2-Set Bonus
Our 2-set bonus is relatively simple, just a damage amplifier to
Matar with a small additional effect, resulting in a pretty decent set bonus. It has some minor potential influence in terms of stat priority (maybe Mastery becomes ever so slightly more valuable) and it might change a talent point or two. However, it is unlikely to change your build much, as
Matar and
Disparo con púas are already the focus of current talent builds and the majority of talents relate to these two spells. Gameplay-wise you won't notice the effect much either as we already get random
Disparo con púas procs, and this effect will just seem like any other proc. It will mainly make it easier for you to maintain
Frenesí. It plays more into single-target as
Tajo mortal isn't particularly strong right now. This effect doesn't blow your mind but it does its job of being an decent and non-intruisive tier effect for the first season.
4-Set Bonus
Our 4-set bonus, which recently got a redesign, is also very simple. Similar to the 2-set, it favors
Matar and
Disparo con púas and talents which buff or interact with these two abilities. It likely won't change your rotation much other than maybe alternating the spells more to maximize the buff, which plays well with
Órdenes de guerra. Finally, again similar to our 2-set, the bonus works better on single-target than on AoE due to
Matar not being as prominent on AoE. Overall, there's not much feedback to give on these tier set bonuses other than that they are quite boring, but this is probably fine in the context of the new talent trees.
The first takeaway is that this is a much less impactful and relatively weak bonus compared to what we got used to from Shadowlands. The Tier Set Bonuses of Shadowlands were completely game-changing, changing the playstyle, rotation and feel of the spec fundamentally.
The Dragonflight Tier Bonuses are much more focused on speeding up and enhancing the existing playstyle. In the case of Marksmanship, the set bonus is all about power, and not about feel in any way. In other words, you will never notice the existence of the set-bonus in your gameplay, though it will significantly improve your DPS. The 4pc bonus is triggered completely automatically and independently of your decisions, as long as you are auto-attacking. It is equally useful on both single-target and AoE as well, but since the proc-rate of the 4-set bonus is strongly tied to your Haste, and you are going to be buffing
Disparo de punterías with extra damage, this will enhance our burst much more than the rest of our rotation, due to the effects of Talents like
Afinar la puntería.
Since you need to cast
Disparo Arcano or
Multidisparo to even activate the Set Bonus, you will get fewer procs during
Disparo certero since you do not naturally cast as many
Disparo Arcanos between your
Disparo de puntería due to the reduced
Disparo de puntería cooldown during
Disparo certero. The Set Bonus seems a little unsure of what it wants to be. Marksmanship is reknowned for its immense burst damage, but the set bonus seems to impact non-Trueshot windows relatively more than Trueshot windows? With this in mind, I wonder why its proc-rate is directly tied to Haste, which you will tend to have more of during your cooldown windows due to on-use trinkets, procs, and Bloodlust?
There is not much else to say about the set bonus, because it is simply a flat DPS increase. The way it is triggered does not seem to mesh very well with how Marksmanship plays, with heavy burst periods and relatively low damage outside of those moments. Its DPS contribution should still be significant.
Welcome to the first impression of the Survival Hunter tier-set from the first season of Dragonflight! This article will go over a few first impressions of the tier-set bonus: how it's implemented, the power impact, any sort of rotational changes it makes, the synergy with the spec, and some brief pieces of feedback at the end.
It's important to note that Blizzard has stated that, in contrast to the tier-sets in 9.2, this first season is intended to have a minimally impacting design that doesn't influence your resource management or rotation too much. They believe the new talent system is complex enough without needing to worry about an extremely powerful tier-set bonus to impact the talents you pick. You can read more about that
here.
TL;DRSet is simple. Very strong in single-target, less so in AoE. Adds a bit more value to Mastery as a secondary stat. Should feel very fun and engaging when you're slamming free and empowered
Mordisco de mangosta building up more stacks than you typically would. Chain proccing back to back free and empowered
Mordisco de mangosta might get a bit out of hand.
Survival's Bonuses
As you can see from the bonuses listed above, this is a fairly simple-tier set as a whole. It works with a mandatory, unskippable talent (
Golpe de raptor) and the rest of the abilities it works with are from very accessible parts of the talent tree. This tier set does not impact your rotation or gameplay in any meaningful way and it only slightly impacts the talents you will select. As it is a % based buff, it will be optimal to use
Carnicería instead of
Trinchar as the latter just does very low damage on its own and Butchery offers much superior raw damage, thus receives more of a benefit.
Two-Piece
Our new two piece set-bonus is very easy to understand, if not a bit too boring. In fact we already have this effect as two separate talents (
Enfoque de lanza and
Lanza de barrido ). Despite being boring, it's still an effective boost to our single-target damage. Unfortunately, not as effective in AoE, but it is nice that
Carnicería is more accessible now.
Four-Piece
The four set-bonus is also an easy read from a gameplay perspective and much like the two piece bonus is more effective in single-target than AoE. It might actually make Mastery more appealing as a secondary stat. Regarding the AoE portion it's a bit less exciting as your AoE gameplay isn't Focus limited like the single-target style is.
Set Discussion
As expected it is a straight-forward tier set and nothing like Mad Bombardier. Apart from the 2-set being much more beneficial to one talent over the other, it appears to match Blizzard's design intent, so shout out to the devs! As it stands now, there is a lot of Mastery itself on the tier-set items, but that could be changed in the future. Currently in Dragonflight, our stat priority is looking to be something like Haste > Crit > Verse = Mastery so we'll need to wait on this closer to live to see if this is the case.
With that said, the two piece bonus seems a bit too plain. As mentioned above it is just a stronger version of a talent we already have. The AoE impact of the tier set is also (very) low. We certainly wouldn't expect another 9.2 tier set hilarity of overpowered bonuses, but with
Trinchar/
Carnicería frequently dealing less than 4%/10% (respectively) of your total damage output in sustained AoE, a 15% buff to either isn't that impactful.
Aside from more aggressive tuning to how much the tier set affects our AoE spells, this could perhaps also be addressed by changing the four piece bonus to be a % proc per on damage instance instead of ability use, so that when you strike multiple targets with
Trinchar /
Carnicería, every hit rolls for a chance to proc the set bonus.
The 20% proc rate on the four piece bonus might be a bit too high, something we'll be able to test once the updated set bonuses are available on beta realms. At least in theory—considering that the Focus we save on the free abilities just means more Focus to use the ability right away—which of course is another chance to proc the set bonus, which can then chain off of itself. Another thing to consider is that with the procs there is a slight counter-synergy with
Punta de la lanza as you will be using less
Matar which will bring down the extremely high amount of modifiers to your
Mordisco de mangosta.
If the chain proccing ends up too silly, it could be a good idea to implement some sort of internal cooldown instead of nerfing the proc rate itself. We're excited to play with it in game on the next build to further test this new tier-set.