You guys know that I don’t dip into the math side of things, so I won’t… but I wanted to discuss my actual thoughts on the 4pc Tier10 bonus, and why I think it’s pretty crappy.



Blanketing and T10 4pc value

Blanketing was big in Ulduar, to the point where it was labelled OP and perhaps triggered the upcoming “bug fix” of removing the last tick of R15 Rejuv, and most certainly the nerf to our Tier 8 set bonus. Too much Rejuv healing.


TOC has been almost entirely the opposite; the Twins fight makes our priest cry foul at me, but other than that, the healing is a lot more bursty and rarely requires Rejuv blanketing. This is particularly true of 10 man size raids, since we are forced to do more direct healing, and there are less people to take damage and require blanketing anyway. Perhaps there’s more Rejuving going on in 25s, but in 10s TOC, not much.


So at the moment, I’m not doing much blanketing.


The 4pc Tier10 bonus pretty much requires you to blanket the raid with Rejuvs to get the most benefit from procs. Obviously, being percentage based, the fewer Rejuvs you’re throwing around, the less benefit you’re going to get. So logically, it will be most useful on 25man blanketing fights. How odd that they would encourage us to go back to this, after nerfing us.



On fights without blanketing


On 10 man fights without a blanketing requirement, the 4pc is going to be near worthless. Why would I need a Rejuv thrown on someone – if they need a Rejuv, they probably already have one already. So the bonus will either give me:


- a Rejuv on someone who doesn’t need it, or
- a Rejuv refresh on someone who already has my Rejuv on them


On fights with blanketing


As a 10 man raider, I can keep Rejuv up on the entire raid with a few seconds to spare (say, to refresh Regrowth on a tank, or throw a spot heal). If I am blanketing, what use is another Rejuv going out? I suppose it’s a free refresh.. but the problem with that is that if I am already cycling through every person to Rejuv them, a refreshed Rejuv in the middle of the raid is going to throw my rotation out.


I will then either keep going with my cycle and overwrite the free Rejuv (to keep everyone nicely in my rotation), or I will skip that person (since they already have Rejuv) for a cycle and come back to them later. The possibility then is that their freebie Rejuv drops off while I’m coming back around to them – so they miss a tick or so until I reapply. See where I’m going with this?


So, I either overwrite the free Rejuv and waste it, or I skip that person and they possibly end up with no Rejuv for a few seconds because the free one is out of sync and dropped off.


TLDR: It will mess with my SYSTEM.



Summary


4pc bonuses are meant to be relatively impressive due to the fact that you need to collect and coordinate 4 pieces of gear.


This bonus is weak at best. Without even going into the math of what it *could* contribute to your HPS and whatnot – I see it messing with my rotation at the best of times, and hardly showing up at the worst. The value drops considerably, in my mind, for 10 man raiders, who will either be covering all 10 people with ease and have little use for an extra Rejuv, or won’t need extra Rejuvs because they have things covered anyway.


Why would we strive to collect a 4pc set if it’s going to be mediocre at best, and at worst (particularly for 10 man raiders) almost useless?


Perhaps Icecrown will be full of heavy aura damage fights, and we’ll go back to blanketing. Even so, this bonus will contribute little for me. It will either throw Rejuvs when they’re not needed, or refresh them when I would prefer that they didn’t. A resounding “meh” on this set bonus.



Post script: On the possibility of “jump” actually meaning “jump”


I’m still 99% certain that Blizzard couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to create a 4pc bonus that is not just seen as perhaps a little lacking, but something that the majority of people would actually avoid picking up at all costs.


Surely.


I have to admit though, while we (as players/bloggers) all know it is the most stupid idea ever conceived.. I have to concede that maybe, just maybe, Blizzard haven’t spotted the problem. Maybe.


It’s so blatantly obvious though – surely they realise how bad it would be for our Rejuvs to randomly drop from our intended target and pop up on someone else? Particularly if you are keeping a Rejuv on your tank, for example – it would be horrible if your Rejuv randomly moved to someone else, just as you were about to Swiftmend the tank. Or to be keeping Rejuvs on the melee, and for one of those melee to suddenly drop their Rejuv, in favour of it landing on someone’s pet cat.


That’d be really, really bad.


Yes, the wording says “jump”. If we take it literally, it would jump. Off.


But they MUST realise that would be awful. You’d have to be utterly BLIND not to realise how terrible it would be.


So surely they don’t intend it to work that way. It must be yet another ambiguous tooltip.


Surely.



I don’t think I’m being overly optimistic, just reasonable. LOGICAL. Which is why I posted to say, “Everyone calm down, it can’t POSSIBLY mean what you guys are reading it as!” To me, it was a simple case of misunderstanding the tooltip and overreacting.

But – and I don’t want to bite the hand that feeds me here – it’s Blizzard, and they have been known to make some kind dumb changes… hmm.



Hat plated and at the ready, just in case..



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