The next tier of raid gear will be released in the upcoming patch 5.2.  This new tier 15 gear brings with is many new set bonuses that have a lot of people talking right now around the net.

Some of the abilities look really awesome, while others are sort of blah. Here is a rundown of all the abilities as they stand right now on PTR servers (taken as of Jan 31).  Please note that these may change drastically before actual release, as a few have changed already since the PTR first went live.

Death Knight - Tier 15 Set Bonuses

Tank (Blood):

  • 2-piece bonus - Reduces the cooldown of your Rune Tap ability by 10 sec and removes its Rune cost.
  • 4-piece bonus - Your Bone Shield ability grants you 15 Runic Power each time one of its charges is consumed.

DPS (Frost + Unholy):

  • 2-piece bonus - Your attacks have a chance to raise the spirit of a fallen Zandalari as your Death Knight minion for 15 sec.
  • 4-piece bonus - Increases the duration of Army of the Dead by 15 sec.

The set bonus here that looks the most interesting and beneficial is the DPS 2-piece set bonus.  It essentially grants you an extra combat pet for 15 seconds at a time.  The proc rate is apparently 1 per minute, but since haste stacks on that and it is random proc chance you could in theory have several up at a time.  This could be a lot of fun.

Druid - Tier 15 Set Bonuses

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Caster DPS (Balance)

  • 2-piece bonus - Increases the critical strike chance of Starsurge by 10%.
  • 4-piece bonus - Nature's Grace now also grants 1000 critical strike and 1000 mastery for its duration.

Melee DPS (Feral):

  • 2-piece bonus - Predatory Swiftness grants you an additional combo point on your current combo target when consumed.
  • 4-piece bonus - After using Tiger's Fury, you gain 40% increased critical strike chance on the next 3 uses of Mangle, Shred, or Ferocious Bite.

Tank (Guardian):

  • 2-piece bonus - Each attack you dodge while Savage Defense is active increases the healing from your next Frenzied Regeneration within 10 sec by 10%, stacking up to 10 times.
  • 4-piece bonus - You generate % more Rage from your attacks while Enrage is active.

Healer (Restoration):

  • 2-piece bonus - Swiftmend's ground effect can now heal up to 4 targets each time it heals.
  • 4-piece bonus - The healing done by your Rejuvenation increases by 6% each time it causes healing.

With so many different specs, the druid class gets a whole ton of new set bonuses.  Since I play a healer, those are of the most interest to me.  Swiftmend healing another person is a real benefit since so much of a druids healing comes from swiftmend. The boost to rejuvenation is also nice since most druids will have enough haste to be getting 6 ticks which means the last one does 30% more healing.  If you add up all the bonuses it means rejuv becomes 15% better than it is without this set bonus.  That is a sizeable increase for a core healing ability.

Hunter - Tier 15 Set Bonuses

  • 2-piece bonus - Your Steady Shot and Cobra Shot have a chance to summon a Thunderhawk to fight for you for the next 10 sec.
  • 4-piece bonus - Your Arcane Shot and Multi-shot have a chance to trigger a Lightning Arrow at the target, dealing 100% weapon damage as nature.

The hunter 2-piece set bonus is similar to the death knight set bonus, in that is summons an additional pet to fight for you for a short time.  This could add up to significant damage, especially for beastmaster hunters.  The 4-piece bonus isn’t bad either as it adds a straight proc chance to deal 100% additional damage on several basic shots.  I would like to see it trigger off more than just the two that it currently does, but will have to wait and see,

Mage - Tier 15 Set Bonuses

  • 2-piece bonus - When Alter Time expires, you gain 5100 Haste for 30 sec.
  • 4-piece bonus - Increases the effects of Arcane Charges by 20%, increases the critical strike chance of Pyroblast by 5%, and increases the chance for your Frostbolt to trigger Fingers of Frost by an additional 6%.

The 2-piece bonus looks really good as it turns a spell that pulls you back to a state 6 seconds ago, into a big haste boost as well.  This makes alter time usable in many more sutuations than it is currently used in.  The haste boost will provide a DPS boost ensuring that alter time is used on cooldown all the time.

Monk - Tier 15 Set Bonuses

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Tank (Brewmaster):

  • 2-piece bonus - After Elusive Brew expires, the amount of damage you Stagger is increased by 12%. This effect lasts 1 sec per stack of Elusive Brew consumed.
  • 4-piece bonus - Each time you take damage from Stagger, you have a 10% chance to make your next Purifying Brew cost no Chi.

Healer (Mistweaver):

  • 2-piece bonus - Your Renewing Mist heals for 15% more each time it travels to a new target.
  • 4-piece bonus - Reduces the cooldown of your Thunder Focus Tea by 10 sec.

DPS (Windwalker):

  • 2-piece bonus - Your Chi generating abilities have a 15% chance to generate an Energy Sphere, which will grant you 10 Energy when you walk through it .
  • 4-piece bonus - You have a 10% chance to gain an additional charge of Tigereye Brew every time you gain a charge of Tigereye Brew.

Not playing a Monk seriously yet, makes it hard to quantify these bonuses.  While I understand the mechanics of the monk class and some of these look really good at first glance, I am not sure how good they are.  The tank set bonuses see very solid as they boost your stagger ability and you purifying brew, which are core tank abilities.  This should make you more survivable as a monk tank.

The healer 2-piece bonus is a good boost to a base healing ability. The windwalker bonuses also seem like good DPS boosts since more energy means more ability usage, and extra tigereye brew charges means faster turn around time for using it for DPS boosts.

Paladin - Tier 15 Set Bonuses

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Healer (Holy):

  • 2-piece bonus - Increases the healing done by your Daybreak ability by 50%.
    4-piece bonus - Increases the healing transferred to your Beacon of Light target by 20%.

Tank (Protection):

  • 2-piece bonus - Casting Word of Glory or Eternal Flame also grants you 40% additional block chance for 5 sec per Holy Power.
  • 4-piece bonus - You gain 1 Holy Power for each X% of your health taken as damage while Divine Protection is active.

DPS (Retribution):

  • 2-piece bonus - Your Exorcism causes your target to take 6% increased Holy damage from your attacks for 6 sec.
  • 4-piece bonus - Your Crusader Strike has a 40% chance to make your next Templar's Verdict deal all Holy damage.

As a tank the protection bonuses most interest me here, and both are pretty amazing.  With the 2 piece you can gain a lot of additional block throughout fights.  With the 4 piece bonus you could be getting a lot of extra holy power whenever you use divine protection.  How much really depends on what the % gets settled at, currently it is undefined.
The other set bonus of impact to me is the Holy 4-piece.  Upping the amount of healing that Beacon of Light does could be a huge deal!

Priest - Tier 15 Set Bonuses

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Healer (Discipline + Holy):

  • 2-piece bonus - Your Prayer of Mending heals for 10% more each time it jumps to a new target.
  • 4-piece bonus - Your Penance and Circle of Healing have a 40% chance to summon a Golden Apparition, which moves to a nearby ally and heals for an additional 92500 to 107500.

DPS (Shadow):

  • 2-piece bonus - When your Shadowy Apparitions damage their target, they have a 65% chance to extend the duration of your Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch, causing each to deal damage one additional time.
  • 4-piece bonus - Periodic damage from your Vampiric Touch has a 10% chance to trigger your Shadowy Apparition.

The priest set bonuses are all very solid in their usefulness.  Extra healing from your prayer of mending, and a chance to get a huge free heal whenever you use penance of circle of healing, are both pure win. On the DPS side, shadowy apparitions extending your DOTs by a tick, and higher chance to summon shadowy apparitions are both great bonuses. Priests should be pretty excited with these set bonues.

Rogue - Tier 15 Set Bonuses

  • 2-piece bonus - Increases the duration of your finishing moves as if you had used an additional combo point, up to a maximum of 6 combo points.
  • 4-piece bonus - Shadow Blades also reduces the cost of all your abilities by 40%.

Rogues are in the same area with priests, win!  Extra time on finishing moves, and the ability to use more abilities during your shadow blade cooldown should both increase rogue dps quite a bit.  If you are combat, the 4-piece may not increase you very much since you tend to have more energy than you can spend anyway, but assassination rogues gain huge with this.

Rogue - Tier 15 Set Bonuses

Caster DPS (Elemental):

  • 2-piece bonus - Your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lighting spells have an 10% chance to cause a Lightning Strike at the target's location, dealing 64750 to 75250 Nature damage to all non-crowd controlled targets within 0 yards
  • 4-piece bonus - The cooldown of your Ascendence is reduced by 1 sec each time you cast Lava Burst.

Melee DPS (Enhancement):

  • 2-piece bonus - Unleash Elements also grants you 3 additional charges of Maelstrom Weapon.
  • 4-piece bonus - The cooldown of your Feral Spirits is reduced by 8 sec each time Windfury Weapon is triggered.

Healer (Restoration):

  • 2-piece bonus - Your Healing Stream Totem now heals an additional target for 50% of its normal amount.
  • 4-piece bonus - Your Ancestral Awakening now has a 20% chance to trigger on non-critical heals.

The bonuses I like here are the enhancement 4-piece since it will allow you to have your feral spirits out far more often.  Even if you only get 4 windfury procs per minute that still knocks off almost ¼ of your feral spirit cooldown.  With lucky proc streaks you could be summoning them every minute.

The healer bonuses are ok as well. The 2-piece bonus makes healing stream totem useful, since it heals for so little the 50% boost makes it viable. The 4-piece bonus has a chance of being one of the better ones in the patch.  Ancestral Awakening coming from even your non-critical heals will add some great raid healing power to you, and Shaman are already pretty good in that area.

Warlock - Tier 15 Set Bonuses

  • 2-piece bonus - While Dark Soul is active, your chance to trigger Nightfall is increased by 30%, Chaos Bolt and Shadowburn consume 20% less Embers, and abilities cost 30% less Demonic Fury.
  • 4-piece bonus - Your Malefic Grasp and Drain Soul deal 5% more periodic damage, your Incinerate has a 8% chance to generate twice the normal Embers, and your Shadow Bolt and Soul Fire grant 5% more Demonic Fury.

Compared to some of the other classes set bonuses the warlock bonuses are pretty plain.  That being said, they are straight boosts to DPS, which is nothing to complain about.

Warrior - Tier 15 Set Bonuses

DPS (Arms + Fury):

  • 2-piece bonus - Your melee auto attacks have a chance to trigger Enrage.
  • 4-piece bonus - Activating Skull Banner now also increases your critical strike chance by 35% for 10 sec.

Tank (Protection):

  • 2-piece bonus - Your Shield Slam and Revenge have a 10% chance to activate victory rush and increase the healing done by the next impending victory by 100%.
  • 4-piece bonus - Your abilities generate 50% more rage when used against targets afflicted by demoralizing shout.

The biggest bonus for warriors is the tank 2-piece set bonus, Victory rush can normally only be used after killing a target, and heals you for 20% health. This set bonus means that you will be able to use it for a 20% heal quite often during boss fights.  It will greatly increase a warriors survivability and is easily one of the best set bonuses listed here.

Comment

There are so many different bonuses available that it is hard to comment on all of them, therefore I looked at the most interesting to me.  Do you agree with the best ones listed?  Do you see a great bonus that I missed?  Feel free to share your thoughts on these tier 15 set bonuses in the comment section below.

 


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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