Dragonflight Season 2 Tier Set Bonuses & Models for All Classes & Specializations
Our Guide Writers have provided initial first impressions on the Dragonflight Season 2 Tier Set bonuses. Check out all of our released opinion articles below.
First Impressions of the Dragonflight Season 2 Tier Set Bonuses
Mage Tier Set First Impressions
First Impressions of the Dragonflight Season 2 Tier Set Bonuses
Our Mage Writers, Porom (Arcane), Preheat (Fire), and Dorovon (Frost), have dissected the newly datamined tier set bonuses to give a deeper first look as to how these bonuses will likely affect their specs in Dragonflight Season 2.
Arcane Mage Season 2 Tier Set First Impression
- 2-Set – Mage Arcane 10.1 Class Set 2pc – Arcane Surge increases Spell Damage by an additional 5% and its duration is increased by (s3 / 1000) sec.
- 4-Set – Mage Arcane 10.1 Class Set 4pc – For every 20000 mana spent during Arcane Surge, your Spell Damage is increased by 1% for 12 seconds after Arcane Surge fades, stacking up to 30 times.
For Arcane Mages in Aberrus, our tier set bonus revolves around Arcane Surge and the window of time following Surge’s expiration.
Underlight Conjurer’s Brilliance
At a glance this set may seem like something Arcane Mages want and is unintrusive to the spec, and the 2-set bonus certainly has one component of that in it. Additional damage during our burst is always something we will welcome and be happy with, however, an issue Arcane has right now is the amount of time we spend in burst and generally GCD locked in our rotation. Additional Surge time seems straight forward and nice, but in practice this also means that other parts of our rotation are going to have to be denser, specifically the window of time between the end of surge and our subsequent miniburst. This could put some more strain on a spec that is already struggling for time management.
Examining the 4-set on top of this presents the same problem but with a larger chunk of time; the set gives us a stacking buff after surge ends that is based on mana spend during surge; currently it is very easy to get all 30 stacks just doing the normal rotation in single target. This currently means we have the following buffs to organize within our opener:
Currently without the 4-set bonus or additional time on Surge from the 2-set, we are entering siphon first, followed by a rune that includes most of the spark casts, enter surge and touch which has everything expiring roughly ~30s after we enter siphon, meaning we have no buffs up when we hit Shifting Power, one of our weakest damaging abilities. With the additional surge time and the 4-set buff following surge the chunk of time we have may be restrictive enough to consider using Shifting Power after miniburst or some other measures not yet foreseeable. The current rotation may also no longer suffice to optimize our casts and time and we may have to shift surge to an earlier point in the rotation with Rune of Power following.
While it is usually desirable to have tier sets shake up rotations from one season to the next, I would be lying if I said I was not a bit dissatisfied with the direction this set takes things. Over the course of Shadowlands and the talent revamp in Dragonflight, mages have been pushed more and more towards being reliant on uptime and away from burst. For me, not only does this feel poorly gameplay wise, as burst is what originally lured me towards mage to begin with, but it also breaks with a long-standing theme of mages being bursty and at times glass cannons that has been a core identity of the class, especially so for arcane, for a very long time.
Another very large concern with the 4-set bonus specifically is that in AOE our mana spend during cooldowns is extremely light. Arcane Orb cost almost nothing to cast, Arcane Barrage cast nothing at all, Clearcasting procs spent on either Arcane Explosion or Arcane Missiles cause them to cost no mana. In many cases most of the benefit of the 4-set could be lost in AOE for Arcane. Overall, this set was not very well thought out for Arcane’s AOE.
My hope is that this is iterated on, especially the 4-set, and something more exciting comes out. A lot of this problem would also be alleviated by some attention paid to our toolkit and the tuning that keeps Siphon Storm and Radiant Spark as prominent pillars in any build, despite the community generally receiving these spells negatively.
Arcane Mage Guide
Fire Mage Season 2 Tier Set First Impression
- 2-Set – Mage Fire 10.1 Class Set 2pc – Phoenix Flames applies Charring Embers to all enemies it damages, increasing their damage taken from you by 6% for 10 sec.
- 4-Set – Mage Fire 10.1 Class Set 4pc – When your direct damage spells hit an enemy affected by Charring Embers 30 times, gain Hyperthermia for 6 sec.
The tier set for Fire Mage makes it so that Phoenix Flames gives targets hit a debuff that increases their damage taken and direct damage returns a buff that procs Hyperthermia once it stacks to 30 (Note that Mastery: Ignite doesn’t count as direct damage). Typically, Phoenix Flames is held for as long as possible during Combustion due to From the Ashes. Spending a Phoenix Flames means that you lose 2% Mastery, but you also gain a 6% damage buff. The end result is that you gain damage, but it feels a bit unsynergetic to open with Phoenix Flames because of the cost to Mastery and because Phoenix Flames isn’t guaranteed to crit in Firestarter.
So how strong is it? At this time we don’t have sims so I will rely on napkin math. To put it in perspective, our current tier bonus is around an 8% increase in total (4.8% from 2p and 2.9% from 4p). Because Phoenix Flames has cooldown reduction via From the Ashes and Shifting Power, we can assume the 6% damage gain will have a fairly high uptime. With high uptime and the loss of around 3% Mastery we can assume this 2p gain to be around 4-5%, making it about as strong as the current 2p. This number shouldn’t change much for AoE.
The 4p bonus requires 30 direct damage spells and results in a Hyperthermia proc. If playing around Firestarter, the first Hyperthermia happens during Combustion, with a 2nd proc during Sun King’s Blessing at around 1min into the pull. This tier bonus seems slightly undertuned, but we will need to wait for sims to know for certain. I’m a fan of Hyperthermia but I think it’s also a bit of a weird choice because Sun King’s Blessing, the talent Fire is build around, does not play well with it.
The biggest feedback I have for this bonus is that I wish it revolved around something other than Phoenix Flames. I think adding another spell for Single Target such as Scorch or making Phoenix Flames always crit with 2p would go a long ways to making this bonus feel better. I also think the number of 30 for the 4p is a bit on the high end.
Fire Mage Guide
Frost Mage Season 2 Tier Set First Impression
- 2-Set – Mage Frost 10.1 Class Set 2pc – Flurry and Frostbolt damage increased by 20%. Flurry causes an explosion on impact, dealing 50% of its damage to nearby enemies, damage reduced beyond 5 targets.
- 4-Set – Mage Frost 10.1 Class Set 4pc – Casting Ice Lance on a frozen target has a 8% chance to trigger Brain Freeze.
The Frost Mage Season 2 tier set bonuses largely reinforce the talents and playstyles that are already the best and most popular by amplifying the spells that these playstyles most rely on. Particularly, there is a strong variant of Frost that focuses on talents like Deep Shatter to amplify Frostbolt damage that almost entirely ignores casting Ice Lance, including entirely ignoring it when Fingers of Frost is available but Winter’s Chill is not active. With this “no Fingers of Frost” variant, Ice Lance is only needed to launch Icicles into Winter’s Chill and most time is spent casting Frostbolt and Flurry. The 2 piece bonus of this new set only increases the damage of Frostbolt and Flurry, which further incentivizes playing the “no Fingers of Frost” variant. The 4 piece bonus does help to offset this a little, but it is not strong enough to make the variant worse than more conventional playstyles and it is only available once you get 4 set pieces. This means the variant is far stronger when only the 2 pieces have been collected early on in the season.
In single target situations, early simulations show that the 2-piece bonus can be expected to increase damage by around 5% for the standard Frost playstyle and around 7% for the “no Fingers of Frost” variant. The 4-piece bonus can be expected to increase damage for the two playstyles by a further 2.7% and 1.1%, respectively. In total, this is around 8% damage for the standard Frost playstyle and 8.5% for the “no Fingers of Frost” variant. This is generally comparable to the value gained from the Season 1 set. Unfortunately, this is not the case in AoE. Against five targets, the Season 2 bonuses increase damage by only around 4.6% (2 piece) and 2.9% (4 piece) compared to 5.5% (2 piece) and 7.5% (4 piece) for the Season 1 set. In total, this is an increase of 7.7% for the Season 2 set compared to 13.4% for the Season 1 set. This gap is significant enough that at least early on, some players may opt to use the Season 1 set in Mythic+ and on AoE raid encounters instead of the Season 2 set.
Overall, this new set bonus appears to be a step down from the Season 1 tier set bonus thanks to three major issues that can hopefully be addressed before the release of 10.1.
- The 2-piece bonus incentivizes dropping Ice Lance from the rotation.
- The 4-piece bonus is weak in general due to its low proc chance and can mostly be ignored.
- Both bonuses are relatively weak in AoE situations.
Lastly, once again this bonus further incentivizes not playing the already weak Glacial Spike talent. This talent is weak in part because any time spent casting Glacial Spike is spent not casting Frostbolt, Flurry, and Ice Lance; and these three spells are all further amplified by this set bonus.
Frost Mage Guide
