Every piece of Crucible of Storms loot has unique equip or on-use effect

Crucible of Storms, the game’s next raid, has had its loot tables datamined by our friends at WowH]head. This raid is coming with the release of patch 8.1.5, with two encounters and three bosses.

It seems the designers have given quite a bit of thought into what kind of effects the raid’s loot could have. Since there are only three bosses, the loot needs to be interesting or this will be just like Ruby Sanctum — a raid people skipped because Icecrown Citadel loot was good enough for the first raid of Cataclysm.

Nine pieces of loot drop off each encounter. The first bosses — The Restless Cabal — have a staff and armor. The second boss — Uu’nat, Harbinger of the Void — mostly has trinkets. Half of these trinkets are on-use while the other half are equip, but all of them have special effects. I’m not fond of on-use effects, mainly because I forget to use them in the heat of battle, but they can be powerful when used regularly.

A raid of water and shadow

Perusing the list, the Cabal has the healing and water-themed effects while Uu’nat has shadow-themed effects, some of which will have interesting visual effects. I don’t think there has been a raid where every piece has some kind of ability which wasn’t a simple stat upgrade, and this alone makes the raid worth running beyond because it’s there or because it has game lore. Plus many of us complain that finding trinket upgrades is one of our frustrations — and here is a boss with five different trinkets as loot!

The premise of Crucible of Storms is an ancient evil is under the Shrine of Storms dungeon, and the story delves into the secrets of the Stormsong zone and will give the Horde a reason to go to an Alliance zone to fight this evil. Uu’nat gets his powers directly from Azshara and N’zoth, so the raid is probably a key stepping stone to patch 8.2 and our journey to Nazjatar — the land of Naga and Queen Azshara. Let’s look at some of the loot which drops.

The Restless Cabal

The first encounter is The Restless Cabal, which has two bosses: Zaxasj and Fa’thuul. Their loot table is mostly armor, plus one weapon, with a focus on absorption and healing effects, with water-themed visuals.

• Abyssal Speaker’s Gauntlets grants you a shield. While that shield is active, you gain haste.
• Belt of the Undying Pact allows you to tether yourself to five allies within 15 yards. After six seconds, you receive a portion of the healing done to your allies.
• Fathom Dredgers puts a damage absorption shield on you for every 1000 mana spent. 
• Fa’thuul’s Floodguards have a chance to send a wave crashing into your target, which deals frost damage.
• Leggings of the Aberrant Tidesage gives you a chance to conjure a storm which heals you. Overhealing causes a lightning bolt to leap onto your enemy dealing nature damage.
• Mindthief’s Eldritch Clasp restores health when you drop under 25% health, but puts a shadow damage DOT on you. 
• Pillar of the Drowned Cabal puts an oceanic ward on a target which absorbs damage and — when consumed — heals the target.
• Stormglide Sabatons which has a chance to give you a crit buff when you auto-attack. The buff drops if you take any damage.
• Zaxasj’s Deepstriders increases your speed for every 20% health you lose, stacking up to 600 speed.

Uu’nat, Harbinger of the Void

Uu’nat was once Queen Azshara’s most trusted advisor. When she struck her bargain with N’Zoth, Uu’nat was offered into N’Zoth’s service, so you’ll find that Uu’nat’s effects are shadow-based — and a lot of them do damage to you in addition to their benefits.

• Grips of Forsaken Sanity deals shadow damage to both you and your target while you’re above 90% health.
• Harbinger’s Inscrutable Will gives you a chance to launch an oblivion spear at your target dealing shadow damage. Once it hits, the spear’s shadow damage comes back at you and will do damage to you if you don’t get out of the way. This is Newton’s Third Law of Physics in Actionealth..
• Idol of Indiscriminate Consumption. This is an on-use trinket. When used, you will feed on five nearby allies or enemies to heal yourself. Any damage done to these five will heal you at a greater amount.
• Insurgent’s Scouring Waistwrap gives your closest five allies a crit buff whenever you kill an aberration.
• Legplates of Unbound Anguish when your target has less health than you, your abilities have a chance to deal damage to them and to you.
• Lurker’s Insidious Gift increases your Mastery, but does shadow damage to you.
• Malformed Herald’s Legwraps opens a void fissure beneath you increasing your haste but causing shadow damage if you leave the fissure. See Newton above.
• Trident of the Deep Oceans gives you a chance to proc a protective bubble whenever you take damage. When the bubble bursts, your primary stat is increased and this can stack three times.
• Void Stone enshrouds a friendly target in darkness acting as protective bubble from damage but also reflecting any healing done to that target. This trinket is going to require quite a bit of management to make sure you don’t kill your target by preventing healing.

These items sound very intriguing. It will be interesting to watch them in action and read the comparisons to current trinkets. Datamining shows LFR versions starting at ilevel 385. I’m currently using two trinkets with an ilevel of 390 so I’m interested in seeing how these will scale with ilevel increases. While things are still on the PTR and could change, these items show an attempt to give us more utility and more visual action. Water and shadow are an interesting combination, but all of these extra visual effects could put our graphics cards to the test.