Ny’alotha: Healing Trinkets

Healing trinkets in Eternal Palace were a blessing. Jellyweed and Deferred Sentence add incredible healing; Leviathan’s Lure and Aquipotent Nautilus put out excellent DPS and Font of Power was a fantastic stat stick (if a pain to use). We… won’t mention Za’qul’s Portal Key.

Ny’alotha adds a lot of new trinkets including a two set with a seemingly massive set bonus. A lot of them are stat sticks which isn’t particularly exciting, even if one does give you an almost permanent set of wings. Every trinket has been added to the beta version of QE Live for patrons. Expect values to shift as they continue to iterate on the PTR but you can play around with and compare these right away. This article will be updated with any future PTR patches and changes will be noted.

PTR & Article Updates

• 16 December: The Void-Twisted Titanshard has seen a heavy reduction to the shield element in return for a small crit increase – an overall nerf to the trinket. The problem here is that you lose effective HPS from the shield decrease and also have a much shorter uptime on the crit buff.
• 21 December: The Forbidden Obsidian Claw (Carafe 2.0) has been buffed substantially. The mana return has been increased by 25% and it now scales with Haste. This was already an ok trinket and the buffs push it solidly into A+ tier status.
• 8 January: Forbidden Obsidian Claw can now crit, further increasing its already decent damage component.

Before you go on…

All calculations are on the 460 ilvl Heroic versions of the trinkets. Some of the trinkets scale with your secondary stats and you’ll have to plug your own numbers in to get accurate values.

Our demo character (henceforth known as Steve) has the following stats:

• 25% Crit
• 15% Haste
• 10% Versatility

None of the trinkets appear to interact with Mastery though Oozing Coagulum will need to be tested on a Holy Priest.

Forbidden Obsidian Claw

Initial Rating: B (Paladin) / A+ (Druid / Monk / Disc / Shaman)
Drops from: Maut (second boss)

The Breakdown

• Damage scales with: Versatility, Haste, Crit
• Mana scales with: Haste
• You should know:
  • Those who remember Antorus will no doubt remember the Carafe of Searing Light. This is really similar to Carafe. They did cut the duration in half. So, the equivalent of copying your friends homework at the last minute and trying to make it look different.
  • Ticks about every second and does currently scale with Haste. That means the more haste you have the more mana you get back. Excellent.
  • This is a “drain” effect, not just a damage effect. That means you heal for a percentage of the damage you deal. Yes this trinket is insane.
• Numbers wise:
  • The trinket restores ~10160 mana over its duration before Haste scaling. That means with 20% haste you’re looking at 12k mana back. That’s about 40% more mana than Fangs would give you at an equivalent item level.
  • Quick tip: Try and pop it during Heroism / Bloodlust for a free 3000 mana.
  • Damage wise you’re looking at 1100+ DPS. 8.5 seconds is a much better duration than its original 18 seconds and you can potentially get a little “priority DPS” value from it. It’s not Cyclotronic level in power but considering its high item level availability and its fantastic healing potential you’ll swap this in for almost every raid scenario.

Mythic+

• Mana tends to be of lower value in Mythic+ but the damage is ok. Consider it a solid “all-rounder” trinket. Not top tier by any means but good at everything. Could rise to top tier on tough tyrannical weeks where strapping on a Claw could help you keep Crucible of Flame instead of Lucid.

Verdict: It was good in Antorus, it is much better here

This was a solid but unexceptional pick in its first PTR iteration. The on-use has been buffed by 40%+ since then and it’s now a front-runner for “must-have”. It also drops from the second boss of the raid which makes it accessible at an ultra high item level and once obtained you likely won’t take it off ever.

Humming Black Dragonscale

Initial Rating: A-
Drops from: Wrathion (First boss)

The Appearance

The Breakdown

• You should know:
  • Remember Crest of Pa’ku? This is Crest of Paku… with wings! The wings do actually slow your fall speed while active. This isn’t always a good thing.
• Numbers wise:
  • The Humming Black Dragonscale procs 3 + haste times per minute. This might very well change before it goes live because as-is you will literally have a 70-80%++ uptime on the buff. That’s a 70-80% uptime on your wings.
  • At 460 item level you’re looking at an average of 250 haste and 110 speed. You’ll be zooming.
  • The speed is a nice, almost entirely useless, bonus. Yes I copy pasted that from the Crest of Pa’ku article. If blizzard can do it, so can I.

Mythic+

• A very decent Mythic+ trinket with current tuning. Haste is often a good Mythic+ stat and the uptime is exemplary. It will still run into tough competition from true damage trinkets.

Verdict: Slightly Overbudget… with wings!

Paladins loved Crest of Pa’ku and Paladins love Wings. This is the best of both worlds. It’s good for everyone else too. The haste scaling might be removed before live which would bring this back in line with every other stat stick.

Manifesto of Madness

N’zoth loot drops 10 item level higher than other bosses so Manifesto is compared at its native 470 item level.

Initial Rating: A
Drops from: N’zoth the Corrupter (Last boss)

The Breakdown

• You should know:
  • Contrary to earlier reports, Manifesto requires that you stay away from allies and then next to allies for the full duration of each buff making it substantially more difficult to use.
  • Therefore, during the crit portion of the buff, you want to have minimal allies around you. This is honestly the tough part and it’s going to be heavily fight dependent. There are some where you just aren’t going to get much value and you’ll quickly swap the trinket out on those. It should be said that the crit value decreases very slowly so if you do clip even 3-4 people in your circle then the punishment isn’t overly cruel.
  • This is not a great trinket to have to wear in melee. As great as this would otherwise be for Glimmer Paladins, I don’t think you’ll be able to get away with wearing it on most fights. You can’t be out of range of the boss for 10 seconds because of Crusader Strike and good luck finding a spot on the boss that isn’t already swarmed with melee. This will also apply to Rising Mist / Way of the Crane Mistweavers.
• Numbers wise:
  • Alright, this is a fancy stat stick but it’s still a stat stick. So it’ll live or die based on its numbers alone.
  • Assuming you get maximum value out of both portions of the trinket (unlikely but stay with me) it’s worth ~131 crit and vers. A little higher than your average proc-based stat stick.
  • On a more standard fight where you’re not able to be quite as free with your movement it might drop to somewhere around 100 crit and ~131 vers (that’s full value from the vers and 3 allies on average sharing your crit circle).
  • 1:30 is a perfect cooldown and the trinket will line up perfectly with Avenging Wrath, Flourish and Evangelism among others. Packing its power into a 20 second duration tends to be a little longer than most huge damage windows but it should still be potent.

Mythic+ 

• It is far easier to step out on your own in Mythic+ but also far harder to restack the party for the Vers portion of the trinket. You’re likely looking at somewhere around 128 crit and 77 vers in dungeons. Usable, but it’s not making any best in slot lists.

Verdict: On use good, stat stick good, trinket good… but not perfect

This is really good but it’ll take some thought and planning. Boosting your healing during Evang / Flourish / Wings healing by ~15%+ for 10 seconds with a roughly equal boost before or after it is absolutely no joke. You’ll just need the fight to not require too tight a stack. Honestly I am going back and forth a lot on this trinket but I think it’ll end up potent. All assuming you aren’t a paladin, and the boss has sufficient burst damage that amplifying your cooldowns is of high value.

Oozing Coagulum

Initial Rating: B+
Drops from: Il’gynoth, Corruption Reborn (third to last boss)

The Appearance

The Breakdown

• Proc scales with: Versatility
• Stuff you should know
  • The pools last for 90 seconds each. That’s a long long time so it isn’t a big deal if you can’t stand in the pool immediately. That also means that you can stack multiple of them in an area and save them for a big burst phase. This greatly increases its value on fights where you aren’t crossing to another area of the arena often.
  • The pools always spawn very close to you, though never quite underneath you. That’s a blessing most of the time since it gives you a choice about when to spend the pool.
  • The healing bonus does apply to hots and ripping a big AoE heal like Wild Growth will quickly deplete the pool. There isn’t a way to track how much healing is left in it but it does get visually smaller the more of it you use.
  • While the tooltip mentions that it increases the healing done by your spells, Oozing Coagulation appears in the combat log as its own healing event. Useful for tracking its throughput.
  • The trinket won’t proc on overhealing so very little of the trinket should be wasted.
• Numbers wise:
  • Oozing Coagulum procs 1.5 times per minute for a potential 1843 HPS. That is incredibly significant even if you end up wasting some of the pools.

Mythic+

• This is not a good Mythic+ trinket. You have fewer healing events to deplete the puddles, you move far more and it offers no damage.

Verdict: Like pineapple on pizza. It’s better than it seems

This is the best possible version of what would usually have been a pretty bad trinket. All of the “What-ifs” go in favor of the player. It does still take a little bit of work and you’ll need to be able to blast 20 healing events to eliminate each pool. It also doesn’t scale well with incoming damage. Mythic raiders are unlikely to use it over the more powerful stat stick options but it’ll likely put out good numbers in heroic and below.

Vita-Charged Titanshard & Void-Twisted Titanshard

Initial Rating: ?
Drops from: Ra’den (fourth to last boss)

The Breakdown

• Stuff you should know
  • In the original PTR iteration you either got the set bonus (while in Ny’alotha) or the individual procs (when outside the raid) but never both. They’ve since reverted that functionality and you now get both while in the raid. In the process they extended the duration of both trinkets while somewhat tempering their effects.
• Numbers wise:
  • Let’s look at how each holds up alone.
  • Vita-Charged Titanshard (the little brother)
    • The trinket procs once per minute for an average of 356 haste. It also offers your party 63 haste each. It really does hit your actual party members in raid so you can stack those that love haste with you. I know that this expansion has been big on adding DPS to fights but you’re not looking at more than 7-800 DPS from this contribution. Just ok.
    • Definitely poor for personal HPS contribution and I’m not convinced by the party buff. You’ll likely only use this as part of the set.
  • Void-Twisted Titanshard (the big brother)
    • You get the full crit value while the shield has even 1 HP left in it. It doesn’t scale down like Zoatroid did last tier.
    • Absorbs are considered from smallest to largest. That means your Resounding Protection, Sanctum and Power Word: Shield buffs are all used before the shroud. You should be able to reliably keep this for at least most of its duration.
    • You need to be taking 4.6k damage per second to deplete the Shroud and that’s before we consider any other absorbs. So that you have something to compare to, the end of Orgozoa phase 1 has each raider taking around 30k damage per second. Post-nerf this isn’t going to last very long at all – especially in the rot heavy Ny’alotha.
    • If you keep the absorb active for 75% of its duration the effect is worth ~257 crit. If you’re battling just to stay alive and it fades after 4 seconds which is quite realistic now then it plummets to ~91 crit.
    • The absorb itself is no longer a gun throughput tool itself like it was in its original PTR iteration. When fully utilized you’re looking at an ok 1.2k HPS.
    • Ok so the package will give you 229 versatility + 75-125 crit + 1000-1200 HPS. Considering how limited the trinket is I can no longer recommend it, at least outside of the set. When the fight is at its most difficult the trinket is basically as good as a couple Resounding Protection traits, except random.
  • Now the set bonus:
    • If you have both trinkets then they add an additional 241 intellect on average. That is enough to justify equipping both so long as your spec gets reasonable value out of haste.

Verdict: Raw. We’ll watch these carefully.

Void-Twisted Titanshard used to be as titanic as the name implied. It’s current iteration is far weaker and you’re likely to only use these trinkets together now. Stay tuned for further changes because they don’t seem to quite be sure what they want out of these.

Patch 8.3 preview series

Corruption | Ny’alotha Trinkets | Essence Analysis