The three recently revealed covenant legendaries for Night Fae, Necrolord, and Venthyr all appear designed to double down on the strengths already established by covenant ability, seemingly intended for players to further specialize their characters. For Venthyr, this means an increased emphasis on the Execute phase and single target DPS, increased multitarget for Night Fae, and greater buff potential for Necrolords.
There are pros and cons to this approach - on the one hand, it allows players to specialize, but the downside is that it also makes characters which participate in a wide range of content less well rounded. This is all rather hypothetical though, because it doesn't matter if they're not tuned well enough to actually consider using them over what we already have - a Mythic+ oriented player may choose Night Fae due to the advantages of
First Strike and
Ancient Aftershock, but they're still going to use
Signet of Tormented Kings if
Nature's Fury isn't strong enough to compete with it. Therein lies the question - how good are these legendaries, and the answer is somewhat mixed.
Night Fae -
Nature's FuryNight Fae
Nature's Fury is fairly strong and the rolling DoT adds up to quite a bit of extra multitarget damage, but it has a major downside in the time it takes to actually deal all of that damage. While it is a DoT instead of a ground effect, the DoT only stacks when
Ancient Aftershock ground effect ticks. This means the targets must be held in a small area and survive for around 20 seconds in order to maximize the legendary's damage. Interesting, the legendary also does not benefit from class buffs such as
Colossus Smash,
Avatar, or
Enrage. The result is that can be strong, but probably isn't practical for most content, and
Signet of Tormented Kings will continue to be the go-to legendary in Mythic+.
Necrolord -
GloryNecrolord
Glory is very strong... just not for the Warrior.
Conqueror's Banner is already extremely competitive if not ahead of other covenants when regularly buffing the right two players (mostly Boomkins, Mages, and Warlocks), and buffing a third ally pushes that potential ahead even further, but it doesn't add nearly as much for the Warrior. Therefore the value of the legendary is mostly dependent on who else you can buff every 2 minutes, and how accessible that is in the new raid encounters, but on paper Glory is the most powerful legendary in the game by a significant margin. It should also be noted that the increased duration of the banner does not apply to buffed allies, only the Warrior benefits from the increased up time - pushing it out to about a 25-30 second duration for Arms & Fury. The Necrolord conduit,
Veteran's Repute also has its duration increased, although Emeni's soulbind ability
Lead by Example, has its own duration and is therefore not affected.
Venthyr
Sinful SurgeVenthyr
Sinful Surge depends on the spec. Although Arms can spam
Condemn enough to extend
Colossus Smash out to 100% uptime, the spec becomes very rage starved without
backed by
Signet of Tormented Kings, so the hits aren't very strong and the legendary doesn't perform quite as well. For Fury however,
Sinful Surge is fantastic, capable of extending
Recklessness out to 100% uptime without
Anger Management or
Depths of Insanity (allowing stronger options) during
Condemn phases. If anything, it's a little too strong, although the effect could be difficult to tune down without neutering it completely. That said, it is still mostly single target oriented, so the
Signet of Tormented Kings legendary and the Night Fae Covenant still pull ahead in AoE/Mythic+.
TLDR:
Sinful Surge is downright overpowered for Fury in single target, and
Glory is even more powerful presuming you're buffing the right people, but
Signet of Tormented Kings continues to pull ahead in all other situations.
The two Legendaries that these three new choices are competing against for Protection Warriors are
Reprisal and
The Wall.
Reprisal was newly revamped in Patch 9.0.5 to grant a serious increase in
Shield Block uptime and Rage generation, and it has become the de facto choice for Protection Warriors in Mythic+, and a semi-competitive alternative to
The Wall in raids.
The Wall has maintained its place of prominence in Castle Nathria for the most part, due to being simpler and much more forgiving than
Reprisal, even if it's somewhat weaker on paper.
Night Fae -
Nature's FuryStarting with
Nature's Fury, it works exactly the way it reads. It adds one (1) extra tick of
Ancient Aftershock, which is a decent burst damage increase, especially in AoE. Basically, this Legendary plays further into
Ancient Aftershock's strengths -- but also amplifies its weaknesses. Increasing the duration of
Ancient Aftershock is great when it works as intended, such as repeatedly interrupting a group of caster mobs, but it's even more of a waste of resources when enemies move out of the circle. Additionally, the DoT effect provided by
Nature's Fury stacks up to 6 times -- which is the total number of ticks that
Ancient Aftershock will deal with the Legendary. It's a decent burst damage increase, but not a consistent Rage generation buff, and it's even more vulnerable to movement than before. This Legendary might be fun for boosting your burst damage, but otherwise, it probably won't be particularly good or desirable for Protection Warriors, and it really doesn't do anything to make Night Fae a more appealing Covenant choice, either.
Necrolord -
GloryNecrolord Warriors gain
Glory, and despite its relatively unassuming tooltip, it has potential to be extraordinarily good. With
Unnerving Focus &
Last Stand active,
Anger Management,
Booming Voice, and
Ravager can all combine with
Conqueror's Banner to give a Protection Warrior an absolutely absurd burst of Rage generation. This has the possibility of making a single
Conqueror's Banner cast last for upwards of 70 seconds when all other Rage generation cooldowns are available. Without them, or while using
Bolster, uptime in the 40-second range per cast is still realistic. This is, without question, overpowered, but don't go changing to Necrolord just yet. This is an incredibly powerful bonus that absolutely shifts the balance hard in favor of all Protection Warriors playing Necrolord with this Legendary in every situation. That's a design that probably won't make it through the PTR as it currently stands. Also, the
Conqueror's Banner uptime on your nearby allies
does not get extended by this Legendary, just your own. It's still a terrific support Legendary, since it applies
Conqueror's Banner's bonus to an additional group member. Even if the uptime extension receives a major nerf, this may still get some use from Necrolord Warriors looking to play an extreme support role, but it would come at a meaningful defensive sacrifice. As it's currently designed, it's better offensively, defensively, supportively, etcera-lly than either of the two current go-to options.
Venthyr
Sinful SurgeAnd last, for Venthyr, we have
Sinful Surge, which is bad. Venthyr isn't a great Protection Warrior Covenant to begin with, and this adds zero damage and barely any meaningful defensive value. Extending
Last Stand is a decent concept, but this Legendary has no interaction with
Bolster, so it's purely an extension of the health increase. That's just nowhere close to being competitive with
Reprisal or
The Wall, either offensively or defensively. Couple that with the defensive concerns Venthyr Warriors already face in choosing to cast
Condemn instead of
Ignore Pain, and you've got yourself a basically-worthless bonus. This may be great for the DPS specs, but it's a real stinker for Protection. Sorry.