Reposted from the General Forums we all read...
Substantially the same as is, with the following changes:
-Elemental rifts never despawn, and initial spawn time is staggered by 10 minutes per rift in a zone. Elemental rifts drop randomly enchanted BoP epics scaling with rift level, and sometimes BoE novelty items and such, including a "Charred/Frostbitten/Sandworn/Muddied Adventurer's Tabard" and "Mark of the Elemental Slayer", which provides a small, short term XP and damage buff; and the "Kalimgah Drum Set" which can be used to make a neat thudding sound and /dance. Tabards are mutually unique so players may only own one, and must farm that one they want.
-City event lasts only 15 minutes, and any one of the four cities are attacked at any given time.
-Talking to the faction leader in front of the city now allows you to queue for "Civil Defense", which functions exactly as a Wintergrasp raid: raid leader cannot kick or change loot threshold; loot is always on Need Before Greed.
-In addition, after completing the introductory quest, players receive a "Elemental Slayer's Insignia" trinket, similar to Shadow's Edge, it applies a debuff to elemental invasion mobs, causing them to drop quest items lootable by the wielder. The proc also applies a Valanyr bubble to heal targets, which also causes those targets to deal reactive damage that applies the debuff. In effect, this means unless the player has this insignia equipped and is actively dealing damage or healing, he cannot loot quest items off the elementals.
-City invasion mobs have about 250% more health and gain dangerous abilities such as Chain Lightning, Typhoon, Frost Nova, Frost Bolt, Flamestrike, Immolate, Earth Shock, and Earthquake.
-This will be offset by the power of the event items provided, and by the introduction of powerful elite Stormwind Weather Action Team and Kor'kron elite forces that spawn during the events - healing, buffing, and fighting alongside players. These elite forces show up on raidframes as raid pets, and can be healed and buffed by players (and should be, since they can be themselves killed by the elementals, and do not respawn until the next time the city is invaded).
-The quest items, "Infused Core of Elements", can be used to purchase elemental pets (including the Frost Chip), instead of being available in the Blizzard Store in a few months for $15 each. Considering that $15 is one month's sub, I'm prepared to argue this is a better deal for Blizzard in the long run.
-Other items purchaseable with the cores include all the same items that drop off the bosses, allowing players the choice of queuing, or doing the invasions and farming the cores, or both.
Also available are:
- [Formula: Enchant Weapon - Greater Elemental Slayer], (melee or cast gains 750 crit rating and 30% crit damage versus elementals; ineffective at 85) - [Tailoring: Cloak of Elemental Resistance], (cloak, 800 armor, 100 stam, 50 resist all, 50 hit rating, 50 mastery) - [Leatherworking: Drums of Elemental Augury], (drums, causes a 15-minute self buff dramatically increasing aggro radius versus elementals, and also provides 50 resistance, ineffective at 85) - [Blacksmithing: Elemental Slayer's Scythe], (non-standard weapon equippable by all classes; provides all the benefits of an Elemental Slayer's Insignia, and increases all damage done against elementals by 100%; ineffective at 85) - [Alchemy: Elemental Scrying Potion], (increases all drops from outdoor elemental invasion events by 50%; Requires Elemental Invasion.) - [Engineering: Civil Defense Distress Beacon], (Requires Engineering 375, consumable; when used, instantly teleports the user into, or away from, any city currently in a state of lockdown. Superpsychocybermechanicocosmical aggro meter is basically an "educated guess" and may randomly teleport the user directly in front of a random enemy faction leader, especially Garrosh. Will be fixed in version 2.0!)
But alas, "should have been"...
Aestu of Bleeding Hollow... Nihilism is a copout.
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