another thing to note is that both trinkets proc from flametongue crits. I've had two charges of each, run up to something, stabbed it, had flametongue crit, which fires a bolt from TLC, only to have the TLC proc crit causing the TC to also fire a bolt. Good stuff.

Comment by 26906

Procs off of molten armor crits as well in addition to the proc itself critting.

Comment by 59638

Darkmoon Card: Vengence procs Thunder Charges if it crits
Fun combo if your a prot pally or prot warrior

Edit: As of patch 3.0.3

Comment by neojackal

Does not appear to work on paladin judgments or Holy Wrath by my testing. This does work on Holy Shock, Holy Wrath, and Exorcism.

Comment by 247906

so horde can't get this trinket?

Comment by 248369

I have a question, it seems to proc with hurricain and if thats the case if you use it when you have no one selected who will it target.

Also dont you think its a bit stupid when you are aoeing about 10 mobs since hurricain crits frequently :P

Comment by 41738

The tooltip is misleading. There is no cooldown on gaining charges, only gaining your first charge after firing a bolt.

Comment by 115120

I love the spellling error.

Equip: You gain an Thunder Charge each time you cause a damaging spell critical strike. When you reach 4 Thunder Charges, they will release, firing a Lightning Bolt for 1181 to 1371 damage. Thunder Charge cannot be gained more often than once every 2.5 sec.
"New and improved design!"

GG Item checkers. When one does a copy and paste, one needs to remember to reread to check for spelling corrections.

Comment by soulol

This procs off priests' Reflective Shield crits.

Comment by 207044

curious i see death coils and stuff crit from death knight curious if that would proc it cause the comment about it not be affected by excorcism and pally spells

Comment by shurs

does this work with hunter shots?

Comment by 253592

RE: Pally

Charm does proc from

Seal of corruption

Comment by 207044

it does work on death knight attacks i did a full test i did get the buff from trinket and it showed up in damage meter for other group members could not get proc from blood boil or death decay but receive procs from death coil fairly often rune tap almost never corpse explosion will not proc it but strikes blood strike death strike ice strike heart strike did not work scourge strike however was not tested so it does proc just definetely not enough to lose out on real dpser trinket 1/3 1/4 fights it would be fully charged

Comment by 6736

I saw this trinket while questing and had to try it. I was an Unholy/Blood build at the time, so I did not try Heart Strike or Howling Blast. This is what I found.

This trinket does work with:
Icy Touch, Death Coil, Blood Boil

It does not work with:
Scourge Strike, Blood Strike. Plague Strike.

Comment by Prophetik

The best part of this trinket is the buff's tooltip:

Thunder Charge
Effective at hiding the thunder.

Definitely a reference to Tobais Funke's great line in Arrested Development:

Excuse me.. do these effectively hide my thunder?

Well done, Blizz!

Comment by SykotikKytten

Equip: You gain an Thunder Charge

Does anyone else notice something vaguely wrong with this sentence?

Comment by 259792

This works with rogue poisons.

And rofl @ "an"

Comment by 79514

lol, it seems it's obvious where they gotten the text for this item (an Electrical charge ^^)

Comment by thething0123

wow they nerfed the respawn rate or something because this is taking me ages

Comment by DreamingDemon

At higher crit rates, this item is far more valuable than its iLevel would indicate. Particularly for AoE damage. My Frost mage currently has about 10% base crit (just hit level 80), but after various talents and debuffs, my typical crit rate when blizzarding mobs is in the range of 50%. With multiple crits per second, the thunder capacitor fires a LOT.

In most instances, my total damage with blizzard is close to the damage with my frostbolt (both around 45% of my total damage). And the thunder capacitor is a whopping 5% of my total damage. It procs often. Very often. Crazy often.

Even Rawr's optimizer choose the Thunder Capacitor over the Pendulum of Telluric Currents, a blue drop from Heroic Oculus. This is a nice trinket.

Comment by SentinelBorg

For enhancement shamans this is currently one of the top 5 trinkets inGame. ^^

Comment by DoomFist

LoL, the grammar mistake is caused by the fact that they "Copy & Pasted" the text from a Lightning Capacitor which makes AN Electrical Charge, not Thunder :P

Comment by 205828

if the lightning bolt fired from the 4th charge crits does it add a charge?

Comment by 160151

I used Lightning Capacitor on my Enhance Shaman while using Flametongue weapon, and found the extra damage procs from the Flametongue crits. I'm not sure if it would work on this trinket, but I'm gonna assume it does. BTW, I know that there are better trinkets, and that I'm a noob for using it, but I just thought that I would throw it out there that Flametongue works as a spell, and can benefit from trinkets like these.

Comment by 205828

also i was wondering if the bolt fired from this is affected by spell power?

Comment by 205828

because thunder clap is an ability not a spell....

Comment by Deivijs

For some reason i saw a night elf hunter with 3 charges and this equipped. I was like WTF. Since when do hunters have spells? Is arcane shot a spell then?

Comment by 250744

Just tested this as Hunter Dual Wield both with 'Fiery Enchant' seems to proc off fiery crit. not great unless you have two very quick fiery daggers. Have not tried other enchants though. So please let us know.

Comment by Shoningun

Playing a boomkin i can say this is one of the best trinkets ive come across
With roughly a 30% crit chance with talents its not possible to not have at leest a charge or two on you
Ide also like to point out that when aoe'ing you can gain all 4 charges if your aoe crits on them all for some nasty aoes

Comment by 152159

As of patch 3.0.8, you need 5 Thunder Charges instead of 4. The tooltip has yet to be changed.

Comment by 116500

This dmg does scale with bonus dmg.
I ran a test using only flameshock and LvB and got a 4200ish crit of a LB and had a min hit of 1407 and a max of 2249 during a 1 min round against a test dummy according to recount.
I will see about reproducing and recording my combat log b/c i think it even procted an overload (had back to back lightning bolts in my combat log).
If so the is possibly the coolest element shaman trinket ever.

Comment by 80680

I had skipped the quest for this update to my favorite trinket ever, the Lightning Capacitor, until I found it on Wowhead. That was shortly before 3.08. So I'm not certain if this was true before the patch or not, but my Thunder Capacitor doesn't fire when it reaches four charges. It takes a 5th crit until it fires the bolt.

That means it's on average still slightly more damage per charge than the old trinket. And while I know that either way there are better trinkets out there I still love to equip both on my shaman for that ultimate 'lightning machine gun' effect.

Comment by 106006

An ench shaman wielding a fast caster mh with fast oh enchanted FT/FT can get great value out of this trinket, even at 80, as it procs on FT crits. given windfury totem and flurry, you can end up with 2.5+ spell hits per second (mw:lb and es included), which can crit to add charges.

In mostly quest blues and a couple of epics, I was getting ~5% of my dmg from this trinket on a dummy at 80. I could not sim another trinket which added more net dps that this.

This did get an effective 25% nerf, which explains why it used to be ~10% of dmgat 80 but less well-geared. Assuming some gear upgrades reduced its relative dps contribution some, the proc nerf accounts for the rest. It also makes me wonder if it makes lightning capacitor now competitive with this in net dps contribution!

Comment by 298513

This works with Hurricane ... however, the target is random.

Comment by 139825

So Shadow Priest are getting a change in 3.1 where all our spells will be able to crit. Running some quick numbers... The lightning bolt hits for an average of 1,276 damage. With VT, SW:P, MF, and DP each ticking once/sec, you need a trivial 10% crit to average one crit every 2.5 seconds. This gives us about 127dps. Based on the theoretical dps contribution given my maxdps.com, that would make this the second best trinket for spriest once 3.1 goes live (with the caveat that there will probably be better trinkets released with 3.1 anyway). Still, that means this might actually be one of the best trinkets that you could walk into Ulduar for the first time with.

Also, a bunch of people have been claiming that the 2.5 cooldown only applies after the last charge is gained and a lightning bolt has fired, not after every single charge. In that case, this trinket will be generated upwards of 500dps for reasonably geared spriests. Just hope blizz doesn't find out about this.

Oh, and sadly I DE'd mine months ago since back then we didn't have any spells that crit that weren't on long CDs :( Thank you blizz for completely screwing me over on gear choices by completely changing how my class works.

Comment by 267839

Damn, if only this worked for all criticals..

As a Titan's Grip Fury Warrior, this would just about increase my dps by ~200.

Comment by 33064

As of 3.1, this trinket seems to be working as the tooltip reads. It now correctly fires on the 4th charge instead of the fifth, however, the 2.5 delay now unfortunately, but correctly, applies to all charges, not just the first.

Comment by Cams00

In 3.1:

This does NOT proc off of dot criticals, only MindBlast, Mindflay, Mindsear and SW:D as shadow. I am not certain about the initial DD effect from Devouring Plague, it's too hard to test that.

Overall at 75 with +1200 DMG this was about 0.9% of my DPS.
=(

I'm going to bank it in case in the future it can gain charges off of dot critical hits, but for now it's horribly useless as a shadowpriest.

Comment by 133212

This has been my favorite trinket so far in the game. I can say that while leveling, it has saved me more times then I can remember, especially for an Arcane mage who thrives on crit ratings.

I have also had some charges Arcane Explosion crits but it will only award you one charge per explosion, even if you were to crit on multiple targets. If your charge does go off while using Arcane Explosion, then it will strike the target you have selected.

Also goes nicely with Frostfire and Arcane Missiles.

Comment by 177096

Just a reminder: It only works with SPELLS. I didn't see this and now my rogue is walking around with it...

But I CAN say it works with Fiery.

Comment by 216030

Procs on Mind Flay crits with Shadowform, however others do not work, have not tried with Imp. Devouring Plague crits. Editing this post when I find out.

Comment by Morbius

Did some tests on my mage with 40% crit. using scorch and fireball and with both spells the damage it added averages out to be approximately 110 additional damage per spell cast. This is not the same as plus damage as its not being added to your spell damage it just averages out to increasing my total damage by 110 damage per spell that I cast.

That's comparable to an on use trinket that adds 660 spell damage for 20 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown. Again, its not exactly the same since this trinket does not add plus damage to your spells it just averages out to act like it does.

If your crit chance is lower then your average added damage will of course be lower but other than that this trinket is very good and I still use it at 80.

Comment by 351012

Massive failure, Blizzard. You do realize that you can't have a "new and improved design," right? There are two options if you go for this route. You either: A) Have a new design or B) have improved an older version of an item. You can't have a new AND improved design. They're contrasting ideas. Maybe this doesn't bother anyone else and I'm just OCD. If so, my bad.

Comment by 262083

This thing is freakin' epic for Ele Shamans after 75. Every lava Burst is a Crit if flame shock is on the target.

Comment by Sjant

As for shadow priests you do NOT gain charges from Mind flay, Vampiric Touch, Devouring Pain or Shadow word: pain crits.

Comment by 517683

if you get a charge every crit what would happen if you crit with http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=42843 5 crits would make a really good dps
i got each missel a maximum crit of 2k ore something like that that would make a 75 mage do 10k dps every 2.5 sec + 1.1k 11.1k dps every 2.5 sec is because i got the talent http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=54490 that would be a really nice frenzy for my mage

Comment by 456680

NO hunter abilities will proc this trinket.
=(

Comment by 216030

Being brought back in a future raid according to MMO-Champion, called the Variable Pulse Lightning Capacitor:
http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/69110/variable-pulse-lightning-capacitor/

+433 Intellect
Requires Level 80
Item Level 391
Equip:You gain an Electrical Charge each time you cause a damaging spell critical strike, granting a chance to fire a Lightning Bolt for 1111 to 1428 damage per Electrical Charge accumulated. You cannot have more than 10 Electrical Charges and cannot gain one more often than once every 2.5 sec.

Comment by George14

In the Combat Log, even though it says Thunder Charge, the damage part is called Lightning Bolt.

Example: Highwrath's Lava Burst hits Wastes Digger for 4000 damage and it's a Critical.
Lightning Bolt hits Wastes Digger for 1021 Nature. (318 Overkill) This confused me as I thought it was broken, but if you get a crit and the damage procs, it's called Lightning Bolt.

This also procs off Lightning Shield/any other damage shield effect which is an easy way to see what I mean.

Comment by radicarl

This was my favorite tricket for the longest time as a crit-dependent Fire mage. But now I'm using MoP gear, and it's time to face the fact that even with my frequent critical hits, ~1200 just isn't enough extra damage to justify its choice over my other trinkets anymore. I'm gonna keep it in my bank though.
R.I.P. old friend.

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Thunder Capacitor

Item Level 33
Binds when picked up

Trinket

Equip: You gain a Thunder Charge each time you cause a damaging spell critical strike. When you reach 4 Thunder Charges, they will release, firing a Lightning Bolt for 11 damage. Thunder Charge cannot be gained more often than once every 2.5 sec. (2.5s cooldown)
"New and improved design!"

Sell Price: 2 27

Thunder Capacitor

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