As a follow up, we now have all of the Paladin Covenant legendaries implemented, and testable. We won’t spend much time talking about
풍요의 계절 or
책무의 망치 as they are primarily unchanged from our last post
linked here.
The real talking point is between the Kyrian and Venthyr legendaries, as these are the two most popular covenant choices for Holy Paladin they are the most noteworthy.
Kyrian
The Kyrian Legendary was worded somewhat ambiguously initially, and now that we can test it, we know how it works.
천상의 공명 will cast one additional
신성 충격 on the INITIAL target of your
천상의 종, every 5 seconds. This will add up to a fair amount of Holy Power over an encounter. However, a large portion of the
신성 충격 healing may go to waste, as there is no guarantee that person will benefit from a
신성 충격 that frequently. Due to the
빛의 자락 cap, this also ensures this person will have
빛의 자락 on them pretty much exclusively for an extended period of time. Some encounters, this may be a benefit or this may be used on a tank frequently. Overall, this legendary is a solid legendary, though it is competing with some heavy hitters for Paladin already, as the power level of our legendaries is quite high.
Venthyr
The real talk however, is in Venthyr’s
광휘의 잿불 now that we have a better idea how this works. Essentially, how it works is as soon as you leave your own
잿빛 신성화, it instantly disappears, but a portion of its cooldown (based on remaining duration) is instantly returned. This means in some scenarios you could get a mechanic forcing you to run out (and waste
잿빛 신성화), or maybe even just stand in the raid if your group “needs” said
잿빛 신성화 healing. This is kind of unique, as far as mechanics go and could lead to problems.
The real strength of this legendary is in its current tuning values. Essentially skilled players will be able to track (probably with a weakaura) its remaining duration, if you leave after exactly 20s into your
잿빛 신성화s duration, you can get its cooldown to roughly 2mins, coincidentally the cooldown of
응징의 격노. Previously, you could not get an
잿빛 신성화 with every
응징의 격노, but this legendary gives you that option which is certainly powerful. If an encounter has a predictable damage pattern, you could run 2-3 paladins with this legendary, and they would be able to stagger
잿빛 신성화s and Wings to have very powerful raid cooldowns for practically every damage event of an encounter. This is somewhat concerning, as the damage potential of Venthyr Holy Paladin is still quite high, despite the nerfs. For more information on the nerfs to Paladin in a recent PTR build you can read about
it here.
In conclusion, the
천상의 공명 legendary effect is a middle of the pack legendary, which could see some play, but has tough competition. The Necrolord and Night Fae legendaries are comparable in power, but are less represented as covenants for Holy Paladins. The Venthyr legendary, is still early and is a really cool idea mechanically but is probably slightly overtuned and could lead to abuse by stacking paladins on specific encounters to take advantage of very powerful short duration
잿빛 신성화s.
Now that the new Covenant Legendaries for Paladin can finally be tested on the PTR, we have a much better idea of exactly how they work and interact with other abilities.
Kyrian
천상의 공명 has had a significant change since it was last discussed - rather than casting
천상의 종 additional times, instead it casts regular
심판s. Compared to how it was previously assumed to work, this will result in less Holy Power in situations with multiple targets, but more initial damage from
심판s on single target. It also obviously now won't proc
울려 퍼지는 총명함 or
전투 명상 with the extra casts. For how
천상의 공명 actually works in practice, it's usually a 30 second buff that casts
심판 every 5 seconds. For each
천상의 종, you get 6 extra
심판s with a 5 second gap between each. However, it also seems to have a bug where if the initial
천상의 종 hits more than one enemy, you actually get a 35 second buff, which results in an extra
심판 cast.
The extra
심판s still proc all the normal effects you'd expect them to, like
고결한 명령,
열정, and the
심판 debuff itself. Awkwardly for both
고결한 명령 and
열정, there are a couple of bugs and issues that appear when you end up casting a lot of
심판s within a small timeframe. For
고결한 명령, its buff doesn't actually get refreshed if you cast a second
심판 with the buff still active, so despite casting 6 or 7
심판s you'll only end up with extra
고결한 명령 procs from about half of them, depending on server lag. With
열정, if you cast
심판 very frequently you end up capping at 9 stacks very quickly, and then waste stacks as they're refreshed above 6. Ideally these problems will be addressed before 9.1 goes live, especially the
고결한 명령 bug, as it's essentially random whether each
심판 will give you another buff or not.
As far as how strong it looks to be for damage, it's not unlikely based on the current version that it will become the best Legendary for Kyrian. The
심판 damage and Holy Power alone is probably enough to rival
최후의 선고, not to mention the increased
기사단의 선고 damage from extra
심판 debuffs and the fact that it doesn't lose value in AoE situations like
최후의 선고 does. Whether it really will be better or by how much remains to be seen, but judging by its current design and tuning, expect this to be a strong Legendary in the coming patch.
Venthyr
광휘의 잿불 is still a very weird Legendary to try to wrap your head around. It's been clarified to cancel
잿빛 신성화 once you leave it, but the cooldown reduction it provides does not scale as you might expect. Up to around half of the 45 second duration, 22 seconds or so in, it will still provide 110 seconds of cooldown reduction for
잿빛 신성화, which is only 10 seconds less than if you left it immediately after casting it. However, after this point the cooldown reduction is reduced at a much faster rate. This ends up with a strange outcome where there's very little change in the amount of cooldown reduction you receive until half of
잿빛 신성화's duration is finished, after which its cooldown reduction is scaled down at a much faster rate.
The result of this is that you can use
잿빛 신성화 for essentially the entire duration of
응징의 격노 plus a couple of seconds, cancel it, and then have it back off cooldown shortly after your next
응징의 격노 comes off cooldown. Although this sounds very strong, it only ends up being around 15 extra seconds of
잿빛 신성화 compared to a normal 4 minute cooldown use. While you can also just wait the full 45 seconds on your last cast of
잿빛 신성화 each fight, since you don't need the extra cooldown reduction if you can't cast it again, it might not end up as strong as
분노한 용장 for Venthyr.
Night Fae
풍요의 계절 has thankfully had a design overhaul. It now doubles the effects of each Season for its middle 10 seconds. Since each buff lasts 30 seconds, you end up with 10 seconds of the normal buff, then 10 seconds of the empowered version, then another 10 seconds of the normal buff.
- 가을의 축복 provides 60% faster cooldown recovery instead of 30%
- 겨울의 축복 does double damage with each proc
- 봄의 축복 increases healing done by 20% and healing received by 40%, instead of 10% and 20%
- 여름의 축복 has a 80% chance to deal 60% extra damage, rather than a 40% chance to deal 30% extra damage
As you might have noticed,
여름의 축복's average damage is actually quadrupled rather than doubled, since both the chance to proc and the amount of damage are doubled rather than just one of them.
It's fairly difficult to evaluate the new version of this Legendary.
여름의 축복 is by far the most valuable Season, so increasing its value by that much means that it's at least worth some consideration. Since in raid combat you can cast
여름의 축복 prepull and have your season reset back to
여름의 축복 on pull, you end up with more uptime on
여름의 축복 than any other season anyway. There could be a build similar to current Kyrian with
사형 선고 and
최후의 집행, where
사형 선고 is used within the middle 10 seconds of
여름의 축복 in order to buff its damage by proccing off regular casts within its window, but could also proc off the final hit of
사형 선고. Alternatively, it could just be used on another class with a strong 10 second burst window every 3 minutes, like a Balance Druid. Either way, this is likely to be a Legendary with some niche uses at the very least, and has potential to be much better.
Necrolord
책무의 망치 hasn't received any recent changes. It's still a pretty underwhelming effect and is unlikely to change Necrolord's position compared to other covenants.