Introduction
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
Bomba de fuego salvaje as well as strengthen in
Matar 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
Punta de Lanza and
Ataque coordinado 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
Bomba de fuego salvaje—this is an incredibly problematic ability (and has been our entire history). The way
Bomba de fuego salvaje 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
Tácticas de guerrilla in the transition from Shadowlands to Dragonflight (as well as the removal of Rank 2 of
Bomba de fuego salvaje),
Bomba de fuego salvaje 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
Carnicería, 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
Bomba de fuego salvaje and allow it to deal increased damage to your primary target (much like
Puños de furia from Windwalkers or scaling AoE from our ranged Hunter friends in
Tajo mortal or
Disparos trucados) which allows it to be tuned both in single-target and AoE separately. A second solution would be the tier-set taking
Bomba de fuego salvaje 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
Bomba de fuego salvaje (and presumably the
Infusión de fuego salvaje variants) as well as an occasional yet predictable buff to our generator,
Matar. It's a bit hard to get a feel for the intention of this as the first half (
10% increase to
Bomba de fuego salvaje) is really not great in single-target as
Bomba de fuego salvaje is very weak in single target. For example, the damage difference between your average
Mordisco de mangosta and
Bomba de fuego salvaje 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
Bomba de fuego salvaje start to outperform
Mordisco de mangostaThe second half of the bonus (a
50% increase in damage to your next
Matar after you use
Bomba de fuego salvaje) is equally confusing in intent as
Matar 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
Matar in AoE but the fact of the matter is we have more Focus generators in AoE (
Golpe de flanco or even
Bomba de fuego salvaje through
Muerte coordinada). 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
Matar 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:
Punta de Lanza /
Dúo mortal. During this cooldown, you already want to avoid using
Bomba de fuego salvaje as it's a GCD spent on something other than
Mordisco de mangosta or generating resources for
Mordisco de mangosta, so throwing a
Bomba de fuego salvaje lowers the value of
Punta de Lanza and this avoidance of
Bomba de fuego salvaje means you won't even be enjoying the buff to
Matar during your big, flashy
Punta de Lanza 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
Bomba de fuego salvaje as it used to be a far more powerful ability. Unfortunately, in Dragonflight that is not the case. In single-target we avoid using
Bomba de fuego salvaje 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
Embestida been reworked to provide CDR to
Bomba de fuego salvaje as well as the litany of other cooldown reduction effects we have such as
Frenesí de golpes or
Muerte coordinada 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,
Ataque coordinado. This is due to the talent
Muerte coordinada reducing the baseline cooldown of
Bomba de fuego salvaje as well as making it generate Focus. This could cause a situation during
Ataque coordinado where will you be generating too much Focus to spend, sitting on too many uses of
Bomba de fuego salvaje as well as wasting valuable
Ataque coordinado empowerments on a weak
Bomba de fuego salvaje, as the empowered
Disparo mortal hit far, far harder than an empowered
Bomba de fuego salvaje.