Patch 10.1 Announcement Thoughts

Yesterday was a cornucopia of news, notes, and interviews. Won’t go too in-depth but there are a few things that stood out to me.

  • Mythic+ Season 2: Vortex Pinnacle, Underrot, Freehold, and Neltharion’s Lair making a comeback for Season 2. Underrot for whatever reason seems to be remembered fondly, but I still have nightmares of that place in the first two seasons back during BFA. Vortex Pinnacle’s going to be a fascinating one and it’s going to be an exercise in patience to see who remembers how the mechanic on Altairus works since it hinges on the direction of the wind, where the player is standing, and where Altairus is. As long as you’re upwind of Altairus, you get the haste and attack buff.
  • No Seasonal Affix: I did not expect this news, but it’s a welcome change. I railed pretty hard against Thundering this season. The absence of a seasonal affix does make me wonder how intense the scaling on the Level 7 affixes will be. If they wanted to be particularly cruel, the number of volcanic spawns could increase on a key level. Or worse, the frequency of quaking occurrences. I’m sure that wouldn’t happen though.
  • Nerfs to Halls of Infusion and Brackenhide Hollow: More tuning than anything else. The diseases in Brackenhide still scare me a little. An alchemist might come in handy to help open up those cauldrons that are lying around everywhere.
  • Shadow Rework again: I feel bad for my Shadow sisters. They’re being redone all over again. Is this the 3rd time this expansion that they’ve undergone another rework?
  • Cross-faction guilds: I’ll admit, I never thought I’d ever see this day ever. I figured I would have quit the game long before this feature came to fruition. I’m still not changing from a Panda, though.

In other news, we had a Diurna wipe with 0.2% remaining. Absolutely heart-wrenching. I expect she’ll go down tomorrow during day 1 of raid. I’ll have to do an internal postmortem of that one after.