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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsPatch 4.3: Tier 13 set bonuses revealed
by Matthew Rossi 
Sep 24th 2011 at 9:30PM
We've seen a lot of previews for the upcoming tier 13 armor sets that will come with Patch 4.3, but until now, we have had no concrete information on what the set bonuses will be. Well, thanks to Zarhym, now we do. While keeping in mind that the PTR hasn't even dropped yet (soon, according to the blues) we can take a look at the set bonuses and contemplate.
The set bonuses in some cases seem linked to the armor design (the mage one has a "Steal Time" mechanic that synchronizes with the name of the set), while others seem less flavor and more functional.
The set bonuses in some cases seem linked to the armor design (the mage one has a "Steal Time" mechanic that synchronizes with the name of the set), while others seem less flavor and more functional.
For starters, as a DPS warrior, I'm astonishingly underwhelmed by these set bonuses. The protection ones are awesome -- jaw-droppingly good. Revenge giving a damage shield? If there's no internal cooldown on this ability, it will make Revenge one of the best abilities in tanking. The raid Shield Wall four-piece seems shared with similar abilities across all tanking classes, and it makes me wonder just how much AOE damage we're going to be looking at in the Deathwing fight. But the DPS bonuses make me sad. Inner Rage? Reducing HS rage? That's terrible. And the four-piece seems ridiculously weak. Do we really want a set bonus that will only add damage for warriors in Execute range?
Here's the complete list of set bonuses so you can check them out for yourself. The mage ones in particular look interesting and thematic. I like the ret bonuses a lot and find the hunter set bonuses might be clues to the set's look.
Zarhym - Patch 4.3: Tier 13 set bonuses
While we've been previewing the visuals of tier 13 on the front page at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com, we thought you might be interested in the magics that lay imbued betwixt their stitches and plating. Behold -- the tier 13 set bonuses!
Please keep in mind that the below data is pre-PTR and could change prior to the release of patch 4.3.
Death Knight
Druid
Hunter
Mage
Paladin
Priest
Rogue
Shaman
Warlock
Warrior
Please keep in mind that the below data is pre-PTR and could change prior to the release of patch 4.3.
Death Knight
- Blood, 2P -- When an attack drops your health below 35%, one of your Blood Runes will immediately activate and convert into a Death Rune for the next 20 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once every 45 sec.
- Blood, 4P -- Your Vampiric Blood ability also affects all party and raid members for 50% of the effect it has on you.
- DPS, 2P -- Sudden Doom has a 30% chance and Rime has a 60% chance to grant 2 charges when triggered instead of 1.
- DPS, 4P -- Runic Empowerment has a 25% chance and Runic Corruption has a 40% chance to also grant 710 mastery rating for 12 sec when activated.
Druid
- Balance, 2P -- Insect Swarm increases all damage done by your Starfire, Starsurge, and Wrath spells against that target by 3%.
- Balance, 4P -- Starsurge generates 100% extra Lunar or Solar energy while Eclipse is not active.
- Feral, 2P -- While Berserk is active, Savage Defense absorbs are 100% larger, and your Blood in the Water talent now causes Ferocious Bite to refresh the duration of your Rip on targets with 60% or less health.
- Feral, 4P -- Frenzied Regeneration also affects all raid and party members, and your Stampede talent now grants two charges after using Feral Charge (Cat).
- Restoration, 2P -- After using Innervate, the mana cost of your healing spells is reduced by 25% for 15 sec.
- Restoration, 4P -- Your Rejuvenation and Regrowth spells have a 10% chance to Timeslip and have double the normal duration.
Hunter
- 2P -- Steady Shot and Cobra Shot generate double the amount of focus.
- 4P -- Your Arcane Shot ability has a chance to grant 25% haste to you and your pet for 10 sec.
Mage
- 2P -- Your damaging spells have a 30% chance to grant Stolen Time, increasing your haste rating by 50 for 30 sec and stacking up to 10 times. When Arcane Power, Combustion, or Icy Veins expires, all stacks of Stolen Time are lost.
- 4P -- Each stack of Stolen Time also reduces the cooldown of Arcane Power by 3 sec, Combustion by 4 sec, and Icy Veins by 6 sec.
Paladin
- Holy, 2P -- After using Divine Favor, the mana cost of your healing spells is reduced by 25% for 15 sec.
- Holy, 4P -- Increases the healing done by your Holy Radiance spell by 20%.
- Protection, 2P -- Your Judgement ability now also grants a physical absorb shield equal to 30% of the damage it dealt.
- Protection, 4P -- Reduces the cooldown of Divine Guardian by 60 sec and increases the radius of its effect by 70 yards.
- Retribution, 2P -- Your Judgement ability has a 50% chance to generate 1 Holy Power.
- Retribution, 4P -- While Zealotry is active your abilities deal 12% more damage.
Priest
- Healer, 2P -- After using Power Infusion or Lightwell, the mana cost of your healing spells is reduced by 25% for [10|15] sec. (10 sec for Discipline, 15 for non-Discipline.)
- Healer, 4P -- Your Power Word: Shield has a 10% chance to absorb 100% additional damage, and the cooldown of your Holy Word abilities is reduced by 20%.
- Shadow, 2P -- Shadow Word: Death deals an additional 55% damage, and you no longer take damage from your own Shadow Word: Death when the target fails to die.
- Shadow, 4P -- Your Shadowfiend and Shadowy Apparitions have a 100% chance to grant you 3 Shadow Orbs each time they deal damage.
Rogue
- 2P -- After triggering Tricks of the Trade, your abilities cost 20% less energy for 6 sec.
- 4P -- Increases the duration of Shadow Dance by 2 sec, Adrenaline Rush by 3 sec, and Vendetta by 9 sec.
Shaman
- Elemental, 2P -- Elemental Mastery also grants you 400 mastery rating 15 sec.
- Elemental, 4P -- Each time Elemental Overload triggers, you gain 200 haste rating for 4 sec, stacking up to 3 times.
- Enhancement, 2P -- While you have any stacks of Maelstrom Weapon, your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and healing spells deal 20% more healing or damage.
- Enhancement, 4P -- Your Feral Spirits have a 45% chance to grant you a charge of Maelstrom Weapon each time they deal damage.
- Restoration, 2P -- After using Mana Tide Totem, the cost of your healing spells are reduced by 25% for 15 sec.
- Restoration, 4P -- Increases the duration of Spiritwalker's Grace by 5 sec, and you gain 30% haste while Spiritwalker's grace is active.
Warlock
- 2P -- The duration of your Doomguard and Infernal summons is increased by [15|45] sec and the cooldown of of those spells is reduced by 4 min. (45 for Demonology, 15 for non-Demonology.)
- 4P -- Soulburn grants a 10% increase to your spell power for 10 sec.
Warrior
- Protection, 2P -- Your Revenge ability now also grants a physical absorption shield equal to 20% of the damage done by Revenge.
- Protection, 4P -- Your Shield Wall ability now grants 50% of its effect to all party and raid members.
- DPS, 2P -- Heroic Strike costs 10 less rage while Inner Rage is active.
- DPS, 4P -- Your Execute critical strikes have a 20% chance to refresh the duration of Colossus Smash.
Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Look at what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back! 
Reader Comments (Page 6 of 8)
Natsumi Sep 25th 2011 12:22AM
Target Swap fights, add fights, run in and out fights, any time where you moved the minimum range from the boss, at the very beginning of the fight, during a movement intensive fight (tank has to drag the boss around the room), the list goes on just looking back to the last few tiers let alone all the way back to the previous expansions.
It's far more useful than a 20% chance to refresh a 6 second debuff on a boss with a move you can only use when the boss is at or below 20%. At least you can theoretically use it more often than the Warrior 4p bonus and the DPS increase is larger by a fair margin when you do use it.
Chance Sep 25th 2011 12:30AM
It seems like its just gonna boost us on the uptake of any given fight. Feral charge, mangle, TF, ravage ravage, apply bleeds, ignore t4 bonus til next fight. :/ This is assuming that all fights are kinda patchwork style though. Going through FL I use my feral charge quite often. Rageface burn is a constant feral charge whenever he switches targets to a ranged on the other side of our fighting area, Beth I use everytime I go up the web and then again when I come down to get some hits on the drone. Alys, well, we all know how that goes, and finally Rhyloth. My raid is quite melee heavy so I usually wind up swiping the adds and feral charging over to the legs, unloading a bit, then feral charge to the spark and pop barkskin so I don't gotta worry about his AoE. The other fights I don't use it as much aside from Raggy's adds, but yeah, its gotten some pretty decent usage in FL compared to previous tier raids without me needing to purposely run out of range and jump back in. I'm waiting to see how the fights in t13 go until I pass full negative judgement about how useless(ful) the bonus could or could not be.
Rmschoir Sep 25th 2011 12:10AM
All the tanking sets seem to be similar: 2-piece provides extra (active) mitigation for the tank, while 4-piece provides survivability cooldowns for the raid.
It seems to me that Blizzard is trying out a new tanking paradigm (see where GC lauded the DK tank model when talking threat) in the form of tier 13 bonuses.
Of course, I could be mistaken.
WolfC Sep 25th 2011 12:59AM
Anyone else notice how terrible the priest bonuses are especially for holy priests.... 4p spam Sanc will make us go oom and tank healing holy priests are pretty bad. Its awesome for disc tho and our 2P procs every 3min...pretty weak. Really disappointing .
Revnah Sep 25th 2011 4:38AM
This. I'm a holy priest and the description of the 2p turns the name of my spec into "non-discipline", and the 4-piece is so ridiculous I'm not going to bother getting it. I'll hang on to my tier 12 2p for as long as I can.
I truly hope they'll chance this before the patch goes live!
Zachariahs Sep 25th 2011 10:32AM
Agreed, you already see very few holy priests cause of the lack of cd's, and now with the bonuses being so much better for disc these numbers are going to continue to drop.
WolfC Sep 25th 2011 12:16PM
Our bonuses are also extremely boring. Having the 4piece bonus, it really added more fun looking for my little flame buddy. Is it sad I want to keep my t12 4p?? I really hate these new ones. I hope they are changed or are just boring place holders for something more interesting and USEFUL. This is the LAST tier of the expansion. I can not emphasize more how boring, useless, and generally disappointing thee bonuses are. Almost make me want to go to the Dark Side, shadow priest bonuses look fun and OP.
kabshiel Sep 25th 2011 12:23AM
Unless there's a huge demonology nerf coming up, the warlock 2 piece will be ridiculously OP for that spec and pretty meh for the other two.
iamtehg Sep 25th 2011 2:22AM
Yea I agree. The same could be said about the 4p for Affliction though with their ability to refresh soul shards with SoC. Still it is nice to see that Blizzard is listening to all those people who posted on the warlock class discussion thread recently who said that the CD on the Doomguard/Infernal was way too long in the first place. But, as it stands right now, my doomguard easily does over 1 mil damage with the right CDs up as Demo. Having him up longer AND with a shorter CD is far too OP for something like this to stand without some other kind of nerf to the move in the future.
gymboy91 Sep 25th 2011 11:44AM
If there are adds during fights, destruction can also easily regen all 3 soul shards with Shadowburn. Maybe this is how they are balancing the OP-ness of the 2p for demo?
Archlord Sep 25th 2011 12:25AM
What I see is a lot of increased burst from DPS. There is also a lot subtle bonuses I notice too. Judgement and Arcane shot are, iirc, pretty low on Ret and Hunter "rotations," but these changes may change that, if they make it live. For every good tier bonus I see there is another one that is lackluster (Warrior and DK dps and non-demo locks are just some). It is easy to tell these are early ideas and need to be adjusted. I cannot wait for the PTR now
Natsumi Sep 25th 2011 12:36AM
Assuming there is one. This kind of info is usually datamined from the PTR client, with Blizz just handing it out like this....
Marshall.a.pierce Sep 25th 2011 12:48AM
They will have a PTR because there is no way internal teams could learn as much as testers. Even if it is 5% of the player base it would still be thousands of people.
Zodiac Sep 25th 2011 12:29AM
Hmm, now if only feral DPS was closer to the top. If only you could justify multiple cats to rotate shifting to bear and popping FR to provide some raid healing. I wonder how much healing that would actually do? Paired with a Blood DK tank?
Brock Sep 25th 2011 12:30AM
All hunters will have the 2pc for pvp. It's godly for that.
Natsumi Sep 25th 2011 12:34AM
It's likely going to be very good for when you need to spam Multishot. Perhaps a large number of fights will have AoE phases or just piles of Trash or even gauntlets. No matter how you look at it it's a great bonus.
kfrazier Sep 25th 2011 12:46AM
When you think about it. We use about 4 stead shots to fill up on focus and 2 is enough for chimera or aimed shot. So, it is creates more focus (Depending on how much) It will take us 2-3 to fill up and we will have more focus to dump with Arcane/aimed/chimera shot. I think its a plus.
Lemons Sep 25th 2011 1:09AM
I love both the rogue bonuses. The first one is like the old Overkill and thus will be completely awesome in pvp. Laying down attacks for 20% less energy is freaking awesome. I can't wait to macro that to my Shadowdance and completely pwn face.
The second one is nice as well, but a 39 second Vendetta? That's just unwieldy. It presupposes that you'll have a nearly 40 second window to just sit there and attack the boss, which simply isn't the case for a lot of encounters.
Bumblebee Sep 25th 2011 5:09PM
@Lemons Why would you PvP in PvE gear? It's pretty much the best way to die fast and be ineffective.
Lemons Sep 25th 2011 9:41PM
I'm in no way advocating pvping in full pve gear, but mixing in a few pieces doesn't hurt, in fact in most cases it's optimal. If you look at the gear of many high rated arena rogues (2200+) they'll often mix in pve pieces with pvp pieces to achieve maximum effectiveness. This is quite common especially at the beginning of a season. The pvp season often starts one or two weeks after the launch of a new raiding tier. So for those few weeks it's quite advisable to wear some pve gear as it simply provides so much raw power it makes up for its lack of resil.
Even after those few weeks it's still not uncommon to see a rogues using a mix of pvp and pve gear. Pvp isn't all about resil. If you can put out the necessary pressure with the increased damage from the pve gear then your opponent won't be able to properly attack you and take advantage of your slightly lower resil.
I don't know if this is the case with every class. I suspect rogues can get away with it better than most simply because of the amount of control and defensive abilities we have, but I will be quite surprised if I don't see a least a few rogues using the 2p in pvp.