Obtaining Rank 3 Essences on Alts

[Phatymcdaddy-malganis (Phatymcdaddy)]

What Blizzard needs to do is just remove all rewards from the game. Gear, essences, gold, mounts. Lets just make all classes have an attack button, a DR and a heal, perfect class balance. This will solve all complaints, no grinds and all classes are viable

[Haavi-barthilas (Haavi)]

I don’t know about universally hated… I would prefer to run Islands over warfronts any day of the week

Agreed, I think short content like Islands has it’s place in the game. Poor execution was probably the biggest issue with these, especially initial design and the whole “only rares give chance at rewards” nonsense.

Warfronts though…they are really just worse LFR content right? They take up a bunch of time, aren’t really engaging and certainly aren’t difficult (heard different about Heroic Darkshore but I don’t have personal experience to attest to, just not interested).

Their only real point seemed to be to give better than LFR rewards for LFR content every so often (when the content was appropriate). Huge let down, why wasn’t it PvP? Why wasn’t the “PvP AI” used instead of standard mobs?

[Awkward-frostmourne (Awkward)]

As long as role specific essences are judged based on having done the content, not specifically having the role available (Hunters blood of the enemy as an example) then it should work fine.

This is my only question mark about the whole system.

If I can’t get Tank or Healer essences despite unlocking their DPS equivalent because my main is a pure, I’m gunna be pretty irritated.

If all I need for Sphere of Suppression is to unlock Blood on my main, or have Rajani Rep (or Breath of the Dying from Uldum), I’ll be happy with the system overall.

[Koriagosa-zuljin]

No I’m not. I don’t get how people don’t understand what I’m saying.

dude, I understand you, you’re not getting it:

before:
you have to follow specific routes and do specific grinds in order to get your essences. the effort is likely wasted time if you eg. want to pve only but have to pvp for blood of the enemy again

now:
you can raid, pvp, m+, whatever - you will accumulate this currency without changing your approach to gameplay at all. if you’re doing this for m+, you can keep just doing m+ and you’ll eventually accumulate enough for an essence. ditto if you raid, pvp etc.

there’s no “appropriate activity” to do, unless you want to do more of these activities in order to get them faster. and then all essence grinds have been flattened into doing this passive grind with ways to speed it up vs having to seek out and actively do specific grinds.

and overall, there’s not nearly the same level of effort required. it’s a few days of doing what you want to do (if you just do stuff casually) vs weeks of doing other essence stuff.

[Tylumos-proudmoore]

As someone who has been a vocal proponent of making essences account wide, I’m good with this.

The only 2 issues that come up for me:

1. Earning this currency on my main is useless.
2. This doesn’t help new/returning players at all.

It’d be nice to be able to do something with this currency on main as well. Either buy BoA tokens or transfer to alts with a bit of a tax.

As for point #2, new/returning players should still be able to use this currency to buy rank 3s at a bit of a higher price. Maybe 700-800 per essence. I know some people will come out and say that’s not enough of a markup because they had to suffer through grinds.

That is a bad argument! I suffered through it and I wouldn’t wish it on others. This is about the health of the game/community and getting people back, which is not done through punishment.

[Thorhàmmer-proudmoore]

As we announced last Thursday, with scheduled weekly maintenance in each region, a new system will allow players who have Rank 3 Azerite essences on at least one character to more directly acquire those Essences on other characters. This will use a new currency called Echoes of Ny’alotha. Here are more details about the system.

If a Rank 3 Essence has been earned by another character on your account, MOTHER will offer that Rank 3 Essence for 500 Echoes of Ny’alotha . Any player who is eligible to purchase at least one Essence from MOTHER will now receive Echoes of Ny’alotha from a wide range of activities in current content. These are the values we’re planning per activity:

• Black Empire Assault – 125 Echoes of Ny’alotha
• Aqir/Amathet/Mantid/Mogu Assault – 75 Echoes of Ny’alotha
• Horrific Visions – 50 Echoes of Ny’alotha, plus 25 per additional objective completed (i.e. 150 Echoes for a full clear)
• Emissary Quest – 50 Echoes of Ny’alotha
• Heroic Darkshore Warfront – 75 Echoes of Ny’alotha
• Normal/Heroic/Mythic Ny’alotha raid bosses – 15-25 Echoes of Ny’alotha each, once per week per boss
• Ny’alotha Raid Finder wings – 25 Echoes of Ny’alotha
• Random Battleground wins – 15-25 Echoes of Ny’alotha
• Rated Arena wins – 10-25 Echoes of Ny’alotha baseline, scaling up with PvP rank
• Rated Battleground wins – 35 Echoes of Ny’alotha baseline, scaling up with PvP rank
• Weekly PvP Cache – 175 to 300 Echoes of Ny’alotha, based on PvP rank
• Mythic Keystone dungeon end-of-run chest – 3 Echoes of Ny’alotha per Keystone Level (i.e. 30 Echoes of Ny’alotha for a Mythic 10)
• Weekly Mythic Keystone Cache – 20 Echoes of Ny’alotha per highest Keystone Level

The general goal here is that doing Assaults and associated Horrific Visions should provide enough to get at least one Rank 3 Essence of your choice per week. Doing other content you like (PvP, dungeons, or raids) will increase that significantly, depending on the level of content you’re doing. Of course, Essences can still be earned normally via their associated activities, so if you want to get your Essence of the Focusing Iris directly via Mythic Keystone dungeons and then buy others from MOTHER, that’s now an option. Within a couple of weeks of hitting max-level on your alt, you should be able to obtain your preferred Essences by playing the game as you usually would.

Please note: Echoes of Ny’alotha may appear to replace Azerite in the Emissary and PvP reward panes, however, it does not. Echoes of Ny’alotha are always additive with existing rewards. We believe that it is more important to release this update with a reward display issue than hold the change for a fix. We expect to fix the display issue in the next week or two.

We’ve seen discussion in the community wondering about the motivation for this change, especially considering that we previously signaled that we didn’t plan to make Essences account-wide. We’ve increasingly moved towards making cosmetics (mounts, pets, transmog, titles, etc.) and access to content (World Quest unlocks, dungeon attunements, etc.) account-wide, but we’ve tried to keep power (character levels, items, expansion-specific systems like artifacts or garrisons, etc.) character-specific.

We take this approach for two main reasons. First, a core part of the experience of playing an alt has always been gaining power as you see the game from a different vantage point, and setting your sights on a goal, whether that’s just reaching max level, or achieving a certain PvP rank, or raiding at a specific difficulty. Thus, every reward that’s account-wide becomes one fewer goal to strive for on alts. Second, while many players enjoy playing multiple characters, and while having alts offers a number of advantages, we’re wary of making it feel as though focusing on a single main character is objectively the wrong way to play the game. If more power rewards are multiplied across all characters on an account, not having multiple max-level alts would be inefficient.

That philosophy led us to initially decide against having Essences be an account-wide unlock, though it was the topic of significant and repeated internal discussion among the development team. The activities that reward Essences are all things that we believe are important to do at least once so that you become familiar with zones and stories, or to engage in aspects of the game that you may not have had a reason to try. If you are just returning to Battle for Azeroth or experiencing it for the first time, the goal of acquiring all of your Essences will lead you through many aspects of Warcraft’s endgame.

More recently, as we continued to revisit the subject, especially in light of ongoing Shadowlands design, we came to see subsequent playthroughs of the same content for the same player differently. While we still firmly believe that each character should have a progression arc of power gains, the player behind those characters understandably may not want to repeat the exact same arc multiple times when they feel they have exhausted the variety or rewards an activity might hold. So if you’ve thoroughly worked with Nazjatar followers to earn your Rank 3 Memory of Lucid Dreams, or delved into Battlegrounds and Island Expeditions enough to earn Rank 3 Blood of the Enemy, we understand why you might not want to feel required to repeat that experience. This is the same philosophy that’s informing our plans for leveling in Shadowlands, where alts can pick and choose their path through level-up content once you’ve completed the linear narrative experience once on a character.

Thank you again for your patience as we’ve worked through these questions, and for all of your feedback! You’ve helped guide us to these improvements to the system. This is the sort of conversation that we revisit every time we consider how upcoming systems will interact with multiple characters. We hope to get it right more quickly next time.

My only question after reading this post regarding the system is what happens with Echoes of Ny’alotha if a toon already has every rank 3 unlocked?

This.

Can we at least have some kind of conversion vendor (like with war resources) to make use of these on our mains, by being able to send them to our alts? Otherwise they go to waste.

[Awkward-frostmourne (Awkward)]

Not to mention that some essences just straight up take less time.

The 8.3 Essences are the best example of this. At a straight minimum, it takes you 3 weeks to get your rank 2 essence and a little bit longer to get your Rank 3 since you need revered with either Rajani or Uldum, and you can get very little rep per day with those factions.

Want meme beam? 2 weeks absolute minimum of M+ (15’s give 8 in your weekly cache), so you’ll get it week 3.

I’m pretty sure they also nerfed the EP Essence grind as well, but that’s still going to take multiple clears.

Now? You can get all three of those in a single week. It might not be easy. But you can do it. If you wanna take it easy, you can also just do dailies and get one per week. No EP farming (on LFR or higher), no timegated 8.3 rep, and a massively reduced grind on the actually grindable ones (like R3 Blood).

Can we at least have some kind of conversion vendor (like with war resources) to make use of these on our mains, by being able to send them to our alts? Otherwise they go to waste.

Should get converted into Residuum if you have everything R3 IMO.

Doing everything each week would be a lot of effort, but it’s not going to let you grind the 20k for a targeted piece in a week or two.

[Gnomenclatur-detheroc]

I like it. Can progress my alts by playing my alts, but this system cuts my alts a break by not having to go back to old patch stuff. Seems to be a nice compromise between maintaining character progression and rewarding people who play multiple characters.

[Duffle-frostmourne]

I think it won’t be that bad.

My hunter was sitting at 280 ilvl as a fresh 120 since korraks leveling and the other night I got him to 55+ neck, rank 5 cape, 415 ilvl and doing about 30k single target up from his starting point of around 7-10k.

Now instead of farming 30k honour for another month or grinding reps/follower xp/eternal palace for 3+ weeks ill be able to unlock minimum 1 maybe 2 of those in the first week and have saved myself many hours.

As someone not interested in doing these mind numbing grinds in content I don’t enjoy, this change is huge. The alternative was it staying as is btw. I don’t think they’d have ever just opened them all up for free. They didn’t for legion legendaries, after all.

[Galassin-stormrage]

I’m cool with this. Numbers seem fair. I’ll be able to do all the end game content i want to do and get essences. Ill see how I feel about the figures over a couple weeks. Super glad they did this. Screw nazjatar followers and mechagon rep. Such boring content. No denying True account wide unlock would be better but this is good. Woot. Listen to the players a little more and we will all be better for it. Oh yeah, guess this stuff is soulbound which is dumb. Boa would be much better but let’s not complain.

[Kiwi-archimonde]

They did do something similar for legion legendaries, in fact they made them BoA tokens so your main wouldn’t be accruing a useless currency and could mail your alt either a random legendary, or a specific one.

I’m not against what your saying. Just pointing out, they did.

[Capitales-sargeras]

Second, while many players enjoy playing multiple characters, and while having alts offers a number of advantages, we’re wary of making it feel as though focusing on a single main character is objectively the wrong way to play the game. If more power rewards are multiplied across all characters on an account, not having multiple max-level alts would be inefficient.

I understand this point. But right now you need four max rank essences, your legendary cloak, bis gear and bis corruption (you need the right corruption, at the right rank, on the right pieces) to compete on alts. It’s just too much. It’s already hard enough for one alt, imagine for multiple alts.

Nonetheless, thank you for the change and the explanation. I think there are going to be a lot more keystone and arena groups in LFG now and to me that is a really good thing that I’m looking forward to!

[Birdman-malganis]

Has it been clarified if you need to earn the R1 essence for all non-Naz/Mech essences? The below wording of the initial release seemed to indicate that… or am I misinterpreting. I’m mainly thinking of conflict and strife, which requires you to earn 500 conquest, then wait for the next reset to get R1.

“While ordinarily each specific Essence must be learned in order to unlock it for other characters via MOTHER, all Essences associated with Nazjatar and Mechagon reputations will be available if any other different character has earned any of the Essences available from that reputation.”

[Extremes-sargeras]

I’m sure i’ll be flagged for this… but it honestly pisses me off to see how ungrateful players can be. Most of you that were complaining about your alts not having BOA essences and having to grind boring content are STILL complaining that now you have to do the fun content in the game to unlock these essences. If you don’t care for any of the content that Blizzard has added the currency to then why do you even care to have Rank 3 essences? Those parts of the game are the ones that you want essences for anyway.

My lord stop crying about everything and be happy that the developers took the time to meet us halfway. I hope one day they stop reading the forums all together just so you guys can learn to appreciate what they’re doing. You guys fail to realize that decisions don’t get made in minutes or by only one person. If you can honestly sit here and complain about having to do Mythic + or raids or PVP or Horrific Visions to get your Rank 3 essences…Then do everyone a favor and go back to your Nazjatar quests, Eternal Palace grind, and 30k honor grind.

This community makes me so sad…

[Astridomo-caelestrasz]

Yikes! I knew the grind was going to be bad, but holy shyt…

[Retinazor-aerie-peak (Retinazor)]

So does the player have a record of high military status within their faction after leaving the 1-10 island that they were assigned to investigate, or am I going to have to find out on my own.

[Extremes-sargeras]

The grind isnt bad…You can get 4 essences in a week if you put in the time. Stop crying.

[Retinazor-aerie-peak (Retinazor)]

Well they just won’t matter anymore like how they don’t now because they’re not present. We still get Azerite.

[Arithawn-stormrage (Arithawn)]

@Himika-moon-guard

My main is a Shaman that can’t get tank essences, does this mean I STILL have to unlock the tank essences the normal way, or do I get access to tank essences on my alts even if I can’t obtain them with my Shaman? (Example, Nullification Dynamo from Mechagon reputation)

Not sure if anyone replied to you or not because I’m not scrolling through all the complainers but the reputation essences are available if you already met the requirements on one character.

Here’s your proof

@Kaivax

While ordinarily each specific Essence must be learned in order to unlock it for other characters via MOTHER, all Essences associated with Nazjatar and Mechagon reputations will be available if any other different character has earned any of the Essences available from that reputation.

[Kneeshooter-amanthul (Kneeshooter)]

I would never flag you for having a different opinion to me, that’s not my style. I might do it if you were insulting or abusive but that’s what the flags are for, after all.

I’m probably done trying to point out that there were better ways to do it and they took the way that added to the grind that will constitute content till the end of the expansion. The way things are going, we probably won’t get Shadowlands till the very end of the year so what we have now in March is what we will be having for as much as 9 more months of BfA.

I guess that gives people plenty of time to get those Essences while they still have any actual worth.

I shall probably be taking a break from the game well before that time comes.