Update: You can find a trinket breakdown for Tomb of Sargeras trinkets here.

In my last post, I calculated the value of the PTR versions of the four Nighthold trinkets and decided they weren’t really up to scratch. This wasn’t a new feeling for us since the trinkets in the Emerald Nightmare were also very weak (looking at you Horn of Cenarius!) and so we’d resigned ourselves to the fact that our best trinkets were probably going to be stat sticks for most of the expansion. A week later Blizzard has turned up with some rather large buffs. Let’s return to the numbers and see what kind of value we can expect from the newly buffed pieces.

Before you go on…

All calculations involve the 890 Heroic versions of the trinkets. Some of the trinkets scale with Crit, Haste, or Vers and so you will have to plug your own numbers in to get accurate values. We will use the following stat sheet here which should hopefully be pretty close:

25% Crit (+ drape of shame)

20% Haste

5% Versatility

+5% Healing from the Artifact Trait

None of the trinkets interact with Mastery at all so it’s ignored.

Aluriel’s Mirror

Link: <link>

What’s Changing?

Hot Portion buffed by 140%.

Detonation reduced by 35%.

The Breakdown

When I wrote my last healer post there was still quite a lot we didn’t know about this trinket. Now that we have a week of raiding with it, we have some answers. Let’s re-do the math with the buffed numbers. We’ll calculate it in two pieces, the initial HoT and the detonation that can follow.

Heal over Time portion

93253 (base heal rate) * 2.4 (buff) = 223,807 healing over 12 seconds per proc.

healing over 12 seconds per proc. It procs 3 times per minute multiplied by our Haste and Vers ratings giving us 223,807 * 3 * 1.2 * 1.05 = 845,990 healing per minute. This is 14,099 heals per second overall. Those numbers aren’t particularly good but we still need to consider the Detonation.

healing per minute.

Detonate Portion

The detonate is a little trickier to calculate since the tooltip isn’t clear on the rate at which the detonate procs. Scouring logs for a couple hours give me a rough 1:1 HoT:Detonate ratio. Not every HoT will detonate, but some will proc twice or more for an overall 1:1 average.

The detonate hits the ally with the HoT plus FIVE nearby allies. It isn’t smart, and will even hit pets.

With a one-per-HoT average each HoT should detonate for 50683(base heal) * 0.65(nerf) = 32943 on up to six total targets.

on up to six total targets. CRIT: While the HoT portion cannot crit, the detonate can. The crit is ‘rolled’ individually for each target hit. Our demo character had 25% crit and a Drape of Shame boosting the detonate numbers by 27.5% on average. 32943 * 1.275 = 42,002 healing to each target hit.

VERS: Our demo character has 5% vers which boosts the numbers by a further 5%. 42,002 * 1.05 = 44102 healing to each target hit.

The total healing the Detonate will do is: number of HoTs * number of targets hit * 44102. Our number of HoTs per minute is 3.6 with our current haste which simplifies the equation to 44102 * 3.6 = 158,767 * number of targets hit. That’s 2646 heals per second.



Together

Alright, so we have 14,099 heals per second on the HoT, and 2646 * average number of targets hit on the detonate.

BEST CASE SCENARIO: There is no overheal, and the Detonate always hits 6 targets. (14099 hps + 2646 * 6) * 1.05 (artifact trait) = 31,473 heals per second. That’s a very decent 6.3% on a fight where you’re pushing 500k hps and 9% on a fight where you’re notching 350,000 hps.

There is no overheal, and the Detonate always hits 6 targets. MORE REALISTIC: The mirror is not a smart trinket. It has two giant weaknesses. Often overheals for 30-50%. It also rarely hits 6 targets (remember the range is only 5 yards), with 2-4 being more common. With 40% overhealing and 3 targets hit on average the hps drops down to: (14099 + 2646 * 3) * 1.05 * 0.6 = 13883 hps. That’s a dreary 2.7% hps on a fight where you’re pushing 500k hps, and 4% on a fight where you’re notching 350,000 hps.

The mirror is not a smart trinket. It has two giant weaknesses.

The Verdict: Chaos Crystal

On fights where you have stacked groups, where damage is consistent rather than spiky, the trinket could have value. It does drop off really quickly if either of those two conditions are not met, and with an equal level stat stick offering ~+5% healing in intellect it really needs to be meeting that threshold to stack up. Upon further testing, there are unfortunately no fights in Nighthold where this trinket shines and I can’t recommend it over the alternatives. It is stronger in lower raid difficulties where there is less damage going out but it’s still in a pretty bad place.

Perfectly Preserved Cake

Link: <link>

What’s Changing?

Absorb effect increased by 140%.

The Breakdown

The cake always brings a smile to the raid, but previously the numbers on it didn’t justify its use. 140% is a huge buff, but is it enough to serve a slice to your raid guilt free? The Cake actually hits six targets currently, instead of the five targets the tooltip suggests. This could be fixed in the future, but we’ll calculate it based off six targets hit for accuracy. Let’s take a look:

The cake offers a 270,466 * 2.4 (buff) * 1.05 (vers) absorb to up to six people. This is 681,574 healing per person, and 4,089,444 healing total.

The cooldown on the trinket is two minutes, which means the absorb is equal to 34,079 heals per second if cast on cooldown. This is 6.8% healing on a fight where you do 500,000 heals per second, and 9.7% if you usually do 350,000 heals per second. The actual value will vary a little bit due to fight length.

heals per second if cast on cooldown. Since we may not always want to cast it on cooldown in order to maximise its value, let’s do the calculations again with a cake every 2.5 minutes. 4,089,444 / 150 = 27,263 hps. Down to 5.5% of our healing on a 500,000 hps fight. Still reasonable.



Those are actually very good numbers, and given it’s an on-use trinket we like it even more. Here are some things you need to know before we elect the cake as god-king:

Good: Nobody has to click on the cake, it automatically applies to the closest five targets within ten yards.

Nobody has to click on the cake, it automatically applies to the closest five targets within ten yards. Neutral: The absorb buff lasts for 12 seconds, which tends to be long enough on most encounters.

The absorb buff lasts for 12 seconds, which tends to be long enough on most encounters. Bad: Not that much control over who gets the shield.

Not that much control over who gets the shield. Bad: The cake only scales with Versatility, and the absorb shield will mean less and less as we get into harder content (this should really only stop it staying strong through ToS).

The Verdict: Delicious

The cake already had some niche uses where an on-demand shield effect could be very useful. It is now amazing in those cases (think Gul’dan chains, or the last boss in BRH). With the buffs it’s a very decent trinket for its ilvl and if the damage is regular enough to use it on cooldown you could see some very attractive numbers from it. Particularly good if you benefit from the flat mastery on it also.

Etraeus Star Map

Link: <link>

What’s Changing?

The amount of secondaries granted from the proc have been increased by 5%.

The Breakdown

The map was already a reasonably strong trinket, and the small buff will make it slightly better again.

The trinket procs twice a minute on either Haste, Crit, or Mastery. The buffs can appear at the same time, and so you are likely to have at least one up for a slightly smaller percentage of the fight than that.

Like similar Haste procc-ing trinkets the proc chance does not appear to be altered by Haste. This gives it an uptime of 26.67% on average.

The proc is worth 3921 * 1.05 (buff) of the chosen secondary.

This is comparable to a flat 1098 secondary. Stat sticks of this ilvl tend to bring around 1137 so in picking up the map we are trading the reliability and consistency of the stat stick for slightly burstier healing which is often not desirable. This makes it weaker than a stat stick overall, but still a strong choice.

The Verdict: Solid

A decent alternative to a stat stick that will likely be much easier to get at a high ilvl (do you really want to wait around forever for an Ethereal Urn to Titanforge?). Much weaker on specs that have a secondary stat that’s significantly worse than the other two.