In WoW: Shadowlands, a spell has an exceptionally long duration. You have to wait a proud 10,000 years until it loses its effect …
Some spells in World of Warcraft have a long casting time. Others have an unexpectedly long duration. The new record is likely set by “Warden Shackles”. Once cast, it lasts for 10,000 years – at least that’s what the tooltip says.
What kind of spell is this? The spell “Warden Shackles” is a variation of the Demon Hunter ability “Imprison.” This actually locks up a demon, a humanoid, or a beast for one minute, thus removing the creature from combat – a rather simple crowd control effect.
“Warden Shackles” is one of the Anima powers from the new expansion Shadowlands and the Tower Torghast. This power extends the duration of “Imprison” to a whopping 10,000 years – at least that’s what data mining suggests.
What benefit does this have? If you don’t want to fight a specific opponent, you can permanently remove them from combat. This makes it easier to pick fights in Torghast that you really want to engage in. Normally, enemies are only removed from combat by Imprison for a minute, but this way you can essentially banish them for your entire stay in Torghast. A good way to completely avoid unwanted enemies.
Does it really last 10,000 years? No, and this is mainly because the servers are restarted once a week (usually) or maintenance occurs. During this time, instances like Torghast are reset. In the worst case, the spell lasts for 7 days on a target – and that’s only if you never log out during that time.
The duration of 10,000 years is actually a reference to the Demon Hunter Illidan Stormrage. He was imprisoned for 10,000 years and was only freed later in the storyline of Warcraft III.
Let’s hope that no player finds a way to smuggle this effect into PvP through a bug – or let’s look forward to the first videos of it.
