Midnight Season 2 Trinket Tuning Lands September 22

Eight trinkets change with the September 22 weekly maintenance

Blizzard has published what it calls the final round of raid and dungeon trinket adjustments for Midnight Season 2, and the changes apply with the weekly maintenance on September 22. Four healing trinkets are buffed, two lose Mastery, one loses primary stat, and Ruby Whelp Shell is re-weighted in several directions at once.

The post went up a full week before the changes land, and Blizzard states the reason plainly: the lead time exists so loot decisions taken this week are taken with the new numbers in view.

The eight changes

These apply with the September 22 weekly maintenance.

• Preternatural Antivenom - Healing increased by 75%.
• Seed of Radiant Hope - Cooldown reduced to 1 min (was 1.5 mins). Healing increased by 40%.
• Mycolic Medicine - Effect frequency increased by 33%. Healing increased by 58%.
• Unstable Felheart Crystal - Cooldown reduced to 1.5 mins (was 2 mins). Healing increased by 58%.
• Ruby Whelp Shell - Frequency of all effects increased by 100%. All damage reduced by 42%. Single target healing effect increased by 37%. Multi-target healing increased by 5%. Stat effects reduced by 50%.
• Gaze of the Alnseer - Primary stat reduced by 10%.
• Vaelgor's Final Stare - Mastery reduced by 10%.
• Algeth'ar Puzzle Box - Mastery reduced by 25%.

What Blizzard says it is fixing

Developer note: "This pass is primarily intended to promote a more viable niche for single-target healing effect options with a few more miscellaneous minor buffs as well."

"In addition, several trinkets from Season 1 remain more desirable than we would like due to a combination of aggressive initial tuning and lack of direct Season 2 trinket competition in a particular niche (in this case, Mastery on use)."

Both halves of that reasoning show up in the changes themselves. Four of the eight changes raise healing on a trinket whose effect is a heal, and the two reductions that are not primary stat both cut Mastery, which is the niche Blizzard names. The full post is on the official World of Warcraft forums.

Healing trinkets carry most of the pass

Preternatural Antivenom takes the largest single increase in the pass at 75% more healing. Seed of Radiant Hope and Unstable Felheart Crystal each gain healing and a shorter cooldown, so both the size of one use and how often that use is available move together. Mycolic Medicine gains healing and effect frequency instead of a cooldown cut, which means its extra output arrives spread across a fight rather than on demand.

These are percentage changes to effects that already exist, so the ordering between the four after Tuesday depends on your own healing numbers and on how the damage in your group is shaped. A trinket that gains more in a tooltip is not automatically the one that gains more in a pull.

Ruby Whelp Shell is re-weighted, not simply buffed

Ruby Whelp Shell is the only one of the eight that moves in several directions at once. Every one of its effects fires twice as often, and what those effects do is then re-balanced underneath that doubling: damage down 42%, stat effects down 50%, single target healing up 37%, multi-target healing up 5%.

Read together, the numbers move it toward single target healing and away from the damage and stat output it also carried. Twice the procs with half the stat value and well under half the damage is a different trinket, not a stronger version of the same one.

Two Mastery cuts and one stat cut

Algeth'ar Puzzle Box loses a quarter of its Mastery and Vaelgor's Final Stare loses a tenth. Gaze of the Alnseer is the one reduction in the pass that is not Mastery at all, at 10% primary stat.

Blizzard's stated reason for touching Mastery is that Season 1 options in that niche have had no direct Season 2 competition, which left them ahead for longer than intended. The percentages are what Blizzard published; whether a Mastery trinket still wins on your character after a 25% cut is a comparison worth running yourself once the maintenance is done.

What to do before Tuesday

Four trinkets are about to get better and three are about to get worse, so a trinket you would replace today is not necessarily the one you would replace on Wednesday. Keeping a second option in your bags until the maintenance costs nothing, and the week of notice is exactly what it is there for.

This closes Season 2's trinket pool rather than opening it up. Blizzard describes it as the final round for the season barring unexpected outliers, so the next change of this size to what you equip arrives with Season 3, whose dungeon rotation is already previewed.

Blizzard's two most recent hotfix batches, on September 17 and September 15, are already live and are the other changes shaping how Season 2 finishes.