The ongoing saga of World of Warcraft’s approach to handling Azerite Armor in its Battle for Azeroth expansion continues, and this time the focus is on Azerite Armor rewards from Mythic+ dungeons. As it stands, Community Manager Lore says, “the process of earning Azerite Armor through Mythic+ feels overly based on luck,” so to remedy the issue, Blizzard is adding a new currency that players will earn from their weekly Mythic+ chests — with higher level Mythic+ runs rewarding more of the currency — and from scrapping or disenchanting epic-quality Azerite Armor.
This as-yet-unnamed currency can be spent to buy caches that contain “a random dungeon Azerite Armor piece for a given slot,” which will be “separated out by item level . . . with higher item level caches requiring significantly more currency to purchase.” Although the examples given by Lore list 385 as the maximum item level, an additional post clarifies that “when the next Mythic+ season starts, and item levels increase, the item levels . . . will increase accordingly.” In addition to the caches, players can also buy max-item-level versions of specific Azerite Armor pieces, which will be “sold at a premium.”
These changes are slated to go live with Tides of Vengeance, and preliminary versions of the changes should be showing up on the PTR “sometime in the next week or so.” Although the current changes and additions are geared toward Mythic+ advancement, Lore adds, “We recognize that PvPers want more options and choice too,” and the team is “talking about that separately.”
In other WoW news, former Lead PvP Developer Brian Holinka has returned to the team, this time as the game’s Lead Combat Designer. Although it’s too soon to tell what kind of changes his return will bring, many players seem to be excited about the prospect of seeing the game’s current combat system shaken up a bit.
