Heads up! You might not want to unlock Lightforged missions yet

We’re over a month into Argus now, and many players are approaching the end of new quests. Namely, if you’ve been on top of quests and missions, you’re likely close to — or, less fortunately, already done with — completing the post-item-level-950 follower quest that unlocks Lightforged missions. If you haven’t done this yet, do not turn that quest in.

Well, don’t turn it in yet, at least. Right now, it seems that Lightforged missions don’t actually offer much in the way of benefits and are actually a net loss if activated. As of right now, the Lightforged missions appear to…

• Have a lower baseline success chance (-50% before any followers are assigned) but reward the same or similar items.
  • E.g., reputation tokens, Artifact Power, etc.
• Cost more Order Resources per reward (in most cases).
  • E.g., 1,800 Order Resources for 4 Blood of Sargeras (with a possibly bonus of 8).
  • In cases that have a higher reward for the cost, the baseline success chance is still typically lower.
• Require special troops (Ridgestalkers, Void-Purged Krokuls, and Lightforged Bulwarks) more often than the ilvl-925 missions.

{PB}In other words, if you turn in Felfire Shattering, you’re going to wind up spending more Order Resources to run fewer missions — due to needing more followers per mission — for less of a reward. If you’ve been enjoying sending out one follower on a mission and still managing to get up to a 200% success chance, you’ll absolutely want to wait.

Now, this could be a bug — or it could be Blizzard’s way of putting in resource sinks. Technically, some of the missions reward more Artifact Power or gold, but the increase is honestly marginal — for the interested, there’s a pretty solid Reddit thread with some Imgur examples, as well as a forum post outlining similar issues. Maybe these rewards will be buffed with Antorus’ arrival, maybe the 925 missions will be nerfed. Right now, it doesn’t exactly seem to make much sense, and it’s probably best to just not hold off on unlocking those new missions until we hear more from Blizzard (if we hear more, that is).

A few final things to note: Lightforged missions will likely be required to unlock Antorus rewards from your command table. Until Antorus, however, that’s not an issue. Additionally, you can complete the mission required for Felfire Shattering — thus unlocking a new heirloom necklace — as long as you don’t turn the quest itself in. In other words, you can still get a item-level-950 follower army.

Hopefully this is remedied soon, but until it is, I’ll be holding off on the quest turn-in.