Happy or Sad?
While Enhancement has had a bit of a bad time of it over the years with a few bright spots here or there (and it's probably got a bit boring reading doom and gloom reports each patch), this time I can pretty comfortably say that what's on the horizon for 9.2 looks universally positive. Lots of the nastier problems with the spec are improving, and some holes in choices/talents & damage profiles are being plugged up. On top of that it's not just "borrowed power" systems being addressed but the baseline toolkit - something
above and beyond what I was expecting to see before the next expansion.
There's quite a lot to break down because Enhancement as a spec while not necessarily difficult to play, does have a lot of moving parts and things that link together, so I'll break it down into a few different sections related to 9.2 changes.
Upcoming Changes
Because there's a lot going on, I'll be splitting it up between Baseline & Shadowlands Systems sections
The Baseline
These are changes that are going to be there the moment you load into patch 9.2, and directly interact with the core abilities of the class/spec regardless of all the Shadowlands systems
- 熔岩猛击 casts now cause you to spread any active 烈焰震击 on your current target to up to 3 random nearby enemies within 8 yards. It can also currently refresh the debuff duration on the target in that pool of enemies if selected.
- 冰霜震击 damage increased by 40%.
- 烈焰震击 is also now capped at 6 targets.
- 野性狼魂 guardians spawned no longer occupy a totem slot when active.
- 霜刃打击 and can now correctly trigger 火舌武器.
- 裂地术 can now trigger both 火舌武器 and 风暴使者.
The clearest and most important part of our toolkit that is altered here is our AoE, specifically the options on the
Level 35 row. Previously, we have become increasingly locked into
元素突袭 with
冰雹 being a very niche Cleave/AoE option, and
火焰新星 being a dead talent. However, following the ability to set
火焰新星 up and a
huge buff to
冰雹 we are now provided with options that lean into either single-target, sustained cleave, or burst AoE depending on the situation and what other talents you select alongside each.
The impact of
烈焰震击 spread on its own (alongside the innate
熔岩猛击 reset it's
currently doing) is effectively free AoE either by application followed by spread, or various Covenant effects that can apply it on their own and then capitalize on it. It also raises the value of
鞭笞烈焰 on the
Level 15 row to a legitimate contender in cleave now that we don't have to juggle two individual tab-target debuffs. We've also now finally got a strong reason to consider the
始源熔岩助动器 Legendary, as previously the higher GCD investment to use this coupled with the
烈焰震击 juggling pushed it far out of the realm of being playable.
The
野性狼魂 change is in response to an issue the new
2-piece bonus caused, where we would cap out on guardian slots in the totem row and Wolves/Totems/Elementals would despawn wasting some value, so is a very important (but quite niche) bugfix.
霜刃打击 and
裂地术's notes are long term bugs that now make them behave as expected (for real this time), which is a nice change to add in.
The Systems
These are changes that are coming to things directly tied to Shadowlands systems specifically (those being Legendaries, Covenants and Conduits) so are likely less permanent going forward but are very relevant to Patch 9.2.
- Venthyr's Legendary 元素导能 now also reduces the cooldown of 收割链 by 1 second each time 烈焰震击 deals a Critical Strike.
- Kyrian's 暮钟图腾 can now trigger healing pulses via hard casting 大地之盾.
- 专注闪电 damage increase to 漩涡武器 spenders has been roughly tripled at max rank.
- 熔火之拳's Critical Strike chance bonus to 熔岩猛击 has been increased by 50% at max rank.
- 不羁之风' trigger chance has been improved by roughly 40% at max rank.
- 极寒之心's chance to trigger has been doubled at max rank.
Throughout Shadowlands we've had a serious issue with the value of our Conduits being extremely frontloaded, and pretty weak. These buffs have smoothed out the gains so increasing their item level is more valuable, and also made them drastically more impactful. The most important of these is
专注闪电 which now moves to being a lock-in Conduit, alleviating one of our other core issues (to some extent) by making
漩涡武器 spenders more punchy - especially when paired with
Venthyr or
Necrolord.
极寒之心 is the Conduit that spent the entire expansion in a bit of a hole but when everything is considered, it is now an option if playing
冰雹 thanks to this and the
2/4-piece below that lets it slot in even with
巫医的狼骨 for mixed damage profiles in some cases. That we also have to cast less
烈焰震击s now due to the
熔岩猛击 reset on
烈焰震击, it even sees value without now there's room to press it.
不羁之风 is now even more of a lock-in with
毁灭之风, and
熔火之拳 with
灼热之手, so we've finally reached a point where all of our Spec Conduits are worth using.
The entire package of these changes makes it a much more interesting question of whether a third potency is worth taking (but not necessarily dominant) in each of your Soulbinds depending on which build you play, or what your goal is - which is incredibly healthy.
The
Kyrian Legendary is a smaller change but does mean we have a lower opportunity cost when using the second charge of the pulse - instead of burning
漩涡武器 it's replaced by a
治疗之泉图腾 cast followed by 2
大地之盾 casts - but this still costs globals, so is mostly quality of life. The
Venthyr change is extremely strong and opens it up as a premiere AoE Covenant choice that we'll discuss below, drastically reducing the cooldown of
收割链 and having some very surprising synergies with other options. This paired with the baseline changes has opened up a lot of options we previously didn't have that allow us to alter our damage profile more directly without throwing away what we're good at - which is the
current situation on live.
As a small extra note there was a listed change to
风怒图腾 in the early patch datamining that should be touched on:
- 风怒图腾 can now only be triggered by Main-Hand swings
While this looks like a nerf
on paper due to the old tooltip, this is how it has always worked throughout Shadowlands - the game tooltip just didn't tell you. Every judgement of how good the totem is for Dual-wield specs from 9.1 upward (thanks to other bugs that were fixed from 9.0) remains the same outside of new effects certain classes are gaining access to in 9.2, so no need to panic!
Tier Set Bonuses
Patch 9.2 also brings us set bonuses which are directly linked to some parts of our toolkit meaning it's important to cover them in the current context (though this is also covered in other broader places on Wowhead currently - the
original Set Bonus write-up is still mostly correct sans some small details). Due to it being an important factor in some sections further down, I'll go through them both quickly here:
- 2-Piece: 风暴狼魂 - Spending 漩涡武器 has a 3% chance per charge spent to summon a single 野性狼魂 for 9 seconds.
- 4-Piece: 风暴狼魂 - Any of your active 野性狼魂s have a 20% chance per attack to trigger the 风暴使者 effect on you.