Patch 12.0.7 Overview
Heroic difficulty recommends 274 item level and adds special modifiers, such as roving elite enemies!
Where the normal version recommends only 217 item level, Heroic takes a big step up to 274 and introduces modifiers to create an even more dangerous environment. We've datamined what could be a few more potential affixes in addition to those below, but so far each weekly rotation for both worlds has been Creatures, Overseers, and Elite Presence.
Creature Affixes: Creatures may spawn with additional abilities.
Elite Overseers: Additional Elite creatures inhabit the world.
Elite Presence - Warp Riders: The Hal'hadar's elite squad of ethereal mercenaries, the Warp Riders, patrol the wilds of Naigtal looking for hostile invaders to ambush with deadly intent. (Naigtal specific)
Elite Presence - Blackstar Legion: Imperator Pertinax's elite squad of domanaar soldiers, the Blackstar Legion, patrol the wastes of Val looking for hostile invaders to ambush with deadly intent. (Val specific)
(Datamined) : Imperator Pertinax's domanaar forces dominate the world, causing some to spawn with additional void abilities.
(Datamined) : Hal'hadar ethereal forces seek to claim the energy of Naigtal, causing some to spawn with additional arcane abilities.
(Datamined) : The fungal world of Naigtal has caused its native creatures to become infused with spores, causing some to spawn with additional fungal abilities.
(Datamined) : Rare creatures may spawn with an additional ability.
(Datamined) : The frigid wastes of Val have caused its native creatures to excel at surviving the harsh climate, causing some to spawn with additional chilling abilities.
(Datamined) : Creatures can spawn with either an additional Infusion or Presence ability.
Creature Affixes Add New Abilities
While everything in the zone is much stronger on Heroic, many of the normal creatures and all of the rare or elite ones are further empowered by special affixes granting a wide variety of additional abilities. These effects range from direct health and damage increases to summoning duplicates of themselves, or creating fields of toxic mushrooms!
Arcane Sacrifice Heavy Wounds Shadow Strikes
Arcane Exposure Glacial Spike Slumber Spores
Chill Touched Gravity Shackles Raging Power
Cosmic Horror Ice Shield Springcap Patch
Cosmic Tethers Icy Beam Steam Vents
Enchanted Infested Thorny Vine
Essence Balance Invigorated Toxic Power
Excess Energy Mushroomancy Unraveling
Frozen Core Mycelium Network Voidmaw
Haunting Strikes Phase Stepping Void Shields
Empowered creatures can often be identified by the buff on their nameplates and orbiting motes of power.
Arcane Sacrifice
Arcane Exposure
Chill Touched
Cosmic Horror
Cosmic Tethers
Enchanted
Essence Balance
Excess Energy
Frozen Core
Haunting Strikes
Heavy Wounds
Glacial Spike
Gravity Shackles
Ice Shield
Icy Beam
Infested
Invigorated
Mushroomancy
Mycelium Network
Phase Stepping
Shadow Strikes
Slumber Spores
Raging Power
Springcap Patch
Steam Vents
Thorny Vine
Toxic Power
Unraveling
Voidmaw
Void Shields
Defeating these empowered enemies will occasionally leave behind a piece of their power, which players can take for themselves. So far, we've found this to be either Astral Acceleration or Fungal Growth on Naigtal, and Dark Matter Domination or Shatterstrike on Val. The buffs only last 5 minutes, but can be stacked and refreshed to provide more long-term benefits.
Elite Overseers and Warp Riders Hunt You Down
Here is where things get interesting. Not only are there new elites scattered about the landscape, but four special, rare elite Warp Riders are patrolling throughout the zone. Seemingly specific to Naigtal, these Warp Rider mercenaries can be seen running back and forth across the map.
Get off the road!
Individually, the ethereal mercenaries aren't that difficult, though they make up for it by traveling in pairs and crossing over the paths of many quest areas, laden with their own rare creatures and normal mobs.
Guardian Halazir - drops a small void zone, while Arcane Deflection applies directional shields. The real dangerous attack is Salvo Protocol, which sends arcane spheres hurling in cardinal directions, though they can be easily avoided by retreating a few yards before the cast completes.
Renegade Kulivero - easily the most dangerous/annoying of the bunch, frequently casting Slice and Dice, Gouge, and Backstab.
Spellslinger Rem'lazar - chain casts Frostfire Bolt, in between a much more deadly Pyroblast. Will also rarely cast Polymorph when outnumbered, and use Ice Block before dying.
Techno-Medic Alazj - does not appear to have any specific abilities at this time.
They aren't just waiting to run into you, though. Defeating several of the zone's inhabitants will begin to draw attention, indicated first by Stalked, and then Hunted before one of the Warp Riders joins you in combat! Any one of the four can appear, including those already active elsewhere, and regardless of what you're currently fighting, leading to some very dire circumstances for those caught unprepared.
Seriously, get off the road!
Heroic or Hampered?
Overall, the area is quite fun to explore, and it's very nice to have an "open world" area of World of Warcraft feel somewhat dangerous again... at least on a relatively empty PTR. That said, it's not quite clear exactly who the Heroic difficulty is for, since there are already several ways to get all the same rewards and none of the new content explicitly incentivizes the Heroic difficulty.
Field Accolades are already abundantly available from 12.0.5 activities and the Normal difficulty.
Warbound gear helps kit alts out faster, though there are a lot of sources of Champion and Veteran gear, while only the boss drops Hero-track. Players can already use excess Field Accolades to purchase Cache of Void-Touched Armaments in Silvermoon as well.
There are a few achievements unlocking mounts, pets, and cosmetics, though it does not seem as though any of them actually require Heroic difficulty to unlock.
The challenge is a more broad question, since there are a lot of players with varying amounts of gear and skill to accommodate, but with all of the loot, upgrades, and power coming to players, 274 item level shouldn't be all that daunting by the time the patch arrives.
Four elites at a time, with two more ambushing at the end of the encounter. It takes longer to kill, but tanks kind of break the difficulty curve.
If anything, we might even say it's not hard enough, particularly for tank specializations. While even a well-geared DPS player may need to be careful when running around solo, tanks can take on two or three rares at a time without hardly breaking a sweat. Perhaps some of the elites would benefit from tank-busting abilities like Nullaeus, but remember this is all from the perspective of a very empty PTR. These are shared world spaces that will accommodate more than a dozen players at a time, so they won't scale with additional players like Tier 6 Ritual Sites - once they're counter-invaded by more than just the handful of players on the public test realm, the practical difficulty of navigating these worlds can be expected to drop sharply.
At least the world bosses are still pretty beefy, and will probably require some friends.
