Convergence of Fate (and other trinkets)

We've been following the discussion on the recent changes to the Convergence of Fate trinkets for Retribution Paladins, as well as the surrounding discussions about trinket balance in general, and wanted to give a quick update on what we're planning:

The original value of Convergence for Ret was wildly out of line with other trinkets, largely due to its interaction with Crusade. After investigation, however, we believe that the change we made may have overshot the mark. We’ll be making some additional adjustments to Convergence of Fate, to make sure that it’s still a good trinket for Ret.

We’re also investigating Convergence’s value to other classes, particularly those with talents that replace the cooldowns that Convergence effects (such as Dark Arbiter for Unholy Death Knights). Like Crusade, those talents are made significantly more powerful when combined with Convergence of Fate, so we’ll likely need to make some adjustments when those kinds of talents are selected as well.

We are also planning to improve Nighthold trinkets which have effects that aren’t a stat buff, such as the slam on Might of Krosus. We will post more information about this as soon as we have settled on the appropriate values, and are planning to make the changes with raid resets next week.

In general, we’ve found that our tuning on trinkets which relied on a direct damage or healing effect (as opposed to their raw stats) have come up a bit short this expansion. To help address that, we’re making the following changes:

• Claw of the Crystalline Scorpid: Damage increased by 30%.
• Arcanogolem Digit: Damage increased by 30%.
• Entwined Elemental Foci: The amount of Critical Strike, Mastery, and Haste granted by this item’s proc has been increased by 5%.
• Might of Krosus: Base damage reduced by 25%, but is now always a critical strike.
  
  • The tooltip for Might of Krosus will display the amount of damage that will result from the critical hit, not the base damage.
  • Also fixed a bug where the cooldown was incorrectly being reduced if Might of Krosus damaged at least 3 targets.
• Draught of Souls: The Use effect of this trinket now respects the global cooldown.
  
  • The damage of this trinket is now reduced by 30% for Unholy Death Knights (was reduced by 40%).
  • Designer Notes: Since Draught of Souls deals Shadow Damage, it’s increased by Unholy’s Mastery, which means we needed to reduce its base damage to keep its overall value similar to other classes. It’s currently a little too low, however, so we’re increasing the damage it deals for Unholy.
• Icon of Rot: Damage increased by 40%.
• Pharamere's Forbidden Grimoire: Damage increased by 85%.
• Fury of the Burning Sky: Damage increased by 40%.
• Star Gate: Damage increased by 30%.
• Aluriel's Mirror: Healing-over-time amount increased by 140%. Detonation effect reduced by 35%.
  
  • Designer Notes: Aluriel’s Mirror’s detonation effect is strong when it activates, but hard to rely on. We’re increasing the heal-over-time effect significantly to improve the up-front value of this trinket, and reducing the detonation effect slightly to compensate.
• Perfectly Preserved Cake: Absorb amount increased by 140%.
• Etraeus' Celestial Map: The amount of Critical Strike, Mastery, and Haste granted by this item’s proc has been increased by 5%.

As for Convergence of Fates, we’re spending a little extra time to make sure our changes here are as comprehensive as possible, so we don’t have final numbers yet. However, we can share our overall plan for the changes we intend to make. We intend to reduce its base effectiveness (before talents) for Windwalkers, and increase its base effectiveness for Retribution Paladins and Frost and Unholy Death Knights. Separately, we plan to adjust its effectiveness individually for the following talents:

• Serenity (Windwalker)
• Crusade (Retribution Paladin)
• Incarnation (Feral Druid)
• Hungering Rune Weapon (Frost Death Knight)
• Dark Arbiter (Unholy Death Knight)

We’re planning to make these changes with the next weekly restarts, alongside the release of Mythic Nighthold. Overall, this should make the trinkets in Nighthold more competitive with other trinkets available elsewhere in the expansion.

23/01/2017 21:54Posted by Aerenor

Does this mean that the CoF changes will be there as well with the reset this week, since you said you wanted a little extra time to ensure they were as comprehensible as possible?

Yes. The exact numbers haven't been completely finalized yet, but the plan is to have that finished in time for weekly resets.

23/01/2017 22:35Posted by Beeble

Any plans for Nightblooming Frond? It seems to be underperforming on Live servers greatly compared to simulations.

We're looking into Nightblooming Frond a bit more.

23/01/2017 23:08Posted by Adlian

Draught of Souls unchanged for DPS warriors but reduced by 30% for UH DKS? Guess doing this damage is intended:

http://i.imgur.com/L9r13IH.jpg

The damage reduction on Draught of Souls has already been in place for Unholy DK's. Like I said, it was intended to counteract the fact that Unholy's Mastery increases Shadow damage (and prevent Draught of Souls from being far and away the most overpowered trinket available to Unholy). This hotfix isn't reducing Draught's damage, it's actually increasing it by about 17%.

That said, we agree that Draught being so strong for DPS Warriors is a problem. We're going to look into it some more.

23/01/2017 22:23Posted by Schlars

Will there be any changes to tank trinkets? They are all very poor...

Tank trinkets are on our to-do list, but not for this round of trinket tuning. We agree that they need some help.

Here's the changes we're looking to make for Convergence of Fate's interaction with some of the throughput cooldowns it affects. These numbers are compared to the trinket's current performance on live, and are not additive with each other.

Frost Death Knight

• with Empower Rune Weapon: +10% proc rate
• with Hungering Rune Weapon: -23% proc rate

Unholy Death Knight

• with Summon Gargoyle: +68% proc rate
• with Dark Arbiter: no change

Feral Druid

• with Berserk: no change
• with Incarnation: -45%
  
  • Note: Incarnation was not properly working with Convergence, which has now been fixed. The number given here is relative to Convergence's proc rate with Berserk.

Windwalker Monk

• with Storm, Earth, and Fire: -62% proc rate
• with Serenity: -75% proc rate

Retribution Paladin

• with Avenging Wrath: +250% proc rate
• with Crusade: +25% proc rate
  
  • Note: This change should bring Convergence back to roughly its original effectiveness for Ret Paladins who are not using Crusade.

Additionally, on the topic of tank trinkets, we'll be increasing Animated Exoskeleton's maximum shield amount by 33%. We're continuing to investigate tank trinkets, but that change will make it in for this week's hotfix.