Our 10.1 tier set is currently disappointing compared to our last few tier sets, both in impact and design. It attempts to tighten up the rotation with a minimal strength boost and cooldown reduction to Wildfire Bomb as well as strengthen in Wildfire Infusion with a back-and-forth rhythm with our pet that many see as an identity to the spec’s overall themes. Unfortunately, the praise stops there as the tier-set bonus is currently significantly less powerful than our 10.0 tier set and introduces several conflicts to our rotation and priority. Finally, this tier set is especially awkward when playing with both of our cooldowns Spearhead and Coordinated Assault which is explained in further detail in the drop down below.
Numbers
Very, very early napkin math (and some shenanigans in a sim) puts the combined 10.1 2/4 piece set at about a ~5-6.5% ST gain and about a 6.5-8% AoE gain. This is fairly weak for a set bonus and especially in contrast to our s1 set bonus which provided somewhere around ~17% ST. Its AoE performance was similar to what the expectations of the new set could achieve.
What does this mean? Well, unless the 10.0 sets are entirely disabled as legacy content, with current tuning there might be scenarios where you wouldn’t want to replace your old set for a long time, (or at all!) for some encounter types. This is surely not the intention of a shiny new tier set bonus.
Sentiment
Many in the Survival community (such as the Survival channel in the Trueshot Lodge discord!) are generally disappointed at the 10.1 tier set.
It’s significantly weaker and more disruptive than our current tier set. The biggest problem of the tier set bonus is the fact that it enhances Wildfire Bomb—this is an incredibly problematic ability (and has been our entire history). The way Wildfire Bomb works in doing the same damage both single-target and AoE presents a very tough balancing act: it is either strong and desirable in single-target and thus wildly overpowered in AoE, or it is strong and balanced in AoE and extremely weak in single-target. Ever since the 50% nerf to Guerrilla Tactics in the transition from Shadowlands to Dragonflight (as well as the removal of Rank 2 of Wildfire Bomb), Wildfire Bomb is just not appealing to use in single-target. This is understandable to make it more reasonable in AoE and to tune our AoE to other tools such as Butchery, but it significantly impacted the single-target.
The most immediate and perhaps most actionable solution to this could be to introduce a baseline separate scaling knob to Wildfire Bomb and allow it to deal increased damage to your primary target (much like Fists of Fury from Windwalkers or scaling AoE from our ranged Hunter friends in Kill Cleave or Trick Shots) which allows it to be tuned both in single-target and AoE separately. A second solution would be the tier-set taking Wildfire Bomb off of the GCD, allowing it to be used without conflicting other, more appealing abilities as well as removing any awkward interactions with cooldowns.
Further Discussion about 2/4 piece bonus
Two – Set
The two piece-set bonus offers a damage buff to an already not-so-strong ability in Wildfire Bomb (and presumably the Wildfire Infusion variants) as well as an occasional yet predictable buff to our generator, Kill Command. It’s a bit hard to get a feel for the intention of this as the first half (10% increase to Wildfire Bomb) is really not great in single-target as Wildfire Bomb is very weak in single target. For example, the damage difference between your average Mongoose Bite and Wildfire Bomb is incredibly tiny, even without 10.0 tier-set and factoring in 10.1 tier set. It isn’t until you introduce extra targets to cleave does Wildfire Bomb start to outperform Mongoose Bite
The second half of the bonus (a 50% increase in damage to your next Kill Command after you use Wildfire Bomb) is equally confusing in intent as Kill Command has 0 AoE applications and only does single-target damage. One could argue that due to the four-set and the increased frequency of bombs we would enjoy more frequently buffed Kill Command in AoE but the fact of the matter is we have more Focus generators in AoE (Flanking Strike or even Wildfire Bomb through Coordinated Kill). On top of that our AoE rotation isn’t nearly as Focus hungry, which means the 2-set loses a bit of the synergy it has with the 4-set. Simply put, we don’t utilize Kill Command as much in AoE.
One could think of it as a buff to both single-target and AoE, but it numerically falls very flat in both aspects, especially compared to our 10.0 tier set.
This bonus also introduces a bit of awkward conflict in our single-target cooldown enhancement:Spearhead / Deadly Duo. During this cooldown, you already want to avoid using Wildfire Bomb as it’s a GCD spent on something other than Mongoose Bite or generating resources for Mongoose Bite, so throwing a Wildfire Bomb lowers the value of Spearhead and this avoidance of Wildfire Bomb means you won’t even be enjoying the buff to Kill Command during your big, flashy Spearhead moments.
Four-Set
Our new four-set is equally as unimpactful and conflicting. In a different time we would have really appreciated the extra cooldown reduction on Wildfire Bomb as it used to be a far more powerful ability. Unfortunately, in Dragonflight that is not the case. In single-target we avoid using Wildfire Bomb typically unless there’s nothing else we could be doing and in AoE we use it because, well, it’s one of our two rotational AoE abilities. This bonus might also end up giving us too much CDR as recently Lunge been reworked to provide CDR to Wildfire Bomb as well as the litany of other cooldown reduction effects we have such as Frenzy Strikes or Coordinated Kill and more uses of a weak spell will not end up feeling or performing well.
Finally, the cooldown on this can drive an awkward wedge in our other, more AoE damage focused cooldown, Coordinated Assault. This is due to the talent Coordinated Kill reducing the baseline cooldown of Wildfire Bomb as well as making it generate Focus. This could cause a situation during Coordinated Assault where will you be generating too much Focus to spend, sitting on too many uses of Wildfire Bomb as well as wasting valuable Coordinated Assault empowerments on a weak Wildfire Bomb, as the empowered Kill Shot hit far, far harder than an empowered Wildfire Bomb.
