Legendaries are concerning

At the start of the expansion, only one legendary at a time can be equipped so that while extraordinarily lucky people will have more choices about which to use when, they won't be significantly more powerful than somebody that isn't quite as lucky. As the expansion progresses, the number of legendaries that can be equipped at once will go up, although still limited to a relatively small number of slots.

They can come from anywhere, with more difficult content having a higher likelihood of dropping them (for equivalent time spent).

02/18/2016 05:49 PMPosted by Anfalas

I feel that the issue is that this type of legendary will even be allowed into the game. I haven't spoken to a single person that doesn't think they'll be a nightmare for raiders. Even one of these items can offer a ridiculous power difference for certain spells/classes.

As you note, there is a massive amount of tuning yet to be done here. A legendary that makes you unkillable, or that doubles your damage, is not a legendary that will be going live in that form. We're testing a lot of different ideas. Some need numbers adjustments; others may prove impossible to tune or unfun. Alpha is alpha.

But if we're in a space where items being powerful and transformative is unacceptable, then that feels like a problem. Marginal passive stat increases, like replacing your bracers that have 93 Haste with bracers that have 105 Haste, are certainly easy to balance and safe. They're also pretty dull. And rewards should be anything but. Currently, completing set bonuses or getting powerful trinkets are some of the more rewarding moments, and those offer powerful effects comparable to many of the planned Legion legendaries. In a way, things like the Archimonde trinkets in Patch 6.2 were a preview of how some of these effects might interact and transform gameplay. We wish more items felt like those, and fewer felt like getting that bracer upgrade.

Way back in the early days of WoW, getting a Hand of Edward the Odd out of a strongbox was like winning the lottery, and every enemy you killed had the potential to be that lucky ticket. Over the years, loot delivery mechanics and their impact have become more and more streamlined, often at the expense of excitement. Legendary items offer a bit of that classic feel.

That said, in addition to the overall unique-equipped limit, our current thinking is that there will be a suppression aura in effect on Mythic raids for the first X weeks after a given raid zone opens, disabling legendary items' special effects (they will still function normally as high-ilvl regular items). This will serve to limit any perceived unfairness in the progression "race," while also serving as a self-nerfing mechanism that can kick in once that race is done.