Dragonflight Beta Development Notes 29 September 2022, Raid Rewards in Dragonflight Season 1, Learning DF Transmog Ensembles

Here’s this week’s Dragonflight Beta update:

CLASSES

• Resurrection Sickness now lasts 1 minute (was 10 minutes). Characters that resurrect at a Spirit Healer below level 10 now suffer 10% durability loss, and characters that resurrect at a Spirit Healer at level 10 and above now suffer 50% durability loss (was all levels suffer 25% durability loss).
  • Developers’ note: Resurrection Sickness—the penalty that is applied to your character when you choose to be resurrected at a Spirit Healer—is to ensure that death has some consequence and players aren’t intentionally dying as a routine travel shortcut. The repercussion of the quick resurrection is that the long standing penalty of 10 minutes of greatly reduced attributes discourages you from playing the game in any capacity for that duration. With this change, resurrecting at a Spirit Healer will now result in a greater hit to your item durability (50%) but much shorter duration for the debuff (1 minute).
• NEW TALENT SYSTEM
  • STARTER BUILDS
    • In this week’s PTR and Beta build, all specializations now have a Starter Build loadout. The Starter Build is a preset talent build created for players who prefer not to choose their own talents yet, but simply want a decent build that’s suitable for most content. This will be available to both leveling characters and max level characters.
  • UTILITY CHANGES
    • This build will have a few changes to various utility themed abilities across multiple talent trees. Based on playtesting feedback, we’ve identified a number of such talents or abilities that we feel need to be changed due to their power level, requirements on group composition or design clarity. In a few cases, these changes are a reduction in power, but we feel they are necessary to ensure a challenging gameplay experience in Dragonflight.
    • In addition to the changes below, we are also taking a second look at Restless Crew for Outlaw Rogues and the scope of Demon Hunters Crowd Control capabilities available in the new Talent Trees. For Havoc Demon Hunters, we are specifically discussing the availability for Crowd Control such as Chaos Nova, Sigil of Misery and Sigil of Silence that contributes to a large amount of control for 1 character. We do not have any additional information to share at this time, but we wanted to give the community a heads up that these 2 items are on our radar.
    • DRUID
      • Mark of the Wild has been redesigned – Infuse a friendly target with the power of the wild, increasing their Versatility by 3% for 60 minutes. If target is in your party or raid, all party and raid members will be affected.
    • EVOKER
      • Zephyr has been slightly redesigned – No longer limited to your party. It now affects you and your 4 nearest allies within 20 yards.
    • HUNTER
      • Sentinel’s Protection has been slightly redesigned – Magic damage reduction has been removed, now only grants 5% leech to your party members.
    • MONK
      • Close to Heart has been redesigned – You and your allies within 10 yards have increased healing taken from all sources.
    • PALADIN
      • Blessing of Spellwarding is now a Protection Paladin only talent, located as a choice node with Improved Ardent Defender. Additionally, Blessing of Spellwarding no longer replaces Blessing of Protection and now shares its cooldown with Blessing of Protection. Talents that reduce the cooldown of Blessing of Protection will now also affect Blessing of Spellwarding.
    • SHAMAN
      • Mana Spring Totem has been slightly redesigned – No longer limited to your party, cooldown has been removed and now lasts for 2 minutes. It now affects you and up to 4 allies nearest to the totem, prioritizing healers before other specializations. Additionally, it no longer triggers from Lava Burst for Enhancement Shaman.
      • Tranquil Air Totem has been slightly redesigned – No longer limited to your party. It now affects you and up to 4 allies nearest to the totem, prioritizing healers and casters before other specializations.
      • Stoneskin Totem has been slightly adjusted – No longer limited to your party. It now affects you and up to 4 allies nearest to the totem.
  • DEMON HUNTER
    • Class Tree
      • Precise Sigils now increases the duration of Sigil effects by 2 seconds.
      • Consume Magic – Renamed to Swallowed Anger.
      • Vengeful Restraint – Renamed to Vengeful Bonds.
      • Demonic Origins – Renamed to First of the Illidari.
      • Fae Empowered Elixir – Renamed to Relentless Pursuit.
      • Hot Feet – Renamed to Blazing Path.
    • Havoc
      • Blur is now a baseline ability.
      • Mo’arg Bionics – Renamed to Accelerating Blade.
      • The Weak-Willed – Renamed to Soulcrush.
    • Vengeance
      • Ruinous Bulwark now causes Fel Devastation to convert 100% (was 50%) of its healing (was overhealing) into an absorb shield for 10 seconds.
      • Roaring Fire increases healing of Fel Devastation by up to 50% based on missing health (was 30%).
      • Abyssal Haste – Renamed to Meteoric Strikes.
  • DRUID
    • General
      • Mark of the Wild has been redesigned – Infuse a friendly target with the power of the wild, increasing their Versatility by 3% for 60 minutes. If target is in your party or raid, all party and raid members will be affected.
    • Class Tree
      • Starsurge is now instant cast for all specializations.
    • Balance
      • The tree has undergone an overhaul. Many talents have been moved, rank amounts have changed, and several new connections have been made.
      • New Talent: Umbral Embrace – Dealing Astral damage has a chance to cause your next Wrath or Starfire to become Astral and deal 50% additional damage.
      • New Talent: Wild Mushroom – Grow a magical mushroom at the target enemy’s location. After 2 seconds, the mushroom detonates, dealing Nature damage and generating up to 20 Astral Power based on targets hit.
      • New Talent: Fungal Growth – Enemies struck by Wild Mushroom are damaged for an additional 70% over 8 seconds and slowed by 50%.
      • New Talent: Radiant Moonlight – Full Moon becomes Full Moon once more before resetting to New Moon. Fury of Elune’s cooldown is reduced by 15 seconds.
      • New Talent: Stellar Innervation – During Solar Eclipse, Sunfire generates 100% additional Astral Power. During Lunar Eclipse, Moonfire generates 100% additional Astral Power.
      • New Talent: Elune’s Guidance – Incarnation: Chosen of Elune reduces the Astral Power cost of Starsurge by 10, and the Astral Power cost of Starfall by 15. Convoke the Spirits’ cooldown is reduced by 50% and its duration and number of spells cast is reduced by 25%. Convoke the Spirits has an increased chance to use an exceptional spell or ability.
      • New Talent: Astral Smolder – Your critical strikes from Starfire and Wrath cause the target to languish for an additional 4% of your spell’s damage over 4 seconds.
      • New Talent: Sundered Firmament – Every other Eclipse creates a Fury of Elune at 25% effectiveness that follows your current target for 8 seconds.
      • New Talent: Denizen of the Dream – Your Moonfire and Sunfire have a chance to summon a Faerie Dragon to assist you in battle for 30 seconds.
      • New Talent: Friend of the Fae – When a Faerie Dragon is summoned, your Arcane and Nature damage is increased by 6% for 30 seconds.
      • New Talent: Astral Communion – Generates 75 Astral Power.
      • New Talent: Nature’s Grace – After an Eclipse ends, you gain 15% Haste for 6 seconds.
      • New Talent: Waning Twilight – When you have 3 periodic effects on a target, your damage and healing on them are increased by 4%.
      • New Talent: Lunar Shrapnel – Starfall’s stars deal an additional 25% damage to nearby enemies when they damage an enemy afflicted by Moonfire.
      • Stellar Drift – Removed.
      • Improved Moonfire – Removed.
      • Blessing of An’she – Removed.
      • Blessing of Elune – Removed.
      • Precise Alignment – Removed.
      • Fury of the Skies – Removed.
      • Improved Starsurge – Removed.
    • Restoration
      • Rejuvenation – Reduced healing by 15%.
      • Rejuvenation (Germination) – Reduced healing by 15%.
      • Nurturing Dormancy – Reduced Rejuvenation extension to 2 seconds, up to 6 seconds (was 3 seconds, up to 9 seconds).
      • Abundance – Reduced effectiveness to 5% per stack (was 6%).
      • Invigorate has been redesigned – Refreshes the duration of your active Lifebloom and Rejuvenation effects on the target and causes them to complete 100% faster. 20 second cooldown, lowered cost to 2% of base mana.
  • EVOKER
    • General
      • Hover – The prevent player casting effect now lasts 0.45 seconds (was 0.7 seconds).
    • Class Tree
      • Zephyr has been slightly redesigned – No longer limited to your party. It now affects you and your 4 nearest allies within 20 yards.
    • Preservation
      • All healing spells are now a 30 yard range (was 25 yards). Damage dealing spells remain at 25 yard across the class.
        • Verdant Embrace, Living Flame, and Emerald Blossom remain a 25 yard range for Devastation, but are increased to 30 when you are specialized into Preservation.
      • All healing spells increased by 5%.
      • Dream Breath – Cooldown increased to 35 seconds base (was 25 seconds). Charging to empower level 2 reduces it to 30, level 3 reduces to 25, and level 4 reduces to a 20 second cooldown. Healing increased by 15%.
      • Spiritual Clarity – Reduces Spiritbloom’s cooldown by 10 seconds (was 15 seconds).
      • Empath – Duration reduced to 8 seconds (was 10 seconds).
  • HUNTER
    • General
      • Freezing Trap – The trap visual has been updated.
    • Class Tree
      • Sentinel’s Protection has been slightly redesigned – Magic damage reduction has been removed, now only grants 5% leech to your party members.
      • Master Marksman – Now works with Spearhead and Coordinated Assault critical strikes.
    • Beast Mastery
      • Fixed issue where Beast Cleave Rank 2 was only using the 35% damage value from Rank 1.
      • Fixed issue where Stomp Rank 1 and 2 were dealing the same damage values and the Rank 2 tooltip didn’t update.
      • Stomps’ tooltip damage value is now more accurate and Animal Companion directly changes its tooltip damage now.
      • Aspect of the Wild’s initial and extra Cobra Shots now properly work with the Cobra Sting, Cobra Senses, and Killer Cobra talents.
    • Survival
      • Barrage – Now scales with Survival’s Mastery when a ranged weapon is equipped.
      • Fixed an issue with Serrated Shots bonus not applying to Internal Bleeding.
  • MAGE
    • Arcane
      • Improved Arcane Explosion – Renamed to Crackling Energy and now also increases Arcane Blast damage by 10/20% in addition to its current effect.
    • Fire
      • Feel the Burn – Duration increased to 5 seconds (was 3 seconds).
    • Frost
      • Icy Propulsion – Now grants 6 seconds of cooldown reduction for Icy Veins if Glacial Spike critically strikes.
  • MONK
    • Class Tree
      • Close to Heart has been redesigned – You and your allies within 10 yards have increased healing taken from all sources.
        • Developers’ note: This change will be applied over the course of the week and not immediately when the build goes live.
    • Mistweaver
      • Zen Pulse now costs 1% of base mana.
    • Windwalker
      • Tree layout has been updated.
      • Hit Combo and Jade Ignition have new locations on the talent tree.
        • Developers’ note: We discussed your feedback at length and were convinced. Jade Ignition has been moved to the left side of the tree in an accessible location, and Hit Combo has been moved to the right side of the tree, which has been slightly restructured to preserve Hit Combo as an opt-in test of player skill.
      • Forbidden Technique now correctly functions.
      • Way of the Fae now correctly applies its damage bonus.
      • Fatal Flying Guillotine now correctly functions.
      • Fixed an issue that allowed Mark of the Crane to be applied without being talented.
      • Flashing Fist now correctly reflects both ranks.
  • PALADIN
    • Holy
      • Echoing Blessings – Now increases movement speed and reduced damage taken by 15% (was 5%).
      • Boundless Salvation – Now extends the duration of Tyr’s Deliverance by 3 seconds when casting Holy Light (was 1 second) and by 1.5 seconds when casting Flash of Light (was 0.5 seconds).
      • Barrier of Faith – Now creates an absorb based on 40% of the healing done by Holy Light and Flash of Light (was 20%).
      • Divine Revelations – Now refunds 1% base mana (was 2%).
    • Protection
      • Blessing of Spellwarding is now a Protection Paladin only talent, located as a choice node with Improved Ardent Defender. Additionally, Blessing of Spellwarding no longer replaces Blessing of Protection and now shares its cooldown with Blessing of Protection. Talents that reduce the cooldown of Blessing of Protection will now also affect Blessing of Spellwarding.
        • Developers’ note: This change will be applied over the course of the week and not immediately when the build goes live.
    • Retribution
      • Developers’ note: Playtesting has revealed that the new combination of talents in the Retribution tree has flooded the spec with Holy Power. As a result, we’re reducing the frequency of some talents with a chance to grant Holy Power and repositioning Zeal to compete against Fires of Justice.
      • Zeal and Empyrean Power have swapped places in the Retribution talent tree.
      • Blade of Wrath – Art of War reset the cooldown of Blade of Justice 50% more often (was 100%).
      • Final Verdict – Chance to activate Hammer of Wrath is now 10% (was 15%).
      • Sanctification – Reduced the chance to generate Holy Power.
        • 1 target: 3% per tick down from 7%.
        • 2 targets: 5% per tick down from 10%.
        • 3 targets: 7% per tick down from 12%.
        • 4 targets: 8% per tick down from 15%.
  • PRIEST
    • Class Tree
      • Halo – Damage from the spell no longer hits enemies that are out of combat. Still hits all pets and players. No longer counts pets towards its healing target cap.
      • Divine Star – No longer counts pets towards its healing target cap.
    • Shadow
      • Mind Sear – Now ticks every 0.75 seconds for 3 seconds and does not have an extra initial tick. Requires 50 Insanity to cast unless you have a Mind Devourer triggered.
      • Voidform – No longer grants an additional charge of Mind Blast. Now grants 10% increased spell damage while active (was 20%).
      • Shadowy Insight – Added an additional effect: Mind Blast gains an additional charge. Reduced the chance for the effect to trigger.
      • Fixed an issue causing Shadowy Insight to trigger more than intended.
      • Surge of Darkness – Reduced the chance for the effect to trigger.
      • Psychic Link – Added Mind Flay to Psychic Link.
      • Fixed an issue preventing Psychic Link rank 2 from functioning.
      • Dark Void – Cooldown is now affected by Haste.
  • ROGUE
    • Class Tree
      • Added connections and pathing and moved a few talents around.
      • Leeching Poison – Now works with any Lethal poison.
      • Deeper Stratagem – Once again increases finisher damage by 5% in addition to its existing effect.
      • Shadow Dance – Base duration has been reduced to 6 seconds and no longer has a base flat damage increase.
      • Thistle Tea – Grants Mastery for 6 seconds, in addition to its current effect.
      • Kidney Shot now spends up to 5 Combo Points max, scaling up to a 6 second duration.
      • New Talent: Reverberation – Echoing Reprimand damage increased by 75%. This talent is a choice against Resounding Clarity.
      • So Versatile – Renamed to Thief’s Versatility.
    • Assassination
      • Significant pathing and talent adjustments have been made to the tree.
      • Cut to the Chase – Now a 1-point talent and extends Slice and Dice by 3 seconds per combo point spent.
      • Internal Bleeding – Now a 1-point talent for the same total effect.
      • The Shiv talent – Renamed to Lightweight Shiv in the Assassination tree.
      • Poisoned Katar – Renamed to Thrown Precision.
      • Poison Damage – Renamed to Fatal Concoction.
      • Maim, Mangle – Renamed to Systemic Failure.
    • Outlaw
      • A few new connections have been added at the top and sides of the tree.
      • Heavy Hitter has been implemented and redesigned – Now grants 10% increased damage to all abilities that generate combo points.
      • Deeper Stratagem for Outlaw – Renamed to Devious Stratagem.
      • Fan the Hammer has been adjusted – When Sinister Strike strikes an additional time, gain 1/2 additional stacks of Opportunity. Max 6 stacks. Half-cost uses of Pistol Shot consume 1/2 stacks of Opportunity to fire 1/2 additional shots.
      • Restless Crew has been implemented.
      • Activating Adrenaline Rush no longer breaks Stealth.
      • Slicerdicer – Renamed to Swift Slasher.
      • Long Arm of the Outlaw – Renamed to Deft Maneuvers.
      • Dispatcher – Renamed to Summarily Dispatched.
    • Subtlety
      • Significant pathing and talent adjustments have been made to the tree.
      • Shadow Dance is now learned baseline.
      • Symbols of Death is now learned baseline.
      • Shadow Techniques is now learned baseline.
      • New Talent: Improved Shadow Dance – Increases the duration of Shadow Dance by 2 seconds/4 seconds.
      • New Talent: Swift Death – Reduces the cooldown of Symbols of Death by 5 seconds.
      • New Talent: Improved Shadow Techniques – Energy generated by Shadow Techniques increased by 4.
      • Deeper Stratagem for Subtlety – Renamed to Secret Stratagem.
      • Shroud in Darkness – Movement speed bonus increased to 100% (was 60%).
  • SHAMAN
    • Class Tree
      • Mana Spring Totem has been slightly redesigned – No longer limited to your party, cooldown has been removed and now lasts for 2 minutes. It now affects you and up to 4 allies nearest to the totem, prioritizing healers before other specializations. Additionally, it no longer triggers from Lava Burst for Enhancement Shaman.
      • Tranquil Air Totem has been slightly redesigned – No longer limited to your party. It now affects you and up to 4 allies nearest to the totem, prioritizing healers and casters before other specializations.
      • Stoneskin Totem has been slightly adjusted – No longer limited to your party. It now affects you and up to 4 allies nearest to the totem.
  • WARRIOR
    • General Developer Notes
      • This week our focus has mainly been on bug fixing, testing and tuning. We appreciate all the fantastic feedback Warriors have been providing and will continuing to monitor, evaluate it and react to it where necessary as we progress through the Beta and through the launch of Dragonflight itself!Some of the below updates made it into last weeks build but were not documented in the update notes, so we’ve included them today for more visibility and feedback.
    • Class Changes
      • Seismic Reverberation (Protection) – Revenge deals an additional hit at 30% damage (was 50%).
      • Honed Reflexes – Now reduces Pummel by 1 second for Arms and Fury to match the reduction Protection receives.
      • Thunderous Roar – Changed tooltip phrasing to make it clear the damage increase effects your bleeds at all times.
      • Protection specialization – Now gets both stances for free as starting points.
      • Wrenching Impact – Now applies to the 5 farthest targets.
      • Unstoppable Force – Now also increases the damage of Shockwave by 50%.
      • All multi-rank talents should now be working as intended.
      • Shockwave – Fixed an issue causing it to not always crit when talented with Sonic Boom.
      • Crackling Thunder – Now reduces movement speed by an additional 20% (was 10%).
      • Avatar – Now grants 15 Rage (was 20).
      • Thunderous Roar – Grants 10 Rage (was 20).
      • Spear of Bastion – Grants 20 Rage (was 25).
      • Piercing Verdict – Now grants 100% Rage (was 50%).
      • Siphoning Strikes – Renamed to Leeching Strikes.
      • Quick Thinking – Renamed to Wild Strikes.
      • Memory of a Tormented Berserker – Renamed to Berserker’s Torment.
      • Memory of a Tormented Blademaster – Renamed to Blademaster’s Torment.
      • Memory of a Tormented Titan – Renamed to Titan’s Torment.
      • Memory of a Tormented Warlord – Renamed to Warlord’s Torment.
      • Armored to the Teeth (Protection) – Now grants 2% Strength equal to your armor (was 5% per rank).
      • Barbaric Training (Arms) – Slam and Whirlwind deal 30% more damage but now cost 5 more Rage (was 40%).
      • Immovable Object – Activating Avatar or Shield Wall casts the other at reduced effectiveness.
    • Arms
      • Fracture – Renamed to Tide of Blood.
      • Exploiter – Renamed to Executioner’s Precision.
    • Fury
      • Hurricane – Fixed a tooltip error referencing Bladestorm.
      • Bloodcraze – Fixed an issue that was causing Bloodcraze to increase the crit value of Bloodthirst by less than intended.
      • Pulverize – Renamed to Tenderize.
      • Crushing Impact – Odyn’s Fury greatly empowers Raging Blow for 6 seconds.
      • Unbridled Ferocity – Fixed an issue causing Unbridled Ferocity to trigger less often than intended.
      • Annihilator – Updated tooltip to not be weapon type specific.
      • Frenzied Flurry – Correctly deals increased attack damage not auto attack speed.
    • Protection
      • Battle-Scarred Veteran – Now correctly triggers at 30% instead of 40%. You take 80% less damage (was 75%) and can now occur every 180 seconds (was 90 seconds).
      • Enduring Alacrity and Focused Vigor now only have 1 rank.
      • Thunderlord – Now reduces the remaining cooldown of Demoralizing Shout by 1 second for each enemy hit with a maximum reduction of 4 seconds (was 1.5 seconds per enemy and a total of 4.5 seconds).
      • Spell Block – Duration increased to 20 seconds and cooldown reduced to 90 seconds.
      • Brace for Impact – Now increases the block value per stack by 5% (was 10%).
      • Disrupting Shout – Cooldown reduced to 90 seconds (was 120 seconds) and range increased to 14 yards (was 12 yards).
      • Spiked Shield – Now ignores Armor.
      • Booming Voice – Has moved to a more appropriate position in the tree for its power level. Also reverted the 10 rage reduction.
      • Instigate – Devastate deals 30% increased damage and Generates 5 Rage. Devastator deals 10% increased damage and generates 1 Rage.
      • Battering Ram – Shield Charge critical strike chance increased by 10%, critical strike damage increased by 25% and Shield Charge increases your auto-attack speed by 20% for 20 seconds.
      • Storm of Steel – Damage penalty is reduced by 40% (was 50%).
      • Last Stand – Cooldown increased to 3 minutes (was 2 minutes).
      • Bolster – Now reduces the cooldown of Last Stand by 1 minute.
      • Spiked Shield – Renamed to Tough as Nails.
      • The Wall – Renamed to Impenetrable Wall.
      • Outburst – Renamed to Violent Outburst.
      • Shield Charge – Now generates Rage and triggers its cooldown when outside of melee range correctly.
      • Shield Charge – Now displays correct animations.

DUNGEONS AND RAIDS

• Castle Nathria, Sanctum of Domination, and Sepulcher of the First Ones now use Group Loot.

USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY

• NEW HUD UI
  • Edit Mode has an option to enable Snap for UI elements.
    • If Grid is enabled, UI elements will also snap to grid lines.
  • Art updated for Vehicle frame.

Hey everyone! We wanted to get out a sort of primer ahead of the Raid Testing tomorrow to provide context for the sorts of changes you will (and won’t) see as you step into Dragonflight’s first raid, Vault of the Incarnates.

Before diving into what’s different – this post is going to be entirely about the Raid. We’ll have other information before long available on what’s going on with other endgame activities (like Mythic+) at a later date, so we won’t be making any mention of them here just to stay focused on the topic at hand.

Without further ado, here’s what’s in for tomorrow:

Group Loot:

• While inside Vault of the Incarnates, Group Loot will be the only method of loot distribution. There is no option to select for yourself or your group to return to Personal Loot.
• Some items, like professions reagents may still use Personal Loot where appropriate.
• Need & Greed UI will return, and we’ll be monitoring feedback to make the rules around when and how players can roll on items be as intuitive as possible.

Loot Trading

• While inside a raid, all item level restrictions placed on trading between members of that group are removed entirely. This means that even small item level increases that aren’t upgrades (as is often the case with rings and necklaces, which are budgeted high in secondary stats) won’t be locked to a player even in the case that they roll and win that item.

Item Level Tiering

• There now exists a 3rd item level tier at which items may drop, up from 2.
• 389 is the base item level for Normal difficulty and will drop from Eranog, Primal Council, Sennarth, and Terros.
• 395 is a new intermediate tier (was previously final bosses) that exists now for Wing Bosses – Dathea, Ascended and Kurog Grimtotem.
• 398 is reserved for Final Bosses – Broodkeeper Diurna and Raszageth, the Storm-Eater
• These item level increases still stay within the +13 band for each ‘tier’ of difficulty – meaning that Heroic Base would start at item level 402, just +4 after them.

For a long while we’ve observed that while players love the challenge of powerful wing bosses and ‘mid-tier walls’ like Halondrus, Sludgefist, and Painsmith Raznal – it didn’t make much sense when overcoming those involved challenges rewarded you with the same gear as you got from defeating a Shriekwing, or similar first boss. Our hope is that by introducing new tiers of raid rewards, progressing through Vault of the Incarnates (and future raids) will feel more meaningful as you master the difficult encounters within.

Unique Drops

Additionally, we’re experimenting with a number of bosses that possess one item that intentionally drops at a higher item level – usually +6 or +7 from that boss’s normal table.
To be clear: this isn’t titanforging. It will be the same item every time, and will be very slightly rarer to compensate (and pending some new tech, we’ll have the ability to note this in the dungeon journal itself). These can be unique appearances, items with special bonus effects, or a powerful trinket that many people may seek after.

We have a few things we’re hoping to accomplish with this:

• Retain some excitement from early bosses that groups typically master very quickly and no longer become challenging by spicing up their loot tables
• Give more long-term goals for difficult encounters
• Make a larger push towards having Item Level accurately reflect the power of a particular item.

While we added many strong effects to weapons in Shadowlands, it wasn’t easily communicated how good an effect actually was – for instance Edge of Night (the sylvanas daggers) were clearly much stronger than their item level indicated, but they still appeared the same as the rest of her loot table. Our hope is that by being a bit more flexible with item level, we can give ourselves better tools for tuning these effects appropriately and in a way that makes sense to all players intuitively.

For the moment it’s intended that not all 8 bosses posses one, but that’s something that could change in the future. Current examples of unique drops are:

• A pair of special rings from Eranog and Diurna
• An ‘Omni Trinket’ (Str/Agi/Int) from the Primal Council that gets stronger with more copies
• A special bow from the Storm Incarnate herself, Raszageth

That ends the list of things that are exist and are implemented (though tuning for trinkets and special effects are still very work-in-progress). That said, we’d also like to share some plans that aren’t implemented. We’re interested in trying this out for a future beta build and getting your feedback on how it feels.

Bind-on-Equip items:

• Regular non-boss enemies within raids will no longer have a chance to drop Bind on Equip Epic items. Instead, ‘Lieutenant’ enemies – named mini-bosses throughout the raid – will have chances to drop them instead. These would work like LT’s do in current WoW, where you’re only eligible to receive loot from them once per week, per difficulty.
• BoEs would become scaled with group size like regular bosses do. This would guarantee a set number of BoEs each raid per group, assuming a full clear of the instance.
• Lastly, we’d be placing more important items into the BoE pool. This could be anything from weapons to higher item-level pieces to make them more worthwhile to raiders.

The goal of these changes are to reimagining BoEs by making the raid environment itself a sort of ‘9th boss’, with a guaranteed amount of extra loot to reward progressing deeper into the raid or efficient full clears without the need to kill every single bat or Mawsworn off in a corner of the battlefield to get your value. Additionally, this as an opportunity to create clear and understandable rules about how BoEs work, and support them as a reliable source of gear players want, rather than feel like an afterthought.

That’s all for now – please feel free to ask questions and provide feedback both on this post, and as some of you dive into Raid Testing over the next week or so and we’ll respond and clarify as much as we can. Thanks for reading, and enjoy the raid!

Previously, the best way to target a specific piece of loot was to stack as many similar armor or weapon types as possible to increase the chances of that dropping. Now, even if you’re the only Rogue or Demon Hunter in your group, you have the same chance as anyone else of seeing an upgrade.

While this does mean it’s possible for a bow to drop in a group without a hunter, the belief is that this rewards groups for playing with a diverse set of classes – as well as the normalizing factor above (mail wearers from the last few years know how hard it is to get loot comparatively).

Currently, there is a bug with Dragonflight vendors that are causing them to show more ensembles for sale than they should to the character viewing their wares. Ensemble unlocks are not changing in Dragonflight; the vendors should only offer them to characters with the appropriate armor type.

With that said, we recognize players don’t want to have to re-earn the ability to purchase these ensembles, but we don’t want to create a problem where a player might unintentionally purchase an ensemble of the wrong armor type, use it and then not find the armor they thought they just unlocked. So in Dragonflight, the ability to purchase the cosmetic Renown unlocks will be unlocked account-wide and can be purchased with alt characters on the account that match the ensemble’s armor type.