Raid Rewards Experiments in Season 4

Raid Rewards Experiments in Season 4
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Hey everyone! This will be the last major post regarding Season 4; patch notes (and then the season itself) will be upon us soon, so look forward to those! That said, it’s clear there’s been some lingering questions & concerns surrounding Season 4, so we wanted to take the time to respond to some of the most common questions in a sort of lightning-round. As a heads up - if your personal question hasn’t been answered yet, it’s likely it has been in the other posts in this thread, so be sure to re-read through them to avoid confusion.

Conduits
  • Conduit item levels are not increasing, meaning they will stay at a max of 278.
  • With 278 becoming the new Normal item level for Fated Raids, conduits on Fated Normal/Heroic/Mythic raids will drop 278. (LFR will drop 265).
  • Conduits aren’t being added to the non-shadowlands dungeon loot pools, but Tazavesh’s conduits will be similarly updated.
  • The Vessel of Profound Possibilities, an item available from your covenant vendors in Season 3 that upgraded all of your conduits to ilvl 278, is changing. It no longer requires S3 Endgame achievements (duelist, 3k+ m+ rating, or mythic sepulcher clear) but is instead purchasable by all characters for Cosmic Flux.

Legendaries & Crafting
  • Crafted Shadowlands Legendaries will not increase in rank, staying at a max of Rank 7 with item level 291 for the season.
  • There is no new Crafter’s Mark to create a single piece of improved item level gear like there have been with previous content updates.

Currencies
  • Cosmic Flux will remain from Season 3, and won’t disappear on season rollover
  • A reminder that since our last post, there is now an item to transfer Cosmic Flux to other characters on your account at Quartermaster Vilo in Zereth Mortis
  • Sandworn Relics will be moving to Bind-on-Account status, but otherwise receive no updates
  • Unused Attendant’s Tokens of Merit from Season 3 Great Vaults will be going away upon season start, converting into gold at the rate of 1000 gold per token.
  • Ephemera-Infused Mesh, the Season 3 socket-granting item, will also cease to function on season rollover. Players with this item in their bags can sell it for 6000 gold, the same price as the 6 Tokens of Merit would have been to purchase it.
  • Tokens of Merit are returning in Season 4, with a new Socketer item priced at only 3 tokens to account for season length. This item works on Season 4 Items from Raid, PVP, and M+, just as the ones before them did.

Mythic+
  • Mythic+ Keystone decay between seasons is -3 levels, as it has been in past seasons. For example, if your highest Timed key this week is a +18, you will receive a +15 key opening your vault or speaking to Tah’sup in Oribos when Season 4 begins.
  • With few exceptions, old dungeon items are going to retain their original stats when scaling up to Season 4. This means that Primary stats on rings from Warlords of Draenor, trinkets with no primary stats, the mechagon rings + and other unique items from these dungeons - will all be enabled. Our intent is for this season to keep as many things from these dungeons as they were, where possible.
  • Azerite Armor from King Mechagon is removed from Operation: Mechagon’s loot pool.
  • As some of you may know, Warlords of Draenor had a different loot system where over 100 items where shared between all dungeons. For Season 4, Grimrail Depot and Iron Dock’s loot table will comprise of the items unique to those dungeons, as well as a mix of items chosen from that large shared pool to bring it in line with other dungeons.
  • Mythic+ End-of-Run items won’t be capped week 1 like in previous seasons.
  • Non-Tazavesh Shadowlands dungeons are gaining an increase in baseline item level, but these items are not upgradeable with valor. Only items from the Season 4 Mythic+ pool will be upgradeable with Valor.

Raiding
  • Mythic raiding is available on launch with no delay.
  • Cross-realm raiding will stay on, as there is no Hall of Fame for Season 4.
  • Raid skips earned in previous seasons will work in the difficulties you unlocked them for. For example, if you have the Kel’thuzad skip for Heroic Sanctum of Domination, then during weeks where Sanctum is the Fated raid, you will be able to use that skip only on Heroic difficulty.
  • Castle Nathria and Sanctum of Domination now give up to 2000 reputation with the Court of Harvesters and Death’s Advance on all difficulties. When these raids are Fated, they will drop up to 2000 Cosmic Flux as well.
  • Items received from Fated Raids will maintain their ‘Fated’ tag when transformed into Class Set armor by the Creation Catalyst, meaning they will also be upgradeable via the Heroic/Mythic upgrade currency mentioned in the original post.

Raid Rewards
  • As a Legendary weapon, Rae’shalare, Death’s Whisper, will not be available to purchase on the Broker Vendor with Dinar.
  • For players that already have the bow, an item will be purchasable from the Broker Vendors that will bring Rae’shalare to item level 285.
  • Sylvanas herself will still drop the bow on Fated weeks, and like it functioned in Season 2, will drop items in place of the bow for anyone who holds it that upgrade Rae’shalare to S4 Normal, Heroic, or Mythic item levels respectively.
  • On top of this, to account for the shorter season and the difficulty to get them, both Rae’shalare and Edge of Night will have an increased drop rate in all difficulties and versions of Sanctum of Domination.
  • We’re making a series of balance changes to trinkets & special weapons obtainable from all 3 Shadowlands raids, and some from Shadowlands dungeons. While we won’t go over the specific changes here (the patch notes will have you covered soon), we’re making these changes for a few reasons:

First, we hope to remove an advantage some players might have from obtaining a 278 version of a Shadowlands trinket from the Season 3 Great Vault, considering that Shadowlands Dungeon trinkets will be attainable at a max of 262 ilvl for anyone who starts after Season 4 begins.

Second, with raids rotating, we want to ensure that a higher amount of items looted from a raid on given week have a chance to be satisfying upgrades for players. You could imagine a scenario where Castle Nathria for example might not be worth it if all of the ‘good trinkets’ come from a different raid you won’t be able to access for 1-2 weeks. Additionally, Season 4 is a unique opportunity for us to look at these items will a full season (or more) of hindsight, and thus able to improve ones that we felt were close power-level wise, but not quite enough to compete with popular or easier-to-acquire options.

Lastly, given the limited Dinar currency we’ve seen a lot of fear from players that they’d be afraid to spend them, only to have that item nerfed or another item made better. We’re frontloading these changes at the start of the season and intending to stay as hands-off as possible so decisions made about which items you buy can be removed from the fear of those numbers changing dramatically.

That’s all for this wrap-up! Sorry if we didn’t get to your questions specifically - we’re really excited to bring you Warcraft’s most experimental season, and we hope to see you there. Stay on the look out for other communication coming soon like patch notes for a more comprehensive view of everything Season 4 has to bring!
This article was originally published in forum thread: Raid Rewards Experiments in Season 4 started by chaud View original post
Published on 2022-07-28 05:12 AM
29 Comments
Comments 29 Comments
  1. Ihavewaffles's Avatar
    Will Rae'shalare become higher iLvl?
  1. Soeroah's Avatar
    Yay, free max conduits and account-wide sandworn mogs

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Ihavewaffles View Post
    Will Rae'shalare become higher iLvl?
    -For players that already have the bow, an item will be purchasable from the Broker Vendors that will bring Rae’shalare to item level 285.

    -Sylvanas herself will still drop the bow on Fated weeks, and like it functioned in Season 2, will drop items in place of the bow for anyone who holds it that upgrade Rae’shalare to S4 Normal, Heroic, or Mythic item levels respectively.
  1. Napee's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Ihavewaffles View Post
    Will Rae'shalare become higher iLvl?
    Sylvanas herself will still drop the bow on Fated weeks, and like it functioned in Season 2, will drop items in place of the bow for anyone who holds it that upgrade Rae’shalare to S4 Normal, Heroic, or Mythic item levels respectively.
  1. Narzok's Avatar
    do we know if 2h weapons cost the same as 1h? no matter how they solve this, there will be imbalance.

    i guess for DW speccs it will come down to 2nd weapon or 2nd trinket while 2h speccs get to have weapon + 2 trinkets from the start.
  1. Chromell's Avatar
    I really wish they had made the change to the Sandsworn Relics a long time ago. So many have already gone to waste.
  1. Cazze's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Narzok View Post
    do we know if 2h weapons cost the same as 1h? no matter how they solve this, there will be imbalance.

    i guess for DW speccs it will come down to 2nd weapon or 2nd trinket while 2h speccs get to have weapon + 2 trinkets from the start.

    2H weapons cost 2 tokens. Both DW and 2H get their weapons and are left without a 2nd trinket. It literally can't be more fair.

    And this is a badluck protection system. If you expect to get more than 1 token per week, you got this all wrong. I can see it being more like 2/3 even, you can earn only 3 coins trough the whole season after all.
  1. Unlimited Power's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cazze View Post
    2H weapons cost 2 tokens. Both DW and 2H get their weapons and are left without a 2nd trinket. It literally can't be more fair.

    And this is a badluck protection system. If you expect to get more than 1 token per week, you got this all wrong. I can see it being more like 2/3 even, you can earn only 3 coins trough the whole season after all.
    We already roughly know the rate we're getting them at. As of their previous update:

    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    I won’t give exact numbers here as we’re still talking about them internally, but:

    As written above, players clearing 10 Fated bosses per week would acquire their season’s limit of Dinar (the currency used to buy Fated raid items) by 6 weeks at the earliest. We’re going to lower the number of kills required on each quest such that it’ll land somewhere in the 4.5/5 week range instead.
    We’ve also heard a lot of feedback about how if you joined late into Season 4 or had alts you wanted to play, you’d be met with a pretty large wall of Quests/Boss Kills necessary to access the system, which felt like it ran counter to the lessons learned with the Creation Catalyst. Exact details TBD, but after a certain period we’ll be heavily reducing the requirements for these 3 quests. This way the initial progression experience of early Season 4 is intact, but that the later it goes, you’ll be able to raid on a new character or with a new friend without being so far behind.
    Originally, the system was planned to take 30 kills for the first token, 20 kills for the 2nd token and 10 kills for the last token. Roughly 6 weeks in total.

    If we're to be done by week 5, we can surmise that it'll likely be 20/15/10 kills, giving us our first token after clearing fated Sanctum of Domination during week 2.

    And keep in mind these quests can be completed in LFR, with LFR being fully open day 1.
  1. Floreon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cazze View Post
    2H weapons cost 2 tokens. Both DW and 2H get their weapons and are left without a 2nd trinket. It literally can't be more fair.
    Except for Fury Warriors
  1. Puupi's Avatar
    First, we hope to remove an advantage some players might have from obtaining a 278 version of a Shadowlands trinket from the Season 3 Great Vault, considering that Shadowlands Dungeon trinkets will be attainable at a max of 262 ilvl for anyone who starts after Season 4 begins.
    What does this mean? Are normal mythics, aka +0's, dropping 262?
  1. Eazy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Puupi View Post
    What does this mean? Are normal mythics, aka +0's, dropping 262?
    I guess the 278ilvl trinkets from SL won't be as strong as the ones that drops in S4(especially WoD trinkets with just straight stats on them).
  1. Puupi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Eazy View Post
    I guess the 278ilvl trinkets from SL won't be as strong as the ones that drops in S4(especially WoD trinkets with just straight stats on them).
    What? Read the quote again.
  1. Lathspell's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Puupi View Post
    What does this mean? Are normal mythics, aka +0's, dropping 262?
    Yes m0 drops 262 in S4, but SL dungeons except for Taz won't have m+ options. They are nerfing overpowered trinkets from S3 like Scale probably, so you don't end up using the 278 version throughout S4.
  1. Puupi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lathspell View Post
    Yes m0 drops 262 in S4
    Hmm, but at least in S3, m0 gear is upgradable with valor. So in S4 that apparently isn't the case.
  1. Loveliest's Avatar
    So, at the start of season 4 I'll be weaker than a day before because they will nerf my trinkets? Great design, very thoughtful, now we get weaker every patch instead of every expansion.
  1. Lathspell's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Puupi View Post
    Hmm, but at least in S3, m0 gear is upgradable with valor. So in S4 that apparently isn't the case.
    It is from the m+ dungeons, but not old SL dungeons.
  1. Eazy's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Puupi View Post
    What? Read the quote again.
    As I wrote above - the 278ilvl trinkets gonna be nerfed. Blizzard don't want people to still parade with S3 trinket in S4.
    They won't also let players upgrade the items from the non-M+ dungeons, because of the same reason.
  1. Ihavewaffles's Avatar
    So the myth leg bow will become 304 or slightly higher item level? Otherwise it will have same iLvl as other weapons..

    So will the content become way harder, to get the better gear?

    Will casle nathria etc on myth become harder than current myth jailer?
  1. richardhuntr's Avatar
    They really need to get rid of the limit on Dinars, given how terrilble it'll feel to buy something, then have it drop straight away in your next kill...

    I think almost none of them will be spent until close to the end of the patch to avoid this, and then there's no point anyway.
  1. cigawoot's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Loveliest View Post
    So, at the start of season 4 I'll be weaker than a day before because they will nerf my trinkets? Great design, very thoughtful, now we get weaker every patch instead of every expansion.
    Some trinkets, like scale and Unbound Changling, were a bit overpowered. Before it wasn't a "huge" issue because those trinkets were always acquirable at their highest ilvl. Now that Season 4 means the highest version of that item you can get is 262, instead of 278, they need to nerf those trinkets to get them in line with their ilvl, lest you feel like you need to use your 278 scale for all of Season 4.

    I welcome this change, mostly because I'm salty I never got a Changling at all in Season 4.
  1. Ragu4's Avatar
    Is now a good time to retry SL during S4? I killed heroic CN then quit, so I am very behind.
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