World of Warcraft: Legion - Game Systems Panel

Article By: Tamsin Skye Heineman

Blizzard revealed some bombshell news today for World of Warcraft: Legion during their panel at Blizzcon. Changes include items, classes, professions, and a full cosmetic unlock system. They’re even adding an option to hide your shoulder slot item. Mainly of note is the ability to unlock an items appearance into a collection simply by owning it.

They revealed that they will go back and unlock the appearance of every quest reward you ever got in the past. This vastly expands the customization options available and will add a large variance of player appearances in game. Tabards, shirts, and weapon enchants were also listed among the cosmetic unlocks as well as the ability to save outfits that change with specialization. Blizzard went above and beyond and made all these unlocks account wide.

Check out the rest of the (huge!) changes and panel slides after the bump!

Artifacts

The Deadwind Harvester – Purged the life from Deadwind Pass, for Affliction Warlocks. Get together with Council of Black Harvest, steal some information about artifacts from the Legion. Go to Deadwind Pass, under Karazhan! Every time you kill something, you get a damage boost for a short time. Souls try to escape and you can reap the damage boost effect.

Artifact power comes from quest bosses, rare spawns, rare drops, dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, arenas.

Artifact traits are unlocked by artifact power. You start with some traits unlocked. You first unlock active traits that you put on your bar.

After the active trait there are more choices, some of them passive. Minor traits have multiple ranks, you have to unlock them all to progress into the tree.

Eventually you can unlock every trait in the tree, but it will takes months into the expansion. You can keep getting smaller power increases after that, so weapon will get more powerful throughout the expansion.

Relics can be socketed into the artifact to increase power. Increases item level and gives bonus ranks to some traits. Go from 3 to 4 or 5 ranks in a trait, giving you some customization.

Two types of relics for each weapon.

You can eventually upgrade your artifact. Dungeon and world content lead up to a big upgrade moment. Upgrade will unlock a new model.

You can also get other models from different types of gameplay, as well as different colors.

Finish questing zones or do something that is significant to your weapon.

Class Halls

Class halls needed to be in a location that strongly represents the class. You should feel like your class when you are in that space.

Some Warriors see themselves are a barbarian or berserker, some as a knight fighting for what is right, some as a grizzled veteran. All of them should feel at home in that space.

Class Orders are stepping up to fight the Legion.

Druids almost had a class hall already with Moonglade. It gets pretty close to meeting the criteria, welcoming a variety of druids, but it could do a better job of immersing them in nature, welcoming feral and guardian druids more.

Druids are getting the Dreamgrove, you can feel the influence of the Dream around you. No other classes are allowed in. It fits better than Moonglade.

You will find a shrine in your class hall to unlock traits and work with your Artifact.

Class champions are also found in your class hall. Some of them are leaders of their own factions. You will unfold their backstory over time and see them in the world.

You will interact with your Scouting Map in your class hall. It lets you select your starting leveling zone and you come back to it for new content later on.

There is class specific content in the halls, such as demon hunting quests or pickpocketing quests.

There are lots of features and bonuses in the halls. Some are shared among many classes, such as armor stands to show off tier sets you have earned from previous content.

Hunters have a lodge in Highmountain, getting access to special flight path network no one else has.

Druids can reach many other natural places in the world very quickly.

Warriors can spar in an arena for bragging rights.

Every class will have their own variation of Death Gate to quickly go to their class hall and back. Giant eagle that takes you for hunters.

Demon Hunter

Demon Hunters are a dark hero, giving up their soul to fight a threat that most people don’t even know exists.

Use weapons of the enemy against them, warglavies, fel magic, sculpted biceps.

You can select your horns, blindfold, tattoos, custom skin textures, plus normal customization options.

New VO for Demon Hunters, things like /train, /flirt, /silly.

Havoc is the melee spec with emphasis on mobility. Fight fire with more fire!

They use fury, generated by abilities, somewhat like rage.

Demon’s Bite – Generates random amount of fury.

Chaos Strike – Does not consume fury, but requires you to have some.

Throw Glaive – No fury cost, short cooldown, no minimum range, hit multiple targets.

Blade Dance – Talent that might become a skill.

Double Jump adds mobility.

Glide is like your own goblin glider, with demon wings! Activated by jump key, no other keybind.

Other damaging abilities may not require a target and can be done in the air. Can use them to move outside of combat.

Consume Magic – Interrupt someone and gain a full bar of fury.

Metamorphosis – Leap in the air, transform, slam into ground, stun everyone, get more damage, more fury, 100% life leech. Gain defense through offense.

Spectral Sight – 10 sec cooldown, see through invisibility, stealth, walls.

Vengeance – Demon inquisitor. Extracting information from the enemy by using fire and inflicting pain. Also have picked up some protective spells. Maybe glaives and parry.

Strong defensive cooldown Metamorphosis. Lots of modifications through talents and Artifacts.

Classes

Immersive – You should feel like everything you do is involved with class. Abilities, names, animations.

Distinct – Every class and spec should have something unique.

Empowering – Your character is powerful, total control over what you are doing, use abilities the way you want to use them.

Death Knight runes restricted gameplay, so there are now 6 runes, one type, don’t worry about what types are off cooldown anymore.

Fury Warrior is controlled by how many charges you have of different things. Use Enraging Blow as much as you want. Use Whirlwind, don’t worry about Meat Cleaver.

Arcane Charges are a resource in addition to mana rather than a buff to monitor.

Arcane has a strong fantasy that you really didn’t feel while playing. The mana management could ruin things. New mastery – Savant, increases the amount of mana you have. Mana level doesn’t matter anymore. Also increases charges damage.

Survival Hunter – Melee spec with pet side by side, all of the old abilities are back and awesome.

Disc Priest – were a different flavor of Holy, but not good enough. Atonement is now core healing mechanic, now heal by dealing damage to enemies.

Subtlety Rogue – Had a really cool ninja fantasy. Shadow Dance was pretty cool, but it is now a passive. 20% chance to re enter stealth that doesn’t break from taking damage. Can figure out what you want to do, new opener, combos, finisher, repeat.

Shadow Strike – Teleport to target, do Ambush level damage opener.

Honor Among Thieves gone

Demonology should be about summoning demons, not becoming one. More new minions, buff them and send them out to attack. Metamorphosis is for Demon Hunters.

Guardian Druid should be a giant bear, not dodging. Now about increased health, armor, survivability.

Shadow Priest – was poor cousin of Affliction warlock. Tapping into the void. Insanity – No more mana or Shadow Orbs, going more insane. Grow tentacles, transform into Void Form. Makes you more and more powerful the longer you stay there. Can only stay there for so long, Insanity drains away, keep generating as much as you can.

Talents will have less theme rows, more meaningful choices, more spec specific talents, hundreds of new talents!

Professions

More stuff to do!

Recipes all coming from the trainer is gone. You should get out into the world and carve your own path, go on adventures.

Tailoring sends you to Dalaran, wants to know what cloth is like in Broken Isles. You go get some cloth, sew with her, make a robe, cloth is falling apart and not working. Go out into the world, meet a Nightfallen who helps you with sewing problem, teaches you more patterns, find out why he was exiled, why he is so good at tailoring.

Miners learn from a dead Tauren. More efficiently mining new materials like Leistone, new Ore.

Mining and Herb nodes will be shared. Everyone can gather from a node, no more stealing nodes.

Recipes have ranks, 1-3 star recipes. Rare, make you more efficient at crafting things. Less materials, shorter cooldown.

Profession UI getting an update, bigger window, list on the left, details on the right, favorites at the top.

Learned and Unlearned tab, so you can see what you don’t know and where to find them.

Obliterum. Build a big forge in the middle of Dalaran, convert crafted items you don’t need anymore into Obliterum. Create ring, it has the wrong stats, destroy it and make Obliterum, use it to increase power of the ring you are wearing.

Lots of things to do with professions, shouldn’t be running out of content.

Crafted gear should be special, helms are made out of gun parts. Shoot bullets at enemies with your head. Necks from JCs have guaranteed gem slot. Class specific buffs, 15% move speed for Warrior when enraged.

Inscription – Major glyphs are gone! Still have Minor Glyphs and Darkmoon Trinkets. Glyphs are a consumable, applied directly to the spell. One glyph per spell, but no limit on total glyphs! Vantus Rune – Week long buff that targets a specific boss. 10% bonus damage on Xavius.

Archaeology – Expansion length campagin over several months, lots of cool things to display, wear, equip, pets.

Cooking – Gnomie comes from Pandaria, more recipes, can make bacon

Fishing – More like an adventure, less what are you watching on your other monitor.

Items

Used to have rare world drops, they are back.

Rare drops, from anywhere in the world.

Power should be relevant throughout the entire expansion.

Unique effects – Role, Class, Spec based effects. Movement speed increase based on haste, extra rage from blocked attacks, etc.

World drops are legendary! – DoT has a chance to trigger full remaining effect each time they tick.

Lots of world drop variety.

Drops aren’t fully random, will have ways for you to target them.

All of the Legion items can scale, could be the best item in the game (super rare).

Duplicate personal loot can now be traded. If you have an item that is equal to or less than power level of what you have, can trade it to anyone else who was eligible for loot.

Transmog – Clean up bank and inventory some more. More customization. A collection system.

Wardrobe – As soon as item is bound to you, appearance is unlocked. Once it is unlocked, you can get rid of it. Account wide! Have to be able to equip item to unlock it.

New transmog UI – Left side is the same as the old one, right side is visual gallery of models. Top has a bar that shows you how many appearances you have unlocked.

Outfits – Make item sets, store what you look like now, link outfits to other people even if everything isn’t unlocked.

When you log in to Legion, all of the items you have are unlocked, as well as items from every quest you have ever completed, including items you didn’t even pick.

Save different outfits per spec. Switch set when you switch specs.

You can hide slots (cloak / helm / shoulders) per outfit.

Hiding shoulders allowed!

Weapon enchants, shirts, and tabards for transmog!