A new tier of Dragonflight means another tier-set bonus for us to chase after! Much like the previous two tier-set bonuses this expansion, Survival Hunters get to enjoy a build-defining, powerful, and fun to play tier-set bonus. Today, let's take a quick look at the tier-set bonus we get to go towards and discuss some initial impressions.
The tl;dr? Feel happy! The tier-set is fun, really helps your damage, and focuses on our old Artifact ability from Legion, which is a nice trip down memory lane. There are only a few (hopefully easily fixable) concerns and bugs.
2-Piece Set Bonus
While it may seem simple on first glance, this buff window provided by our two-piece bonus (
狂怒打击) is exactly the sort of thing Survival has been looking for—a frequent and powerful damage amp. One of the best things about this about this bonus is that the buff itself is equally powerful in both single-target and AoE encounters and as it applies to you directly, you can target swap without any fear. Something to keep in mind is that the buff refreshes itself while you channel
雄鹰之怒, so you'll end your channel with the maximum duration of the buff.
4-Piece Set Bonus
The four piece set bonus really helps Survival Hunters with something we have struggled with in 10.1: single target damage. The immediate and free
野火炸弹 (now enhanced with a baseline 40% primary target damage amplifier) can deal some surprising damage with the 15% critical strike chance + damage amplifier from our two-piece, and the further 40% primary target damage amplifier from the four piece puts our
野火炸弹 at a very respectable damage level against a single target.
Bugs
Unfortunately, there seems to be a pretty significant bug with our 2-piece bonus. A large portion of our spec's damage output (between 18-20%) is not affected by the buff. These abilities include both our and our pet's auto-attacks, your pet's basic attack (
爪击,
撕咬, or
拍击), the pet portion of
侧翼打击,
杀戮命令 and
觅血者,
毒素注射 (looks to be the wrong Latent Poison Injector), and
内出血 (the DoT from
散射炸弹).
None of these seem intended to not work with the tier-set bonus, as it specifically lists you and your pet's damage.
Additionally, the 4-piece bonus that amplifies
野火炸弹 on our target does
NOT refresh its duration as you channel
雄鹰之怒 unlike the 2-piece bonus. This can be awkward as you waste uptime of the buff and desync the 2-piece and 4-piece bonuses as you channel the primary ability of the tier-set, which can feel unintuitive. You can see in the graphic below that the two buffs very rapidly get out of sync when you channel
雄鹰之怒.
Strength of Tier Set
Assuming these bugs/quirks are corrected, the 2 set and 4 set combined will boost our single target output by around
11.5%, which is not too shabby when paired with the 40% primary damage buff our
野火炸弹 are getting in 10.2.
Our AoE / M+ damage sees a slightly bigger increase at around
~13.5%—partly because we would already be taking
雄鹰之怒 for AoE purposes anyway—meaning we talent
雄鹰之怒 in AoE at no additional DPS cost.
Concerns
A small concern is that with current numbers, you're better off cancelling
雄鹰之怒 after a single GCD in single-target. Both the 2-set and 4-set trigger on-cast, and maintaining the channel in Single Target is not worth the extra time spent. Although the gameplay aspect of the set doesn't really change much whether you are finishing the channel or not, it may feel a little unintuitive to treat
雄鹰之怒 like a regular GCD rather than a channel. Luckily, this is not an issue when AoEing or cleaving. Finishing the channel is always worth it when dealing with multiple targets.
The biggest gameplay concern we have about this entire tier set is the free charge of
野火炸弹 from the four piece-set bonus. As it stands, we are frequently using the
无情掠夺 talent in AoE. This talent provides an extreme amount of CDR to
野火炸弹 while we channel
雄鹰之怒, which means the free charge is immediately wasted and we can't help but avoid over-capping on resources. One workaround is to simply remove one or both points from
无情掠夺, but this isn't a satisfying solution.
You can see just how fast the cooldown recovers with the talent below. It would be excellent if this bonus changed to something else, such as "Your next
野火炸弹 does not incur a cooldown."