by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

Books have often been society’s only bastion of light for passing along knowledge that would otherwise be lost to time or convoluted by the oral tradition. In order to provide new and old adventurers with as much knowledge of what to expect on their journey in Sanctuary, we created this tome of knowledge – Ars Arcanum. We will regularly feature a Legendary weapon or armor piece, discussing its stand-alone powers and capabilities, as well as how it may synergize with new builds or other items.

Our last Ars Arcanum saw us discussing the merits of the redesigned Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac. However, Patch 2.2.0 isn’t only introducing redesigns. If you’ll recall, there was a segment at BlizzCon 2014 rolled into the Evolving Reaper of Souls panel where the community was charged with the task of designing a new Legendary power to go with an item. Well, after much deliberation, the result manifested itself in the Convention of Elements, a ridiculously powerful, brand new ring.

Courtesy of @N3rdwards.

Why is it good?

Why is it good? Competition and diversity. This item has been discussed in detail by the developers on several occasions, but one of the main takeaways each time is that they liked that it might encourage players to build in a different way. When Reaper of Souls launched, the main gearing techniques were to unify yourself with one element and bolster that through affixes on your bracers, amulet, and ring with the Stone of Jordan. As such, for the ring slot, SOJ became one of the most mandatory rings when looking to boost your offense. You also can’t ignore its significant increase to your damage against elites, which are often the main focus of your slaying no matter what activity you’re engaged in.

So, how do you unseat such a behemoth? You introduce a major elemental bonus, but give it a caveat so that it’s not super overpowered. Convention of Elements’ Legendary power is interesting. Naturally, it’s a massive boost to elemental damage, but because the bonus is constantly rotating, playing one element in your build means it functions like a seventh buff skill. For example, if your class has a four element rotation on the ring, that means the power essentially reads as “Boost your single element for 4 seconds with a 12 second cooldown.” Even that bonus is still compelling enough to find a way to work this into your build, but the obvious benefit would be to find multiple spenders or skills to benefit from the rotation.

However, most builds look to get rid of generators as soon as they can and usually look to have one main spender, with the rest of the skills providing utility or buffs. We’ll have to observe a general departure from how standard builds operate in order to allow this ring an opportunity to work, but the fact that the ring forces the idea any at all should be a good thing for one of the reasons I noted earlier – diversity.

Will this item see play? Right now, there are a few other rings (soon to be discussed here) stealing a bit of Convention of Elements’ shine. I think it’s still too early to see how this will affect new builds and if people will actually attempt to diversify their elements to take full advantage though. Time will tell.

Who is it good for?

Every class uses elements, so this is technically good for every class. However, multi-elementalists will obviously see the most benefits. It’s likely that Wizards trying to make good use of the Tal Rasha’s Elements set will be able to put this horse to work best. As mentioned above though, it waits to be seen if the advantages are great enough that classes will diversify their skill elements and choose runes more for their utility/bonuses versus elemental affinity.

Where can I find it?

Now that Patch 2.2.0 is live, you should be able to find this bad boy right now. Go get to killing things! Maybe if you’re nice to Kadala, she’ll put a ring on it.

The Fluff

Long ago, a great conclave of mage-smiths convened during a blizzard to channel their collective energy into a single artifact, forging a powerful ring that bestowed upon the wielder mastery over all of the elements.

Really awesome flavor text here, as this is a direct shout-out to the event that happened on-stage at BlizzCon 2014. It’s really cool to see something like this – designed by the community, for the community – also have its true spirit and essence captured down to the last detail. Clever.