All embellishments below (and we'll cover about half) are assessed at their current tuning level. It's quite standard for many to be bugged or tuned poorly a few weeks out from launch so the rankings might have switched by the time you are able to craft. Definitely check out your main guide for updated recommendations at that time since this is a preview article only.

Darkmoon Sigil: Hunt​

Can be attached to: All Weapons & Offhands (NOT Shields). Flexible Secondaries.

An incredibly unique embellishment that gives you different secondaries based on your physical target. To be clear, this isn't the target of your spells (who will mostly be allies), it is whoever you have clicked and currently have targeted. In a world where mouseovers are a dominant healing strategy this will often be the boss. So, let's see which mob types give which stats. We've started with one of the more complex embellishments so don't worry about them all being this way. There are plenty of typical stat procs too!

Notably all allies count as Humanoid and so give Mastery. That offers a safe way to guarantee Mastery for specs that benefit from it. You're also able to have two stats up at once by swapping who you're targeting once a buff is active but that's probably going to be too annoying to really track much.

Current Bugs​

The Darkmoon Sigil: Hunt proc rate currently scales with Haste, which is a mistake for stat-based effects.

Rating: A+

This is a great early choice when you're looking for an Embellishment to put on your initial weapon craft.

Loa Worshiper's Band​

Specific Ring only. Always Crit / Mastery

Loa Worshiper's Band is the second most unique embellishment but it sadly only procs off damage spells. This is no problem if you're playing Disc Priest or Keeper of the Grove Resto Druid but it can be more difficult to get a full proc rate out of on some other specs - particularly in raid. The tooltip isn't very helpful so here's what the ring does:

There are five possible procs, based on which gem types you have equipped. Your proc rate is divided by the number of Loa you can call, so there's no inherent advantage to socketing many gem types. If you have the listed gem, then the proc is added to the pool. If you have no gems, it will always proc Filo. If you have all Haste gems, then you'll get either Filo or Akilzon and so on.

We don't care as much about the damage procs, so if you were using this you'd probably want to stick to crit and haste gems so as to avoid polluting the pool. Given it's also a Crit / Mastery ring I think the pool of specs that'll like using this will be quite slim if not nonexistent.

Rating: B+

Not worth fine-tuning your gems for unless you're in an environment where you really value damage procs. Also a pretty bad proc rate so if you have quite a few gems then you might be waiting a long time for your chosen proc.

Arcanoweave Lining​

Can be attached to: Any Armor Slot. Flexible Secondaries.

Finally a nice simple embellishment. Note that while the initial tooltip says it gives stats to yourself and a friend, 80% of the stats are yours and only 20% are shared. Still a very good embellishment, but less of a support choice than it might initially look. Intellect is also by far your best stat this early into an expansion and you should find the uptime to be high (about ~55%). It'll give you around 32 intellect and a randomly chosen ally 8 intellect.

Rating: A

Just a great choice that can go on any armor slot. Slightly difficult in the early weeks of an expansion though since it cannot go on your early Weapon craft. It could definitely pop up in the weeks following that if the few above it (Darkmoon Sigil: Hunt for example) are bug fixed.

Voidstone Shielding Array

Specific Neck only. Always Haste / Versatility

Voidstone Shielding Array has a very clear audience: high Mythic+ players that require some a button they can push for effective health. A couple of glaring issues however:

• The shield sucks. I have well over 400k health in great gear and it shields for about 10% of my health.
• The cooldown is extremely long. A 10% shield might be ok if it's up very often but a 3 minute cooldown is terrible.

The concept is interesting enough, but the tuning is really poor. It is made worse by the bug below:

Current Bugs​

Healing specs currently get a 33% penalty on the shield portion. These role multipliers are often used on damage effects but it appears one was attached to this too - despite no part of it being a damage effect (hopefully not a copy / paste issue).

Rating: D

Fails to appeal in its niche and the bug makes it worse. Even if buffed unlikely to be the play for the majority of the games audience.

Thalassian Phoenix Torque​

Specific Neck only. Always Haste / Mastery

I don't want to be too harsh on Beta-tuning of effects that'll later be rebalanced. It's very common, and it's not a big deal at all - so long as they do get to tuning them before expansion release. Thalassian Phoenix Torque is an example where they've maybe chosen such a low placeholder as to be obvious it's not final.

You are looking at a 4000 heal effect twice a minute when we have 400,000 health pool. About 10x weaker than expected, but surely set to change before live. Tuning aside, I don't really see a place where this is a desirable effect unless it's very overtuned. It's a fast ticking HoT but putting out two HoTs a minute just isn't very appealing.

Rating: D-

Probably just dead in the water, but we'll see how the final tuning looks.

Sunfire Silk Lining​

Can be attached to: Any Armor Slot. Flexible Secondaries.

Speaking of barely functional effects, Sunfire Silk Lining is an interesting design where your periodics like heal-over-time effects can proc intellect. It stacks up to 10 times! Unfortunately it only procs 5 times a minute and the buff lasts 10 seconds. You will need excellent luck to hit 3 stacks and 10 is outright impossible. I really have no idea what the intended design is here even but given you'll sit at 0-2 stacks most of the fight it's incredibly poor and increasing the number on it isn't really sufficient.

I do wonder if it would be better placed as an updated version of Eye of the Broodmother where full uptime on 10 stacks is expected and it's tuned around that expectation. It would be quite nice to have an embellishment that offers value at all times given most of the alternatives are different kinds of procs.

Rating: D-

We'll cover the other half of the embellishments in a second article which is available now to all Patrons, but here's the running tier list so far:

Tier List So Far​

• A Tier: Darkmoon Sigil: Hunt, Arcanoweave Lining,
• B Tier: Loa Worshiper's Band
• C Tier: ??
• D tier: Voidstone Shielding Array, Thalassian Phoenix Torque, Sunfire Silk Lining

An indepth breakdown of all of the raid trinkets coming in Manaforge Omega in Season 3 of The War Within.

The last few tiers we've had some very creative trinket ideas - particularly in raid which they often used as a testing ground for new ideas. In Manaforge Omega we've returned to fairly standard stat sticks with a few exceptions. There are a lot of non-trinket effect options this tier so they might have thought that complex trinkets on top of that would have been too much. In any case this should be a shorter read than usual because the trinkets are a lot more similar to one another. There's nothing here that's as bombastic as Eye of Kezan, Mister Pick-me-up or Mug's Moxie Jug. There are no real S-tier trinkets this tier. Just a bunch of well-tuned A-tier options.

How to Evaluate Trinkets​

There are two trinket archetypes in modern WoW:

• Trinkets with passive intellect and a small effect. You expect these effects to do 2-3% of your healing.
• Trinkets with passive secondary stats and a large effect. You expect these effects to do 5% of your healing.

When looking at how much something does on your meter you need to adjust your expectations for whether it was a small effect or a large one. If Gallagio Bottle Service does 4% of your healing and Mister Pick-me-up does 3% then that's a large win for the latter.

Astral Antenna​

Balls.

Initial Rating: A

Loomi'thar (Early boss)

The Breakdown​

• You should know:​

  • When Astral Antenna procs it'll summon a small orb within 10 yards or so of yourself that'll slowly make its way to you. It takes 5 seconds to hit you if you aren't moving at all and you have 15 seconds in total to grab it before it despawns.
  • In general you should be able to treat this like a passive trinket, the only exception is when it spawns when you're about to make a significant movement across the room. You're also able to grab the orb early, or delay it briefly if you know you have a big burst of healing coming up.

• Numbers wise:​

  • At 723 item level it'll average a whopping ~2.5k crit if you manage to grab every ball which should be realistic on most fights even if you don't try and grab them.
  • That number isn't high enough that specs that don't enjoy crit will seek this out (Resto Druid) but for everyone else this should be a powerful option.

Verdict: Above Average​

You probably don't want to read huge passages of text about a fairly typical stat stick trinket so I'll just say that this is a solid option if you enjoy crit as a stat.

Nexus-King's Command​

Pick your favorite friend and give them... a small shield... sometimes.

Initial Rating: B+

Dropped By: Nexus-King Salhaddar (Late boss)

The Breakdown​

It does also give them a debuff so that you can track it on your frames.

• You should know:​

  • The absorb the target gets is based on the healing the trigger spell did. So if you Spiritbloom them for 1 million overhealing then they'll get a shield for that 1 million.
  • Similarly if the Regrowth you used to proc the buff didn't overheal them then they don't get anything. It's overhealing protection on your one spell cast.
  • You can delay consuming the debuff and you can even have more than one out at once (though the intellect buff wouldn't stack).
  • Debuffs are removed when you pull the boss but the 30 second timer is internal to the trinket so you'll get your first proc anywhere from 0-30 seconds in.

• Numbers wise:​

  • The absorb portion of Nexus-King's Command isn't very high value outside of niche high Mythic+ scenarios where an absorb is much higher value than healing would be.
  • You gain about 13% healing while the buff portion is active, though the edge over a standard passive intellect trinket is only 7.5%.
  • The trinket averages a poor 5.3k intellect but being able to store them and line them up with your healing windows has its own advantages.

Verdict: Not sure the juice is worth the squeeze​

This isn't really what I expected out of a trinket that has an "Oath-Bound" theme. In reality your ally matters very little and it's really just a flexible stat proc trinket. Trinket theming does run secondary to the purpose of these trinket articles but I'm not sure if this trinket will quite match what people expect out of it. It reads like you'll be able to bind yourself to an ally for 10 seconds and this bond might greatly improve their survivability. Instead it's a mini-game where you try to avoid touching them until you need the intellect buff. If anything they might be more likely to die since you're not ready to ramp yet - surely another healer will help them out?

Power-wise the trinket is fine. In good hands it should be quite a capable trinket. For the rest of us though, I am not sure the micromanagement is quite worth the somewhat small reward.

Loomithar's Living Silk​

The best Mythic+ trinket in the game. Raid drop.

Initial Rating: A

Dropped By: Loom'ithar (Early boss)

The Breakdown​

• You should know:​

  • Bug Watch: Loomithar's Living Silk can currently apply to pets as one of its "four nearby allies". This makes it a lot weaker but a fix is likely so I'm writing with the assumption it will work as intended. I'm not sure Chops the Panther needs a 5m shield.
  • The shield the trinket applies is unique to each target. That means they get the 5.5 million on the tooltip each.

• Numbers wise:​

  • The trinket absorb is equal to about a third of your health. That is multiple key levels worth of effective max health. Even if you are only able to get the Heroic version, it still provides a 4.2m shield.
  • The shield scales with your Versatility but not much else.

Verdict: It's a win​

In raid I don't think it's worth giving up almost 8000 intellect for a shield effect on a medium cooldown though as far as these types of effects go it isn't awful. In Mythic+ this trinket should get an opportunity to really shine since eventually you'll run into a scenario where defensives are required to get through a damage check and you'll be able to include this in your defensive rotation. You'll also get multiple uses per boss and can pop it during dangerous trash to insure against missed interrupts.

Diamantine Voidcore​

Higher proc rate when you're OOM. Finally a trinket designed for Restoration Shaman.

Initial Rating: A-

Dropped By: Fractillus (Mid Boss)

The Breakdown​

• You should know:​

  • The mana bonus is not massive. Please do not burn your mana early for a slight increase in trinket procs.
  • You'll average somewhere around 60% uptime. This will be important in a minute.

• Numbers wise:​

  • Diamantine Voidcore is also part of a special effect set: Shards of the Void. If you wear it at the same time as one of the raid effect weapons then you'll massively buff the weapon effect while Voidcore is active.
  • By itself the trinket averages about 7.3k intellect. Slightly below average and fairly high variance compared to the passive intellect trinkets you could wear instead.

Verdict: Mandatory yet not that good​

Diamantine Voidcore is good because the raid weapon set is good and making it 3x as strong 60% of the time is quite a good bonus. By itself you're looking at a fairly standard stat stick that has stronger contemporaries. That does make planning your gear this tier a little bit of a mess at the beginning - particularly when it comes to Vault selections.

Araz's Ritual Forge​

Initial Rating: A-

Dropped By: Forgeweaver Araz (mid boss)

The Breakdown​

Wowee

• You should know:​

  • The 15% maximum health cost is applied immediately as damage and you can heal it back up. You aren't down 15% health the entire duration. That does make it a rather pointless addition in my opinion. I love risk / reward trinkets but the risk here is very low.
  • Araz's Ritual Forge diminishes at a linear rate so half way through the duration you'll have lost half the buff size and so on.

• Numbers wise:​

  • During the apex of the buff it gives you a whopping 30%+ healing increase.
  • It falls behind the value of a regular trinket with a little less than a quarter of its duration left. You're also down about 5% healing when the trinket isn't active.

Verdict: Niche, but it's a common one​

Realistically I can't rate such a significant burst of healing too low because there have been many bosses where improving your healing in a few specific windows are your only real objective to killing the boss. I'm not sure I'd wear it on every fight though, and if you are progressing a little later in the tier you might find a more sustained healing bonus to be more valuable for you. Any specs that won't align well with two minute cooldowns will also want to pass. Some specs might also find the 1.5 minute cooldown Lily of the Eternal Weave to be more useful - it's also less all-in on the on-use so your healing won't have such a large variance between in and out of cooldowns.

If you enjoy QE content like this trinket preview, or if QE Live has helped you over the years, consider the Questionably Epic Patreon. Contributions from the community have made the last eight years of content possible.

An indepth breakdown of all of the raid trinkets coming in Liberation of Undermine in Season 2 of The War Within.

Raid trinkets continue to be the developers playground for testing out new ideas. Dungeon trinkets tend to be different kinds of either on-use or proc stat sticks which are powerful but rather boring in WoWs 20th year. In raid we instead get designs that make us wish they were a little more boring. There are a few topics to discuss before you scroll down the page to see which is best.

Bugs​

Almost every raid trinket (except Eye of Kezan) on the PTR is currently bugged and missing the ability to proc off HoTs or other periodic effects. The result is that almost every raid trinket is underperforming its expected uptime or HPS. For some specs this is as large as a 30% hit. I've sent in bug reports but am still waiting for this crucial fix.

How to Evaluate Trinkets​

There are two trinket archetypes in modern WoW:

• Trinkets with passive intellect and a small effect. You expect these effects to do 2-3% of your healing.
• Trinkets with passive secondary stats and a large effect. You expect these effects to do 5% of your healing.

When looking at how much something does on your meter you need to adjust your expectations for whether it was a small effect or a large one. If Gallagio Bottle Service does 4% of your healing and Mister Pick-me-up does 3% then that's a large win for the latter.

Eye of Kezan​

Objective: Top Spymasters Web

Initial Rating: S

Chrome King Gallywix

The Breakdown​

• Numbers wise:​

  • At 672 item level Eye of Kezan gives 448 intellect per stack, and you'll get a stack roughly every 12 seconds.
  • You need about 10 stacks for it to be equivalent to a regularly powered trinket so the trinket takes about two minutes to be decent.
  • At its max stack count it gives you an enormous ~9000 intellect. This dwarfs any other trinket option and makes it one of the most powerful in the game.
  • Even if you average the stack count you'll get over a fight you'll sit somewhere around 15 stacks which is huge.
  • The healing / damage proc you get while it's fully stacked is cute but not a significant portion of the trinkets power. Expect it to see it down the very bottom of your log. Don't let this bait you into thinking its not a strong trinket.

Verdict: Spectacular... in raid anyway​

If you opted to stop reading the article, you'd at least know what your best in slot trinket is. It's good on every spec and despite some minor downsides is so far ahead on average value that you will feel more powerful the moment you equip it. Speaking of downsides there are two:

• The stacks disappear quickly when you're out of combat. That makes this is a harder sell in Mythic+ where downtime is common. It's not unusable - particularly in dungeons with little time spent running - but it's unlikely to be your best.
• In raid, some fights are very front loaded. On Queen Ansurek or Fyrakk for example you had to put in your biggest healing shift in phase 1 when Eye of Kezan is at its weakest. Don't unequip it the moment a fight has damage on the pull but keep it in mind as we look at what Undermine has in store for us.

Gallagio Bottle Service​

I feel bad rating what might actually be a role play trinket

Initial Rating: F

Dropped By: The One-Armed Bandit

The Breakdown​

• You should know:​

  • Gallagio Bottle Service does require you channel for its 5 second duration.
  • The number of drinks you hand out is 10 x your haste percentage with every 10% haste adding one drink. It rounds up your drink count.
    • So 5% haste is 11 drinks, 18% haste is 12 drinks, 21% haste is 13 drinks and so on.

• Numbers wise:​

  • With 12 drinks you're looking at around 8 million or so healing on a 1:30 cooldown. 90-100k HPS on average.
  • They also get about 14% speed. Very nice, thank you.

Verdict: Forgot to add a zero​

This is a very awkward trinket for them to nail the tuning on. It doesn't have intellect so like we covered above we're expecting a massive effect here. It also has a very long channel time which means it needs to do a lot more than others buttons you could press in that time instead. Unfortunately the times where this trinket is most valuable is also where you already want to be pressing your biggest buttons. A trinket that locks you out of doing that for a very long time needs to be almost absurdly overtuned to see any play whatsoever.

To double the size of the hit here, this trinket is not overtuned at all. In fact it does similar healing to Mr Pick-me-up which doesn't lock you out of your casts and also has a full intellect budget. Because the channel time is so long this is also a rare bad trinket that I don't want them to buff. I want to press my rotation during the most dangerous damage of the fight, I don't want to press a trinket instead.

The only possible salvage in my opinion is to make the channel occur whether you are pressing spells or not (so basically a 5s buff instead of a 5s channel) but that's a striking change and the seasons release is nigh.

House of Cards​

Spacey-free

Initial Rating: A

Dropped By: The One-Armed Bandit

The Breakdown​

• You should know:​

  • House of Cards is mostly a fairly standard on-use stat trinket. It's not as RNG as it looks.

• Numbers wise:​

  • Your first use of the fight will average 9307 mastery at max item level.
  • Your second use will average 9461, your third 9616 and so on. It's really not much of a difference.

Verdict: It's spec dependent but good​

This is a well tuned on-use trinket but it's not good enough to leave off cooldown. Basically, if your spec is built around 90 second cooldowns then you'll love House of Cards. Examples include Preservation Evoker and Disc Priest. If your cooldowns are on a one minute or two minute cycle instead (basically the rest) then you'll avoid this if you can in favor of a trinket that lines up better with your cooldown cadence.

Mr Pick-me-up​

Call me, Mr Uppies

Initial Rating: A-

Dropped By: Sprocketmonger Lockenstock (yes that's a real boss, stop asking)

The Breakdown​

• You should know:​

  • The healing beam prefers injured targets but isn't smart healing.
  • It doesn't interrupt whatever you're doing. It's just a buff that heals 5 people every 2 seconds for 6 seconds (so 15 people total).

• Numbers wise:​

  • As a flat healing trinket Mister Pick-me-up is quite easy to evaluate. You can expect about 2-2.5 million healing per proc depending on your crit, versatility and overhealing.
  • The trinket is supposed to proc about 2.5 times per minute. So we're looking at 80-100k HPS if the proc bugs we discussed at the beginning of the article are fixed. In reality, it's doing about 30% less than that right now but most proc based trinket are afflicted by a similar issue.

Verdict: Surprisingly capable for a flat healing trinket.​

Flat healing trinkets often have an issue where they do alright in normal and heroic content and then fall off as your healing scales up in Mythic. This will happen with Mr Pick-me-up too no doubt but it's at least tuned well enough that you'll be able to use it for a while. You're quite happy if you're getting 2.5-3% healing out of it which should happen quite commonly.

They've also wisely buffered against overhealing a bit by adding a damage portion if targets are overhealed. Don't expect this to do crazy DPS numbers but it's an appealing added bonus to a trinket that's already fairly good. Mr Pick-me-up is hit particularly hard by the proc rate bug so hopefully this is fixed before launch.

Mug's Moxie Jug​

Initial Rating: A-

Dropped By: Mug'zee, Heads of Security

The Breakdown​

• You should know:​

  • Most of the power is in the stacking buff you get while it's active. So if you don't cast many spells, then you aren't getting many stats. There's also a 1s internal cooldown to those hoping to cheat out stacks with off global cooldown spells are likely to leave disappointed.

• Numbers wise:​

  • If your spec presses buttons with any regularity (sorry Preservation) then it's quite easy to stack this up quickly. Even casting GCD-length spells with 20% haste will get you to 12 or so stacks + the free one you start with. That's an average of ~6000 crit per proc and you can expect a 30-40% uptime depending on bug fixes. Not bad.

Verdict: Average? Average is good​

I honestly enjoy a trinket that pushes the "always be casting" creed by rewarding you further with extra stats. There isn't a ton to say on this trinket except that if you like crit and don't have 4 second casts in your kit then you'll probably like this. It's a particularly good fall back option if you don't have access to the S-tier trinkets like Eye of Kezan or if none of the other competitive trinkets like House of Cards fit your spec well.

Reverb Radio​

Initial Rating: B+

Dropped By: Rik Reverb

The Breakdown​

• You should know:​

  • The trinket procs about 5 times a minute but won't proc while you have the "giga buff" active. That means you'll have the big "10 stack" buff about 20% of the time and somewhere between 0 and 4 stacks the rest of the time.

• Numbers wise:​

  • You'll get a fairly big 3950 haste (6% haste) while the big proc is active. This won't necessarily be at a reliable time every pull so we'll assume we can't reliably line it up with cooldowns.
  • The smaller stacks will average about ~600 haste. To its credit you'll have a decent uptime on at least some form of power.

Verdict: It's below average but playable​

You'd like more than the ~1300-1400 average haste this trinket gives but if you really like haste (Resto Druid) then you could still do worse - particularly as a fill in while you wait in line behind 16 other people for your Eye of Kezan.

An indepth breakdown of all of the raid trinkets coming in Nerub'ar Palace in season 1 of The War Within.

Season 1 of The War Within adds so many trinket choices that we’re going to break them down by drop location. We’ll cover the raid trinkets first (which are more complex on average) and then check out Dungeon and Delve options which have some powerful options this time around. The raid trinkets are more of a mixed bag. They’re very creative but this extra mental overhead can be a downside in some cases compared to simpler trinkets with similar throughput.

Note that they are very likely to tune every trinket in this article, and often do so shortly after publication. I’ve included one DPS trinket below too, you’ll see why.

Treacherous Transmitter​

Initial Rating: C+

Dropped By: Nexus-Princess Ky’veza

The Minigames​

When you press Treacherous Transmitter you get one of three mini-games that you have to complete to get your massive intellect buff. Here are the possibilities:

Jump​

Jump three times. This is probably the easiest one to complete but can still be fairly annoying during heavy healing moments depending on your spec. You’ll get three small purple crystals above your head to remind you to jump.

Portal​

Stand in a portal for about 1.5s to get your buff. It tends to spawn quite close to you. You technically get 30% avoidance once you start standing in the portal and before the game completes. I’d be surprised if that was useful one single time.

Orb​

Chase down an Orb. It’ll wander off in a random direction. Sometimes even into you (good luck!)

The Breakdown​

• Numbers wise:​

  • You’ll deal about 25% more damage and healing while the trinket is active. That’s a very high number. It tries to pay its way out.
  • It averages about 2500 intellect which is slightly underbudget but that’s often the penalty you pay for on-use trinkets.

Verdict: Niche at best​

The problem with trinkets like Treacherous Transmitter is that you’re introducing mental overhead to what is likely an already dangerous moment of the fight. You are also not able to leave your stack point to run after orbs or portals on a lot of fights. If you want a significant on-use trinket you’re likely to look to alternatives that aren’t quite as much work. The trinket does best for specs that have powerful 1:30 cooldowns but even for those you might use it as a “sometimes” trinket rather than an “always” trinket.

If you’re playing a 1 minute spec like Restoration Druid then you’ll probably use this every two minutes with a Flourish ramp rather than trying to use it on cooldown.

Creeping Coagulum​

Initial Rating: B+

Dropped By: The Bloodbound Horror

The Breakdown​

• You should know:​

  • The tooltip makes it fairly obvious, but the healing you use to feed the trinket is deducted and “lost”. You pay ~900k healing to charge it to full. The overhealing DPS portion is confusing and potentially bugged. It actually stores a value based on the raw overhealing the trinket did instead of its overhealing percentage like Rashok’s did in Dragonflight. The 88k on the tooltip can be misleading since typical values will be 250k+ and if you crit it’ll double again!
  • The DPS portion can also crit itself which means it actually double dips. This is likely to be change before it goes live.

• Numbers wise:​

  • If you deduct the redirected healing then each use of the trinket is worth about 2.2 million healing. This averages about ~25k HPS. You can expect it to do 2% or so of your healing on a late heroic or early mythic raid boss. It’ll do a little better in lower-difficulty content.
  • It’s worth noting that some of the healing it redirects would have been overhealing anyway.

Verdict: Buggy but underwhelming​

We have around 5 million health on Beta so the equation here is paying 800k to get a 12% heal on 5 targets. You can’t even really charge it up ahead of time and then release it when you need it most since it’ll burst as soon as it finishes charging so the timing aspect is difficult. I just don’t see many situations where I’d rather have this than a stat stick that’ll offer a more consistent benefit.

DPS wise the trinket does ok while it’s bugged. Not game changing but an acceptable bonus. If its value is ever fixed and approaches the 88k tooltip value (or even double it) then it starts to become unnoticeable.

Gruesome Syringe​

Initial Rating: B+

Dropped By: Broodtwister Ovi’nax

The Breakdown​

• You should know:​

  • Charges of the trinket can overlap, and so can stacks of the intellect buff. So if charge A expires 10s into the fight and charge B expires 10s later then you will have two intellect buffs for 5 seconds and one otherwise. On the UI they will appear as one buff. Generally we like this kind of system.

• Numbers wise:​

  • If 50% of your charges become an int buff, and half heal then you’re looking at around 2.4k int and ~15k HPS. These are honestly very reasonable totals and compare fine with other trinkets. Having the intellect active when you need it is another matter.

Verdict: Awkward Design​

The biggest issue with this trinket is it tries to be a flat-heal trinket with a backup if nobody is injured so that nothing is wasted. Good in theory but the int buff is much stronger than the flat heal – problem is you will only get it when nobody is injured and it doesn’t last very long. The heal value is also not very high. You are not saving many lives with an extra 300k heal. Ideally you have a few charges going into a big healing moment that expire right before for a decent int buff but it’s too inconsistent to guarantee that so you’d rather play another trinket in a similar niche. It isn’t awful though and if you get a high level one early then it’s usable.

Ovi’nax’s Mercurial Egg​

Initial Rating: B+

Dropped By: Broodtwister Ovi’nax

The Breakdown​

• You should know:​

  • You will always have 30 stacks in total, split between the int and secondary buffs. You’re never getting zero value from this trinket even if certain stack counts are stronger than others.
  • If you backpedal then it’ll treat you as standing still and you’ll get the intellect buff. They’ll probably fix this by launch.

• Numbers wise:​

  • The perfect configuration is 20 intellect stacks and 10 secondary stats which will give you 3260 intellect and 1490 of your best secondary. That’s on par or slightly better than comparable stat trinkets.
  • With 30 intellect stacks and 0 secondary stacks you’ll get 3912 intellect which is a bit worse.
  • With 15 of each you’re getting 2445 intellect and 2235 secondaries.
  • You will generally want to stay in the 15-20 intellect stack range and it will probably be worth grabbing a weak aura to help out.

Verdict: Very creative for a stat stick​

I was fairly cold on this trinket before I used it but it plays quite well. There’s an optimal number of stacks you’d like to be at (20 intellect, 10 secondary) but it doesn’t matter all that much. The trinket is only awful if you have to move so often that your secondary stack is very high (especially 20+) but you have ways to insure against that (stacking int higher before the heavy movement, or clicking the trinket to freeze it).

It’s still likely to be replaced by trinkets that require less thinking for similar performance like Unbound Changeling and Gale of Shadows but if you get an early one at a high item level then it’s very usable.

Spymaster’s Web​

Initial Rating: F (Mistweaver); A (Everyone else)

Dropped By: The Silken Court

The Breakdown​

• You should know:​

  • You can continue getting charges of the little intellect buff while the large one is active. That means you’re constantly stacking the buff over a fight.
  • There is no deduction for being a healing spec wearing a DPS trinket. You get the same power as a DPS wearing it.
  • It procs off damaging spells including DoTs.
  • For Druid it does proc off Moonfire cast by Grove Guardians.

• Numbers wise:​

  • Most of the power here comes from the on-use but the stacking int buff does give you even more flexibility around your usage and it slightly encourages using it less often rather than more (since your average stack count will be higher on the passive). If you proc the trinket on cooldown and use it every minute then the passive is worth about 500 intellect.
  • The on-use portion is a fixed average instead. If you proc the trinket every six seconds then you’ll get an int buff for 9550 for every minute you’ve charged it. It also lasts quite a long time for a high average around ~3200.

Verdict: Outstanding but somewhat advanced​

Spymaster's Web is basically the perfect healing trinket with one catch – it only procs off DPS spells and as a result is only on DPS loot tables. It provides some benefit at all times and can be used incredibly flexibly to supercharge your healing during the moments you need it the most. A resto druid might use it every minute with Flourish and Grove Guardians, or if the raid is feeling safe at 1:00 then let it tick over and be even stronger during your second ramp. You can even make the decision dynamically during the fight.

The downside, and only reason the trinket isn’t A+, is that you need a damage event roughly every six seconds in order to stack it. DoTs are the most efficient here and the trinket is strong enough that it’ll be worth casting a couple a minute. There are also a ton of free sources of damage that’ll proc it too like Treants of the Moon, or rotational offensive abilities like Fire Breath.

Given the power of the trinket, it might be nice if it’s changed to work with healing spells too. That will particularly help newbies who are less inclined to DPS during a fight. As-is it might be seen as a slightly more advanced option.

The power of the trinket scales with the amount of burst healing your spec does so specs like Discipline Priest and Resto Druid will get higher value.

An in-game addon that shows you tips for every dungeon mob in their tooltip or in a little frame.

You have the QE written guide, the QE beach towel and the QE action figure. Now pick up the QE dungeon tips addon. The new addon displays useful information inside mob tooltips - never again forget which mob has that massive AoE that dumpsters your party. As a beginner it will hold your hand through your first few dungeon runs; if you're closer to intermediate, use it to tell similar mobs apart and perfect your dungeon performance.

The addon automatically adjusts to whatever role you are playing. Are you the next big thing in tanking? You will see tank specific stuff like when to face mobs away from the party or deadly mechanics that require a cooldown. Prefer healing your team through the 6847th fire they stood in just this week? You will see healer specific tips like which debuffs you need to dispel and mobs or bosses you will need your big healing cooldowns for. You will always see key bits of information, no matter your role, like:

• Stuff you need to dodge
• Mobs you should skip entirely
• Must interrupt spells
• Mechanics requiring defensive cooldowns
• What to CC and when Parjesh holds such a warm place in my heart that I won't replace his image, even four expansions later.

The Dragonflight version is now live. Become the expert that fills your group in on all the mechanics they have been slacking on. Lead.

An in-depth look into a type of unconventional RNG used sometimes in WoW.

In Legion Blizzard introduced a new system of RNG into the game, featuring it on several legendary items and a trinket. It was accompanied by a brief explanation in a Reddit developer AMA. It's designed to smooth out your luck, making chance-based items much more consistent at the cost of the huge streaks you can achieve with pure chance. Think of it as 'Good luck protection' and 'Bad luck protection' rolled up into one. Post-Legion, this type of RNG is used less but still pops up from time to time in spells like Convoke the Spirits.

How it works​

They branded the new system "Deck of Cards", and you'll see why in a second. Let's take an example, Chameleon Song, the new Resto Druid legendary. The tooltip reads "Wild Growth has a 15% chance to grant you Tree of Life for 12 seconds". You might assume that each Wild Growth cast has an independent 15% chance to proc the effect when cast and this is actually how similar items have worked in the past. In the new system however the proc chance is based off a deck of cards where we have X cards in total of which Y are procs. The number of cards / procs in the deck vary from item to item. Every time you cast the listed spell, you'll draw a card. An example will hopefully clarify:

This would be a 10 card deck with 2 procs.

Picture a similar deck with 20 cards. 17 of them have an "X" on them and the remaining 3 have a "Proc". Every time we cast Wild Growth we'll draw a card from the top of the deck. If the card has an "X" on it then our helm didn't proc. However, if we drew a "Proc" then we were successful and we'll spend the next 12 seconds in Tree Form. As we work through the deck our odds of pulling a "Proc" or an "X" on our next cast gets higher or lower based on what we've already drawn. If we pull 10 "X" cards in a row, our odds of getting a proc on the next cast is now 3/10 (double the tooltip). Similarly, if we open the fight by drawing three "Proc" cards then we are guaranteed to get 0 procs for the next 17 casts! Using this system we will always get 3 procs within every 20 casts of Wild Growth. You can think of it as a 'controlled randomness'. Once you've emptied the deck (i.e. you've cast 20 spells) you'll shuffle and start over again.

Voulks attempt to use the new helm. Smoothed out RNG indeed.

The following legendary items use the new system:

• Chameleons Song (Resto Druid - 3 procs - 20 card deck)
• Chaos Theory (Havoc Demon Hunter - 2 procs - 20 card deck)
• Doorway to Nowhere (Mistweaver Monk - 4 procs - 20 card deck)
• Fire in the Deep (Resto Shaman - 3 procs - 20 card deck)
• Inner Hallation (Disc Priest - 7 procs - 20 card deck)
• The Alabaster Lady (Holy Priest - 3 procs - 20 card deck)
• The Topless Tower (Holy Paladin - 2 procs - 20 card deck)

If you get a proc while you have the buff active it will add to the duration up to a maximum of the duration of the spell itself. So, for Disc Priests you can get a maximum of 20s on your Power Infusion buff. For some reason Chameleon Song is an exception, and you can surpass the 30s duration on Tree of Life.

The Deck system is also used by Tomb of Sargeras trinket, Sea Star of the Depthmother (10 card deck) and the number of procs in the deck vary by spec:

• Disc Priest: 6 procs
• Mistweaver Monk, Resto Druid: 5 procs
• Holy Priest, Holy Paladin, Resto Shaman: 4 procs

Resetting the deck​

The deck resets (shuffles) at the start of raid combat and when you run out of cards in the deck. That's it. No other resets.

The list of things that did not trigger a shuffle at the original time of writing include:

• Relogging.
• Re-equipping the item.
• Starting a dungeon.
• Entering combat in a non-raid environment.
• Death (both in-game and presumably real life).

You got a weak aura for that?​

Yesss. The below weak auras will track the number of cards left in the deck, as well as the number of 'procs' you have remaining.

Use this one for all legendaries: https://wago.io/HkSWyLRrb

Use this one for Sea Star of the Depthmother: https://wago.io/SkVZBBAHW

But how does it change my odds?​

Let's look a little deeper into the effect the new system might have on our raid performance. You can consider this section supplementary.

We'll open with the expected number of procs for each system over 20 casts, which should be identical.

• "Pure Chance" is a binomial distribution and our expected number of procs is  20 * 0.15 = 3 with a variance of 2.6.
• "Deck of Cards" follows a hypergeometric distribution and our expected number of procs is 20 * (3 / 20) = 3 with a variance of 0.

This should hopefully make some intuitive sense. If I cast Prayer of Mending 1000 times, I should expect exactly 150 procs using Deck of Cards and an average of 150 procs using Pure Chance. So the system isn't giving us any more or any less overall procs and this is true regardless of the number of cards you draw during the fight.

The real difference between the two systems is the variance as seen above which is what defines the proc predictability. Check out the graphs below which compare the deck method (the blue bars) to chance (the red line) over a series of casts. The graphs are based off a 20 card deck with 3 procs but you'll see similar results with any of the new legendaries.

We can see the low variance of the Deck system in action. 15 casts into the fight I'm almost assured 2-3 procs with Deck whereas random chance would grant me between 0 and 6 (technically 0 and 15 but let's be reasonable).

To cap it off​

I think this is a really cool way of introducing some 'controlled chance' into our gearing options and I'd like to see more in future, especially on healer items where low variance is desirable. This could be a great accompaniment to the rppm system used by most trinkets. Hopefully blizzard will experiment with smaller deck sizes since it can be quite demoralizing to run through your proc cards in your first 10 or so casts and know that you've got nothing coming for the next few minutes.