Blizzard targets tanks and healers using DPS trinkets in The War Within
The community quickly honed in on one change in the latest War Within beta patch notes: an adjustment that will cause tanks and healers to rethink their trinket choices. With this change, tanks and healers will receive a 33% reduction in the output of trinkets designed for DPS players (i.e. trinkets that only deal damage). Under this change, a trinket that does 100 damage for a DPS player would only deal 67 damage when equipped by a tank or healer.
According to Blizzard, that will bring them closer in line to trinkets designed for those roles, but it’s a little disappointing, to say the least, for tanks and healers.
DPS trinkets and items with additional effects reduced by 33% for tank and healer specializations.
Developer’s note: Tanks and healers choosing to wear damage trinkets have often seen them contribute a disproportionate and unintended amount of their overall damage. DPS cantrips have further exacerbated this issue. This change is intended to shift power back into players’ class kits while reducing the opportunity cost of choosing specialized tank and healer trinkets over pure damage trinkets. This change is not retroactive.
This isn’t intended to be a nerf, however. WoW Developer Drahtz explains the thought process behind the controversial change, saying Blizzard feels tanks and healers are too often choosing options that do damage over trinkets that provide support or utility. This change isn’t intended to keep these roles from ever equipping a DPS trinket, but to close the gap between the trinkets designed for tanks and healers and trinkets designed for DPS.
Assuming a tank trinket has 100% of its budget allocated to damage effects, a tank could expect it to deal equivalent damage to a DPS trinket for them. DPS players would therefore deal ~33% less damage by equipping the tank trinket instead of one intended for their role.
In general, the trinket decision for tanks should feel more along the lines of “deal 100 damage and gain a defensive benefit” with an offensively-oriented tank trinket (or a more defensive option as needed), or “deal 100 damage” with a DPS trinket.
This remains a little confusing, particularly since we haven’t seen much of what trinket design will look like in The War Within. Drahtz seems to suggest tanks will always be better off with tank trinkets, which can deal damage and also provide a defensive benefit. That doesn’t always seem to be the case right now. Drahtz does give us one hard example about Fyrakk’s Tainted Rageheart, which suggests overall trinket balance will be different in The War Within.
Rageheart has a lot going on in terms of its budgeted effects, so let’s use Gift of Ursine and Branch of the Tormented Ancient for our examples since they’re primarily just dealing damage. For the sake of the example, assume all current DPS trinket damage was also reduced by 33% for tanks/healers.
A tank would find that Gift deals about as much overall damage as Branch while also offering some defensive benefit (“100 damage + healing, vs “150*0.66=100 damage”). Branch would deal 50% more damage for a DPS player (“150 damage” vs. “100 damage + healing”). A healer would see the same numbers as a tank between the two options.
Ideally we’ll get some clearer examples — like a look at actual tank, healer, and DPS trinkets in Nerub-ar Palace — as we get closer to launch.
If this change remains in place, how will this impact your play? Do you prefer the current tuning where you have the high risk, high reward option to leave defensive trinkets at home so you can end encounters faster? Should tanks and healers be more limited in their trinket options by keeping the benefit of damage output trinkets marginal at best?
I think that no matter what Blizzard decides players looking to push higher difficulties will make the swap to the highest DPS trinket once the minimum survival requirement has been met. One thing is for certain, this is only one change in a sea of many upcoming changes in The War Within.
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