Introduction
Our 10.1 tier set is currently disappointing compared to our last few tier sets, both in impact and design. It attempts to tighten up the rotation with a minimal strength boost and cooldown reduction to
Огнебомба as well as strengthen in
Команда "Взять!" with a back-and-forth rhythm with our pet that many see as an identity to the spec's overall themes. Unfortunately, the praise stops there as the tier-set bonus is currently significantly less powerful than our 10.0 tier set and introduces several conflicts to our rotation and priority. Finally, this tier set is especially awkward when playing with both of our cooldowns
Острие копья and
Согласованная атака which is explained in further detail in the drop down below.
Numbers
Very, very early napkin math (and some shenanigans in a sim) puts the combined 10.1 2/4 piece set at
about a
~5-6.5% ST gain and about a
6.5-8% AoE gain. This is fairly weak for a set bonus and especially in contrast to our s1 set bonus which provided somewhere around
~17% ST. Its AoE performance was similar to what the expectations of the new set could achieve.
What does this mean? Well, unless the 10.0 sets are entirely disabled as legacy content,
with current tuning there might be scenarios where you wouldn't want to replace your old set for a long time, (or at all!) for some encounter types. This is surely not the intention of a shiny new tier set bonus.
Sentiment
Many in the Survival community (such as the Survival channel in the Trueshot Lodge discord!) are generally disappointed at the 10.1 tier set.
It's significantly weaker and more disruptive than our current tier set. The biggest problem of the tier set bonus is the fact that it enhances
Огнебомба—this is an incredibly problematic ability (and has been our entire history). The way
Огнебомба works in doing the same damage both single-target and AoE presents a very tough balancing act: it is either strong and desirable in single-target and thus wildly overpowered in AoE, or it is strong and balanced in AoE and extremely weak in single-target. Ever since the 50% nerf to
Партизанская тактика in the transition from Shadowlands to Dragonflight (as well as the removal of Rank 2 of
Огнебомба),
Огнебомба is just not appealing to use in single-target. This is understandable to make it more reasonable in AoE and to tune our AoE to other tools such as
Свежевание туш, but it significantly impacted the single-target.
The most immediate and perhaps most actionable solution to this could be to introduce a baseline separate scaling knob to
Огнебомба and allow it to deal increased damage to your primary target (much like
Неистовые кулаки from Windwalkers or scaling AoE from our ranged Hunter friends in
Взять их! or
Коварные выстрелы) which allows it to be tuned both in single-target and AoE separately. A second solution would be the tier-set taking
Огнебомба off of the GCD, allowing it to be used without conflicting other, more appealing abilities as well as removing any awkward interactions with cooldowns.
Further Discussion about 2/4 piece bonus
Two - Set
The two piece-set bonus offers a damage buff to an already not-so-strong ability in
Огнебомба (and presumably the
Усовершенствованная бомба variants) as well as an occasional yet predictable buff to our generator,
Команда "Взять!". It's a bit hard to get a feel for the intention of this as the first half (
10% increase to
Огнебомба) is really not great in single-target as
Огнебомба is very weak in single target. For example, the damage difference between your average
Укус мангуста and
Огнебомба is incredibly tiny, even without 10.0 tier-set and factoring in 10.1 tier set. It isn't until you introduce extra targets to cleave does
Огнебомба start to outperform
Укус мангустаThe second half of the bonus (a
50% increase in damage to your next
Команда "Взять!" after you use
Огнебомба) is equally confusing in intent as
Команда "Взять!" has 0 AoE applications and only does single-target damage. One could argue that due to the four-set and the increased frequency of bombs we would enjoy more frequently buffed
Команда "Взять!" in AoE but the fact of the matter is we have more Focus generators in AoE (
Обходной удар or even
Огнебомба through
Согласованная команда). On top of that our AoE rotation isn't nearly as Focus hungry, which means the 2-set loses a bit of the synergy it has with the 4-set. Simply put, we don't utilize
Команда "Взять!" as much in AoE.
One could think of it as a buff to both single-target and AoE, but it numerically falls very flat in both aspects, especially compared to our 10.0 tier set.
This bonus also introduces a bit of awkward conflict in our single-target cooldown enhancement:
Острие копья /
Смертельный дуплет. During this cooldown, you already want to avoid using
Огнебомба as it's a GCD spent on something other than
Укус мангуста or generating resources for
Укус мангуста, so throwing a
Огнебомба lowers the value of
Острие копья and this avoidance of
Огнебомба means you won't even be enjoying the buff to
Команда "Взять!" during your big, flashy
Острие копья moments.
Four-Set
Our new four-set is equally as unimpactful and conflicting. In a different time we would have really appreciated the extra cooldown reduction on
Огнебомба as it used to be a far more powerful ability. Unfortunately, in Dragonflight that is not the case. In single-target we avoid using
Огнебомба typically unless there's nothing else we could be doing and in AoE we use it because, well, it's one of our two rotational AoE abilities. This bonus might also end up giving us too much CDR as recently
Выпад been reworked to provide CDR to
Огнебомба as well as the litany of other cooldown reduction effects we have such as
Неистовые удары or
Согласованная команда and more uses of a weak spell will not end up feeling or performing well.
Finally, the cooldown on this can drive an awkward wedge in our other, more AoE damage focused cooldown,
Согласованная атака. This is due to the talent
Согласованная команда reducing the baseline cooldown of
Огнебомба as well as making it generate Focus. This could cause a situation during
Согласованная атака where will you be generating too much Focus to spend, sitting on too many uses of
Огнебомба as well as wasting valuable
Согласованная атака empowerments on a weak
Огнебомба, as the empowered
Убийственный выстрел hit far, far harder than an empowered
Огнебомба.
