7.2 FAQ
The patch is almost upon us, and it brings with it a wealth of changes. Let’s work out what we need to know for Tuesday.
What is changing in 7.2?
We would start by looking at the Resto Druid class changes. Except… there are none. For a second consecutive patch, we’ve seen no real changes. We are ok with this since we’re in a pretty good place anyway. This means that our recommended talents also won’t be changing, nor will our stat priorities or trinkets.
What are our best in slot legendaries for 7.2?
Our best in slot legendaries will be very fight dependent with Prydaz and Velens being good all-round choices. All of our sub-par legendaries are going to be in a much better place than on live. The power gap between worst and best is going to be much smaller and you can worry a little less if your first couple of legendaries aren’t perfect. You can find some further thoughts here.
New Traits! Which order should we pick them up in?
In 7.2 we are able to put four points in our minor traits, as well as the five new traits unlocked in the patch. It’s recommended that you take the new traits (heading toward Deep Rooted) before filling out the fourth point in your old minor traits. You need to have 4/4 in all minor traits, as well as Deep Rooted to unlock the new Paragon Trait Concordance of the Legion.
So that’s Grace of the Cenarion Circle -> Eternal Restoration -> Joy of Spring -> Deep Rooted -> Persistence -> Grovewalker -> Knowledge of the Ancients / Essence of Nordrassil. You can pick the grey traits in any order since they are all equally insignificant.
You will require 129 million Artifact Power to get to 42 (Deep Rooted) from 36. You should get around 58 million refunded if you had a 54 trait weapon prior to the patch which will buy you up to trait 39.
Is Drape of Shame still worth using after the nerf?
You can run the following macro to check the ilvl value of the Drape of Shame effect after the patch hits:
/script local x,a,b,c,d,l,i;x=GetInventoryItemLink("player",15);a,b,c,d=GetItemInfo(x);l=0;x=GetCritChance()/100;i=GetSpellBonusDamage(4)*0.05*x/(x+1);while true do i=i-9.44-l*0.474;if i>0 then l=l+1;else print("Effect:", l, "Total:",l+d);break;end endTier bonuses aside, the DoS is still best in class and the availability of higher level drapes from M+ Karazhan should ensure it keeps its place on our character sheet until Tomb of Sargeras hits. It still isn’t as good as our tier set bonuses and so once the next raid releases we are likely to prefer wearing 2 pieces of T19 and 4 pieces of T20.
What are our T20 bonuses? Are they good?
2pc bonus: Swiftmend triggers up to 40% reduced cooldown based on the current health of your target.
4pc bonus: Swiftmend increases your Efflorescence healing by 400% for 8 seconds.
We’ve been treated with two very strong T19 bonuses which make the T20 equivalents pretty disappointing. The bonuses are going to vary in strength drastically depending on the fight with movement heavy Efflorescence-unfriendly fights being a real killer.
The two piece alone is incredibly weak and we are likely to wait until we have four pieces until we think of removing our T19 four piece (though we can wear both if we get the right pieces). The four piece is at least more interesting.
Some numbers:
- In high end raid gear (low-end by the time ToS rolls around), Efflorescence heals for ~37,000 * 3 every ~1.6 seconds. Let’s include 25% crit, a 1.5 HoT average and 20% mastery and go with:
- 37000 * 3 * 1.25 * 1.3 = ~180,000 healing every 1.6 seconds on average.
- After we Swiftmend, Efflorescence will heal for five times (+400%) that for five ticks (if we’re above 25% Haste).
- Multiplying our previous number, Efflorescence will heal for 900,000 (300k per person) for the duration of the buff.
- This makes the raw total healing value of the bonus equal to (900,000 – 180,000) * 5 = 3,600,000. Think of it as a mini-tranquillity!
- The Joy of Spring, and fourth Essence of Nordrassil traits will give it an additional boost so you can consider these a low end of the numbers we might see. You may also pick up Efflorescence relics for an additional boost.
Now let’s put the bonuses together and see what kind of total percentage healing boost we might expect.
- We don’t have any hard data on how much cooldown reduction we’re going to get on Swiftmend from the 2pc just yet so let’s be a little conservative and assume we’re looking at a 24s cooldown on average (20% cooldown reduction out of the maximum 40%).
- This gives us 3.6m raw healing every 24 seconds. That’s 150,000 raw heals per second.
- Let’s assume a 40% overhealing on the Efflo bonus. It could very well be lower a lot of the time. 150,000 * 0.6 = 90,000 heals per second.
- I don’t really think giving a proper percentage to a bonus like this (that will vary so wildly depending on the fight) is that appropriate but at those numbers it could easily contribute 10% or more of our total healing.
- That makes it a situationally very powerful bonus. I still don’t like it though.
How do I empower my weapon? What should I be doing the day the patch hits?
When the patch hits there are two quest lines you will want to complete as soon as possible (The mythic+ cache will not have an AP token so you can open it before you do your quests).
The first unlocks Artifact Knowledge 26 (and allows us to begin researching AK27 and 28).
- Pick up Armies of the Legionfall from your Adventure Guide (you may be given it automatically upon login).
- Meet up with our favourite wizard in Dalaran.
- Complete the scenario he offers you. It’s in 8 parts and will take you around 15 minutes. You kill some things, they die, it’s good stuff.
- You will be offered a set of follow up quests. Complete Seeking lost knowledge. This quest will have you dreaming of your flying mount, such is the terrain of the broken shore. There are a bunch of other quests around that are unrelated to our Artifact Weapon mission but you can tick them off while you’re here if you have time. Try not to do any of the World Quests in the area yet since they’ll be worth a lot more once we’ve grabbed AK26.
- Khadgar will send you back to the Dreamgrove to learn your new artifact knowledge rank. Make sure you start your research for 27 and 28. They are still priced at a very reasonable 500 Order Resources each.
Next, we are going to complete a short quest chain to empower our Artifact Weapon, opening up a new path from 36 onwards. This entire piece takes around 30 minutes.
- (Requires 36 traits) Take The Broken Shore: Investigating the Legion from Khadgar nearby. Kill nearby enemies until you get the required quest item and then return to Dalaran.
- You should pick up The Bradensbrook Investigation from the Violet Keep. Complete it in Val’sharah and then return to Dalaran to upgrade your artifact weapon.
How do I get my new Artifact Challenge Appearance?
7.2 adds a new artifact appearance, available by completing a challenging solo scenario. I’ve written a guide on making it through, which can be found here.
When does Tomb of Sargeras come out?
All that we know for sure is that it isn’t with the patch, and that there is an 11 week quest chain that ends around the same time Final Fantasy XIV releases a big new patch so signs at least are pointing to early – mid June. This is basically a guess.