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 were 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!