Season 3 Trinket Preview

Season 2 was big for trinkets. We had an all time great in Rashok’s Molten Heart and some very solid stat sticks in Ominous Chromatic Essence and the special class trinkets. Season 3 is going to feel like a pretty big downgrade as things currently sit to the point where you might even just keep your Rashok’s on. We’ll discuss that closer to release if needed. Keep in mind that this is still PTR, and item effects are often tuned very late in the cycle. A second nerf finally hit Rashok’s and it’s no longer competitive with season 3 trinkets though it’s still a fine choice for week 1 before you can obtain them.

Before you go on…

Calculations are based around high level versions of the trinkets but conclusions tend to hold at any item level – images don’t always match. With the new Mythic track we’re also able to upgrade any dungeon or raid trinket in the game to max level (489) with Blossom of Amirdrassil going all the way to 496. Keep that in mind when looking at specific numbers. You can see a full chart of all new and old trinkets at Questionably Epic Live. It’ll be updated for 10.2 shortly before the patch goes live.

Trinket Tuning & Article Updates

• Blossom of Amidrassil +20%.
• All relevant season 2 trinkets nerfed.

This is part 1 of a 2 part article. The second part is here: https://questionablyepic.com/season-3-trinket-preview-part-2/

Blossom of Amirdrassil

Initial Rating: B-
Drops from: Fyrakk the Blazing – Very Rare

The Breakdown

• You should know:
  • Scales with: Versatility. It’s likely a bug that it can’t crit since it’s usually an expectation on flat healing trinkets.
  • This is currently bugged on the PTR. The tooltip is clear about the HoT bouncing to 3 nearby allies, however it has been bouncing to 9+ instead. This appears to have now been fixed.
  • The trinket only spreads one time (to X targets) per proc. The spreads don’t themselves spread or add an absorb.
• Numbers wise:
  • With a 3 target spread you’re looking at around 13k raw HPS. That would be great if it was an intellect trinket but we get haste instead and getting 4-5% healing is insufficient outside of normal and low heroic raids.

Mythic+

• This isn’t a particularly stunning Mythic+ trinket and you’d only ever wear it if it was very overtuned. It only procs once a minute so it’s a challenge to line it up with dangerous damage periods, and the lack of passive int means you’re investing quite a lot of your power into the heal proc.

Verdict: Unworthy

A shorter cooldown on the effect might have been more interesting to play with, but the format isn’t necessarily an issue if the tuning is good. In this case though, it just doesn’t heal for enough to equip it unless it goes live in its bugged 9 target state. I think there’s a certain expectation when your trinket is a very rare drop off the last boss of the raid and I think they should push it up a bit before launch. Adding crit scaling to the primary HoT might be a good approach.

Smoldering Seedling

Initial Rating: C
Drops from: Larodar, Keeper of the Flame

The Breakdown

• You should know:
  • Smoldering Seedling is an on-use trinket that spawns a small tree when you click it. The tree doesn’t appear on your frames and needs to either be macro’d or manually targeted. You can also mouse over it in the world but that’s a pretty bad idea. It takes about 50k damage per second and you need to heal through that in order to keep it alive. It spawns with about half health.
  • When the tree receives healing it pulses an AoE heal to up to 5 nearby targets. It won’t heal full health targets and won’t replicate your heal if everyone is full health.
  • There are certain ways on the PTR to break the Seedlings healing cap. If they go live then you could get millions out of every use and it could be very competitive but they’ve been bug reported and so we’ll assume for now that it works as intended. I won’t discuss them too much here but if they make it post launch then it’ll be a discussion point.
• Numbers wise:
  • This is actually a slightly awkward trinket to evaluate. We’ll ignore any healing the tree itself receives since really we’re only interested in the healing it does to raid. We do then also need to deduct the time we spend healing it – even if we can do it efficiently. So, is the healing it does worth both a trinket slot and the time invested in healing it to spread its healing?
  • The trees healing works as follows:
    • You heal it for X.
    • X gets multiplied by the number of injured targets nearby. The heal is increased by 20% per ally, up to a cap of 100%.
    • X gets further multiplied by your versatility.
    • X is then split between the 5 targets.
    • So for 5 targets at 10% versatility a 100k heal would heal 5 targets for 44k each. It’ll also benefit from any healing taken increases the targets have like Attuned to the Dream.
  • It is likely the cap is similarly multiplied by target count. Or rather, only our initial 100k heal above is counted towards it rather than the full 220k heal that was actually delivered. Unfortunately logging is broken on the PTR currently and so testing this properly is very difficult. Unfortunately that also makes analyzing its healing tough because ultimately the cap is how much healing it will deliver to your raid. I can hopefully update this very soon.

Mythic+

• This is a non-starter in Mythic+. When only 1-2 targets are injured, healing the seedling is barely better than just healing them directly. You’re better off using a trinket that’s applicable in more scenarios.

Verdict: Where do I start

Smoldering Seedling is this tiers “high concept” trinket where you’re investing a lot for usually small gains. In this case there are some severe playability issues. You need to be set up with a macro to target the tree or you’re susceptible to it burning out before you can even click it. A macro is a low but still unnecessary barrier and the difficulties don’t stop there.

The concept of an item that lets you convert single target healing to AoE healing for X seconds is actually a really good one. It lets you play very differently for a segment of the fight and be rewarded for your mastery of a different aspect of your spec. Seedling is just not a very fun way to go about it. Additionally, its healing is small enough that if your single target heals aren’t ultra efficient (or free) then you’re probably looking at a healing loss. You can’t afford to be hitting it with Living Flame or Regrowth, and you certainly don’t want to be investing major cooldowns like Guardian Spirit.

The small mastery buff here could probably have just been invested power-wise into the trees healing too. You’re almost never going to be able to leverage it for much value (since your tree covered the most dangerous damage window).

For a typical player I’m not expecting your returns here to be worth it.

Pip’s Emerald Friendship Badge

Initial Rating: A
Drops from: Council of Dreams

The Breakdown

• You should know:
  • Pip’s is purely a personal trinket. From the tooltip you might assume it works the same way as Ominous Chromatic Essence, Whispering Incarnate Icon and other “group” trinkets where you all pick a buff and share a portion of it. In this case all three best friends are yours and you’ll rotate through them via procs. There’s no benefit to other people in the group also running one.
  • There are “best friends” for Crit, Versatility and Mastery but not Haste. Whenever you get a proc you’ll bring out a new best friend but the order is random and you can even get the same once twice.
• Numbers wise:
  • You’ll always have some kind of Pip’s buff active. You’ll either have a passive ~280 of a random eligible secondary, or you’ll have a proc which starts out at 3362 before decaying back down to 280 over 12 seconds. You won’t make any attempt to play around the procs.
  • On average you can expect Pip’s to average about ~270 Crit, Mastery and Versatility. That’s very similar to a fully charged Ominous Chromatic Essence. Slightly worse overall but we get it at a high item level so we’ll take it.

Mythic+

• This is just as solid in Mythic+. Just treat it as a passive stat stick.

Verdict: Reliable, but it’s a shame there’s no Haste best friend

I’m not quite sure why they decided to only go with Mastery, Crit and Versatility but it’s a little annoying if you’re a haste-dominant spec like Resto Druid or Discipline Priest – particularly given other stat sticks this tier don’t have haste on them either! That decision aside, this is a lot of stats on average and with the more healing focused trinkets being quite weak so far you’re likely to rate Pip’s quite highly.

Echoing Tyrstone

Initial Rating: A
Drops from: Dawn of the Infinites Pt II

The Breakdown

• You should know:
  • Tyrstone was very overpowered on initial release and then the healing portion was changed to split between allies rather than serving each a full portion. You also get a 15% healing boost per additional ally healed, up to a cap of 5. Notably the haste effect was never changed to split and every member of your raid gets the maximum amount. It’s actually this buff where the trinket draws most of its strength.
  • While you need to be healing during the trinkets charge phase, the requirement is quite low and it’ll store overhealing. Popping it during any period where you’re using healing spells should be more than sufficient to charge it.
  • You can pre-charge the trinket before a pull and get a “free use”.
• Numbers wise:
  • You can expect around 7k raw HPS from Echoing Tyrstone assuming you’re using it on cooldown and not getting too unlucky with procs on just 1-2 people. It’ll store ~473k healing and you’ll get a 75% multiplier on that if it heals at least 5 allies. It obviously won’t be 0% overhealing on everyone but this is still a decent amount of healing for a trinket with a significant upside.
  • Each proc also gives your entire raid 337 haste for 15 seconds and it isn’t split like the heal is. This is a massive amount of average haste for your raid. It won’t always line up with DPS cooldowns (especially on pull) but you’re still looking at quite a high value for a trinket slot. That kind of pads out its power, similar to how Rashok just brought 1k average versatility to your raid with it last tier.

Mythic+

• This kind of turns into a very different trinket in Mythic+. The heal is only split between 5 people so it’s much bigger, but you’re hitting fewer people with the haste buff too. If you remember to charge it you should find this to be a fairly good defensive option in keys.

Verdict: A safe, strong choice considering the current competition

Echoing Tyrstone is really quite good, if a little swingy. It’ll proc the moment anyone drops below 35% which can include random hunter X standing in a swirl, or even the tank taking a bigger hit than usual. These kinds of misfortunate might cost you a bit of HPS but is also likely to save them from death. You’re also getting a decent haste buff either way across your raid.

It can actually be a bigger hindrance in lower difficulty raids where you might have difficulty proccing it regularly enough in general. It wouldn’t make too strong an LFR trinket for example.

Overall this is a very good trinket at high item levels but the power is split well between the two effects so don’t expect it to make up a massive percentage of your healing.

Amalgam’s Seventh Spine

Note that “direct healing” here is two specific spells for each spec. 

Initial Rating: A- (Resto Druid), D-F (other specs)
Drops from: Black Rook Hold

The Breakdown

• You should know:
  • While the tooltip will sometimes read “direct healing” it actually only procs off two spells for each spec. They’re as follows:
    • Resto Druid: Rejuvenation, Regrowth. Germination works fine. Rejuvs procced via Luxuriant Soil don’t work.
    • Discipline Priest: Power Word: Shield, Flash Heal.
    • Preservation Evoker: Living Flame, Echo. Doesn’t work on Echo’d Living Flames, nor any tier set bonuses, nor Leaping Flames.
    • Holy Paladin: Flash of Light, Holy Light.
    • Holy Priest: Heal, Flash Heal.
    • Resto Shaman: Healing Wave, Healing Surge. Doesn’t interact with Primordial Wave.
    • Mistweaver Monk: Vivify, Enveloping Mist.
  • Resto Druid gets 30% less mana from this than anyone else. That’s actually quite reasonable since Resto Druid casts their eligible spells much more frequently.
• Numbers wise:
  • The trinket returns 775 mana per cast at max level. If you’re a resto druid you’ll get 543 mana per cast instead.
  • If you’re able to cast eligible spells 20 times per minute you’ll get about 93,000 mana back over a 6 minute fight. You’re looking at about 10% more mana when considering just your base pool and natural mana regen.
  • This is comparable to Rashok’s from season 2 except Rashoks also added thousands of HPS and a ton of versatility to your raid. Note too that 20 is likely way higher than what you’re actually going to do unless you’re a Resto Druid.

Mythic+

• You’ll never use this in Mythic+ regardless of your spec. You usually have better answers to mana issues already.

Verdict: Realistically not good on most specs

If you’re not a resto druid then Amalgam isn’t even in contention for your trinket choice. It’s going to range somewhere from mid-tier to terrible for you. Ultimately the trinket is just tuned around casting your eligible spell a ton and most specs just aren’t hitting that on the few spells that work.

If you are a resto druid, this is still only “good” and not “great”. The glory days of going infinite off this trinket in Season 4 of Shadowlands are long behind us.

Leaf of the Ancient Protectors

Initial Rating: F
Drops from: Everbloom. Consider setting your loot spec to DPS.

The Breakdown

• You should know:
  • This is a mastery passive trinket which means we’re expecting big things out of the on-use effect due to the lack of intellect.
• Numbers wise:
  • At max level this offers a paltry 163k absorb which is about 25% of a geared characters max health.
  • You’ll also give a pretty decent 1425 versatility to your target for 15s. This averages around 350 vers. The buff also only goes out if the shield is fully consumed so you need some damage going out.
  • Ultimately 2.5k HPS and 350 vers is an ultra poor return for a mastery trinket – even if you really like the person you’re giving the versatility to.

Mythic+

• You won’t even use this trinket while world questing until it gets a buff.

Verdict: Similar value to wearing no trinket at all

Absorb trinkets are usually fairly useful to have around – Ward of Faceless Ire did this well in season 2. This one, however, is in that “too undertuned to ever consider” bucket. It has passive mastery on it instead of intellect which puts a lot of pressure on the on-use effect to perform. In this case it just doesn’t get close and you’d drop significant item level to avoid wearing it.

This would be much more competitive if it offered flat intellect instead of flat mastery and that might be the best solution to push it up the rankings.