Blizzard has been working hard to keep everything balanced in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, and the expansion is quickly reaching the next mark of progression in the patches. With patch 9.0.5 on the way, Blizzard is implementing plenty of alterations.
One of the primary issues with World of Warcraft: Shadowlands has been the issue of loot scarcity. Players have become frustrated with completing endgame content only to leave empty-handed, with drop rates on loot abysmally low.
We recently discussed Blizzard’s intention to fix the issue as far as Mythic+ goes by implementing a Valor point system again. Through this system, players will always earn Valor that allows them to purchase and upgrade items at a guarantee.
But this does nothing for raids like Castle Nathria, where such a system remains unannounced. The developers seem to have no plans to do such a thing for this or future raid tiers, but that doesn’t mean that they’re turning a blind eye to it.
Instead, Blizzard is implementing a boost to the drop chances of items – and quite a considerable one as well. Blizzard will be increasing the drop chance of all items except for weapon tokens by 33%, effective on all bosses.
Weapon tokens are having their drop chance increased as well, but Blizzard didn’t give the exact number for players to expect. It’s unknown why they didn’t just give the tokens the same 33% increase that the other items are experiencing.
“10-player raids should now see 2 gear items, and 20-player raids should now see 4 gear items from each boss,” Blizzard wrote in their announcement. “These adjustments will not affect other loot that drops in Castle Nathria, nor will there be any impact to drops from raid encounters outside of Castle Nathria.”
There also won’t be an impact as far as Mythics are concerned, with the increased drop chance only affecting Castle Nathria. These changes are also active on all difficulties, from raid finder to mythic.
These updates will also be active very shortly, coming this February 16th with the Tuesday weekly reset rather than making players wait until the release of patch 9.0.5.
It’s unknown if these changes will carry on to the next raid tiers to be released from 9.1 and further, or if they’ll be returning loot to how it’s been active for Shadowlands. It’s likely that Blizzard will make some comment to address the situation at BlizzConline, where many are expecting there to be news of patch 9.1 and the future of the Shadowlands.
