World of Warcraft is memorable and important to the gaming industry for setting the tone for future MMO's. WoW is over 15 years old and developed through the years through multiple expansions. With a game being this old, balancing remains just as challenging and sometimes catastrophic.
While there are still balancing issues, we can talk about within the game today. We are going to take a look back at World of Warcraft's trinkets that were insanely overpowered. Most, if not all, of the trinkets on this list, have been nerfed. Hopefully, you might remember some of these items from Warcraft's past as we go through our top picks.
10 Zandalarian Hero Charm/Talisman of Ephemeral Power
With the recent launch of Zul'Gurub, players in WoW Classic can get this trinket. However, we want to mention its original version in vanilla WoW. Both trinkets provide the same spell damage/ healing buff, but the ZHC is more potent than the talisman. In Classic, both of these trinkets share a cooldown, but both could be active at the same time. This combo gives over 300 additional spell power and could one-shot a player in PVP. Sadly, this is no longer the case, but it is still possible with the right set up with ZHC.
9 Azshara's Font of Power
Recently in Battle for Azeroth, after players defeat Azshara at the end of the Eternal Palace, we obtained a trinket most would use for the rest of the expansion. The trinket did not offer a lot for raw stat power, but it made up for its active effect. Preforming a channel for four seconds increases the player's primary stat by over 2500. Mainly for raiding before pulling a boss to create a powerful burst window when starting a fight. This trinket is powerful, and it still has use in the final raid in BFA. The amount of power it gave for long fights was beneficial, but not entirely useful for other content.
8 Deathbringer's Will
In Wrath of the Lich King, armor penetration is beneficial in PVP. Dropping in Ice Crown Citadel is one of the most sought out trinkets for all melee DPS. Providing a massive buff for 30 seconds that can give one of three buffs, on top of the passive 115 armor pen.
Those who have this trinket in WOTLK can potentially one-shot players in PVP or pump out lots of DPS on bosses. Plus, Deathbringer's Will is one of the few trinkets that changes your appearance when it activates.
7 Dragonspine Trophy
In the Burning Crusade, the first raid to open up is Gruul's Lair, which only has two bosses but one of the best trinkets in the whole expansion. BC introduces the stat; haste, which increases your attack speed and casting time of ranged spells. While this trinket was an extremely rare drop of under a 5% chance a week, everyone sought it out. Giving 325 haste every twenty seconds was nearly the equivalent of a personal Bloodlust. If you obtain this trinket, you will not need to swap it out for the rest of the expansion. It is so high on the list for its low drop chance that everyone wants it, but few got it.
6 Unstable Arcanocrystal
This recent trinket from Legion comes to no surprise from recent players. In Legion, the developers wanted to increase secondary stats on rings and trinkets and move away from primary stats. This trinket, that drops from a world boss, has an absurd number of secondary stats. With no active effect, this trinket is useful as a stat stick until the end of the expansion. The stats it gives are nearly double if the item was titan forged.
5 Prophecy of Fear
The Prophecy of Fear is one of the most powerful trinkets among the end game trinkets of Warlords of Draenor that does not drop from the final boss Archimonde. The Prophecy of Fear is a trinket that allows you to turn some of your single target spells into AOE. At the time, mages have the spell, Prismatic Crystal, which, when damaging the crystal, also did lots of AOE damage. Mages combo this with spamming Arcane Missiles, and bosses take up to three waves of damage per tick. Using this trick allows the mage to damage a target once with Arcane Missiles, which triggers Prismatic Crystal, then Prophecy of Fear, and the crystal again. A group using this trinket could kill lower difficulty bosses in under a minute.
4 Vial of Shadows
Much like the previous Dragonspine Trophy, only a few players got this trinket, but it remains extremely strong. This trinket can trigger a massive burst of shadow damage for over 4000 damage on a melee or ranged attack. Rogues and melee DPS alike can drop a player's HP under 50 at the start of combat. Later this trinket received changes to lower the damage but increases the in combat proc chance. With nerfs, the trinket functioned nearly the same in PVE, but was weaker in PVP.
3 Draught of Souls
Another devastating melee trinket is the Draught of Souls, a trinket from Legion that lots of recent players will remember. Its effect is a channeled AOE ability for melee classes that scales with percent damage values. In the hands of Warriors, they can use all of their DPS cooldowns and make the trinket tick for over a million damage. The raw power of this trinket's combo was so much it could kill a player for double their HP. Nerfs came quickly and kept coming for the rest of the expansion.
2 Unerring Vision of Lei Shen
To explain why this trinket is on the list, we need to define a feature that is not in the game anymore. This feature, known as "snap-shotting," is when you put a DOT on a target; it would tick with the stats you have the moment its cast. Today spells update and damage changes depending on your buffs and debuffs. The trinket has a proc that gives the player one hundred percent crit chance. With "snap-shotting" whenever the trinket procs, you could load up DOTS on a target that will crit for the full duration. Combining this old feature and this trinket is what made it so unexpectedly broken.
1 Scarab Brooch
This trinket from vanilla WoW is so powerful was used all the way up until Wrath of the Lich King, a total of three expansions for one trinket. The active use of the trinket turned 15% of your healing on a target into a shield. Later expansions increasing character power, so did the trinket's usefulness grow thanks to its percentage scaling. This is why trinkets on armor don't use a percent scaling anymore, and they give you a set amount with player stat increases, so they become outdated. The Scarab Brooch was also used in the world's first heroic Lich King kill, and it goes to show how overpowering and prolonged usefulness this trinket had.