World of Warcraft: Legion Patch 7.1: Return to Karazhan! Karazhan is here…. again. Well, another iteration of it is here. Patch 7.1 comes with a slew of changes. Quality of life updates, class balances and much much more. I will do my best cover the highlights here, what I have been able to do personally so far and what is still coming within this patch.
Firstly, Karazhan the 5 man Rai….Dungeon, Yes Dungeon…
This is an instanced dungeon and it is HUGE. I have not yet had a chance to step into it and battle it out myself but I know I will be getting into it ASAP, it just so happens that patch day and access also fell on my guilds raid night. Karazhan is a 5 man mythic only dungeon. You will only be able to access Karazhan after finishing an atunement series of quests, these quests just have you going through current mythic dungeons collecting Fel Crystal Fragments and Fragment of spite.
Karazhan will not have a keystone dungeon option. It is a dungeon that is expected to take multiple hours to get through, Choose you’re groups wisely and get in there and have a blast.
Karazhan is so much more than just a “dungeon”. In my opinion it IS a 5 man raid experience. Boss fights that take much longer than the normal mythic boss (1-2minutes maybe). Karazhans Boss fights will span 5+ minutes, really giving you that raid style fight experience where you get the opportunity to effectively use your cooldowns more than once and put some shots into a boss.
The bosses in Karazhan are not few, In fact there will be 9 of them as you progress through a magically twisted tower that has much similarity to the old Kara (I must also mention here that YES the old Karazhan raid is still accesible, you will in fact be entering this new Karazhan dungeon through a side door, not the original raid entrance, so Yes, you do get to enjoy those old farm and mog runs like always). Of these 9 bosses, several of them return from the raid experience. If you happen to be someone that raided Kara in content you will get to enjoy seeing some of these fights again and with only slight changes to their original raid style mechanics and abilities. Lastly: gear. The first 5 bosses in Karazhan will be dropping 855 gear, Bosses 6-8 will drop 860 and the last boss will drop 875, as always there is a chance at Warforging and Titanforging this gear to even higher item levels, reinforcing how this dungeon is in fact a small raid.
What else is there in 7.1!
This really was a patch with a lot of content. A blood trader was introduced. YAY for all the alchemists out there sitting on hundreds of Bloods of Sargeras with nothing to use them on except Infernal alchemist stones. You will be able to trade your Bloods of Sargeras for virtually any crafting material in legion, Notably Felwort will be excluded from this trade option and will stay time gated to the world quests as they pop up for each herbalist. With this “Blood Trader”, who by the way is located in Dalaran, and you will have a quest for him popup right away as you log in, The server wide economy is in a state of flux, Across all servers. Key items for this expansion – Obliterum, all legion herbs/ores/gems have gone into a heavy state of flux. It has generally been titled the “Herbpocalypse”. Until this moment Legion has seen the most expensive potion and flask market of all time, some heavy Mythic guilds have even been quoted to say that they would not be supplying potions and flasks for content in progression because of the cost. For the next several weeks this market for raiders will be volatile, Invest your time and your gold carefully.
I won’t go into heavy detail about class tuning, Big things to note are HUGE survival hunter buffs, I cannot say yet how that will read in logs. I believe that just buffing the pure damage of the class doesn’t exactly fix the complicated mechanic system of it, I also have yet to directly spot a survival hunter, I am not even certain they exist in the wild, they for sure are not on my guild’s raid team, not for a lack of trying.
The Action camera is back.
What is the action camera? Well, its a third-person style over the shoulder camera direction that really draws you into the fight in a somewhat gears of war style angle. As a raider I won’t be using the action camera in raid, I prefer to be zoomed out to maximize awareness to the fight I am in. I may every so often use it during world quests because it is cool, though not as intense and fun for a caster class like it is for a melee class that is charging and moving around a fight constantly. A handy add-on for the camera is The Dynamic Cam add-on (curse link?). The Action Camera is also turned off by default. There
Suramar story continues!
In what I think is one of the single most interesting and interactive story lines of World of Warcraft’s history, we will continue through the quests that reveal more and more about suramar. This will be a 9 chapter quest line unlocking at a rate of 1 per week. I will not be releasing spoilers to these quests at this time. Rewards from these quests range from ilvl 830-850 and can forge higher. Finishing this entire quest line will reward players with a mount: “Arcanist’s Manasaber”
The Falcosaur Invasion is a new set of world quests that can drop a pet that may turn into a mount in the future? as well as rewards and drops for First aid and Cooking recipes in game.
One of the more interesting things is Alcaz Isle. Not a new thing at all but another revamped old thing, a major theme in Legion that I really think is working great for them so far. Alcaz Isle is in Dustwallow marsh, The home of the famed Dr. Weavil and his dredge gnomes. The zone is changed now and full of level 110’s. It turns out after all these years Dr Weavil has been building a mechanical army! The Island is filled with elites, Sentries to tanks and even the occasional “Former Intern” Sludge. With so many Elites in the area it’s a safer bet to be in a group than to run around solo.
There is some new stuff for the professions. The single biggest note here is the new combat potion for raiders. the Potion of Prolonged Power
The reagent to craft this potion is Only Blood of Sargaras. I cannot say yet how this potion will stack up versus the current battle potions we take in raid but it does seem very substantial.
Tailors are also getting a 30 slot bag that takes current crafting materials over old world ones, we don’t have to constantly farm old world cloth to get bags, unfortunately the size of this new bag does not improve over the old, we seem to have reached a technology plateu in bag making. (links to these new things)
Scribes get new Vantus runes for the upcoming raid, a couple of new glyphs if that’s something you are into as well (links to these new things)
Glyph of Crackling Ox Lightning
Cooks get new food to make, it has even learned how to make prettier cooking fires! The new food includes:
Spiced Wildfowl Omelet
Quality of life changes include:
PvP talents no longer reset when you prestige, you don’t have to start over anymore pretty large change here, allowing you to go through prestige ranks without having reduced power each time you rank up.
Unlocking World Quest’s on one character will allow you to do them on any other character once you hit the level cap of 110
Suramar Attunement goes account wide: If you have a character that is attuned for the Court of Stars or Arcway mythic only dungeons and you happen to get another character to max level, that other character will also be able to go into those dungeons without having to do the same Reputation farm again.
That basically sums up 7.1 so far. I know I did not go into details about the Trial of Valor, the 3 boss raid that is part of the patch. The raid is not out yet and won’t release for another 2 weeks and I will go into detail about that Raid then.
In closing: Legion so far has been, to me; the most content filled expansion in all of World of Warcraft’s releases. This first content patch does not disappoint at all, It feels very good. I log in every day and feel like I have so many different things I can go do and sometimes wonder what is the best thing to focus on. The pace is very good and the game feels very rewarding in many cases. It is not a perfect beast but I do feel like Blizzard is addressing the issues that are coming up more quickly and thoroughly than they have ever before, I cannot give the design team a bigger thumbs up as they try to balance the Mammoth of a game that is World of Warcraft.