The Heart of Azeroth is the “new” artifact weapon from WoW: Battle for Azeroth. We reveal what this piece of jewelry can do.
The artifact weapons from the Legion expansion of World of Warcraft will soon belong to the past. As Ion Hazzikostas revealed at BlizzCon, there will be a small closing event where the artifact weapons will be “put to rest” – whatever that means.
In the next expansion “Battle for Azeroth”, the artifact weapons will no longer play a role!
Nevertheless, Blizzard is not completely saying goodbye to the concept of upgradable, permanent armor.
Heart of Azeroth as “new” artifact weapon?
All players will receive a medallion (a necklace) from Magni Bronzebeard called “Heart of Azeroth”. The medallion starts at level 1 and is upgraded through a new resource called “Azerite”.
Azerite is the lifeblood of Azeroth, manifesting through the wounds in various places in the world.
In essence, Azerite works like artifact power – however, there are no consumables and no different weapons. Various activities simply grant a certain amount of Azerite. This includes PvP, dungeons, raids, island expeditions, and more.
New abilities in existing equipment
The Heart of Azeroth continuously levels up throughout the “Battle for Azeroth” expansion. But what does that actually bring?
The jewelry unlocks new abilities in your equipment! There are additional bonuses for individual equipment slots and it also gains further abilities.
- Some equipment slots (3 are currently planned – chest, shoulder, helmet) can be upgraded through the Heart of Azeroth.
- The artifact itself has abilities that are unlocked gradually.
- The equipment items, in turn, have a selection of 3 “rings”, which contain various talents or properties.
- One last unlock per item, the innermost “ring” is a fixed bonus (no choice)
- Only one property can be chosen per ring (like in “talent trees”)
- Each ring has a different level requirement for unlocking.
The idea is that you collect Azerite and thus level up your Heart of Azeroth. This in turn allows you to unlock additional abilities in the equipment slots “head”, “shoulders”, and “chest”.
While you can unlock a talent in the outer ring of an item with a Heart of Azeroth level 5, the middle ring remains locked until level 15 and the inner one even until level 25. The mentioned numbers are just examples.
Unlike the hated Netherlight Crucible, the selection of abilities on items is not randomly assigned. The selection for each item is handpicked. This means that every “Helmet of the Twisted Loa” at the same class gets the identical selection of possible abilities. However, it may happen that the effects of a helmet from the “mythic” difficulty are stronger than the effects of a helmet from “heroic” or “normal”.
As soon as the Heart of Azeroth reaches a new level, corresponding bonuses can be unlocked in the items. This can also be done “on the fly” – you do not have to return to an artifact forge or anything like that.
What abilities are there?
The developers place great importance on the options within a ring being “on par”. To put it somewhat exaggeratedly, they want to avoid players having to choose between “+20% damage on Chain Lightning” or “+15 to fishing”. Because everyone would know that fishing would be completely overpowered in the fight against Azshara.
Instead, you should rather choose between different “similar” things. An example was chosen for the shaman. Would you prefer an upgrade of the Spirit Wolf, making you move faster when you take damage? Or would you rather enhance the Astral Shift, allowing you to withstand harmful effects a bit longer?
But it will probably just be a matter of time until the theorycrafters have also discovered the optimal combinations here.
Summary of all facts about the Heart of Azeroth
- The Heart of Azeroth is a necklace that every player receives
- The Heart of Azeroth levels up through Azerite, which is available for almost all activities (dungeons, quests, PvP, etc.)
- Through new levels of the heart, players can unlock additional abilities in their equipment
- Only chest, shoulder, and helmet equipment have unlockable abilities
- The higher the item level of the equipment, the stronger the abilities are
How do you like the concept of the Heart of Azeroth? A good, simplified alternative to the artifact weapons? Or completely unnecessary and already tedious grinding?
Do you want to sign up for the Battle for Azeroth beta? We reveal how it works!
