The changes to Artifact power should protect WoW players from themselves – did it work?
Yesterday, on 23.02.2017, Ion Hazzikostas (Game Director) along with Josh Allen (Community Manager) answered many questions regarding World of Warcraft . In the one-hour Q&A on Twitch, the focus was mainly on the grind of Artifact power and the changes planned for the future.
With Patch 7.2, there is a new quest line for each weapon, which unlocks new traits for the weapon, also consumes the current max talent, and raises the weapon to Artifact knowledge level 26 (the new cap will be 40).
Blockade for Artifact power
At the same time, all items that grant Artifact power will become useless for the weapon if collected beforehand.
This means in plain text: if you currently have your Artifact weapon at maximum and are already diligently collecting Artifact power for Patch 7.2, you should rather invest in your secondary and tertiary weapons. After upgrading the weapon, only “new” Artifact power items can be used.
The reason for this was immediately stated by Hazzikostas in the stream: “We wanted to protect players from themselves here.”
Understandable: If one could already farm the Artifact power for the next patch right now, many high-end guilds would already start completing absurd amounts of runs in the Maw of Souls. This would clog inventories and create the need for another grind again. To ensure that no one feels forced to complete “Mythic+” dungeons 24/7, this blockade was implemented.
Prefer a hard dungeon over many easy ones
Hazzikostas also admits that it was a mistake that something like “endless Maw of Souls runs” was even a possibility to collect Artifact power.
In the future, this grind will be reduced, and instead, it will be ensured that players are rewarded for completing a particularly hard dungeon rather than many easy ones.
This also goes hand in hand with the goal that Artifact weapons should not differ so much with Patch 7.2. The difference between a player who invested 50 points in a weapon and one who invested 70 points should be minimal.
Related to this topic: In Patch 7.2, there is a new “endless” talent with 50 upgrade levels!
