Shadowland's Pre-patch: BFA systems catch up for returning players?

Community General Discussion
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Is there any way we can get an easy catch-up for Essences, Heart of Azeroth, Azerite Traits, Ashjra’kamas, Shroud of Resolve and, overall item level?

Now that BFA is over, I know there’s a lot of players, including myself, returning to the game or trying out alts to figure out what they want to main in Shadowlands. Testing different specs in raid, dungeons, rated and non-rated PvP is always enjoyable but currently extremely difficult to do effectively due to lack of gear.

It is far too tedious and time-consuming to farm all these different components, which is why I propose adding some serious catch-up mechanics. During this extended pre-patch, would be really nice if I could try out different classes without having to commit to a grind that’s essentially meaningless as soon as the expansion hits.

I know for myself and many others it would be much appreciated and allow us to do things we enjoy in the game, instead of going out and farming neck level, essences, cloak levels all these systems that are absolutely necessary to play the game at the moment.

Curious what other’s thoughts are on this topic?

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This seems like a good, fun idea. But I’d like to get the input of a high rated pvp player first.

I missed most of BFA, and would love to be able to jump into some arena without committing to systems that are going to disappear on me as soon as I hit level 51.

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Kinda hard when you can’t get a heart of azeroth anymore.

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Bump.

Totally agree!! This would be really fun and engaging for not only returning players but new players too! Also; considering this will probably be a long prepatch… WHY NOT?

Dang, he has a solid point. :frowning:

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You mean like the OP? :slightly_smiling_face:

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Eh i guess he has a decent rating but I was thinking a blizzcon champ or something like cdew

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The catchup is pretending that Battle for Abilities never happened.

:surfing_woman: :surfing_man:

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You can still get one though. Am I missing something?

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Probably not because if there were going to do that, 3-4 months ago was the right time.

I think their intention is to nearly replace all your gear in the pre-patch event coming in a bit, rendering all BfA gear useless.

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Lmao, he’s a caster for them, actually looks like he won in 2012 with Snutz and Kollektiv. I’m not sure what else you can ask for. Cdew would probably be saying the same exact thing as him right now. This would be a welcomed change, especially for alts. Either that or just completely disable essences at this point.

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I second this. Weird that people were asking for this before prepatch even hit and no response. Maybe they’ll listen but ay it’s a good laugh when they don’t.

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I feel this too, but from what Is provided and read, the gear earned in prepatch event will be ilvl100.
Which means it will not replace everything. All it takes is them being open and honest with people. I don’t know how professional people ask questions and they don’t respond. Wild.

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There will be catchup gear once the pre-patch “event” starts with the zombies/quests etc.

In the meantime your most efficient way of gearing up would be world quests. I don’t know the new ilvls since the squish but world quest gear actually gives higher levels as your gear improves. I think pre-nerf it capped out at 435 which should be just under 100 now I think.

And I’m not sure sure what they give now but the NZoth assaults give gear too.

Most efficient I’d say is do world quests, make sure you complete your daily emissaries for the caches, check out the Nzoth assaults and maybe throw in a few dungeons.

Other than that just wait for the prepatch event.

Final thought, really try to go after Tortallon WQs and things that reward trinkets and rings. Heading into a new expansion or patch trinkets and rings are usually the hardest to replace while leveling

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Yeah, I’m pumped for SLs but BFA was a steaming pile of Matt Patricia so I would love a way to test characters without playing through this “questionable” expansions systems.

1 Like
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For anyone that cannot figure out how to get a Heart of Azoeroth (fresh 50), it is possible. There is a quest giver in your BFA capital city - in Bolarus it was the guy about 10-15 ft away from the weekly raid/pvp/pet battle quest giver. He tells you to meet magni at the heart of azeroth and the questline begins with him. Took me a while to find him - everyone appears to be reporting that the quest is bugged but that is not true. You just dont get a spam from Magni right when you hit 50/110 anymore…

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WQs, Emissaries, and Heroics are fast ways to gear up. You want to run through the Nazjatar and Cloak quest line, they both drop some decent pieces – but you probably shouldn’t do that with a fresh 50 toon, get from WQ/Heroic gear first.

With those Questlines out of the way, your iLevel jumps up, and that makes WQs even more useful for gearing. There’s little reason to progress the cloak, especially with corruption gone. But it’s a nice piece all on its own and easy to get.

AP comes quickly, especially with the 3000 AP Emissary rewards.

Essences are pretty much the same as they’ve always been. If you already have Level 3s, you can buy them with currency.

But, arguably, you should focus on raw iLevel. The Essences and AP will go away in SL, but the iLevel stays. The gearing is a bit slower in SL, so whatever easy gear you get now will last you longer then, so pursuing iLevel via WQs etc. is a good way to go.

Naturally, Mythics still exist if you run those, LFR isn’t completely awful for new characters either. If nothing else, it can bump your iLevel for Emissaries.

Emissaries used to tap out at 445 (I don’t know what they are now). At that point, M+ and Raiding is your only real recourse for gear.

None of these are really catch up for SL. They’re not like the invasions in WoD when Legion launched, leveling toons for free and giving them some of the best gear in the game for doing nothing.

But, they’re good for alts if you have several because you can run them on all your toons each day.

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If you wanna make a new toon you haven’t made for SL the amount of time you need to dedicate to test it is above 40hs.
Just regarding azerite armor there’s no way to get any decent gear because it was time-gated with a loot box system. Add essences on top, there’s no way to recover a forgotten alt or test a new class (add raider.io) to the pile.

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100% Agree with OP here, Spending countless hours/resets grinding essences/azerite traits/neck on fresh alts during prepatch feels like a complete waste of time, as everything youre grinding gets removed/disabled with the shadowlands release.

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yes you can? Just go do the quest lol

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Sounds like you want prepatch to turn into a sort of beta, with being able to buy gear and skip past all the grindy systems.

Sounds good to me.

Maybe in a future expansion tho. They seemed to want to hobble us goin into SL so as to avoid the problem that happened during bfa leveling and players losing so much power when leggos ticked off.