For quite some time now, each World of Warcraft expansion has had its own expansion-specific mechanic that helps bring a feeling of uniqueness to the content, rather than the expansions just serving as a few new zones.
Examples of this could be the legendary rings that players farmed countless Apexis Shards for back in Warlords of Draenor, or the Artifact Weaponry of the following expansion, Legion. In the current Battle for Azeroth content, players have the legendary Heart of Azeroth and Ashjra’kamas, Shroud of Resolve to keep farmed up.
These mechanics provide a significant source of power, regardless of which form they take. With legendary mechanics likely to continue on into Shadowlands, some datamining on the part of Wowhead seems to have possibly provided what we’ll be utilizing.
“We’ve found some new spells that are likely Shadowlands Legendaries,” Wowhead announced a few hours ago. “These effects have been taken from old Legion legendaries, old Tier Set Bonuses, Legion Artifact Traits, BFA Azerite Traits, and Torghast Anima Powers!”
Simply put, it seems like the legendary content for Shadowlands – in its current state, at least – will be a bit of a recycling of several of the last few expansions that we’ve dealt with. While this sounds unimaginative on the surface, it’s important to wait until the actual implementation to decide.
“These spells were found in a place called ‘RuneforgeLegendaryAbility’, and since so many of them are old set bonuses and Legion Legendary effects, it’s likely that these are related to the upcoming Shadowlands legendary system,” Wowhead explains in their announcement.
The examples they give are specifically a few Demon Hunter powers, which show four universal options, four Havoc-specific options, and four Vengeance-specific options. However, other examples were found, and it isn’t just Demon Hunters being given these abilities.
One of the perks of the upcoming Legendary Powers systems for the new expansion is that players will be able to pick their option rather than relying on randomization. This has generally been seen positively, as it adds another level of removal of the RNG-heavy gameplay the last few expansions featured.
With Legendary Powers being choosable rather than randomly picked, it’ll be more akin to a talent tree than a random loot drop. This should make it easier for players to hone their builds and focus in on their preferred gameplay.
While nothing can be confirmed off of this datamining, it seems rather solid proof that we’ll be dealing with some sort of Runeforge when the new expansion comes. All we can do now is wait for more information!
