A few weeks ago in Newcomer Chat, a new/returning player was wondering why their health kept bouncing to full after they ‘almost’ died. At the time, other guides didn’t really know why this was happening, and assumed it was just part of a failsafe during a quest to allow the player to complete it with ease. I didn’t think much of it.
Fast-forward to a couple of days ago, I see a reddit post on /r/wownoob, a subreddit dedicated to helping mostly new/returning players with questions about the game, someone there was really confused as to why they just couldn’t die. It was impossible! They would get too cocky, too confident, pull far too many mobs and their health would plummet, only for it to magically be restored to full. Over and over and over again.
Upon looking into it, it seems that in The War Within, Blizzard have added a new series of buffs called ‘Prismatic Blessings’. These buffs trivialise certain mechanics and are what I would describe as excessive in their levels of handholding. These buffs are:
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Ruby Blessing: Death Prevention.
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Obsidian Blessing: Prevents durability loss and ‘significantly’ decreases damage from falling.
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Emerald Blessing: Health regeneration increased outside of combat.
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Blessing of the Bronze Dragonflight: Melee, Ranged and Spell Casting Speed increased by 40%. Movement speed increased by 40%. (Didn’t seem to be active when I tested for it)
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Azure Blessing: After 5 seconds out of combat, gain a shield for 10% of your max health.
Ignoring that the Azure Blessing is literally useless because the Ruby Blessing makes you invulnerable to death, why exactly are these in the game? Are these meant to have an internal cooldown? I see having a death prevention every hour or 30 minutes could be something, but-…constantly?
The Ruby Blessing is probably the most egregious one. I think it’s handholding to an insane degree. It leads to confusion as new players expect there to be a death state, hell, some of the classes in Exile’s Reach are taught about the death mechanic if you fail to use Bubble when crossing the necrotic perimeter on the Paladin quest, for example.
But even then, the other buffs are also quite questionable. Surely the early game is when you want to teach about mechanics such as durability, fall damage, death itself. Generally, I’m just a little bit confused by it all.
Here’s a video of the Ruby Blessing in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUaEeJxqYdM
The Paladin autoheals heal me for next to nothing, it is not that which is full healing me for eternity.
