Reading the hotfixes today:
Developers’ notes: Unlike Forbidden Reach, the rare elites in Zaralek Cavern are meant to be a bonus, rather than the primary activity.
So what exactly is the primary activity to do in Zaralek Caverns? Look for the smelly treasures?
I don’t really go there much(because there is no meat on the bones as evidenced)… but i always assumed the primary activity within a new zone (except for the obvious campaign storyline progress) would be the rare hunting.
Probably just get your rep and world quests in and then once your done que for dungeons/lfr.
I bet most people are there for the shadowflame fragment. And 30 smelly coins a week for the 2 drake crests.
This means there will be less flightstones available to gather then. Which now makes me dislike this patch and now consider it just garbage. And there is only two world quests at a time in there to begin with…this sucks bad man.
I’m just speechless over the level of disconnect from blizz devs to the players.
Sooo they want people who don’t raid or M+ to log in for 30 mins max a week for some super fun happy slide… err sniffenseeking? And that’s it… that’s literally all this patch is then for non raiders/m+s…
Blizzard is unreal. Reminds me of my old place of work, just when you think they have hit rock bottom and can’t go any lower they pull out all the stops and somehow go even lower than rock bottom 
It’s so bad it’s actually comical at this point 
I’ve already pretty much been ignoring rares since the first week because of the inconsistency in whether or not anyone else is around.
The rares simply have too much health. Needs to be slashed by 90%.
To be fair the rare rewards are kind of meh. But that doesn’t discount it was an actual, somewhat fun activity to do. A decent little carrot on the stick for players to feel involved in group activity (Even though you aren’t usually grouped up). Now they’ll practically be perma-dead from the hardcores/maybe bots.
This patch has kind of sucked because I really wanted to avoid doing M+ this time around but I’m finding myself back in there for Flightstones. Even stepping in there once invalidated most of the work I’ve done in open world.
From a player who loves M+, raiding, and open world, it feels like such a slap in the face to force me into the easy mode of M+ to get what open world should already give players.
Wait those are weekly? I thought they were once off.
EDIT: After doing some reading they are weekly, but also count towards the cap, so like me if you are running too many dungeons there is no need to buy them.
As for what to do in ZC? Events, WQ’s and achievements. But like any content, once you have enough currency to buy it all and got the right renown, you just farm for mats to buy all the renown stuff and call it a day.
Yeah. Looks like the Events will be the only repeatable content in the zone now. This really is a surprising decision by Blizz.
I never farmed rares, but I know it gave people something to do. Maybe they think this will increase the number of people killing specific rares when they are up in an attempt to fix the zones population issues.
Yea, the whole point is its better to just skip the world content and do mythic plus.
At least we got some cool transmog sets to collect… and now will have a harder time doing with the waiting 5 days for you to be able to loot some rares again… yea…
Events are completely pointless though, they give you rep and coins, once you have enough coins and rep to buy everything that you can with coins, or convert to your Michael Bublés and buy those items, then what?
Far from it, once per 3 days you have a chance to kill a rare, than it will be down for a day, you think people will be here all 3 days kill rares like they are now? It will be far worse, with no reason to repeat kill rares within those 4 days people will just kill the one they want and leave.
Events are already weekly though.
The Caldera ones are, the others are not.
I’m not sure how well this is going to work out. So, there’s no lockout on killing them as long as there’s a WQ in their area? How often do they respawn?
No, they will be once per event rotation, so once per 4 days, 3 days to kill the rare, 1 day down time.
EDIT: And the Caldera rares and events being once per week.
So, you can only kill them once per 4 days? Oof. 
I been rep grinding on a bunch of toons. Once you do a weekly quest. You can’t do it again, probably until it cycles back up. So they are making the rares work that way too.
“Zone events are on a weekly lockout”
This explains how it works now. But now they will buff rewards (not sure what that means…) more flightstones?
Each day we get 4 sections of the map unlocked and 1 disabled. In those places we can see events and rares of those zones. Caldera is always up so it rotates between the other 4.
Well, if you thought the zone was dead now, this just killed it. I tried going back to the forbidden reach, but rares have so much health that it takes a tank maybe 15 minutes or more to kill one, doing 30-40k dps.
This change makes absolutely no sense. Well, this content is just terrible now anyways.
Events aren’t even repeatable either. They already lock out based on the same system Blizz is moving the rares to (outside the Caldera, which as was mentioned is already weekly). Each public event is only doable once every “cycle”, and the events reset on the day after that region was inactive. The rares will be the same.
As it stands with this change, the only truly “repeatable” content in the zone will be dirt/trash and the Researchers event (which, after your weekly bonuses from tiered bags, has laughable rewards).
If they want to make it even worse, no one will go there period now.