T9 Set Bonuses, Yay or Nay?
So the Tier 9 set bonuses have been released for all the classes. Some models/artwork are being datamined and discovered from the PTR, but I wanted to discuss the Shaman set bonuses briefly.
Out of the Argent Coliseum, there are 3 new iLevels of gear – 232, 245 and 258, depending on which level of the 5, 10 or 25 man raid instance you do. Yes, complicated. And homogenous. Oxymoronic, yes?
All of that aside, here are our new set bonuses:
Shaman T9 Enhancement 2P Bonus - Adds an additional 3% chance to trigger your Static Shock talent.
Shaman T9 Enhancement 4P Bonus - Increases the damage done by your Earth Shock, Flame Shock, and Frost Shock spells by 25%.
Shaman T9 Elemental 2P Bonus – Increases the duration of your Flame Shock spell by 9.0 sec.
Shaman T9 Elemental 4P Bonus – Increases the damage done by your Lava Burst spell by 20%.
Shaman T9 Restoration 2P Bonus – Increases the healing done by your Riptide spell by 20%.
Shaman T9 Restoration 4P Bonus – Increases the critical strike chance of your Chain Heal spell by 5%.
Before we discuss, here are the current Tier 8 bonuses:
Enhancement 2Piece Bonus – Increases the damage done by Lava Lash and Stormstrike by 20%.
Enhancement 4Piece Bonus – Increases the frequency of Maelstrom Weapon being triggered by your melee weapon attacks by 20%.
Restoration 2Piece Bonus – Reduces the cooldown on Riptide by 1 sec.
Restoration 4Piece Bonus – Reduces the cast time of Chain Heal by 0.2 sec.
Elemental 2Piece Bonus - The periodic damage dealt by your Flame Shock can now be critical strikes.
Elemental 4Piece Bonus – Your critical Strikes from Lightning Bolt cause the target to take nature damage equal to 8% of the Lightning Bolt’s damage over until cancelled sec.
As always, I invite Resto and Elemental Shamans to discuss the changes as I know very little about Elemental and am still in the noob/learning phase of Resto.
For the Enhancement, however.
Is anyone else a little disappointed by the set bonus? Static Shock is a great talent to have. That coupled with Improved Shields and you have a great extra boost to damage. But upping the chance to 9%, while nice, doesn’t seem like the best reward after all the work that will go into getting said Tier pieces. When you compare it to the current T8 2 Piece bonus, it falls a little flat. I’ll take a flat 20% damage increase on my two most often used skills over an extra 3% chance to do extra damage.
The four piece bonus, while better than the two piece bonus, still falls a little short of the current four piece bonus. For me, my Maelstrom Weapon stacks very quickly so I fire off Lightning Bolts every 10th swing or so (I haven’t counted), but, with the current four piece bonus, the stacks go faster, which means more overall damage from Lightning Bolt, which scales way more efficiently than Chain Lightning and has no cooldown.
Don’t get me wrong, I like flat damage percentage increases but, until they put the Shocks on separate cooldowns instead of one GCD, it isn’t a huge incentive to go for the Tier 9.
I want to know your thoughts on it, though. It’s still early on the PTR so these may change while Blizz is still balancing, but initial impressions?
As one of the few Resto Shamans left in my realm,
I’m very displeased with t9, using it only here and there for the int, haste and Mp5 improvements that some pieces can offer. This gear will keep YOU alive at the cost of keeping others alive.
The 2 and 4 piece bonuses are nowhere as useful as the T8: 2 and 4 piece bonuses.
On top of all that, it looks awful! I don’t get it! does Blizzard want to push us shamans out of healing roles and into DPS roles?
The t9 shoulders can be useful with a JC only Haste gem, otherwise the 20% riptide and crit to healing spell bonuses are actually pretty weak.
Stick to t8 and the pieces of gear you find while raiding. You’re job as a healer is to keep your group up. t9 gear somehow forgets that’s what healers are supposed to do.
I completely agree. I’ve seen many shamans just sticking with T8 and getting non-set ilvl 245 pieces to upgrade as they see fit. Most are just waiting for T10 to come out and just going straight for that. Shame, really, that very few of the T9 sets are actually appealing to their classes.
I feel like a bird or a peacock in the T9! It looks horrible. And the set bonus is crap. I don’t know what Blizzard was thinking. I’ve noticed that the look of all the armor has changed dramatically since WotLC. Everything seemed to get dull with a lot of black and grays and earthy browns with the lich king. And now with the new Argent thing all the tier looks like birds with bright colors and the helmets remind me of beaks lol! They might as well give us all feathers on our backs and arms.
I agree! T9 looks horrible and I can’t wait to get rid of it. I actually like the muted blues and greys of the new T10. It fits in with the theme of the Frozen North a bit more to me. However, it still doesn’t come CLOSE to the awesomeness of the old world and even BC tier sets.