Death Knight Season 2 Dragonflight Tier Set Bonuses Reviewed - Guide Writer First Impressions

PTR Posted 2023/03/21 at 9:00 AM by Jaydaa

Dragonflight Season 2 Tier Set bonuses

We've datamined Dragonflight Tier Set bonuses for all 38 specializations in the Patch 10.1 PTR. Check out all the bonuses and armor models below.

Dragonflight Season 2 Tier Set Bonuses & Models for All Classes & Specializations

Our Guide Writers have provided initial first impressions on the Dragonflight Season 2 Tier Set bonuses. Check out all of our released opinion articles below.
First Impressions of the Dragonflight Season 2 Tier Set Bonuses

Death Knight Tier Set First Impressions
Demon Hunter Tier Set First Impressions
Druid Tier Set First Impressions

Evoker Tier Set First Impressions
Hunter Tier Set First Impressions

Mage Tier Set First Impressions
Monk Tier Set First Impressions

Paladin Tier Set First Impressions

Warlock Tier Set First Impressions
Warrior Tier Set First Impressions

First Impressions of the Dragonflight Season 2 Tier Set BonusesBlood Death Knight Season 2 Tier Set First Impression

2-Set - Death Knight Blood 10.1 Class Set 2pc - Heart Strike and Blood Boil deal 20% increased damage and have a 10% chance to grant Vampiric Blood for 5 seconds.

4-Set - Death Knight Blood 10.1 Class Set 4pc - When you would gain Vampiric Blood you are infused with Vampiric Strength, granting you 10% Strength for 5 seconds. Your Heart Strike and Blood Boil extend the duration of Vampiric Strength by 0.5 seconds.

Mandl & Panthea

Set Effects

Our tier 30 set effect is as follows:

2p: Heart Strike and Blood Boil deal 20% bonus damage and have a 10% chance to grant Vampiric Blood for 5 seconds
4p: When you would gain Vampiric Blood, you are infused with Vampiric Strength, granting you 10% Strength for 5 seconds. Your Blood Boil and Heart Strike extend the duration of Vampiric Strength by 0.5s

At all times, Heart Strike and Blood Boil deal 20% increased damage. This is a welcome damage boost to abilities that should probably have seen an increase in season 1 (particularly Blood Boil). Spell copies cast by Dancing Rune Weapon are also buffed by 20%.

Whenever Heart Strike or Blood Boil is cast, you have a flat 10% chance to gain Vampiric Blood for 5 seconds. This refreshes to 5 seconds if you gain a second proc while Vampiric Blood is up. If you hardcast Vampiric Blood while a proc of Vampiric Blood is active, it instead overwrites the buff and resets it to default Vampiric Blood duration.

any sourceany reasonVampiric BloodVampiric StrengthHeart StrikeBlood BoilHeart StrikeBlood BoilVampiric Strengthdoes notVampiric BloodVampiric BloodVampiric Bloodapplied

Just before you hard-cast Vampiric Blood, you have a very strong incentive to /cancelaura any existing Vampiric Blood

If you gain a Vampiric Blood during Vampiric Blood, instead of getting bonus Vampiric Strength uptime, you effectively lose potential uptime you could have had if you could (hypothetically) predict the proc.

not

Procs of Vampiric Blood are not extended by Improved Vampiric Blood

Procs of Vampiric Blood do not trigger Umbilicus Eternus

Vampiric BloodRed ThirstVampiric StrengthRed ThirstDancing Rune Weapon

It adds an additional dimension to Vampiric Blood - which is great!

It provides completely random procs on a very low proc chance without RPPM smoothing and with zero prior knowledge of procs on a major defensive cooldown. This is really bad, especially when you consider that casting Vampiric Blood while a proc of Vampiric Blood is active straight up causes you to lose uptime

Vampiric BloodVision of PerfectionVampiric BloodVampiric BloodHeart StrikeBlood BoilVampiric BloodentirelyVampiric BloodVampiric BloodFrost Death Knight Season 2 Tier Set First Impression

2-Set - Death Knight Frost 10.1 Class Set 2pc - Howling Blast and Frost Fever damage increased by 10%. Your Rime-empowered Howling Blasts reduce the cooldown of Frostwyrm’s Fury by 2 seconds.

4-Set - Death Knight Frost 10.1 Class Set 4pc - After consuming Rime 15 times you call down Frostwyrm’s Fury on your target at 100% effectiveness.

The Frost Death Knight receives a tier set that's thematically fun and exciting that primarily sees an AoE gain. The single target boost by equipping both the 2p and 4p is around 3%, with AoE going up to 8-12%. The set provides some passive damage increase to Howling Blast and Frost Fever as well as a CDR to Frostwyrm's Fury. This is quite interesting as this is a talent quite far down into the tree. One has to pick it up to gain any of this value. The 4p send a full-strength Frostwyrm's Fury whenever you've used up 15 Rime. I must say that I like the idea of more dragons, however the prospect of ninja-pulling trash in Mythic+ does not entice me. It has the same hitbox as Frostwhelp's Aid, extending a whopping 40 yards in front of you. Given that ninja-pulling with Frostwhelp's Aid already happens frequently (I'm guilty of this as well I'm afraid), getting a Frostwyrm's Fury when you're just pressing your Howling Blast is bound to pull even more. Sure, one can easily track the buff so that you're ready for when it triggers. Still, it is bound to ninja pull even more...

I believe an easy fix would be to attach the Frostwyrm's Fury to some other spell. For instance, if the tier set said something like "consuming 15 procs of Rime empowers your next Pillar of Frost, unleashing a Frostwyrm at 100% effectiveness when you press the ability". This would gives us far more control, and wouldn't make us more prone to ninja pulling than we already is! This also resolves issues around holding on to your procs. If a big add wave is coming up, you'll want to avoid consuming your Rime procs to unleash the Frostwyrm on the adds. This will cause detrimental gameplay where you'll be avoiding a significant part of your rotation to optimise the tier set.

I do feel the weakness of the set in single target must be addressed as well. As it stands, simply holding on to your T29 set will be by far more powerful than swapping to the new one! I believe something more is required that isn't just the extra Frostwyrm's. If we continue on the attaching to Pillar of Frost idea, it could increase the buff further whenever it's empowered for instance. I'm sure the devs can think about a lot of fun and interesting ways to make the set better in single target!

Overall, the Frost Death Knight tier is fun and exciting to use. Unfortunately, it's incredibly prone to ninja-pulling in Mythic+ and its single target power is far too weak.

Unholy Death Knight Season 2 Tier Set First Impression

2-Set - Death Knight Unholy 10.1 Class Set 2pc - Death Coil and Epidemic damage increased by 10%. Casting Death Coil or Epidemic grants a stack of Master of Death. At 20 stacks, Master of Death is consumed and you gain 15% Mastery for 20 seconds.

4-Set - Death Knight Unholy 10.1 Class Set 4pc - When Death Coil or Epidemic consumes Sudden Doom gain two stacks of Master of Death or increase the Mastery bonus to 25% for 5 seconds.

The Unholy tier set consists of an okay 2-piece that adds 3-4% throughput as well as a 4-set which is very weak at 0.5% increase. The effect has bad synergy with our current damage profile and can potentially result in us halting a large part of our normal rotation to align it with our burst CDs. The set essentially gives you a mastery buff every 40-80 seconds or so, depending on haste and procs. You have control of when it triggers with your usage of Death Coil/ Epidemic, allowing you to delay it by not utilising these spells.

One of the major negative aspects of the set is that it's a buff which we want to align with our other cooldown, but the nature of the set makes it very difficult to do so. The first proc you'll get is 40+ seconds into the fight, long after our burst has actually finished. Furthermore, aligning with our second set of CDs will prove to be a huge pain. I can see potential scenarios where we replace our normal casts of Death Coil with Death Strike if it allows us to delay the proc by 15-30 seconds and align it with our burst. The nature of Unholy's damage profile, that sees the highest burst in the game every 3 minutes with lower-than-tank DPS in the middle can push us to these extremes.

Finally, the 4p is simply far too weak of an effect to matter. As it stands, holding on to the previous 4p from the old raid will be better than equipping new higher ilvl set pieces. I would much prefer if they implemented the tier set in a way that synergises with our rotation in a good way. For instance, the 2p could be attached to Dark Transformation, granting you a mastery buff for every Death Coil/ Epidemic used while its active for instance. The 4p is tricky if it's to be attached to Sudden Doom. The low frequency of these procs demands a powerful effect. However, you quickly start to approach similar design to Death Rot and Rotten Touch if you're not careful.

I'm generally optimistic about new stuff but in this instance I must let forward my pessimistic self. The Unholy Death Knight tier set bonus is unfun, unimpressive and weak.

Comment by FignewtunSuch a bad set for Unholy, needs a complete redesign and quickly.Comment by AtramedosJust rework FDK in general, FWF and the Whelp can be the same round circle as the Torghast Anima Power (Ancient Drake Breath).
Ancient Drake Breath
It will be much smoother too play and we don't need too worry about pulling Adds or Bosses.Comment by Kherneasmaking blood want to use defensives as DPS gain is really annoying designComment by SondrelkShame the Unholy set is so awkward and unfun to use.
Would have loved to see a more disease centric variant though. Would have fit quite well given the theming of being in a laboratory.
Maybe something like diseases pulsing for extra damage, or becoming supercharged. Given the sheer amount of diseases Unholy has access to I think that could be quite interesting.Comment by NewermoreBlood looks solid / fun and addreses some of bloods weekneses. Frost got off better than unholy on other hand unholy set is garbage and a step down from what we have now.Comment by Mrpickle>Procs of Vampiric Blood do not trigger Umbilicus Eternus

Wow this completely ruins my excitement for the set bonus. That was the entire reason that it was hype (for me).

Pretty lame.Comment by RageWolf1222Just rework FDK in general, FWF and the Whelp can be the same round circle as the Torghast Anima Power (Ancient Drake Breath).
Ancient Drake Breath
It will be much smoother too play and we don't need too worry about pulling Adds or Bosses.Comment by MagnoshMy issues with the Blood DK set is that it doesn't address the DPS differential to the other tanks that is getting aggravated with the loss of specific trinkets such as Grieftorch/Skovald/Whetstone. It also feels that pushing for a spam X or Y for 0.5sec extension of a buff is in the line of degenerate playstyle that we had in SotFO but without the benefits it had so, this 10% strength feels very underwhelming considering we might even have to spend a global/rune on DnD during that time.

And, after the recent interview it feels we wont see much changes to the talent tree and we have a bunch of trap talents that should have been scraped long ago.Comment by SeniaaI mean all they have to do is make Frostwyrm's Fury not do damage to enemies not already in combat similar to Halo and other abilities.Comment by SublimeChaosmaking blood want to use defensives as DPS gain is really annoying designComment by hamhelth213>Procs of Vampiric Blood do not trigger Umbilicus Eternus

Wow this completely ruins my excitement for the set bonus. That was the entire reason that it was hype (for me).

Pretty lame.Comment by victororio17My biggest issue with the blood set is how vampiric strength does not get reapplied if you trigger another vampiric blood while one is still active. It doesn't even need to extend the duration, just resetting it would be enough payout. Having to wait for the buff to drop off, or even remove it manually, before triggering it again just seems ridiculous and if rng has you proc it multiple times in quick succession then you lose all value on any vampiric strength you would have gotten had the timing been spaced out more.

I'm not good with balancing mechanics so this idea might not be healthy for the game, but I think it would be neat to have the set interact with our talent that increases the duration in order to possibly keep near full uptime on vampiric blood if played correctly. Having a constant health and healing/absorb boost would seem like a strong outcome from these tier sets. Though if this would be the case then umbilicus eternus would need a rework. It could be changed so that whenever your vampiric blood is active you gain an absorb based on the damage dealt by blood plague rather than when it expires. Or even also increase the damage of blood plague while vampiric blood is active to begin with as blood is lacking some form of damage. This would also work better for more spread out damage than just one bigger shield.

Again I'm not good at balancing but a change like this might be nice for blood and their tier set.

TLDR: Make vampiric strength reset duration. Make umbilicus eternus increase blood plague damage and give absorb during vampiric blood, not after.Comment by Redzonemaking blood want to use defensives as DPS gain is really annoying designComment by GorbaReally hope for seconds passes on UH set... And not just as a direct number increase, just an overall different effect.

I wouldn't know what to suggest, just something else! Something that gives an interesting single target use to DD? Or perhaps something for FS and SS/CS...

Bicepumps suggests something a bit more bursty by tying to DT... I'd like to see something that makes us more reliable and consistent between bursts.Comment by Frender8462We need a new class writer for Frost and Unholy. They are so out of touch with both the specs and don't even play the class to the level of authority they speak with.

The Frost and Unholy sets MUST be completely reworked. This is very understated in the article and doesn't reflect the community consensus. The comments here even offer better insight than the class writer did. You don't see this lackluster level of detail or understanding with the majority of the other class writers.

Please, WoWhead, get us a better theory crafter and player that will use their voice to help our class.