The Maw in WoW: Shadowlands has become even deadlier. Players can no longer reset the negative effects.
The Maw in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is not a pleasant place. It is not supposed to be. After all, this is the home of the Jailer, who shapes the captured souls of all worlds into his army.
What was the problem? In the Maw, players try to gain as much reputation as possible with the Broker Ve’nari. To do so, they must exploit the disturbing mechanic of the “Eye of the Jailer” with maximum efficiency.
The Eye of the Jailer gradually inflicts players with stronger and stronger negative effects. At first, players only encounter enemies, but at the highest level, healing received is first reduced progressively, and then damage is inflicted until the character inevitably dies. This state was called “Instant Extermination” and was meant to force players to leave the Maw for good.
How did players work around this? Some players quickly realized that they could fill their Eye of the Jailer to the maximum by killing rare enemies. After that, killing enemies no longer grants reputation with Ve’nari – but daily quests do.
Some players exploited this by first reaching level 5 of the Eye, and then completing their quests. To have enough time, they teleported out of the Maw now and then to reset the negative effects.
What has Blizzard changed now? When players leave the Maw, the “Instant Extermination” state is no longer reset. So if players have already spent some seconds with “Instant Extermination” in the Maw, the debuff will resume from that point when they return on the same day.
What does this mean? In simple terms, this means that players have about 200 seconds of time after reaching level 5 of the Eye of the Jailer before they are inevitably killed by the effect. If they return to the Maw again, it only takes a few moments before they are killed again by the Jailer.
As a result, the time players can spend in the Maw each day is now truly capped – at least until players find a new way to exploit the system beyond the maximum.
For most players, this may not mean a big change, but those who try to gain maximum reputation every day in the Maw will need to plan a bit better and may need to complete the quests a little earlier.
Now Blizzard just needs to remove the reason why players leave dungeons prematurely.
