This is a historical document detailing the Corruption borrowed power system from patch 8.3. While most of the information is no longer relevant since Shadowlands prepatch, some of the info may become relevant in the future should similar systems become a part of WoW again. This may contain excerpts regarding Corruption from some of the other pvp guides in order to keep the other guides more up to date.

Hey guys, Tiraffe here with a brief guide regarding corruption, corrupted gear and how to take advantage of it in 8.3 PvP, now that a bunch of tuning regarding corruption has recently passed (and hopefully I don’t have to update this). This will be in regards to all matter of PvP, but a good chunk of the analysis be in regards to arenas.

Table of Contents:

  1. What is Corruption?
  2. Corruption in PVP

What is Corruption?

So for those not familiar with what corruption itself is, take a short stop over at wowhead  for a run down on what corruption is all about:

https://www.wowhead.com/guides/corrupted-items-overview-titan-purification-corruption-resistance

If you can’t be bothered to click the link, corruption is as follows:
Gear available in patch 8.3 now has a chance to gain a corruption effect instead of warforging or titanforging. Each piece of loot essentially has a chance to roll one of 18 or so effects, the intensity of which is then randomly chosen as well.

Certain weapons from the Ny’alotha raid are guaranteed to have a certain corruption effect. Similarly, non-trinket items from the mythic+ weekly chest are guaranteed to have a random corruption. The higher intensity of the effect, the more corruption is applied to the player. The more corruption a player has, the more ‘bonus’ mechanics that player has to deal with. On the right is the list of bonus mechanics, the list stops at 80 corruption, but the intensity is still increased beyond that.

In addition, characters will turn closer and closer into a Wildberry Poptart until they hit 80 corruption, at which point they become a Watermelon Poptart. A visual for this is shown farther below.

To counteract the negative effects of corruption, the legendary cloak, https://www.wowhead.com/item=169223/ashjrakamas-shroud-of-resolve#reward-from-q, is needed. Increasing the level of your cloak not only increases its ilvl, but also gives you more corruption resistence; more corruption resistance lets keep your corruption in check, allowing more corrupted gear to be used to increase your performance.

 

Corruption in PVP Table of contents:

  1. General Statements
  2. How Much Corruption is Too Much Corruption in PVP
  3. Positive Benefits of Negative Corruption Effects
  4. What Corruption Effects Are Good?
    1. Corruption Effects to Aim For (Melee DPS/Tanks)
    2. Corruption Effects to Aim For (Ranged DPS)
    3. Corruption Effects to Aim For (Healers)
  5. Corrupted Gladiator’s Spite and Corrupted Gladiator’s Breach
  6. How Do I Get Corruption Gear?
  7. Conclusion

1. General Statements

 

In general, what does this all mean in regards to pvp?

  1. Having some corruption effects will oftentimes be better than none.
  2. It means that depending on your role, you’ll want to try to get certain corruption effects.
  3. The negative corruption effects can provide some positive benefits as well.
  4. Sometimes, you’ll win or lose because of extra damage/healing as a result of corruption effects

2. How Much Corruption is Too Much Corruption in PVP?

 

From a pve standpoint, you’ll want to sim your gear to get as much out of your combinations of gear available as possible. Most folks in pve will want to cap around 39-59 corruption depending on what class/spec they’re playing. The more offhealing and cc your class has the better. If your class does not have the sustain and/or cc to handle a hit from the Thing from Beyond, I’d recommend staying below 40 corruption regardless.

From a pvp standpoint, you’ll want to keep your corruption at or below 39 at all times. This is because the Thing from Beyond effect will usually eat 1/10th to 1/4th of your max health without any defensives up. If you end up having to cc the Thing from Beyond, then that is cc that could have been used on the enemy team and is unfortunately wasted. Keeping your corruption even lower also reduces the magnitude of the slow that https://www.wowhead.com/spell=315176/grasping-tendrils will have on you and reduces both the damage and radius of https://www.wowhead.com/spell=315161/eye-of-corruption, which is also important for melee classes.

This means that early on, or if you’re coming in on an alt, I’d recommend working on leveling your cloak. This goes doubly so if you managed to land strong corruption effects on your gear, as you’ll likely be able to afford only one or two corruption effects at most .

 

3. Positive Benefits of Negative Corruption Effects

 

To start, you can always throw some stuns (or other cc that isn’t broken by damage) onto an enemy player that is under the effects of negative corruption effects. This will cause them to take extra damage, which can help secure a kill if you notice that they’re looking like a Wildberry Poptart. The 2 new trinkets will be discussed near the end of this guide for those that already know about the.

Finally, because the 1-19 and 20-39 range  are indistinguishable from each other, your level of corruption is practically invisible. You’ll be able to unconsciously use this to your advantage. Your own corruption effects will be invisible until they proc (if they’re an effect that procs), so having a bunch of Racing Pulse effects, for example, can be very difficult to react to for your opponents.

 

4. What Corruption Effects Are Good?

 

As it turns out, outside of a couple outliers, they’re relatively equal and pretty good. Most give increases to secondary stats in some way or another. In addition, while all effects stack if you have multiple copies of the same type of effect (e.g. having 1 tier 1 Racing Pulse and 1 tier 2 Racing Pulse will give you 1274 haste), some corruption effects will give you more corruption at the same rank than others. (e.g. tier 3 of Infinite Stars gives 75 corruption for a single effect, while tier 3 Expedient gives only 20 corruption.) Given that you’ll want to stay within a certain range of corruption, you’ll be quite limited early on. You could however take a leap of faith and run a bunch of corruption effects in order to turn an arena match or skirmish into a coin flip, as seen in the following video, where someone stacks 3 pieces that have Infinite Stars:

Furthermore, over half of the corruption effects give either a static % boost to a secondary stat or provide a chance to proc and sizable amount of a secondary stat for 4 seconds. Regardless of your role, you’ll probably do well to follow the single target stat distribution mentioned previously in my Intro to Rated PVP Guide.

Before I continue, I’ll also mention the corruption effects that are only available from the raid. If you can get any of the following weapons, do so, as all of their corruptions are quite strong for the classes that can equip them. This goes doubly so for An’zig Vra, Skshuul Vaz, and Unguent Caress, due to the heal, armor buff and snare respectively. From wowhead:

Sidenote: At the time of writing, certain corruption effects have been nerfed in pvp. They’re still quite strong, so don’t let that dissuade you from using them. However, there are certain caveats that should be kept in mind.The following snips are part of this post: https://www.wowhead.com/news=310122/patch-8-3-hotfixes-for-january-27th-2020-spirit-drinker-fix-trinket-tuning-corru
And this post: https://www.wowhead.com/news=311119/patch-8-3-hotfixes-for-february-10th-upcoming-corruption-tuning-tol-dagor-nerfs-

In addition, how certain effects function can be an advantage or disadvantage.

  1. The buff provided by Echoing Void can be purged before all stacks are expended, significantly reducing the amount of damage possible. However, if you have a rank 1 version, you can definitely use that to provide to protection from purges from Priests, Mages, DHs and Shamans. In addition, Echoing Void can now only be procced by abilities on the global cooldown. Finally, the aoe effect from it is centered on the caster’s location, which limits its use for ranged.
  2. Twilight Devastation  has a range of about 20-30 yards and the actual beam from the sky has to hit the target to deal damage. In addition, it fires in the direction your character is facing at the time of the proc in a serpentine pattern, so if you’re running away,  you’re likely to hit miss completely. This also means that melee will almost always hit their target with this and ranged can’t play at max range without losing the benefit.
  3. The main reason Infinite Stars does so much damage in pve is because of the debuff that the effect applies that increase the damage taken from the effect. This debuff is a magic debuff that can be dispelled. However, it has no duration, so it won’t fall off and will force the healer to dispel more often than they’d like to prevent a string of lucky procs.
  4. Twisted Appendage spawns little tentacles that cast a Mind Flay for 10 seconds. This does a lot of damage, but just like most Shaman totems and a Shadow Priest’s Psyfiend, they have a low healthpool that allows them to be one-shot to end the Mind Flay. That’s still means that a global will have to be used on killing the appendage instead of on the kill target and is highly sought after.
  5. Gushing Wound, Infinite Stars and Lash of the Void were all changed such that their damage is directly affected by the item level of their item. Gushing Wound and Lash of the Void can also provide bleeds and slows to classes that lack high uptime or any options to apply bleeds or slows. Note that Gushing Wound has been nerfed as of 5/26, with it’s damage reduced by 35%. As such a one-of is nice to have a bleed effect to counter rogues, but other corruptions will probably outscale it as people get more corruption resist.

Finally, here corruption affects that should be avoided by just about everyone for pvp:

  1. Glimpse of Clarity, it’s very easy to waste the cooldown reduction provided by this effect, as it only affects a single spell, and it’s practically useless for any energy spec, DK or DH.
  2. Similarly, Ineffable Truth is all but useless for everyone but Holy/Ret Paladins, BM Hunters, Warriors and Shadow Priests in pvp.
  3. Avoidance, since most of the damage in pvp will be single target, this will be practically useless, even in pve. In addition, it’s even worse for specs that don’t care for haste.

 

Disclaimer: If you know your specific built needs a specific corruption, then by all means try to get it by any means.
(Ex. Holy Paladins running Glimmer will want Ineffable Truth/Severe/Strikethrough)

4a. Corruption Effects to Aim For (Melee DPS/Tank)

For melee, most of these are relatively similar, so you can probably use whatever you have on hand. Specifically for Echoing Void and Twilight Devastation, you’ll want to keep track of your positioning and uptime, as any downtime can cause any procs of these two effects to be completely wasted.

  1. Twisted Appendage
  2. Infinite Stars
  3. Echoing Void
  4. Stat Buffs
  5. Gushing Wound
  6. Twilight Devastation
  7. Void Ritual
  8. Siphoner (Leech buff)

4b. Corruption Effect to Aim For (Ranged DPS)

Since Echoing Void and Twilight Devastation are reliant on either standing on your opponents or compromising your position to maximize your dps, I’d recommend prioritzing some of the other corruption effects or going for more stat buffs instead. However, Echoing Void can be used as a risky way to perform a turnabout on enemy melee cleaves by increasing the damage they take while they’re on you, that they normally wouldn’t take otherwise (mainly for Shadow Priests spamming instant casts).

  1. Twisted Appendage
  2. Infinite Stars
  3. Stat Buffs
  4. Void Ritual
  5. Gushing Wound
  6. Siphoner (Leech buff)
  7. Echoing Void
  8. Twilight Devastation

4c. Corruption Effects to Aim For (Healers)

Healers are in a bit of a weird spot when it comes to corruption effects. While most of ‘fun’ effects are completely focused on dealing damage, healers instead want to look for any and all stat buffs from the corruption effects.

  1. Stat Buffs (Follow your pvp stat distribution)
  2. Void Ritual (when 2 or more other folks are running it)
  3. Siphoner (Leech buff)
  4. Void Ritual (solo)
  5. Everything else

If you’re looking to throw in some damage, you can probably follow the ranged (Disc, R Druid/Shaman, H Priest) or melee (MW, H Pally) recommendations, with the slight change of putting Infinite Stars at the top if you can apply a DoT to the enemy time for consistent damage instead of burst.

4d. The Current State of PVP and Corruption (in 8.3)

This segment is transplanted from the Getting Gladiator guide and should provide a glimpse of the impact of patch 8.3’s systems in high-rated PVP arena games.


Note: The clips in the first video take place around February/March in 8.3. The second one has clips from then to May 26th. As should be apparent from watching both videos, stacking corruptions, even nerfed ones are a viable strategy. Something else not previously mentioned is that the Writhing Segment of Drest’agath, Remote Guidance Device (Motorcycle), Forbidden Obsidian Claw and Corrupted Gladiator’s Spite are popular pvp trinkets in 8.3.

As seen in the above videos, rated PVP is wack in 8.3, mostly because of corruption. As it stands, having good corruption effects helps a ton for landing kills, forcing defensives and being a nuisance. For more general info on what corruptions to shoot for once you have them and how to maximize the amount of corrupted gear that will forever sit in your bags, feel free to take a look at my general guide for corruption guide or take a look at your class guide on Wowhead: https://www.ministryofdefense.net/stepping-into-the-arena-corruption-in-pvp/

With a corruption vendor now available, things are probably going to get out of hand if you aren’t able to keep up with your opponent’s corruption resist. Make sure you keep gathering Echoes of Ny’alotha so that when the corruption you need is available, you can buy every corruption you need for the the next couple months. In addition, it is absolutely vital to stay as up-to-date on your cloak’s corruption resistance as possible.

Given this, there are a couple schools of thought into what corruptions to stack together, now that folks have had the rank 15 cloak for some time and upwards of 77 corruption resist. While the various procs (Twisted Appendage, Infinite Stars, etc.) are the most visible, there are a few general strats right now that are available or enhanced because of corruption.

First and foremost, stacking versatility corruptions is a surefire to both protect yourself and deal some damage. Other secondary stats are also boosted by similar strats, but versatility will usually give you the most bang for your buck since it’ll be far more consistent regardless of your other secondary stats, since you’ll get the full benefit of versatility even while CC’d.

Secondly, just running a bunch of different corruption procs will help ensure that your opponents will have to provide multiple reactions to counter it.

  1. Infinite Stars can force a dispel
  2. Twisted Appendage can force a target switch
  3. TD can forces a an opponent to move (Still don’t run it though unless you’re a tank, won’t be reliable damage against range.)
  4. Echoing Void gives purge protection
  5. Gushing Wounds is still a bleed, despite the impending nerf

Even the stat procs, if on different stats, will provide a more consistent increase in dps/hps. Even with the nerfs to proc rates for the direct damage corruptions, if multiple players on your team run multiple procs, then there is a higher chance to throw the enemy healer and their team off balance, instead of relying solely on one single beefed up proc. Be sure to check any pvp class guides for more direction on what your class/spec wants in pvp.

Finally, literally just stack all of one corruption type to go all in. As seen in the videos, it’s not exactly the most reliable tactic if it’s a proc, but stacking the same corruption can turn the game into a coinflip if combo’d withCC.

5. Corrupted Gladiator’s Spite and Corrupted Gladiator’s Breach

 

With patch 8.3 also came two new trinkets available from PVP sources: Corrupted Gladiator’s Spite and Corrupted Gladiator’s Breach

Both of these trinkets take advantage of your opponents’ corruption values in order to protect yourself or deal some damage.

Corrupted Gladiator’s Breach can only be used when enemy players are nearby, but operates as a much more effective Smoke Bomb after a short channel. In theory, having multiple people use the Breach can make it very easy for the opposing team to lose track of your team since your nameplates disappear as well. However, there is also the caveat for taking increased damage, but unless they’re waiting right outside your Breach, it won’t be long before the debuff from exiting falls off.

Corrupted Gladiator’s Spite serves a similar role to Corrupted Gladiator’s Maledict as a versatile option for securing a kill. The main purpose of it to force an opponent to slowly be under more and more corruption effects while you’re hitting them. If you are the one that cast it, it’ll show up as a transparent, light purple circle on the group. If the enemy cast it, it’ll show as a dark blue/black circle directly under your character, which will also make it very difficult to see stuff like Shaman totems or a Mage’s Meteor cast. If multiple Spites are cast on a single player, the initial increase of 20 corruption will not stack. The corruption increase of 3 corruption/second will stack however, so 3 spites stacks on a single person will result in 20 + 27 additional corruption if the target is in the Spite Zone for 3 seconds. This will automatically put someone in the corruption range of Thing from Beyond. When combo’d correctly, the target will quickly go above 80 corruption and start getting chunked by the damage increase and healing reduction.

If two players get 30 stacks each, that’s 90 corruption on top of any corruption both players already had. This puts both of them at 15% increased damage taken and 15% reduced healing received. And that’s on top of all of the other negative effects from corruption. Even Guardian druids go from 100 to 0 very quickly when their stacks are that high. In particular, if you’re able to land a full stun or pull the target back into the middle of the Spite Zone, you’re in a very good spot to kill them as their corruption rises.

There is some counterplay to Spite though. Any ability or spell that both removes and prevents slows/snares should be saved for a go such as this, such as March of the Damned, Dispersion, Blessing of Freedom, etc. You can also use any instant movement to escape, the best of which are Demonic Circle for Warlocks and Transcendance for Monks, since you’re likely to los the enemy team at the same time and completely stop their attempt to finish you off.

If you need to make a talent choice to be able to escape the Spite Zone, make sure to keep in mind what rating you’re playing out. It’s very unlikely that a character will even have Corrupted Gladiator’s Spite until they’re past 1400, and that doesn’t mean they won’t use other trinkets before they get to higher rating. Once you go above 1800 cr, this might be something to consider, especially if the enemy team has multiple ways to keep one or more people in the Spite Zone.

 

6. How Do I Get Corrupted Gear? (And the two trinkets)

NOTE: As of 5/19, MOTHER sells 6 out of the 52 total corruptions in exchange for Echoes of Ny’alotha. Doing various activities in BfA will still provide Echoes in addition to the usually goodies. The current stock can be found on Wowhead and they rotate whenever the minor N’zoth assault rotates. Higher corruption costs require more Echoes. Both crafted gear and cleansed gear can have corruption applied to it.

The weekly pvp chest has less gear that can corrupt due to chance of getting Azerite gear in  addition to trinkets from the chest. This means that if you’re looking to minmax yourself in pvp, you’re going to have to do some pve. As of now, there are four main sources of guaranteed corruption on pieces.

  1. Get a weapon that has a guaranteed corruption effect from Ny’alotha, the Waking City raid
  2. Complete a +2 or higher M+ dungeon and then hope you get something that isn’t a trinket from the weekly M+ chest.
  3. Complete your conquest cap for the week and then opening the weekly conquest box. (Both Azerite and trinkets can drop from this)
  4. As of a patch to Horrific Vision, completing a full clear, preferably with one or more masks, will reward a guaranteed corrupted piece,based on the number of masks used. Note that Azerite Pieces can still drop from this if the reward is 430, 445 or 460 ilvl.

These four sources are the closest a person can get to guaranteeing a corruption effect without spending any Echoes of Ny’alotha.

As for Corrupted Gladiator’s Spite and Corrupted Gladiator’s Breach, you can get either from the Conquest cap reward that gives trinkets. Personally, I’d recommend picking up Corrupted Gladiator’s Spite if you’re looking to use it for crowd control setups. Most of the other trinkets are pretty usable either for pve or pvp, so if you’re aren’t looking to push rating that high, you can grab whatever else strikes your fancy.

 

7. Conclusion

Corruption is a volatile system with no guarantees until you open the box. It can help and it can most certainly hurt. Sometimes, you will just get beaten down or win outright; corruption likely won’t be the sole reason for it, though it will play a noticeable part. You still have to know how to play your class both for yourself and your team. You’ll still need to do all of the things pvp requires of you in order to succeed. Even if you may not have the best hand, you’ve still got cards to play. Which is why you should never give up, unless you need a break.

Obligatory:

 

Sources:

 

“CORRUPTION.EXE, Blood DK Arena” Youtube, uploaded by StratovariusWOW on 11 Feb, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6lNbrlXccY

“supatease ded” Twitch.tv, uploaded by Pikabooirl, clipped by datsphilthy on 16 Feb, 2020 https://clips.twitch.tv/FriendlyDarlingLobsterRlyTho

“Here’s a Warlock playing Demonic Circle because he KNOWS the puddle is being played, and outplays it”Twitch.tv, uploaded by Method, clipped by ConcernedGaming on 14 Feb, 2020 https://clips.twitch.tv/FriendlyBlazingClintNotATK

“Matsuoka Shuzo [松岡修造 ] – あきらめかけているあなた (NEVER GIVE UP!!) [English]” Youtube,

uploaded by Ryuujin131 on 25 Jun, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxGRhd_iWuE

“It’s ok to be yourself” Youtube, uploaded by Tofupupper on 22 Oct, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RahYj4xs_dU

“3:59am” Youtube, uploaded by Limmy on 26 Aug, 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=831Zy5ICBsw