WoW demon Cortyn celebrates a new trinket. It has quite interesting effects – and frustrates healers and raid leaders.
Patch 9.2 Eternity’s End of World of Warcraft was well received among my friends and acquaintances. This also led to our old raid group being excited again and daring to venture into the Sanctum of Domination. After a few sessions (and some much-needed Anduin nerfs), we finally managed to defeat the Jailer. And, because the loot gods decided so, I directly received a trinket from the Jailer, the “Scars of Fraternal Strife”.
I love this trinket.
The Scars of Fraternal Strife are a classic “kiss/curse” item. It provides a positive bonus, but you have to accept a penalty. It somewhat resembles the corruption effects from Battle for Azeroth, but is significantly more controllable.
The trinket essentially has 5 different levels that it goes through. The tooltip is not particularly helpful, as it only says:
Equip: Affixes a Rune of Domination to you, granting you power … at a certain price.
Use: Adds another one. (30 seconds cooldown).
I can affix up to 5 runes to my Draenei, each having different effects. The runes always follow a fixed order:
- 1st Rune: Your haste is increased by 81. 10% of the damage taken echoes 3 seconds later and is inflicted again.
- 2nd Rune: Your versatility is increased by 81. All healing received is reduced by 5%.
- 3rd Rune: Your critical strike rating is increased by 81. You bleed for 857 damage every 2 seconds.
- 4th Rune: Your mastery is increased by 81. Your spells and abilities reduce your movement speed by 2% for 15 seconds, stackable up to 10 times.
If you build the trinket up to the 4th rune, you have a bonus of 81 to all secondary stats, while permanently bleeding, being slowed by 20%, taking less healing, and receiving damage multiple times.
But it gets really cool when you add the 5th rune. Then all other effects are consumed, and instead, a new buff is added for 30 seconds:
The Last Rune: Your haste, your critical strike rating, your mastery, and your versatility are increased by 163. When the Last Rune fades, you explode for 16160 damage.
A second berserk, but with downsides
For me, this final rune is somewhat like a personal second berserk that I can activate multiple times in combat. Because 163 to all secondary stats means – depending on the attribute – 3% to 6%, which is a drastic damage increase. Additionally, the explosion effect of the rune can also critically hit and can deal up to 28,000 damage to enemies in the vicinity.
Of course, there are downsides to this. For one, my healer either yells at me for taking so much damage all the time, or my raid leader asks why I am avoiding area effects in “RP walk” when the 20% slow is active again. As a priest, you are already so mobile that you would almost have to pay property tax.
Furthermore, after running through all the runes, only the 1st rune is active, and I have to gradually rebuild the others. This means that for a while the trinket “only” grants 81 haste and nothing else – much less than other trinkets that usually still have close to 100 intellect as a bonus.
But honestly? The runes are incredibly fun. Not only because they drive my healer crazy – almost as much as my deadly faith jumps – but also because they bring a pretty tactical element.
I often have to weigh: Do I really want to activate the final rune now to have my “glorious 30 seconds”? Or would I rather have 4 runes active throughout the fight and thereby retain all attributes at a solid value? When exactly does the next burst phase come, so I can use the explosion at the end of the final rune to deal a lot of AoE damage?
The Scars of Fraternal Strife are fantastic. An exciting trinket that I wish there were many more of.
