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Skull of Gul'dan Loot Priority in Burning Crusade Classic
TBC
Pubblicato
17/02/2022 alle 06:30
da
Zephan
The
The Skull of Gul'dan
was a powerful demonic artifact created from the skull of the orc sorcerer
Gul'dan
. Used for a plethora of demonic activity, from opening portals to corrupting the forests of
Ashenvale
, its powers were finally consumed by
Illidan Stormrage
. Although weakened, the skull still holds power and is in Illidan's possession (for now).
Credit to ViciousBambi
How Rare is Skull of Gul'dan?
The Skull of Gul'dan
drops from
Illidan Stormrage
. The good news is that the drop rate is relatively high, especially compared to items like the
The Twin Blades of Azzinoth
. The drop rate so far according to client logging is around 14 %. This is near three times the drop rate of the legendary and we only need the single one. What this means is that most of us that want skull, will have it sooner or later.
Which Class Benefits The Most From Skull of Gul'dan?
The Method
The relative benefit of any item in the game is going to depend on the item that is being replaced, and the players/class performance. Doing this across multiple classes and for everyone’s individual raid setup/performance is going to be impossible. However, if we do some generalizations we can establish a good baseline that can allow us to compare the benefit of giving skull to certain classes, and ultimately which class will see the biggest benefit.
Luckily for us (and me writing this guide) all of this comparing has already been done. A group of different class leaders and class discord representatives have collaborated on researching what loot priorities should look like. They have done so for most of the contested phase 3 items, including
The Skull of Gul'dan
. This theorycrafting has happened over at the
Egalitarian Discord
and the culmination of all this can be seen over here in this
spreadsheet
that Louki put together.
The
spreadsheet
shows the relative DPS performance of different gear setups and the difference compared to a baseline best setup. These values are derived from different simulation tools created by the wow community as a whole. All these simulations have been carried out with similar settings. These are based on being Alliance (so +1% hit for everyone thanks to
Inspiring Presence
) and assumes ideal but realistic groups: Elemental Shaman/Boomkin Druid/Warlock, Mage/Shadow Priest/Restoration Shaman. Furthermore, the simulations include aggressive consumable usage (e.g.
Dark Rune
, Jewelcrafting necks) and short kill times (<2mins). 2-minute sims put 2min-CD trinkets at their theoretical worst, a good player will be able to capitalize on 2:20-2:30 fights and push double trinket usage, while a worse player will only get one use out of skull. More details about the exact sim settings used, and the reasons behind them can be found in the
spreadsheet
.
Note that all
simulations are only a tool
, they are mathematical approaches to in-game performance. This means that there will always be a skew in the numbers seen. Not everyone plays as perfectly as a sim assumes, not all fights are equal, nor are all raid setups/ performance. Another thing on top of that is the use of different simulation tools, each of which has its limitations or models which make the relative numbers displayed not always the best for cross-class comparison. This doesn’t mean that the results aren’t correct, it means we should look at them in their context. It gives a basis to work off and is the best thing we got so far for making gear prioritization based on actual numbers instead of feelcrafting.
Now that we have the technical disclaimers out of the way, let us go over the actual results. Who lays claim to skull? Six classes can make use of the trinket, in
no particular
order:
Protection Paladin
Mage
Shadow Priest
Boomkin Druid
Elemental Shaman
Warlock
Eglitarian DiscordCaster Spreadsheet by Louki
The Results
What will play into how beneficial Skull is for each is going to depend on how much use they can make of the static hit rating and how well they scale with the haste from the on-use effect. Let’s look at these classes one by one and what the implications are. Something to note here that applies to all of the below classes is that the benefit from the hit rating on Skull will be bigger for the Horde seeing as they do not have the 1% hit chance from
Inspiring Presence
.
Protection Paladin
Paladins are the odd duckling on the list and not covered in the spreadsheet, so let's get this out of the way first.
The Skull of Gul'dan
is the best threat trinket available for Protection Paladins, but
only by a small margin
. The closest threat alternatives are
Mark of the Champion
,
Darkmoon Card: Crusade
, and
Eye of Magtheridon
(with 25% uptime). However, the biggest benefit for paladins is the spell hit rating. Most of a paladin's abilities are spells, which in turn requires spell hit to well, hit. This mostly comes into play when Protection Paladins are main tanking. Reducing your chance to miss will increase consistency when pulling.
Mage
The good news for mages is that they already have strong trinkets options, the “bad” news is that this means whilst skull is their new best trinket for phase 3, it doesn’t last the entire expansion. The combination of
Hex Shrunken Head
+
Ashtongue Talisman of Insight
is also nearly as good as
The Skull of Gul'dan
+
Ashtongue Talisman of Insight
and in phase 5
Shifting Naaru Sliver
is going to be the go-to. The cooldown from
Shifting Naaru Sliver
lines up perfectly with
Arcane Power
. Another thing in later phases that doesn’t favor Skull for mages is the amount of haste that becomes available on gear, for arcane mages this means that hitting the GCD haste cap for
Arcane Blast
becomes a real concern.
Shadow Priest
Shadow Priests have the benefit that all of their available alternatives are close in value to skull. The trinkets combinations that Shadow Priests can make use of in combination with
Icon of the Silver Crescent
are either
Dark Iron Smoking Pipe
(double on use),
Darkmoon Card: Crusade
, or
Mark of the Champion
in case of phase 3 raids. Contrary to popular belief there is no actual haste breakpoint for shadow priests to concern themselves over, so the skull on-use doesn’t change anything in the equation.
Boomkin Druid
The Skull of Gul'dan
is the second-best upgrade overall for boomkins right after
Zhar'doom, Greatstaff of the Devourer
. It lasts until Naxxramas in Wrath of the Lich King, and they don’t get into any issues with reaching GCD, so it can be combined to heart content with cooldowns. The only thing you can say is that Warlocks gain relatively more from Skull due to having slightly more throughput. This is going to be highly dependent on the individual performance of the raiders and is about a marginal difference to begin with.
Elemental Shaman
Next up are shamans. Elemental Shamans love
The Lightning Capacitor
, so it should come as no surprise that their technical BiS setup is a combination of
The Lightning Capacitor
and
The Skull of Gul'dan
. The thing however is that the gain compared to going from
Quagmirran's Eye
or
Sextant of Unstable Currents
to skull is smaller compared to the gain from some other classes. This comes due to two reasons; First, the best setup for Elemental Shamans is high on hit rating, making it harder to utilize the hit rating on skull. On the other hand, shamans and especially
Troll
get close to GCD cap for
Chain Lightning
during the use of
Bloodlust
and
Drums of Battle
. This causes the need to postpone the use of your trinket and not get the additional benefit from stacking cooldown + trinket usage. However, the consolation is that once
Zul'Aman
is out that
Hex Shrunken Head
is a close alternative compared to Skull.
Warlock
Last but not least warlocks, for them
The Skull of Gul'dan
is a significant step up compared to the other available trinkets. It will last them till the end of time (of the expansion) at least. To make the most out of the hit rating on the trinket some planning might be required seeing as most phase 3 caster loot is riddled with hit rating. However, in later phases caster gear gets a bigger focus on haste instead of hit, making this a non-issue. The remaining question is how well warlocks scale with haste. And boy, do they scale. Warlocks have no issue running into breakpoints or reaching the global cooldown with their spells when combining the haste effect from skull with
Bloodlust
, along with the main portion of their DPS coming from filler spells that scale with haste. Looking at the results from the spreadsheet we can also see that warlocks gain the most in this phase and going forward from having the trinket.
Who Should Get Skull of Gul'dan?
It should go without saying that loot distribution accounts for more than only who gains the most in theoretical DPS.
Personal performance, attendance rate, other loot priorities, DKP, being the guild masters lover, most gold bid, etc… all play into loot distribution. However, if all else is equal and keeping in mind the limitations of simulations:
Warlocks will benefit most the most from the trinket, both on a single target as well as AoE DPS. Not only in phase 3 but also going forward until the release of WotLK.
Mages and Boomkins arguably gain a roughly similar amount of DPS. However, boomkins will be able to make use of the trinket for a longer time, whereas arcane mages will be making the switch over when more haste gear becomes available.
Shadow Priests and Elemental Shamans arguably gain the least out of Skull compared to the other classes discussed. They both got to use skull after Lust since they tend to overcap their GCDs, which make up a considerable part of their normal rotation.
Whilst Protection Paladin have an important role to fulfill in raids, the relative benefit compared to the alternatives is minor.
Keep in mind and I can’t stretch this enough: this is purely based on the theoretical DPS gain, not accounting for a lot else. I want to thank the
Egalitarian Discord
In particular: lologarithm, Egregious, Louki, Ryusei, Twizzles, Ceridwyn, Juff, Cjblue, Walther, and Linelo.
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