Druid Season 1 Dragonflight Tier Set Bonuses - Guide Writer First Impressions

Posted 2022/10/14 at 11:46 AM by Jaydaa

Dragonflight Season 1 Tier Set bonuses

We've datamined Tier Set bonuses for all 38 specializations in the Dragonflight Season 1 Beta. Check out all the bonuses and armor models below.

Dragonflight Season 1 Tier Set Bonuses & Models for All Classes & Specializations

Our Guide Writers have provided initial first impressions on the Dragonflight Season 1 Tier Set bonuses. Check out all of our released opinion articles below.
First Impressions of the Dragonflight Season 1 Tier Set Bonuses

Death Knight Tier Set First Impressions
Demon Hunter Tier Set First Impressions
Druid Tier Set First Impressions

Evoker Tier Set First Impressions
Hunter Tier Set First Impressions
Mage Tier Set First Impressions
Monk Tier Set First Impressions

Paladin Tier Set First Impressions
Priest Tier Set First Impressions

Rogue Tier Set First Impressions
Shaman Tier Set First Impressions
Warlock Tier Set First Impressions

Warrior Tier Set First Impressions

First Impressions of the Dragonflight Season 1 Tier Set BonusesBalance Druid Tier Set First Impression

2-Set - Druid Balance Class Set 2pc - Starsurge and Starfall increase the damage of your next Wrath or Starfire by 20%, stacking up to 3 times.

4-Set - Druid Balance Class Set 4pc - When you enter , your next Starsurge or Starfall costs no Astral Power and deals 35% increased damage.

Implementation

The tier bonus implementation for the spec does not dramatically alter the playstyle of the spec, and it requires almost no intentional talent pathing to gain access to the tier set. It does add 2 procs that you need to manage that adds an extra level of management that moonkin has not seen in a while. I would say overall this tier bonus is not super polarizing. The 2-set synergizes with nodes that are early on in the tree. The 2 nodes that the 2 set synergizes most with are Umbral Embrace and Umbral Intensity. The 4 set synergizes quite well with Primordial Arcanic Pulsar, Starweaver, and Rattle the Stars. Even with the synergies it seems at the current time that the tier set itself will likely not impact your talent choices in any major capacity.

Relative Strength

The tier set recently got nerfed, but the expectation is that it is around a 7% damage gain or so from VERY VERY preliminary sims assuming you are not abusing major bugs. The tier set is not overly strong and pretty competitive with tier sets that we are accustomed to from previous expansion like Legion, WoD, and so on. Fortunately, the tier set impacts both M+ and Raid in around the same strength as it can be used to proc Starfall. This leaves no content out to dry.

Feedback
Overall, the tier bonus seems fine. I have concerns that Balance Druid's Astral Power generation may be looked at as too high due to the amount of free Astral Power generated by the 4-set itself, but the tier set is pretty solid. I do think that it is a very plain tier set, but that was something that Blizzard stated was one of the major goals for the first tier.Feral Druid Tier Set First Impression

2-Set - Druid Feral Class Set 2pc - Ferocious Bite and Rip deal 6% additional damage.

4-Set - Druid Feral Class Set 4pc - For each combo point spent, finishing moves increase your Bleed damage by 2% and increase the chance for Shred and Rake, Brutal Slash, Swipe, and Thrash to Critically Strike by 2% for 4 sec.

Feral tier set looks pretty good, I think if you’re a feral you should probably be pretty pleased with what they’ve come up with (much like the rest of the changes we've gotten this beta!). It’s important to remember that they intend tier sets to be a) much weaker and b) much less rotationally redefining than last tier’s tier sets, if you go into it expecting something similar to what we had in sepulcher you’ll be disappointed! With that in mind though the feral tier set is pretty solid, It’s fairly interesting, and reinforces similar gameplay patterns to the talents on the tree without overly defining how you should talent!

The set’s just recently gotten a fairly significant change (a buff in numbers but primarily a change in how it functions) the 4pc now has two functions, a bleed amp after spending combo points and a crit buff to generators. It’s pretty ambivalent to content type with pretty similar value in single target and AOE dungeon content. It’s hard to judge how numerically strong they intend these tier bonuses to be but this set should stand it’s own with most of what we’ve seen.

I don’t think there’s a huge amount if anything that needs changing with this tier set, I think it fits the stated goals almost perfectly, gives ample space for tuning if they suddenly decide that tier sets should be more valuable and reinforces existing gameplay interactions from the talent tree!Guardian Druid Tier Set First Impression

2-Set - Druid Guardian Class Set 2pc - Using Mangle with Gore also deals 30% of damage dealt to nearby enemies, damage reduced beyond 5 targets. It also increases your damage done and reduces damage you take by 5% for 6 sec.

4-Set - Druid Guardian Class Set 4pc - Gore has a 5% increased chance to trigger. Using Mangle with Gore heals you for 150% Attack Power over 6 sec.

The tier set for Guardian druid revolves around Mangle, which is a bit strange as our current builds in Dragonflight are either Moonfire or Thrash focused. However, the recent update to the tier set enables the set bonuses to work quite well with all builds.
The 2 set bonus now causes every Mangle affected by Gore to deal 30% of damage dealt to nearby enemies and increases your damage done and reduces damage you take by 5% for 6 seconds. This buffs both the Moonfire and Thrash builds fairly evenly and is a significant improvement over the previous iteration of this tier set.

This 2 set bonus will likely alter our playstyle slightly, now using Gore procs on Mangle in AoE situations to maintain the 2 set buff, making the rotation more interesting and reactive as Gore procs were completely ignored on AoE in the past.

The 4 set bonus adds some more synergy by increasing the chance to trigger Gore by 5% and causing every Mangle buffed by Gore to also heal you over 6 seconds.
The increased proc chance on Gore and the extra healing from Mangle being a heal over time makes it a nice additional source of incoming healing for us on both single target and AoE.

Overall, the updated tier set bonus for Guardian is quite in line with the other tank tier sets now and adds another layer of intricacy to the rotation and playstyle of the spec, it also has some additional synergy with a new dragonflight talent (Vicious Cycle), which could lead to some very significant Mangle healing.Restoration Druid Tier Set First Impression

2-Set - Druid Restoration Class Set 2pc - Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Efflorescence, and Tranquility chance to critically heal is increased by 10%.

4-Set - Druid Restoration Class Set 4pc - Efflorescence critical heals increase the healing of your next Wild Growth by 5%, stacking up to 5 times. Lifebloom critical heals reduces the cooldown of Nature's Swiftness by 2.

Resto Druids were blessed by one of the strongest healer tier sets in Sepulcher and we were well on our way to continuing our streak when the set was hit with some nerfs. Let's see how it holds up after the changes.

Our bonuses are as above with our two set being extremely good and our four set being solid.

Playstyle & Build Changes - Raid
Build
Blizzard have done a fairly good job at making these bonuses mostly build agnostic. There are a few nodes though that become even more powerful:

Soul of the Forest. The tier set increase and Soul of the Forest increase are multiplicative which means when both are active your Wild Growth is 200% as strong as usual. Huge.
Unstoppable Growth. Wild Growth is such a key part of our healing that you'll take this fairly large increase to it's healing.
Convoke the Spirits. Wild Growth cast by Convoke benefit from the healing increase but do not consume the buff. This is an incredible combo.

Playstyle
While impactful from a numbers perspective, the bonus doesn't change our playstyle that much. We already emphasized high Efflorescence uptime and this will double down on it. You'll want to aim for 100% uptime wherever practical. The Lifebloom bonus to Nature's Swiftness will mostly be wasted but it's a situationally good upside to an already strong bonus.

Power through multiplicative combos

Current Tuning - A look at some numbers
2 Set Bonus
10% crit on our key spells might not seem like a lot but it's actually a very good bonus. The spells that gain the bonus make up anywhere from 60-80% of our healing and we won't generally be gearing for that much crit. That puts the bonus at a 5-7% healing increase in most scenarios.

4 Set Bonus
Our 4pc bonus could basically be rewritten as "Increases Wild Growth healing by 25% while Efflorescence is down". We'll almost unavoidably end up with 10-15% base crit, which gives us 25% when we include our 2 set. This means that we'll have little issue getting maximum stacks for most of your casts. Let's confirm that with some numbers:

Numbers at 25% Haste, the more haste you have the less crit you need.

So how good is +25% Wild Growth healing? It's strong and you can expect 6-9% healing from it in most cases.

If we add them up we're looking at 20%+ healing across our two set bonuses. This makes it one of the strongest healing tier sets and something you're going to want to grab as soon as possible. We'll be able to give more precise numbers in the leadup to the patch.

Mythic+ Value
This is still a decent Mythic+ bonus, but it's relatively weaker than in raid. Efflo uptime is a little sketchier, and Wild Growth can only hit 5 targets instead of 6-8. You're also less able to take advantage of big Convoke healing combos since it already tends to heal a party of 5 to full. All that said, you'll still want to pick it up and it's still a very powerful increase.

Quickfire Questions

Do Convoke Wild Growth casts benefit from the buff? They benefit from the increase, but do not consume the buff.
Where does it drop? Tier pieces drop from the new raid, the Vault of the Incarnates. Specifically Gurog Grimtotem, Dathea, Sennarth, Broodkeeper Diurna and Raszageth.
I'm an M+ main or PVP player. Can I still get it? The Inspiration Catalyst will let you turn any items in tier slots into their equivalent tier pieces. This won't be available on launch but will pop up during Season 1 at some point.
Will this make crit our best stat? Our 2 set actually lowers the value of crit on gear, and while the 4 set increases it slightly it also caps out very quickly as seen above. Crit won't go up much in value as compared to now - a solid 3rd best with the potential to be 2nd depending on talent tuning.

I'm happy with our set bonuses overall. They didn't want early sets to be playstyle defining and this one is in a good place of being very noticeable while not requiring you to play much differently. It emphasizes what you should have already been doing instead. It's also in a very reasonable spot in terms of power after the large nerf it just got.

Comment by KardoxI’m excited to see how guardian plays out throughout the expansion.

Looks like resto will be fun as wellComment by cartman1982I’m excited to see how guardian plays out throughout the expansion.

Looks like resto will be fun as wellComment by WildnightshadeI always appreciate your reviews Jaydaa.

The Restoration Druid Tier set is okay imo. It would have been nice to get crit to ALL spells like Restoration Shaman Tier Set bonus as that would assist Restoration Druid in contributing more DPS in Mythic Plus.

Blizzard just nerfed -10% to ALL R. Druid spells for the begining of DF (10/11/22) and our Tier bonus gives us:
2-Set - Druid Restoration Class Set 2pc - Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Efflorescence, and Tranquility chance to critically heal is increased by 10%.
4-Set - Druid Restoration Class Set 4pc - Efflorescence critical heals increase the healing of your next Wild Growth by 5%, stacking up to 5 times. Lifebloom critical heals reduces the cooldown of Nature's Swiftness by 2.

It's like when a store marks up prices to items and tells you they are having a 50% off sale. The overall is negative to r. druid healing.

If the issue is that R.Druid as one of the "HPS Healers" is too good of an HPS Healer, then please give us some damage reduction like adding DR to Tranq instead of consistently clipping our wings.

It would be nice to see R. Druid get something besides nerfs to our HPS at the begining of each expansion. The HPS nerfs to Resto Druid have been a grisly trend (-7% to heals for SL & -10% to heals in DF so far).Comment by dabone1337Guardian look very interesting. Also liking the ideas behind the healer bonus :)Comment by SqixsI always appreciate your reviews Jaydaa.

The Restoration Druid Tier set is okay imo. It would have been nice to get crit to ALL spells like Restoration Shaman Tier Set bonus as that would assist Restoration Druid in contributing more DPS in Mythic Plus.

Blizzard just nerfed -10% to ALL R. Druid spells for the begining of DF (10/11/22) and our Tier bonus gives us:
2-Set - Druid Restoration Class Set 2pc - Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Efflorescence, and Tranquility chance to critically heal is increased by 10%.
4-Set - Druid Restoration Class Set 4pc - Efflorescence critical heals increase the healing of your next Wild Growth by 5%, stacking up to 5 times. Lifebloom critical heals reduces the cooldown of Nature's Swiftness by 2.

It's like when a store marks up prices to items and tells you they are having a 50% off sale. The overall is negative to r. druid healing.

If the issue is that R.Druid as one of the "HPS Healers" is too good of an HPS Healer, then please give us some damage reduction like adding DR to Tranq instead of consistently clipping our wings.

It would be nice to see R. Druid get something besides nerfs to our HPS at the begining of each expansion. The HPS nerfs to Resto Druid have been a grisly trend (-7% to heals for SL & -10% to heals in DF so far).Comment by SeniaaOverall, the updated tier set bonus for Guardian is quite in line with the other tank tier sets now and adds another layer of intricacy to the rotation and playstyle of the spec, it also has some additional synergy with a new dragonflight talent ( Vicious Cycle), which could lead to some very significant Mangle healing.Comment by YellowthermosThe Guardian set is way much more interactive that some of the other sets would leave you to believe they're aiming for. Both effects in the set should be baseline in the talent tree - AOE Mangle and HoT from it... Just having them in the set means it's goodbye for S2 and the Guardian talent tree is already a bit lackluster, especially so for Mangle choices.Comment by AuriI always appreciate your reviews Jaydaa.

The Restoration Druid Tier set is okay imo. It would have been nice to get crit to ALL spells like Restoration Shaman Tier Set bonus as that would assist Restoration Druid in contributing more DPS in Mythic Plus.

Blizzard just nerfed -10% to ALL R. Druid spells for the begining of DF (10/11/22) and our Tier bonus gives us:
2-Set - Druid Restoration Class Set 2pc - Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Efflorescence, and Tranquility chance to critically heal is increased by 10%.
4-Set - Druid Restoration Class Set 4pc - Efflorescence critical heals increase the healing of your next Wild Growth by 5%, stacking up to 5 times. Lifebloom critical heals reduces the cooldown of Nature's Swiftness by 2.

It's like when a store marks up prices to items and tells you they are having a 50% off sale. The overall is negative to r. druid healing.

If the issue is that R.Druid as one of the "HPS Healers" is too good of an HPS Healer, then please give us some damage reduction like adding DR to Tranq instead of consistently clipping our wings.

It would be nice to see R. Druid get something besides nerfs to our HPS at the begining of each expansion. The HPS nerfs to Resto Druid have been a grisly trend (-7% to heals for SL & -10% to heals in DF so far).Comment by islanddeacHow is feral looking for 10.0?

I haven't gotten to play it in beta but I'd love to play it again when DF goes live. At the same time, I also don't really want to be constantly trying to fit a round peg into a square hole like it often felt while playing feral in SL.Comment by 2364312Excited to play Restoration Druid in M+Comment by frnsI always appreciate your reviews Jaydaa.

The Restoration Druid Tier set is okay imo. It would have been nice to get crit to ALL spells like Restoration Shaman Tier Set bonus as that would assist Restoration Druid in contributing more DPS in Mythic Plus.

Blizzard just nerfed -10% to ALL R. Druid spells for the begining of DF (10/11/22) and our Tier bonus gives us:
2-Set - Druid Restoration Class Set 2pc - Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Efflorescence, and Tranquility chance to critically heal is increased by 10%.
4-Set - Druid Restoration Class Set 4pc - Efflorescence critical heals increase the healing of your next Wild Growth by 5%, stacking up to 5 times. Lifebloom critical heals reduces the cooldown of Nature's Swiftness by 2.

It's like when a store marks up prices to items and tells you they are having a 50% off sale. The overall is negative to r. druid healing.

If the issue is that R.Druid as one of the "HPS Healers" is too good of an HPS Healer, then please give us some damage reduction like adding DR to Tranq instead of consistently clipping our wings.

It would be nice to see R. Druid get something besides nerfs to our HPS at the begining of each expansion. The HPS nerfs to Resto Druid have been a grisly trend (-7% to heals for SL & -10% to heals in DF so far).Natural RecoveryComment by nuttswomanThe armor is okish, minus the head peace, I glyph, as well as others, moonkin for a reason, moonkin is hideous, and minus the hands, I prefer a staff that isn't huge and out of proportion to the character, as blizzard is well known for having. I don't understand the thinking around almost every class gear, not only is most of its thugly and we'll just mog over it, its so out of proportion of the character's size that it looks bulky and out of place. Why can't blizzard make gear look like it fits the class and in proportion to the character size. Just sayingComment by GiorikaResto.. Nice..