The three recently revealed covenant legendaries for Night Fae, Necrolord, and Venthyr all appear designed to double down on the strengths already established by covenant ability, seemingly intended for players to further specialize their characters. For Venthyr, this means an increased emphasis on the Execute phase and single target DPS, increased multitarget for Night Fae, and greater buff potential for Necrolords.
There are pros and cons to this approach - on the one hand, it allows players to specialize, but the downside is that it also makes characters which participate in a wide range of content less well rounded. This is all rather hypothetical though, because it doesn't matter if they're not tuned well enough to actually consider using them over what we already have - a Mythic+ oriented player may choose Night Fae due to the advantages of
Frappe initiale and
Réplique des anciens, but they're still going to use
Chevalière des rois tourmentés if
Fureur de la nature isn't strong enough to compete with it. Therein lies the question - how good are these legendaries, and the answer is somewhat mixed.
Night Fae -
Fureur de la natureNight Fae
Fureur de la nature is fairly strong and the rolling DoT adds up to quite a bit of extra multitarget damage, but it has a major downside in the time it takes to actually deal all of that damage. While it is a DoT instead of a ground effect, the DoT only stacks when
Réplique des anciens ground effect ticks. This means the targets must be held in a small area and survive for around 20 seconds in order to maximize the legendary's damage. Interesting, the legendary also does not benefit from class buffs such as
Frappe du colosse,
Avatar, or
Enrager. The result is that can be strong, but probably isn't practical for most content, and
Chevalière des rois tourmentés will continue to be the go-to legendary in Mythic+.
Necrolord -
GloireNecrolord
Gloire is very strong... just not for the Warrior.
Bannière du conquérant is already extremely competitive if not ahead of other covenants when regularly buffing the right two players (mostly Boomkins, Mages, and Warlocks), and buffing a third ally pushes that potential ahead even further, but it doesn't add nearly as much for the Warrior. Therefore the value of the legendary is mostly dependent on who else you can buff every 2 minutes, and how accessible that is in the new raid encounters, but on paper Glory is the most powerful legendary in the game by a significant margin. It should also be noted that the increased duration of the banner does not apply to buffed allies, only the Warrior benefits from the increased up time - pushing it out to about a 25-30 second duration for Arms & Fury. The Necrolord conduit,
Renom du vétéran also has its duration increased, although Emeni's soulbind ability
Montrer l’exemple, has its own duration and is therefore not affected.
Venthyr
Afflux vicieuxVenthyr
Afflux vicieux depends on the spec. Although Arms can spam
Blâme enough to extend
Frappe du colosse out to 100% uptime, the spec becomes very rage starved without
Ravageur backed by
Chevalière des rois tourmentés, so the hits aren't very strong and the legendary doesn't perform quite as well. For Fury however,
Afflux vicieux is fantastic, capable of extending
Témérité out to 100% uptime without
Maîtrise de la rage or
Tréfonds de la folie (allowing stronger options) during
Blâme phases. If anything, it's a little too strong, although the effect could be difficult to tune down without neutering it completely. That said, it is still mostly single target oriented, so the
Chevalière des rois tourmentés legendary and the Night Fae Covenant still pull ahead in AoE/Mythic+.
TLDR:
Afflux vicieux is downright overpowered for Fury in single target, and
Gloire is even more powerful presuming you're buffing the right people, but
Chevalière des rois tourmentés continues to pull ahead in all other situations.
The two Legendaries that these three new choices are competing against for Protection Warriors are
Représailles and
Le mur.
Représailles was newly revamped in Patch 9.0.5 to grant a serious increase in
Maîtrise du blocage uptime and Rage generation, and it has become the de facto choice for Protection Warriors in Mythic+, and a semi-competitive alternative to
Le mur in raids.
Le mur has maintained its place of prominence in Castle Nathria for the most part, due to being simpler and much more forgiving than
Représailles, even if it's somewhat weaker on paper.
Night Fae -
Fureur de la natureStarting with
Fureur de la nature, it works exactly the way it reads. It adds one (1) extra tick of
Réplique des anciens, which is a decent burst damage increase, especially in AoE. Basically, this Legendary plays further into
Réplique des anciens's strengths -- but also amplifies its weaknesses. Increasing the duration of
Réplique des anciens is great when it works as intended, such as repeatedly interrupting a group of caster mobs, but it's even more of a waste of resources when enemies move out of the circle. Additionally, the DoT effect provided by
Fureur de la nature stacks up to 6 times -- which is the total number of ticks that
Réplique des anciens will deal with the Legendary. It's a decent burst damage increase, but not a consistent Rage generation buff, and it's even more vulnerable to movement than before. This Legendary might be fun for boosting your burst damage, but otherwise, it probably won't be particularly good or desirable for Protection Warriors, and it really doesn't do anything to make Night Fae a more appealing Covenant choice, either.
Necrolord -
GloireNecrolord Warriors gain
Gloire, and despite its relatively unassuming tooltip, it has potential to be extraordinarily good. With
Concentration déroutante &
Dernier rempart active,
Maîtrise de la rage,
Voix tonitruante, and
Ravageur can all combine with
Bannière du conquérant to give a Protection Warrior an absolutely absurd burst of Rage generation. This has the possibility of making a single
Bannière du conquérant cast last for upwards of 70 seconds when all other Rage generation cooldowns are available. Without them, or while using
Renforcement, uptime in the 40-second range per cast is still realistic. This is, without question, overpowered, but don't go changing to Necrolord just yet. This is an incredibly powerful bonus that absolutely shifts the balance hard in favor of all Protection Warriors playing Necrolord with this Legendary in every situation. That's a design that probably won't make it through the PTR as it currently stands. Also, the
Bannière du conquérant uptime on your nearby allies
does not get extended by this Legendary, just your own. It's still a terrific support Legendary, since it applies
Bannière du conquérant's bonus to an additional group member. Even if the uptime extension receives a major nerf, this may still get some use from Necrolord Warriors looking to play an extreme support role, but it would come at a meaningful defensive sacrifice. As it's currently designed, it's better offensively, defensively, supportively, etcera-lly than either of the two current go-to options.
Venthyr
Afflux vicieuxAnd last, for Venthyr, we have
Afflux vicieux, which is bad. Venthyr isn't a great Protection Warrior Covenant to begin with, and this adds zero damage and barely any meaningful defensive value. Extending
Dernier rempart is a decent concept, but this Legendary has no interaction with
Renforcement, so it's purely an extension of the health increase. That's just nowhere close to being competitive with
Représailles or
Le mur, either offensively or defensively. Couple that with the defensive concerns Venthyr Warriors already face in choosing to cast
Blâme instead of
Dur au mal, and you've got yourself a basically-worthless bonus. This may be great for the DPS specs, but it's a real stinker for Protection. Sorry.
