Skill Inconsistencies with Items

Certain items give bonuses to certain skills where neither the item nor the skill make any sense at all because of the nature of the item and the nature of the skill. I would like some clarification on these:

  • Serrated Titan spear: A 2-handed spear that gives a bonus to the Nightblade’s Dual Blades and Belgothian Shears skills, both of which are dual wield skills and require dual-wielding 1-handed weapons. It is impossible to dual wield 2-handed weapons
  • Fleshwarped Bulwark (shield): Gives bonuses to Shaman skill Brute Force and its subskill Feral Hunger. Both Brute Force and Feral Hunger specifically state “Requires a twohanded melee or ranged weapon” If you have a shield, you can only have a 1-handed weapon. There used to be a shield block chance boost for Mogdrogen’s Pact instead.
  • Stormrend: 1-handed axe that gives +3 to Primal Strike and reduces Primal Strike’s cooldown by 0.4 seconds. Primal Strike: Requires a towhanded melee or ranged weapon

I could understand the Titan Serrated Spear having the Primal Strike or Brute Force modifiers and Stormrend having the Dual Blades / Belgothian Shears, but not these as they exist.

These skill modifiers on these items make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Unless the items also happen to have a hidden modifier for the skills themselves that allows them to be used outside of their normal limitations. However, such possible hidden modifier information is not stated anywhere.

I do not remember right now if there are other items with such glaring issues, but there probably are. Detailed information would be appreciated, and if these are oversight bugs, for the issues to be fixed.

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These items do have a hidden modifier that makes you able to use the skills they modify, but you are correct that it’s unclear and unexplained in game (unless they added that information to the game guide maybe?).

I agree that it could be telegraphed better but logically, why would an item give a skill modifier to a skill that item can’t be used with, right? A player’s natural first instinct would be to go “huh?” and then try to see if it actually works. At which point the player finds out that it does and keeps that in mind for the future.

This “requirement breaking” has been quietly in the game for a long time, with the Spellscourge set supporting Devastation even though Devastation normally requires an offhand, or Stormrend supporting Primal Strike which is otherwise only two-handed. This expansion is just pushing that idea forward a lot more.

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Yeah that is how I learned that wow devastation works with this shield awesome! It felt like I discovered something and it was exciting. If there is too much information in game, it kinda becomes meh.

Like what are they gonna add next, explanations on which debuff stacks and not? Maybe also a warning when you are to select your second mastery “warning you can not undo this selection and it seems you wanna make a battlemage well have fun playing wihtout any RR from your masteries kappa”