First off, most of the visuals that i've seen are pretty horrid. The rogue one is probably the coolest of the previewed. The hunter one is utter shit on a stick (Piratestalker? wtf). Pally, Mage, and Priest all look almost the same except for the helmets. Very much unimpressed there. The fire theme is cool and all, but ugh. The DK tier isn't half bad. The helmet is halfway decent, and they actually look different from the rest. But I didn't start writing this to write about the looks of the gear. That's cosmetic (well duh), and secondary to what really matters.. STATS AND BONUSES.
Tier 12 set bonuses are sexy. Except maybe the resto shaman bonus. (Poor shammies). Let me start with the class I am maining right now - Death Knight.
- Blood 2 Pieces - Your melee attacks cause Burning Blood on your target, which deals 800 Fire damage every 2 for 6 sec and causes your abilities to behave as if you had 2 diseases present on the target.
- Blood 4 Pieces - Your Dancing Rune Weapon grants 15% additional parry chance.
- Frost/Unholy 2 Pieces - Your Horn of Winter ability also grants you 3 runic power every 5 sec for 2 min.
- Frost/Unholy 4 Pieces - Your critical strikes with melee abilities deal 15% additional damage as Fire damage over 4 sec.
One of my guildies brought up an interesting point with the 2p bonus. The burning blood ability makes other abilities act like there are "2 diseases on the target"... so does it stack with the other diseases, making things hit even harder? /ponders. I dunno... Also, the wording makes it sound like *every* melee swing puts the burning blood buff on the target. Is it only white hits? Abilities and melee? Does it stack, or just refresh every swing? If so, how will it deal any damage at all, because you're consistently refreshing the DoT.. I'll need more information, but the 2p bonus is pretty promising, and a bit confusing. I had always been under the impression that Blizz wanted to kill diseaseless tanking (which is partly why they rolled Scarlet Fever into Blood Plague for tanks, imo). As far as the 4-piece tanking bonus goes... there's nothing confusing or negative about it. 15% additional parry chance, every 90 seconds. Fuck yes.
Now for the DPS versions. The 2p version is... strange, to me. It's probably better suited to unholy than frost. Frost strike has a relatively low priority in frost's rotation, both for DW and 2h, so i'm not sure what's going to happen there. Obliterate hits harder, and theorycrafting these days even shows that it's worth waiting a couple seconds for an obliterate on killing machine procs over hitting frost strike. Unholy also prioritizes death coil a bit lower last I checked, but it's not *as* far down as frost strikes are for frost. DC's are great for unholy because they're used for the empowered ghoul, and unholy blight stacking. The 4p bonus is, again, just pretty awesome. 15% of extra crit damage, as fire damage, off melee abilities... which means it won't affect diseases, icy touch, howling blast, or death coil.
All in all, i'm stoked to see Blizz trying to do new shit with their set bonuses. So many of them have been just very meh. Some have been good (bear T10), some have been not so good (bear T11), but it's long overdue for some fresh ideas. I'm glad to see it comin from Blizz nowadays.
