- Level 99: As a baseline, I’d recommend Razor Spikes for all scenarios. The only time that Abyssal is a DPS increase is if you’ve taken Flamecrash + Concentrated Sigils, and perfectly weave in your Abyssal Strikes with Sigil of Flame for 100% up-time on the debuff. This benefit is so small that it completely disappears once we get 4-piece, and Razor Spikes is both more damage and more self-healing through damage (assuming Spirit Bomb). Also, in M+, the snare from Razor Spikes is far more valuable than the movement from Abyssal in most cases.
- Level 100: Burning Alive is stronger than Fallout if you take Spirit Bomb (due to the healing). Burning Alive is also consistently better for survival than Feast of Souls, if you have the legendary boots.
- Level 102: Assuming Spirit Bomb, Felblade is both the lowest DPS choice and the lowest survival choice. On pure ST with zero adds at all, Fel Eruption provides a very minor (~5k or so) DPS gain over Flame Crash. If there is ever a point where Flame Crash hits more than one target, it comes out on top.
- Level 104: See above – Fracture falls in the same group as Fel Eruption. It is a very minor DPS increase on Single Target, but Feed the Demon pulls ahead if there is any AoE that would benefit from higher up-time of Demon Spikes + Soul Cleave.
- Level 106: Overall, yes. Do not under-estimate the power of Chains, even in raids. The minor DPS increase that is offered by perfect usage of Concentrated Sigils is immediately gone if you are able to use a single Chains in the fight to stack enemies better. As a general rule of thumb, if an encounter has any enemies that are able to be moved with Chains, Chains is probably the best option.
- Level 108: Fel Devastation for DPS and Spirit Bomb for mitigation here. Spirit Bomb is also situationally great DPS if you are too far from a pack to use Soul Cleave, but you can hit them with Spirit Bomb (Aluriel, Etraeus, Tichondrius). One thing worth noting is that Soul Cleave hits ~2.5x as hard as Spirit Bomb.
- Level 110: If the encounter has some unpredictable one-shot mechanic that happens once-per-fight, but the damage intake outside of that mechanic is extremely low, and you are under geared for the content Last Resort is potentially useful. If the encounter has predictable damage intake events, you are tanking lots of targets, or the damage is a mix of magic/physical Soul Barrier is the default choice for damage reduction. If the encounter is single-target, deals only physical damage, and has an extended enrage event then Demonic Infusion will be the best mitigation. Demonic Infusion will be the default choice for DPS if you do not need any form of mitigation, specifically when paired with Razor Spikes.
Itemization is extremely reliant on item level and content, but assuming you’re at-level, Versatility is always superior to Mastery for survival, even when you have tier. If 100% of damage was physical, then Mastery would come out on top by a significant margin. Nighthold has a lot of magic damage, so we need all the Versatility that we can get.
Assuming we are properly geared for the content, this is what I have found:
- (with tier) Armor >> Leech > Versatility => Agility > Stamina > Mastery >= Crit >= Haste
- (without tier) Armor >> Leech > Versatility > Agility > Crit >= Haste > Stamina > Mastery
This doesn’t change for M+, outside of the reality that your damage contribution is more important to clear times, which would make Agi and Crit edge up slightly.
It seems that the original post values mastery extremely high, which would make sense if we were only taking physical damage. In my last Nighthold run, 50% of the incoming damage was Magic. It also values Crit far lower than anything I can see. The only way that I can get Crit to be valued that low is to sim for TMI with an extremely small health pool.
With regards to
trinkets, I’m surprised that there’s no mention of how powerful
Writhing Heart of Darkness is for Nighthold. Granted, it would be tough to get one to Titanforge to meaningful levels, but it should be up at 3 stacks permanently against any boss mob with how frequently we attack and how much Crit we have. This is one of our very few effective trinket options for reducing magic damage, and has the added bonus of being useful when we are AoE cleaving as well.