Netherlight Crucible and Relic Customization in Patch 7.3

posted 2017/07/18 at 9:25 PM by perculia

This is an early news preview based on PTR testing. For our definitive Netherlight Crucible guide and links to Crucible recommendations for all specs, please visit this link instead.Artifact Knowledge is receiving big changesNote this is a very early 7.3 PTR preview and details are subject to change. We have updated this post several times based on Blizzard clarifications since initial publication.Unlocking the CrucibleKrokuunMac'AreeAn Offering of Shadowthird week of Patch 7.3account-wideNetherlight Crucible TiersConcordance of the Legionfall

First Relic: Tier 2 at 60, Tier 3 at 69

Second Relic: Tier 2 at 63, Tier 3 at 72

Third Relic: Tier 2 at 66, Tier 3 at 75

Tier 1

Netherlight Fortification: Upgrade the item level of your artifact +5, for a total of +15 when done across all three relics.

Tier 2Shadow

Master of Shadows: Mastery increased by 650. Avoidance increased by 1000.

Murderous Intent: Your Versatility is increased by 2500 while Concordance of the Legionfall is active.

Shadowbind: Your spells and abilities have a chance to deal 166000 Shadow damage and heal you for 166000.

Chaotic Darkness: Your spells and abilities have a chance to deal 60000 to 300000 Shadow damage and heal you for 60000 to 300000.

Torment the Weak: Your spells and abilities have a chance to cause Torment, dealing 99000 Shadow damage over 15 sec. This effect stacks up to 3 times.

Dark Sorrows: Your spells and abilities have a chance to afflict the target with Sorrow, causing it to burst after 8 sec, dealing 133100 Shadow damage.

Holy

Light Speed: Haste increased by 650. Movement speed increased by 1000.

Refractive Shell: Your spells and abilities have the chance to cause Refractive Shell, absorbing 200000 damage. Lasts 10 sec.

Shocklight: While Concordance of the Legionfall is active, your critical strike is increased by 2500.

Secure in the Light: Your harmful spells and abilities have the chance to deal 155000 additional damage and grant you Holy Bulwark, absorbing up to 77500 damage over 8 sec.

Infusion of Light: Your harmful spells and abilities have the chance to deal 116000 additional Holy damage. Your helpful spells and abilities have a chance to heal for 116000.

Light's Embrace: When you take damage, you have a chance to generate Light's Embrace, stacking up to 5 times. Light's Embrace heals for 29000 damage over 6 sec.

Tier 3RNG TraitsBlizzard ExplanationsPatch 7.3 Q&AQ: Is the Netherlight Crucible supposed to be fully RNG on Tier 2 and Tier 3?
A: The artifact traits in your weapon have always been a steady form of progression. However, the relics you slot in your weapon is subject to RNG -- the loot might not drop or other factors.

Well what's a problem with relics? Relics point to a specific index and for each spec that can use that relic, that specific index will map to a specific trait. If a holy relic is a bad trait for one spec and they wanted to change it, that would change the relic for all the other specs that could use it, because of the way the index works.

They wanted to fix that with a system that gave relics a random second trait in 7.2, but it was pulled at the last second. This was supposed to help classes that were searching for specific relics but was determined to be too random. The Netherlight Crucible is slightly different; while it has some randomness, players will not be able to choose their worst trait because they simply won't pick it.

Q: Why is the Netherlight Crucible good, but Reforging bad?
A: Reforging wasn't great because of hit and expertise management -- e.g. when you got a ring and had to reforge 10 other items because of it. They don't think it was an interesting system, since if an item didn't have your best two stats, you simply just reforged to your best stats. In some cases, it was hard to evaluate upgrades as well.

Q: How much of the new Artifact Power will work in 7.3 PvP?
A: The first trait from the Netherlight Crucible, Netherlight Fortification, on each relic will work in PvP, but that only equates to a fraction of a percent upgrade since it applies before the scaling. The remaining traits will not work in rated PvP.

Blizzard

Hey guys!

So, after yesterday's Q&A, it's become apparent that there's still some confusion about the Netherlight Crucible and how it works. We've been keeping an eye on your discussions about the topic, and wanted to give some explanations where we can, as well as open up a thread for any additional questions you may have.

Q: How do the Relic "talents" unlock?

A: As your Artifact increases in level (by spending Artifact Power), your Relic slots will level up as well. When you first unlock the Crucible, you'll have access to the first additional trait (a +5 increase to your Artifact's item level) in each slot. The second row unlocks at Artifact level 60, 63, and 66 (for the left, center, and right Relic slots respectively), and the third and final row unlocks at Artifact level 69, 72, and 75. This should all be pretty apparent when you look at those slots in-game, but may not be showing clearly via datamined info.

Q: What did you mean by "it can't double roll a trait"?

A: Just that you will never be able to upgrade a Relic to increase the same Artifact trait twice. If your Relic already has a bonus rank of Wrath of the Ashbringer on it, that trait will not be one of the three options presented in the bottom row of the Crucible's upgrade tree.

In other words, there's no risk of having your Wrath of the Ashbringer relic be "ruined" by not rolling a second bonus to Wrath of the Ashbringer, because that could never have happened in the first place. However, if you get a relic without Wrath of the Ashbringer, there's now a chance that it'll gain it from the Crucible.

Additionally, those three options will always be unique; it won't, for example, give you the "choice" between Deflection, Deflection, or Deflection. Aside from making sure you always have options, this means that your odds of having your favorite trait appear on a Relic you'd otherwise have discarded are actually pretty decent.

Q: How do the ranks for the first two rows work?

A: There are no such ranks. We think this is coming from some confusion about how the Netherlight Crucible is showing up in datamining, versus how it actually operates in-game. Once you've unlocked a row in the Crucible, you just select the option you like, and that's it - there's no additional leveling up of those options beyond that.

For those peeking into the data (or anyone else who might be curious): this is because of how we built the system to allow the unlockable effects to stack between each relic. It's just a subtle behind-the-scenes optimization on our end.

Hopefully that will help clear the air about how the Netherlight Crucible works, but we're sure you have more questions, so ask away and we'll do our best to answer what we can! We'll aim to provide an update sometime next week. Thanks!
TLDR:

Before the patch, if you get a relic that doesn't have the trait you want, you throw it away.

After the patch, if you get a relic that doesn't have the trait you want, you can plug it into the Netherlight Crucible and maybe get it anyway.

That's about all there is to it!

Blizzard

Okay, here's a first pass at some answers. Thanks for all the discussion so far.

Q: Why are you adding this system? What’s with the RNG?

A: The Netherlight Crucible (aside from being an important part of the 7.3 storyline) is intended to help with an issue with Relic availability that players have been reporting for some time now. As Ion explained during our last Q&A, there are technical issues with the way Relics were built that limit which bonus traits can be available from raids. This has caused a number of raiders to feel as though their best bet is to run Mythic Keystone dungeons constantly in the hopes of having a Relic with their ideal bonus trait drop (and Titanforge for a high item level).

Those who were following development of Patch 7.2 may recall an earlier take on an improvement for this issue, where we experimented with adding a single, randomized second bonus trait to Relics. Ultimately, we decided that was the wrong approach, and wanted a system that put a little more control in players’ hands. So, while the Netherlight Crucible does still have an element of randomness, it presents you with several options to choose from.

To be clear: we believe that having some element of randomness is important. Our goal was not to simply allow players to choose the precise bonus traits they wanted (you already do that, more or less, when spending Artifact Power). We still want there to be those exciting moments where a Relic gives you a great outcome. The Netherlight Crucible is intended to make Relics more valuable on average, not to make all Relics be equal value.

Q: Will I be able to trade Relics with other players to see who gets the best options at the Crucible?

A: No. Previewing a Relic at the Netherlight Crucible will bind it to your character and remove the ability to trade it. This is because those trait options don’t actually exist on the Relic until you attune it to the Crucible, in a process similar to enchanting a piece of gear. It also prevents raid teams from feeling like they need to send everyone who might be interested in a Relic back to the Vindicaar before continuing.

Q: Will the Netherlight Crucible work on Relics acquired prior to 7.3 release?

A: Yes. However, keep in mind that it will take some time (likely several weeks) to unlock the later stages of the Netherlight Crucible, where the additional bonus traits come in. We don’t expect that stockpiling Relics prior to 7.3 will give any real advantage in practice.

Q: Doesn’t this just mean I’ll want my best two traits on each Relic now?

A: For the hardcore min/maxer, yes, there will still be a “best” outcome for your Relic configuration. However, there are now more Relics that can achieve that state (as Relics with your second-best trait can now roll your best trait at the Crucible), and you’ll encounter fewer “bad” Relics along the way.

Q: Why do I have to go back to the Netherlight Crucible to upgrade my Relic? Didn’t you want to get away from mechanics like that?

A: Players often compare this to the old Reforging system, and our dislike of having to visit a vendor after each and every upgrade. That hasn’t changed. The Netherlight Crucible only affects Relics – you won’t need to visit the Crucible every time you pick up a new pair of boots.

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Comment by g0dkarJust a friendly reminder that you have to go to Act 5 to acquire the Netherlight Crucible :')Comment by moosecat11Uhhh wow. This is a bit hard to follow on top of all the other stuff (people already mix up artifact power/artifact knowledge/artifact level...). I feel like this is adding unnecessary complexity to an already fairly complex system.

That said I don't mind the artifact system as it is CURRENTLY, with one complaint: I don't like how I have to go through the Broken Shore scenario and starting questline before I can go grab my artifact upgrade quest to start working toward concordance. If I could just do the weapon upgrade quest itself once I fully upgrade my base artifact, without ever having to set foot in Broken Shore, that would be much better. Otherwise, I do not think the artifact system, progression wise, is a pain.

My biggest complaint this expansion is World Quests. For world quests, I like the system a lot, but when it's the main content to do on alts and the quests/emissaries are all the same each day, it's boring. Rather than there being 3 emissaries up at once, I'd rather be able to choose ANY 3 emissaries and once it's done it goes on cooldown for X days until I can do it again. This lets me do different things on alts. I know there's a good amount of world quests to choose from...but I'm not going to do a 50 gold world quests instead of a 500 gold world quest just because "oh my other character did that one". I will always do the most profitable ones for the emissaries that are up. Because of this, it ends up feeling no different than dailies, doing the same things on all characters each day.

The second complaint is artifact appearances. They previously mentioned they were planning to make it so appearances you earn during the expansion unlock as transmogs later on, but earning them after the expansion won't unlock the transmogs. Unless this changes, I'll be pretty pissed off, as it locks away a full expansion's worth of appearances. The time investment that goes in to some of these on your main is huge. Doing them on alts is pretty rough (not to mention some of them having prerequisites of unlocking the far left one to use one you've already unlocked, so unless you do EVERYTHING on your alts you're SOL). So, I hope they will change their plans and make the following available to unlock as transmogs after the expansion: base appearance + tints, the upgraded appearance + tints, and the balance of power appearance + tints (except maybe mythic keystone), and base pvp appearance. Keeping the others as more "prestigious" limited time awards is fine with me.Comment by Exhale2AcclaimI remember the times when we just picked up a random weapon and smacked internet dragons with it right away !Comment by kellorionThis, but *!@# reforging right. Too much stat switching and cookie cutter nonsense. Reforging was too far.
Question: Can you actually hear how hard my eyes are rolling?Comment by OzzozoThis is a convoluted mess of a system. At this point in Legion, why not just have additional trait trees to an already existing interface?Comment by AlecinoObviously this is meant for top game relics and not the anything you will be replacing anytime soon, imagine for a second that the relic you spent all that time reforging and upgrading and an upgrade ilvl drops, that a slap in the face , plus will the cost material from the upgrades be refunded? Nice try Blizzard, this is a casual game which you said yourself , so either make top end relics drop more or implement a catch-up system for when you find an upgrade.Comment by Joker1313I don't like this...seems very confusing...Comment by drunkenrhynoKind of like how the Garrison tech was scaled back after WoD to an optional thing.Comment by kutkuI personally like how one tier of artifact upgrades are gated from another.
A new player only focuses on unlocking his third relic slot.
After doing that, he'll focus on getting all the traits unlocked on his artifact, the "bonus" traits are completely blocked from sight.
Then after doing that he'll unlock the bonus traits and focus on concordance, the crucible wont let you do anything until a few levels into concordance.
Then FINALLY, once he's literally completed everything else, he gets introduced to this crucible thing, a new thing to keep him occupied.Comment by neoslayyerOh christ. I thought Blizz wanted to avoid this #$%^? Setting unlocks to be reliant upon the astronomical AP requirements after 52 is guaranteed to make entire guilds quit WoW. Again.Comment by neoslayyerOh christ. I thought Blizz wanted to avoid this #$%^? Setting unlocks to be reliant upon the astronomical AP requirements after 52 is guaranteed to make entire guilds quit WoW. Again. never ending postsComment by KittyKatBarOh. When you said customization I thought you meant... You know, something cool. Not RNG relic traits.

Well, I WAS excited... For a second or two.Comment by Gronker
It's easy to expect that progress in the system will be wiped clean too, which I believe is the point of the cynicism.Comment by TombsvObviously this is meant for top game relics and not the anything you will be replacing anytime soon, imagine for a second that the relic you spent all that time reforging and upgrading and an upgrade ilvl drops, that a slap in the face , plus will the cost material from the upgrades be refunded? Nice try Blizzard, this is a casual game which you said yourself , so either make top end relics drop more or implement a catch-up system for when you find an upgrade.Comment by slavedheartWith the orange corners on that square, am I the only one thinking legendary relic?Comment by slavedheartI remember the times when we just picked up a random weapon and smacked internet dragons with it right away !Comment by orionaegis7This is almost getting to a LOTRO level of insanity with the systems baked into these weapons... that we'll be abandoning in a year haha!Comment by kazeytbhmy favourite aspect out of all of this is how this complex monster that's become our artifact weapons will be rendered obsolete in the next expansion.Comment by Seiya3Obviously this is meant for top game relics and not the anything you will be replacing anytime soon, imagine for a second that the relic you spent all that time reforging and upgrading and an upgrade ilvl drops, that a slap in the face , plus will the cost material from the upgrades be refunded? Nice try Blizzard, this is a casual game which you said yourself , so either make top end relics drop more or implement a catch-up system for when you find an upgrade.Comment by Seiya3Oh christ. I thought Blizz wanted to avoid this #$%^? Setting unlocks to be reliant upon the astronomical AP requirements after 52 is guaranteed to make entire guilds quit WoW. Again. never ending posts

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