These Artifact and Legendary abilities are baseline in the Battle for Azeroth alpha

If you’ve been paying attention to the Battle for Azeroth alpha, you may have noticed that certain abilities that exist in Legion as Artifact Traits or effects on Legendary items are being baked into classes or talent trees. Wowhead has a list of the current changes, and it’s interesting to see what made the cut and what didn’t. Quite a few that I expected to make the cut haven’t yet.

Of course, it’s alpha, and things may eventually change. But for now, let’s look at what we have.

Demon Hunter

• Havoc Demon Hunters are getting the talent Insatiable Hunger, based on the legendary Anger of the Half-Giants
• Vengeance Demon Hunters get two Artifact traits rolled into their specs, with Fueled by Pain becoming Gluttony and Fiery Demise seemingly improved into Charred Flesh

Druid

• Restoration Druids see Essence of G’Hanir (the key Artifact ability) become rolled into the Flourish talent

Hunter

• Beast Mastery Hunters see the legendary Qa’pla, Eredun War Order lend not just it’s suspiciously Klingon-sounding name but its ability to reset Kill Command to Cobra Shot. It’s not a one for one transfer, but the functionality is there
• Marksmanship Hunters get Thas’dorah’s Healing Shell. But instead of applying it to Aspect of the Turtle, it’s now going to be part of Natural Mending.

Mage

• Arcane Mages who miss the Artifact trait Rule of Threes can take the talent Mana Adept, which will at least give them a shot at additional Arcane Missiles.
• If you would rather be the kind of Mage who yells “I am the god of fire and I bring you… FIRE” at your enemies, you may be happy to know that Phoenix Flames, the Artifact Trait from Felo’melorn, is now a talent named Phoenix Flames. Seems like the closest to a 1 to 1 jump for any of these traits I’ve seen so far.

Monk

• Windwalkers get two traits as Talents. The first, Strike of the Windlord, gets a nerfed version with Fist of the White Tiger. Tornado Kicks, on the other hand, makes the jump to a talent unscathed.

Paladin

• Retribution Paladins get Wake of Ashes as a talent. It stands with Phoenix Flames and Tornado Kicks for faithful translation of an Artifact ability or trait into a talent. It’s also one I expect a lot of Rets to take. I know mine probably will.

Priest

• Holy Priests get a new talent version of Cosmic Ripple.
• Shadow Priests start throwing around those Void Torrents even without an evil piece of cutlery telling them what to do, using them, and then cruelly dumping them once the expansion’s over. Perhaps their broken hearts are why they can still torrent that void. Also, not content to hold on to that bit of power from their ex, they also get Dark Void (adapted from The Twin’s Painful Touch) and Shadow Word: Void, an improvement on Mangaza’s Madness.

Rogue

• Assassination Rogues — and can’t we please just start calling them Assassins — get the talent Master Assassin, based on the legendary Mantle of the Master Assassin, and the new talent Poison Bomb is based on the Artifact trait Bag of Tricks.
• Outlaws get Loaded Dice as a talent.

Shaman

• Elemental Shaman who love Stormkeeper can now take it as a talent, also called Stormkeeper. They also get Volcanic Rage, a new talent likely based on the Artifatc trait Volcanic Inferno
• Enhancement Shaman see Elemental Spirits, a new talent which mimics Doom Wolves from the Doomhammer.

Warlock

• The new Affliction talent Creeping Death seems like a beefed up version of the legendary Hood of Eternal Disdain as well as one of my favorite Metallica songs.

Warrior

• If you really love the Arms Artifatct ability Warbreaker, you can keep your AoE Colossus Smash with the new Arms talent Warbreaker, although unlike the Artifact it replaces CS entirely. It also doesn’t deal Shadow damage. And Sudden Death is back as a talent, after being the legendary Ayala’s Stone Heart, which was itself the old Sudden Death talent back in legendary form after being a completely redesigned talent like six times already.

Like I said, I’m surprised certain abilities, traits and legendaries didn’t make the cut, like Odyn’s Fury or Tyr’s Deliverance. But it’s still alpha so who knows, maybe a second wave of added traits/abilities will come out before too long. Honestly I’m a little sad at how these are being implemented. I’m cool with Artifact traits becoming talents for the spec they were involved with. But seeing legendaries that worked with all three specs becoming spec exclusive talents is a little disheartening to me. Still, at least some abilities made the grade and we’ll get to see them moving forward into Battle for Azeroth.