One of the things that’s been a big part of gearing in Battle for Azeroth is randomness. Whether you love or hate that, things like Corruption, Titanforging, and sockets on gear as a random factor have been part of the game this expansion, and that’s something that Shadowlands will be reining in to a degree. But as a result, some thought had to be given as to what to do about sockets on gear the coming expansion. That’s because sockets make gems more appealing, and gems are a big part of the Jewelcrafting profession and the economy as a whole. We’ve seen how removing or greatly limiting items in this way hurt Inscription — which still hasn’t really recovered — so it was clear that if random sockets on gear were to be removed something would have to be done to keep sockets, and thus gems, present for players.

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World of Warcraft (WoW) Patch 9.0.2 Shadowlands Beta Holy Paladin healer mythic plus dungeon gameplay video. I test Kyrian Covenant paladin ability 'Divine T. BiS'Mage DPS Best in Slot Gear (BiS) - WoW Classic Below are the Best in Slot gear recommendations for DPS Mage in Ahn'Qiraj, the newest raid in WoW Classic Phase 5. While epics from AQ40 play a large role in this list, we also recommend gear from PvP, Professions, dungeons, and quests.

Ion “Watcher” Hazzikostas, the Game Director of World of Warcraft, has recently done a Road to Shadowlands post and in it he discusses what’s going to happen to sockets on gear. There are a few things we discover here, and one of them is the idea that you’ll be able to get your gear socketed yourself, while another is the fact that in Shadowlands, the specific gear that has sockets is more limited in scope. But there still will be random sockets on gear — they’re not removing sockets as a random item property the way they are Titanforging.

Sockets

While we eliminated Warforging and Titanforging in Shadowlands , with the goal of increasing clarity and player agency over rewards, the question of how to handle sockets was not quite as clear-cut. A certain critical mass of sockets across all player gear is essential to support Jewelcrafting as a player profession, and in recent expansions the chance for any endgame item to upgrade to a socketed version gave players of all playstyles the opportunity to interact with the Jewelcrafting tradeskill. At the same time, sockets unquestionably constitute power, and can be every bit as impactful as Warforging.

Trying to balance these considerations, the approach we’ve settled on for Shadowlands is to keep sockets as a random item property, but to allow players to add sockets to their items via a consumable sold by Ve’nari in the Maw (similar to Gouged Eyes in the recent Visions of N’Zoth update). This way all players can take advantage of gems and seeing a socketed item drop offers a short-term efficiency advantage, but in the long run competitive players can still make steady progress towards a best-in-slot gear setup without relying on an additional layer of randomness. Finally, in order to limit the total impact of gems, and the power gap between players with full sockets and those without, in Shadowlands only Helms, Rings, Necks, Bracers, and Belts can have a socket randomly generated or added by Ve’nari. These changes should all be active by next week’s Beta update.

The one thing all the above topics have in common is that they have been driven by your passionate feedback throughout the development process, which has helped shape the game for the better over the course of the past year. And a special thanks to all the testers reporting bugs on Beta – we’ve already fixed thousands of issues based on your reports, and are continuing to work through those reports as we aim to make Shadowlands the best experience it can possibly be when it arrives on October 26.

You can only bedazzle certain items with gems

Ve’nari, the NPC in the Maw who will be selling the item that allows you to socket a piece of gear, will be following the same rules as the random socket property — the items you can socket and the items that will have sockets randomly are the same. A randomly socketed item is a nice bonus but won’t be something that will force you to grind WQ or run the same dungeon or raid boss over and over again to get your socketed BIS item. If that one Helm, Ring, Neck, Bracer, or Belt item didn’t drop with a socket, instead of desperately trying again and again to get it, you can just do the Maw and eventually buy that socket you need.

I’ll personally miss sockets on other items — I have fond memories of sockets on Tier Gear pants, because they had like three sockets apiece and it was pretty great to customize your gear. But I understand the goal here — Shadowlands is already changing how secondary stats scale on gear, so an active attempt to control how much you can boost yourself with gems instead of letting you just staple sockets on every single piece of gear you own makes sense. This approach should allow for Jewelcrafting to still stay relevant without making players desperately hot glue sparkly rocks to every inch of their character in an attempt to eke out that extra bit of power.

Although I have to admit I remember the days of Kael’thas attempts in The Eye with my Warrior sticking tanking gems into every available socket on my gear with a touch of fondness, it’s probably best to rein that in a touch. I must have been blinding to look at.

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So you want to know what DPS class to play now that World of Warcraft: Shadowlands has officially launched.

There are an abundance of options, as always. But with Blizzard Entertainment making significant changes to just about every class prior to the new expansion, it’s best to take everything you learned in Battle for Azeroth and throw it out.

To figure out which classes are best in Shadowlands, we need to start with a fresh perspective on the class balance in the game.

While Blizzard will assuredly rework the balance of classes over the course of the next two years through hotfixes and new patches, as it stands there are a few classes that stand out for people who want to play the most powerful damage dealers available.

Whether you’re looking to top the meters in the upcoming Castle Nathria raid or just push Mythic dungeon keystones, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best options for players early on in Shadowlands.

Mage

Mage is one of the most iconic classes in WoW, and it continues to be one of the best to play in Shadowlands.

With massive amounts of flexibility across different specializations, you’ll be able to perform at a high level in raids like Castle Nathria playing Frost Mage, and then quickly re-spec to Fire Mage and smash some dungeons.

In raid, Frost’s solid single-target damage is supported by strong burst AOE if your raid has a nice clumped-up pile of adds around the boss.

In dungeons, you’ll be able to AOE to your heart’s content and top meters as either Frost or Fire mage. It’s up to your personal preference.

Shadow Priest

Shadow Priests had a bit of a tough time overall in Battle for Azeroth. While some raid fights allowed Priests to excel as damage dealers, most Shadow Priests were forced to spec into healing classes.

With Shadowlands, Shadow Priests have all of the damage-over-time (DOT) abilities that they always have, but they’ve been given a larger tool kit and more AOE ability to push their status as top-tier raid damage.

While Affliction Warlocks have similar DOTs and strong raid DPS, they don’t have quite the same capabilities as Priests do in dungeons.

If you’re a good enough player, it likely won’t matter too much what class you play in a dungeon. But if you’re looking to play the “best,” you might want to run your Shadow Priest instead of your Warlock for the time being.

Hunter

Hunter is a class that was consistently strong in Battle for Azeroth. But with the release of Shadowlands, Blizzard has made a slew balance of changes to the Marksmanship specialization in particular.

Typically, in BFA, Beast Mastery was the specialization of choice for professional players like former Method raider and Mythic Dungeon International champion Gingi (who has moved to a new guild Echo). But Shadowlands reworks are giving Hunters a new way to play that class at its highest level.

Rogue

Similar to the way that Marksmanship Hunter is giving players a fresh specialization to optimize, some changes to Rogue will result in a lot of variety for the class.

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In Battle for Azeroth, it was almost assumed that if you were pushing mythic dungeons, you would play Outlaw. If you were raiding, you would play Assassination. There was very little room for anything different, and if you wanted to play Subtley Rogue, you were likely not going to be accepted by many guilds.

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While Outlaw and Assassination will still be reasonable choices in Shadowlands, reworks to Subtley have made it stronger than the other two. Not only is the specialization stronger than Outlaws in dungeons, but it’s stronger than Assassination Rogues in raids.