Shadowlands Season 4 Healer FAQ

Season 4 is a bit of a short one, and there are far fewer changes than we’d usually expect from a big patch. Instead of putting together separate FAQ posts for each spec, we’ll combine them all into one. Season 4 features all three Shadowlands raids returning in new “Fated” versions with higher ilvl gear. It also shakes up the Mythic+ dungeon pool with the two Tazavesh dungeons joined by Upper and Lower Karazhan, the two Mechagon dungeons, Grimrail Depot and Iron Docks. We’ll go over what you need to know about your legendaries, where to spend your Dinars and what cool stuff is in the returning dungeons.

Returning Greatness

Drape of Shame, Mechagon Rings & the Rest

Special effect items that of high value are actually pretty rare. This season we’re blessed with the strongest three we’ve seen in the last few years and we’ll have them all at once.

Drape of Shame

Usable by: All

Drape of Shame was nerfed to 3% (from 5%) as servers went live. The paragraph below reflects it’s post-nerf form.

Drape of Shame increases crit healing by 3% while worn (it technically increases your crit modifier to 2.03 from 2.0). At 25-30% crit you’re looking at around a 0.6% healing increase from the effect. It notably still has a full allotment of secondary stats on it so you will want to wear this most of the time. It does see competition from equal item level leech cloaks if you don’t already have a lot of leech but QE Live will be able to advise on specific scenarios. This is not a hugely impactful effect and you shouldn’t feel you need to go out of your way to farm it ASAP.

Mechagon Ring Sets

Usable by: All (but not optimal for Priest)

The Mechagon Ring combos consist of four different “If” rings and four different “Then” rings. You pair an “if” with a “then” and get the effect whenever you fulfill it’s condition. These are incredibly powerful and are must-haves if you’re looking to maximize your non-priest character. They are on a short 15 second cooldown.

Raid: Pair the healing effect (Rebooting Bit Band) with either Logic Loop of Division or Logic Loop of Recursion. Logic Loop of Division’s “behind” condition really just means “don’t be in front of the boss” and it’ll proc off DoT ticks so you’ll end up with very high uptime. If you don’t think it’s likely you’ll be casting a lot of DPS spells then Logic Loop of Recursion is extremely comparable (it procs off healing spells).

Mythic+: Pair either the healing effect (Rebooting Bit Band) or haste effect (Overclocking Bit Band) with Logic Loop of Division. Higher keys will benefit more from the DPS gain of Overclocking but when starting out either are powerful options.

The Priest Exception: Unfortunately if you are a Priest then the Mechagon ring set competes directly with the Soulwarped Seal of Wrynn which is stronger.

Neural Synapse Enhancer

Usable by: Druids, Priests, Monks and Shaman

An on-use intellect buff that trades significant base intellect for a big proc. This is an extremely good weapon for Disc Priests and almost nobody else. Druids and Shamans are better off sticking with Antumbra. It’s an upgrade for Disc Priests if ~half of your healing or more is within your ramp windows. You can use QE Live to compare with what you own but you might find it’s a choice you make on a fight by fight basis.

Warlords of Draenor Intellect Necks & Rings

Usable by: All (optimal for none)

Warlords of Draenor Mythic+ items use a different type of itemization since they were released in a time where rings and necks had intellect as well as secondary stats. You might initially think these would be quite good given how strong intellect is for all healing specs. Unfortunately they give up a significant amount of secondary stats for it and aren’t worth wearing in any scenario.

New Trinkets

Well, new old trinkets anyway. The selection here isn’t very good and you’ll want to pursue raid trinkets in most cases. There are several Warlords of Draenor trinkets that may or may not be available. This FAQ will be updated when servers go live. Here’s what we’re looking at:

Fluctuating Energy

Drops from: Upper Karazhan
Rating: B

An average at best mana trinket with an orb mini-game. Having to chase after the orbs will reduce it’s average power a bit and it’s not all that strong even if you play it well. Avoid for now.

Ingenious Mana Battery

Drops from: Mechagon Workshop
Rating: C+

This trinket is a little bugged on the PTR and the mana return isn’t scaling correctly. That makes it a pretty poor versatility stat stick and there aren’t many scenarios where you wouldn’t already have better.

Faith’s Crucible

Drops from: Lower Karazhan
Rating: F

No passive intellect combined and a woefully underpowered effect leaves Faith’s Crucible in the “never use” category.

Tovra’s Lightning Repository

Drops from: Grimrail Depot
Rating: A+ (Druid, Holy Priest, Paladin); B (Disc Priest, Shaman); D (Mistweaver)

This one is pretty straightforward. If your spec likes Mastery then it’s a top 2-3 trinket. If it doesn’t, it’s not quite as good. If you’re a Mistweaver, then it’s a tragic pick.

Fleshrender’s Meathook

Drops from: Iron Docks
Rating: B

Further analysis coming for this but it’s only really potentially good for Disc Priest and Resto Druid and it’s unlikely to displace either specs best alternatives.

Enforcer’s Stun Grenade

Drops from: Iron Docks
Rating: F

This one is straightforward in the opposite direction. There is no reason to equip it outside of ultra niche scenarios where the versatility can act as a defensive but you’re giving up quite a lot of power for it.

What are Dinars and where do we spend them?

Season 4 will offer a new type of gearing token called the Puzzling Cartel Dinar. You can trade these for normal versions of trinkets, weapons and special effect items from the three raids active this season. You can then later upgrade them (or any other raid drop you get) to heroic or mythic difficulty by combining ~20 Confounding Cypher (which drop from every fated boss you kill each week) into a Sacred Creation Impetus. It appears that your first Dinar won’t be acquirable until week 3 of the patch (since it requires 30 fated boss kills) which means the specific item you’ll want to buy might change based on what loot you get early (you might even get a few items on this list). As such don’t take it as definitive. This system was also not tested much on the PTR so check back when servers go live for any updates – especially around how many of each token you need.

Note: When selecting items consider how difficult it would be to get the item from raid. Resonant Reservoir for example is often passed around since it isn’t that good for DPS players and it drops off quite an early boss.

Spec by spec recommendations

All you need to know about Legendaries

Legendaries are staying at 291 item level in Season 4 and there won’t be a way to upgrade them further. This means that the technically optimal slot for them will change from a high budget item to a low budget item. This is fairly low impact swap and if your legendary isn’t currently on a cape or ring slot then you shouldn’t feel like you must move it.

The rough new slot order will be Bracers > Neck > Belt > the rest but it will depend on what high ilvl slots are available to your spec and which slots your non-unity legendary can actually fit into. This is a very low impact decision.

Class Changes

… There are none.