Blizzard has revealed how the Heart of Azeroth will change in World of Warcraft. We show what the developers have planned.
In a livestream, developer Jeremy Feasel from World of Warcraft talked about many changes that will come to players in Patch 8.2 Rise of Azshara. One of the biggest innovations is the reworking of the Heart of Azeroth. We will tell you how the artifact necklace will change with the upcoming update.
Active abilities for everyone: Every player can choose how they want to upgrade their Heart of Azeroth. These upgrades occur through essences, which players can unlock through various actions. Some may be available through world quests, others in raids or in PvP. These essences can then be placed in three socket slots – one large and two small.
- The large socket slot grants the active ability of an essence and additionally its weaker passive bonus.
- The small socket slots grant only the passive bonus of a chosen essence.
Essences have multiple levels: Each essence exists in several ranks. They start with uncommon (green) and go up to legendary (orange). Ranks not only increase the raw numbers of an essence’s ability but also bring additional effects. For example, an essence might gain a second charge for its ability when upgrading from “rare” to “epic” or can deal damage to additional targets.
The last level (legendary) is cosmetic in nature and serves as some kind of prestige reward for the hardest content, such as mythic raiding or high-level PvP.
Great choice for individuality: In the preview, there are 11 different essences, each coming with its own active ability. Thus, it will be possible to heavily customize the Heart of Azeroth and choose exactly the ability you want to play with. Whether they are also well-balanced, so that later not everyone runs around with the same abilities, remains to be seen.
You can reset the essences at will and swap them in rest zones, similar to talents. They will not be consumed. Once learned, you can apply an essence infinitely.
When is the patch coming? Patch 8.2 Rise of Azshara is expected to hit the PTR sometime next week. Those who want can test the new features themselves before they are released on the live servers in a few months.
You can find many more details about Patch 8.2 “Azshara’s Rise” in our extensive overview article.
What do you think of the changes to the Heart of Azeroth? Is this a better, cool system? Or is it just a drop in the bucket?
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