In World of Warcraft, the Azerite trait system has made for a more dynamic and interesting way to play. With so many different traits that can be found on armor pieces scattered across the world, players are able to stack certain traits for even greater effects. This blog post will outline what each trait does and how they affect gameplay in detail before diving into stacking strategies.
Traits with a damage or healing component will have an effect that is either applied continuously over time, such as the Night well energies on Unbroken Armor. These effects are often passive and always active when wearing the armor piece unless they state otherwise in their descriptions. Traits with a defensive component may grant you some form of protection against incoming attacks, like Plated Skin which negates up to 100% of physical damage taken for 12 sec after your death.
Players can stack certain traits for greater benefits by combining two pieces of Azerite gear that share at least one trait together. For example, stacking Unbroken Armor with Hardened Carapace or any of the other traits that grant damage reduction.
This brings us to an important rule in Azerite trait combinations: when two pieces share more than one trait together they will always provide their effects at full power without diminishing returns from additional sources. This means you can mix and match multiple sets of gear that have a similar effect on your character as long as each set has different traits slotted into them. You should also keep in mind that while Azerite items are bind-on-pickup there is nothing stopping you from acquiring new ones through trading so if you get lucky enough to find something better for the role then by all means swap it out!
Azerite Traits:
– Hardened Carapace or any of the other traits that grant damage reduction.
– Unstable Flames does not stack with itself but is increased by Lasting Impressions and Destructive Potency if they are present on your gear, making it a great trait to use in combination with others such as Blightborne Infusion or Chaos Theory which boosts critical strike chance.
– Disruptor can be stacked for even greater effect when paired with either Unleashed Power or Finality because both those traits also increase spell power at roughly 40%. However some classes like Mages have more access to these two talents than others so you might want to steer clear from stacking this trait unless you’re playing one of them.
But if your goal is just increasing the DPS on a single target, then Chaos Theory and Blightborne Infusion are always good choices. You could pair that up with any other damage increasing bonuses such as Unstable Reverberation or Conviction coming in ilevel 900 gear which would make it easier to kill bosses by yourself without needing any help from a healer or tank who may not be too good.
It’s also worth mentioning that the new Spell Power traits have a little more to them than just increasing your spell power. They can provide extra damage mitigation, healing absorption or even reduce the casting time of spells and give you increased haste for quicker casts which are all things I would consider when going through my Azerite trait list later on in this post.
The first thing we’re going to talk about is how they actually work with each other since it seems there has been some confusion as to whether they affect one another or not but A recent hotfix from Blizzard cleared up any misunderstandings by stating “Azerite Armor does NOT increase armor value at all” so if your goal is to stack armor, you’ll want to go for traits that have more of an impact on damage mitigation rather than stacking up as much armor as possible.
-Azerite Armor does NOT increase armor value at all (hotfix) so if your goal is to stack armor, you’ll want to go for traits that have more of an impact with a higher focus on reducing and mitigating incoming damage.
-Many of the traits offer passive buffs that are a great help in both raids and dungeons, such as increased damage from your other abilities.
Conclusion: In this guide we talked about how Azerite Traits stack with each other and what you should focus on stacking if armor is not your goal.
