Phyrix's Embrace - what were devs thinking?

[Maester]

So yesterday I got my first legendary. And my joy turned to ashes when I read its name: Phyrix's Embrace.

Let's delve into this pile of crap. First of all, the stats. It's a ring, so, bye bye intellect. And then it gives you a huge chunk of haste. Haste. Borderline useless for a Holy Priest. In fact, increased Haste can lead to DECREASED healing throughput due to mana constraints.

Yes, it gives some mastery. But the 845 ring I had before had almost double the mastery, AND some crit. Now THAT is a stat combo I would expect on a Holy Priest legendary.

Fine, stats are nothing to write home about, but this is a legendary right? It must have a passive that makes up for it, right? WRONG.

Here's the passive: when you use your guardian spirit on someone, that person will also get healing from each of your active renews.

If you have played a Holy Priest for even 5 minutes, you know exactly how garbage that passive is. But let me spell it out anyways.

First things first. Renew. We don't cast Renew. In it's current state, it's basically just a waste of mana. We use it when we have to move, but even then if I can afford to stop for a second and get off a flash heal instead, I do that. Renew is basically nonexistent to me.

Alright, so renew sucks, but it was said that some legendary's could change your playstyle. So maybe if you get this ring, start using renew?

NOPE. Why not? Because this passive is about guardian spirit. A PANIC button that you use when you see the tank about to go bye bye. So you can't plan your Renews out to synergize with the legendary anyways, you need to be casting it all fight and maintain Renews on as many people as possible all the time so that when you do use this panic button, usually ONCE per fight, you can get a use out of the legendary (for a few seconds benefit). But that's a waste of mana because Renew is, as we all know, crap.

But THAT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER. Because when you guardian someone, that's basically all they need. They get topped up within like 3 seconds max. Even if you have renewed 20 people, the tanks not going to need that crap anyways!

THIS THING HAS NO REDEEMING VALUES. EVERYTHING ABOUT IT SUCKS.

Now hear me out. This isn't just a whine thread. There is clearly an issue here, and it's not just this legendary, there are a couple others with the same issue. And that issue is: getting a legendary should ALWAYS be an upgrade (I mean...it's a legendary...) and should NEVER make you UPSET. Clearly that's a design goal of Blizzard's also as is evident from their recent QA.

So how the hell did this thing get through beta. I mean how the hell was it designed like this in the first place?

I'm still using it. I've waited long enough for a legendary, who knows if and when I'll get another. So even though it's a straight up downgrade from an 845 (come on Blizzard, that should never be the case for any legendary), I'm using it.

[ryklin]

haste's tradeoff for more throughput from more mana isn't great, but it's a lot better than you're rating it to be, and it seems pretty effective for dungeons which are probably the best source of gear right now, I mean it's not the ankh full mana restore cape or the cast speed bracers

also the thing has a socket and is going to be far better than an 845 unless for some reason you already have haste in lots of other slots or something silly because you probably want haste in at least some slots

[Nephthysis]

Time to spec Guardian Angel/Benediction/Guardians of the Light?

In all seriousness, I'm sorry you had to get that one. It's easily the worst of any healer legendary (at least the Monk ring has good stats) and probably well in the running for the worst of any non-generic legendary. I think Sephuz's Secret would probably even be better for Holy.

[Djriff]

That sucks, I'd just stick with your previous ring. Also slight correction, no rings have int, so you're not exactly missing out on that with the legendary.

For some fights where you do use Benediction (Nyth comes to mind) it might be decent, but honestly I doubt it's worth the trade off.

[worcester]

Sorry to hear. I had an idea it would be decent in mythic+ with the Guardian Spirit talent being 60s, but now its back up to 90 and I feel the effect is powerful but lacks frequent usability. For raids its garbage. Also does the cloak give you back mana after you come back? That's pretty insane.

[Mazi]

Sorry to hear. I had an idea it would be decent in mythic+ with the Guardian Spirit talent being 60s, but now its back up to 90 and I feel the effect is powerful but lacks frequent usability. For raids its garbage. Also does the cloak give you back mana after you come back? That's pretty insane.

It doesn't give you mana back - it "freezes" your buffs/mana when you die and then you rez with the same mana.

[Maester]

haste's tradeoff for more throughput from more mana isn't great, but it's a lot better than you're rating it to be, and it seems pretty effective for dungeons which are probably the best source of gear right now, I mean it's not the ankh full mana restore cape or the cast speed bracers

also the thing has a socket and is going to be far better than an 845 unless for some reason you already have haste in lots of other slots or something silly because you probably want haste in at least some slots

My 845 ring has a socket, twice the mastery, and an amount of crit that is about the same as the amount of mastery on this legendary.

But whatever, you can argue the stats one way or another. But that passive is just objectively useless.

[Deleted]

blizzard couldnt give less of a shit, you bought the expansion and thats what they wanted

and you are most likely going to continue paying your monthly fee

[Maester]

blizzard couldnt give less of a shit, you bought the expansion and thats what they wanted

and you are most likely going to continue paying your monthly fee

I mean that's a bit of an overreaction, yes I will continue paying my subscription because this doesn't make me not enjoy playing the game anymore.

[Xar226]

It's a pretty awful legendary.

The worse news is... most of the holy priest ones are.



Four of our legendaries are actually below the no-legendary baseline and two more make effectively no difference. It's X'anshi or Prydaz, or bust. And Prydaz isn't even exclusive to us.

As far as why? Two reasons I think:

1. The devs clearly underestimated the power of secondary stats this expansion, meaning any of the legendaries without mastery and crit immediately have a deficit. Obviously that's less important on main-slot pieces but, as you say, makes a huuuuge difference on rings and neck where there is no primary stat to bolster it. And given how quickly ilvls can go up in this expansion, it makes the primary stat difference less impactful.

2. The unsatisfying answer: When they originally talked about legendaries, they mentioned them in a context of a way to test out new mechanics. These are, apparently, the mechanics they've considered for us. If they wanted to know whether or not they could do these things without making a huge impact, well, job done I suppose.

3. Bonus reason for the Renew legendaries: They may have thought that Benediction would be better than it is, or maybe they're trying to push people into using it if they get one of those legendaries. I haven't given that a lot of thought but it's probably a trap with how strong Apotheosis is for big damage.

Honestly, the suckiness of our legendaries in general is one of the things keeping me sane about not getting one at all.

[Jimjam38]

I think the fact that renew is so weak/mana inefficient is really more than enough said about the state of holy and the devs understanding of it. Honestly, how the shit did they let it get to that state and not immediately realise there was some major design flaws going on.

[Nephthysis]

It's a pretty awful legendary.

The worse news is... most of the holy priest ones are.

Yay I have the worst legendary!

[Mazi]

Be patient padawans. Remember how all legendary jewelry didn't have a socket? Good things come to those who are patient.

[Maester]

Be patient padawans. Remember how all legendary jewelry didn't have a socket? Good things come to those who are patient.

If they change the ring (from the recent QA it seems they will probably change it) that would be excellent, I'm glad they're seeing the issue and doing something about it.

But I'm still wondering how this was designed like this in the first place, the developers must have known the issues with renew and the power of guardian spirit.

[Actarius]

I think they intended renew to be better. Given the two legendaries surrounding it.

The tank one isn't terrible if renew was decent, and if renew was on the order of rejuv or even lifebloom (sans bloom part) it'd be a lot more worthwhile, especially with the extra duration.

• What I'd like to see is the holy priest mastery do what it currently is, but also increase the power of any HoT (except itself, ofc) by the same percentage. That'd make mastery useful for a renew build.
• Next bring it up to the power of rejuv, or maybe on the order of 75% of the power. Obviously keep the current playstyles still viable since many enjoy it
• Give a bit more synergy to it, like HW:Sanctify heals 50% more on targets affected by renew, or PoM prefers (or avoids?) targets with Renew, Serenity heals a bit more if they have renew on them
• This would also restore some usefulness to Enduring Renewal

I know druids can either go massive raid AoE healing, half AoE half single target, massive single target, or small group based healing by mixing up gear/talents, and they're all pretty viable. You see a bunch of playstyles in the top 50% of druid parses.

Holy Priests have like 1 playstyle, and it's mainly Flash Heal spam. Woo

[DevilsAdvocate]

They were thinking:

"We tried a new strategy with WOD where we could appeal to more casual players and people who have left the game--due to growing up and understanding the value of their time--by having garrisons do a lot of the grind, and let them do what they enjoyed each week."

Then WOD subscribers crashed.

Then they thought:

"FUUUU ***** CK! It must be because of making things easier on players (and not the fact that we missed an entire tier of raid content versus other expansions and there weren't many dungeons and apexis crystals were stupid and that Tanaan Jungle was a pathetic amount of content for a year of development). Let's go back to the basics and appeal to college students, little kids and geriatrics who don't value their time at all. Time-Gate everything and make sure there's always more marginal loot and miniscule rewards to go for! Who cares if this Legendary is useless or AP Farming is a waste of time, it will convince our dopamine-addicted base to play even more!"

And now we have Legion. Same amount of content as WOD all massively time-gated with pointless boring quests. Legendaries are the most poignant example of how they want people to play for the bullsh*t rewards in this game.

[Deleted]

Be thankful you didn't get the neck that goes bong every 30 seconds :S

[Sjokois]

Be thankful you didn't get the neck that goes bong every 30 seconds :S

You mean the legendary that many consider to be BiS for holy priests? That one?

[Deleted]

You mean the legendary that many consider to be BiS for holy priests? That one?

While it may be best in slot for its functionality its the cosmetic bong shield proc sound that will drive you insane slowly.

[Nazagoth]

While it may be best in slot for its functionality its the cosmetic bong shield proc sound that will drive you insane slowly.

It's easy to disable that sound, disabled mine after a couple of procs.
Just create an empty file named divineshield.ogg at World of Warcraft\Sound\Spells (this sub-folder does not exist at base installation, just create it).