Tank and Healer Trinkets in The War Within – Nerfed by 33% for Tank/Healer Role

June 6, 2024
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Blizzard has posted a clarification on the philosophy behind the Tank and Healer trinket change.

Tank and Healer Trinkets in The War Within – Nerfed by 33% for Tank/Healer Role

Blizzard has posted a clarification on the philosophy behind the Tank and Healer trinket change.

When gearing, tanks and healers have the choice of equipping more damage-focused trinkets and cantrips, usually at a minor cost to defensiveness or healing. This strategy is often employed during farm content or Mythic+ to contribute extra damage for faster content clears but can be used during progression when the extra healing and tankiness isn’t typically required.

With the latest War Within Beta development notes, Blizzard is looking to tone down that strategy with the intention of shifing power back in healer and tank class kits.

The War Within Beta Development Notes

DPS trinkets and items with additional effects reduced by 33% for tank and healer specializations.
- Developer’s note: Tanks and healers choosing to wear damage trinkets have often seen them contribute a disproportionate and unintended amount of their overall damage. DPS cantrips have further exacerbated this issue. This change is intended to shift power back into players’ class kits while reducing the opportunity cost of choosing specialized tank and healer trinkets over pure damage trinkets. This change is not retroactive.

Blizzard Clarification to Trinket Changes for Healer and Tank

Blizzard has offered further clarity with a couple additional posts, linked below. Using existing trinkets as an example, the emphasis is that tank trinkets should provide a similar amount of offensive value to Tank players, while also providing a defensive benefit, but tank trinkets should not be as strong as DPS trinkets for damage dealers.

Assuming a tank trinket has 100% of its budget allocated to damage effects, a tank could expect it to deal equivalent damage to a DPS trinket for them. DPS players would therefore deal ~33% less damage by equipping the tank trinket instead of one intended for their role.

In general, the trinket decision for tanks should feel more along the lines of “deal 100 damage and gain a defensive benefit” with an offensively-oriented tank trinket (or a more defensive option as needed), or “deal 100 damage” with a DPS trinket.

Rageheart has a lot going on in terms of its budgeted effects, so let’s use Gift of Ursine and Branch of the Tormented Ancient for our examples since they’re primarily just dealing damage. For the sake of the example, assume all current DPS trinket damage was also reduced by 33% for tanks/healers.

A tank would find that Gift deals about as much overall damage as Branch while also offering some defensive benefit (“100 damage + healing, vs “150*0.66=100 damage”). Branch would deal 50% more damage for a DPS player (“150 damage” vs. “100 damage + healing”). A healer would see the same numbers as a tank between the two options.

The intention is not that tanks should never use DPS trinkets, but rather that they give up less by opting for a tank trinket. At the same time, tank trinkets should not be attractive options for other roles.