Blizzard on Higher Item Level Weapons from Raid - Design Philosophy, No Weapon Token, Special Effect Weapons

WoW Developer Scariizard has posted some thoughts on the Design Philosophy on weapon acquisition in raids especially those with higher item level, why no Weapon Tokens were used after Castle Nathria, weapons with special effects and more!

Blizzard Hey there! This feedback’s come up in a few places, so I wanted to drop by and give an update on what we’re doing to address it, why we’re addressing it in this case specifically, and then go into a deeper dive behind some of the motivations and current thoughts about end-boss weapons, raid loot in general, and weapon tokens ala Castle Nathria. First off, the what and why — we’re going to be adding an Agility Dagger to Rygelon (Boss 10) & removing the Agility Fist Weapon from Skolex and moving it to The Jailer (Boss 11).

This represents +1 additional weapon overall for the raid, and leaves only some healers without a weapon from those final 3 bosses — we’re not likely to make a change to that, as there’s a unique Healer Mace that we anticipate will be a pretty powerful option for those specs earlier in the raid. As to why we’re making this change — Sepulcher of the First Ones has the highest amount of bosses with increased item levels (3 bosses over the traditional 1 or 2), which we felt was appropriate to support both Rygelon & Lords of Dread feeling like high-level encounters you could tackle in any order, as well as the cement a clear jump after Anduin, the raid’s first-week hurdle.

However, even one extra boss at the +7 threshold created a level of imbalance that felt less textured in the ‘some have one, some don’t’ way, and more like a small few being excluded — exclusion to this degree wasn’t intentional, and that’s why we’re acting on it. However, this has led to some.

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