Patch 7.2.5’s Legendary class rings give you an extra talent

Patch 7.2.5 will introduce several new Legendaries, including a set of class-specific rings — and each one gives you an extra talent specific to your class and spec. While that sounds great, you may want to wait before getting excited, because these rings aren’t perfect for everyone.

But let’s get started with the basics. These rings have a straightforward naming scheme, reflecting the class titles we’ve earned in Legion: Soul of the Highlord, Soul of the Huntermaster, Soul of the Farseer, Soul of the Archdruid, etc. If one drops for you as soon as the servers go live, it will be ilevel 940, but after the Tomb of Sargeras opens, these rings will drop at ilevel 970 — but like all Legendaries, you’ll be able to upgrade 940 drops to 970.

Rings with talent

In a mechanic first seen in Diablo 3, these rings grant one of your talents without needing to swap it for another talent on that row. The Protection Paladin ring, for example, grants Holy Shield. Blessed Hammer and Consecrated Hammer are the other talents on that row, so with the ring equipped, you could take Blessed Hammer and still get the Holy Shield effect.

However, the developers have announced that we won’t be getting the ability to equip a third Legendary. That means these rings will have to compete with all the current Legendaries, along with the other new Legendaries added in 7.2.5. This will bring the total number of Legendaries available to each spec to 15.

Here’s what each class and spec gets with their new ring:

• Death Knight
  • Blood: Foul Bulwark
  • Frost: Gathering Storm
  • Unholy: Bursting Sores
• Demon Hunter
  • Havoc: First Blood
  • Vengeance: Fallout
• Druid
  • Balance: Soul of the Forest
  • Feral: Soul of the Forest
  • Guardian: Soul of the Forest
  • Restoration: Soul of the Forest
• Hunter
  • Beast Mastery: Bestial Fury
  • Marksmanship: Lock and Load
  • Survival: Serpent Sting
• Mage
  • Arcane: Temporal Flux
  • Fire: Flame On
  • Frost: Frozen Touch
• Monk
  • Brewmaster: Mystic Vitality
  • Mistweaver: Mist Wrap
  • Windwalker: Chi Orbit
• Paladin
  • Holy: Divine Purpose
    Protection: Holy Shield
    Retribution: Divine Purpose
• Priest
  • Discipline:Twist of Fate
    Holy: Surge of Light
    Shadow: Twist of Fate
• Rogue (all specs): Vigor
• Shaman
  • Elemental: Echo of the Elements
  • Enhancement: Tempest
  • Restoration: Echo of the Elements
• Warlock
  • Affliction: Death’s Embrace
  • Demonology: Grimoire of Synergy
  • Destruction: Eradication
• Warrior
  • Arms: Deadly Calm
  • Fury: Massacre
  • Protection: Vengeance

Not every player loves these Legendaries

{PB}Protection Paladins, Feral Druids, Unholy Death Knights and Elemental Shamans see these as possible new Best in Slot (BiS) items. I know that being able to have Holy Shield mitigation and the AoE from Blessed Hammer would help on many encounters. Feral Druids have too much energy with Soul of the Forest and never enough with Savage Roar, but with the new ring Soul of the Forest could give them the energy to make Savage Roar worth taking. Unholy Death Knights love the idea of getting both Bursting Sores and Ebon Fever. Resto Shamans see the potential for burst healing with both Echo of Elements and Cloudburst Totem. The ring provides a bit more burst for Discipline Priests.

Holy Priests and Holy Paladins see their rings as more of a luxury. Other classes, like Fury Warriors and Windwalker Monks are having a hard time seeing how their rings will be desirable at all. Mages run the gamut, with BiS for Arcane to decent for Frost to plain bad for Fire.

Ring stat distribution

The current analysis of the rings uses the distribution of secondary stats from the PTR. The developers have already buffed those stats once during the PTR cycle, and we won’t know the final numbers until the patch is live later today. At one point, the rings had randomized stats but it’s not clear if that was PTR issue or working as intended.

Even after the buff, the rings appear to have fewer secondary stats than they should. This is a clear sign the developers feel having an extra talent point is a powerful effect — even when the extra talent point isn’t equally useful to all classes and specs.

The problem with RNG-driven Legendaries

These rings are a random drop like every other Legendary, but will not drop from the Dauntless tokens. The better the class ring is for your class, the more problematic this is. Some of these rings could create meaningful gaps in player power, which will segment the player base. You’ll have a group of players that can play a spec to its full ability, and another that can’t. It’s not fun or healthy for the game to have this determined by pure luck. Beast Mastery Hunters (Mantle of Command) and Havoc Demon Hunters (Anger of the Half-Giants) have already seen this kind of issue.

The developers have created the potential for this to happen to every single class, and it seems a deterministic method (quest line, reputation) to get these rings would have been better. The rings hearken back to the Violet Seals from Karazhan or the Eternal Bands like Band of the Eternal Champion from Mount Hyjal. It makes you wonder if the rings weren’t part of a quest line or a reputation at one point in the design of the patch.

As it stands, may the RNG be ever in your favor as you farm for your new Legendary.