Raid Rewards Experiments in Season 4

At this point so late in the expac i dont get their choices on making it 3 only . Like gee thanks only mf 3 ? how am i supposed to gear my alts ? like you would think by now theyed just let everyone have some fun .

i liked at the end of legion how they showered us in leggos . Why cant they shower our alts in catch up gear ???!?!!?!?!

These limits make it seem that the devs have been dragged into this kicking and screaming. They have inserted as many speedhumps as they think they can get away with.

Being able to purchase and upgrade direct raid items is very powerful and something they’ve never done before.

3 for most people is 2 trinkets and a MH or 2H wep which are the key slots.

Normally badge gear is trash items as a stop gap not actual great raid items.

This is great, but Rae’shalare is still not on the weapon/trinket vendor.

The entire point of this vendor is bad luck protection - but you’re essentially saying “Screw You” to MM/BM hunters in particular out of all 36 specs by not including Rae’shalare on the vendor. Their damage was balanced for Wailing Arrow in 9.1 and I have no doubts y’all will do it again in Season 4.

Hell, you even said the inspiration for the vendors were the rogues who failed to get Sylvanas’s Daggers - which objectively has even more damage locked to them than Rae’shalare.

This entire vendor makes zero sense if you don’t add all of the BiS weapons.

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I think I saw in one of the videos that there is a quest for earning the Dinars. I’ve looked around on the PTR but I haven’t seen a quest giver for that.

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!

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Even in PST, this is 10 pm. You madlad, I appreciate that.

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Thank you for taking the time to clarify so many of these concerns for us!

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So anyone will just be able to purchase max level conduits, with no requirements?

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Strange choice but ultimate way better than having to upgrade legendaries AGAIN. I’d prefer if they just kinda increased ilvl, It’s going to be our lowest ilvl piece now which seems like a bit of a miss. People will need to recraft it to their worst slot I suppsoe.

Thank god.

Great news!

NICE!!

This is a great decision.

Wonderful!

Sweet!

Damn this owns.

What a great post, Great work Scariizard.

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thanks for the post, you’re doing the CM’s great work!

So our legendaries will now be lower ilvl than the gear we will be looting?

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Excellent post, only point I can bring up are peoples concern about when we reach the all raids being fated segment of season 4. Like I know people won’t be happy being told on a Thursday afternoon (likely during a fated sepulcher week) that come next reset all raids are going fated. Of course realistically by that point we will very likely know prepatch dates. So it just comes to be point that if the final time left in the season is not a clean “3 weeks aka 1 fated cycle” then that would likely be the designated all raids being fated period.

So how will raid scaling work? I assume there will be a scaling of legacy raids to account for the increased item level drops, but what exactly is the expectation here?

Are we expecting the same speed of progression of guilds as you expect on a completely new tier, sans dealing with raid mechanics that are already understood?

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I can totally foresee a situation where a class could drop their second legendary for a hps/dps boost once their gear starts getting better. That seems like quite the strange situation.

Holy priest could almost 100% drop unity in this situation and maybe even Holy Paladin.

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Would it be possible to hotfix legendaries to an increased item level?

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This is what I most want to know, and it wasn’t addressed in the topic.

Surely there aren’t any 3 week long prog bosses this time around… right?

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Specs like holy priest will likely take off unity because gaining ilvl is better than the covenant legendary.

You need to provide a way to increase the ilvl of legendaries.

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Dude I love you, those were all my questions. Thanks for your hard work!

Will you also perform the tuning corresponding to the target classes currently? in both PvE and PvP?