Will you be able to customize Mythic keystones in Battle for Azeroth?

The friendly neighborhood dataminers at Wowhead have worked their magic once more. They’ve discovered three sets of intriguing new items for Mythic Plus Keystones. These items allow you to customize the Keystone in a variety of ways. The three items are as follows:

• Set Keystone Level
• Set Keystone Map
• Set Keystone Affix

Set Keystone Level changes the level of your Keystone. This could be helpful in two ways. On live, there’s no easy way to drop a Keystone’s level. You have to run at least part of the dungeon, then reset the instance. There’s also no fast way to level a Keystone up. You have to grind dungeons gaining two to three levels at a time.

Set Keystone Map changes the dungeon the key is attuned for. Some dungeons are more attractive than others. Group composition, familiarity with the dungeon, and the affixes all play a part in this. Having a key to the right dungeon can be helpful in getting into Mythic Plus groups.

Set Keystone Affix might be the most exciting. One way this might work is players are given a blank Keystone and have to add affixes to it. My casters would want nothing but Sanguine and Raging. As a tank, I’d never put Necrotic or Skittish on it. Melee would want Volcanic and Teeming. Oh, the sweet AoE DPS numbers we’d see. Healers would stay away from Grievous and Bursting.

There is no sign of where or how we will get these items. They could be rewards from Mythic Plus achievements like Keystone Master. The icons look like scrolls leading some to speculate they will come from the Inscription profession. Others expect they will be loot from the weekly Mythic Plus chest itself, or as another way to spend Order Hall Resources.

Intended use

These items would help mitigate the randomness of the current Mythic Plus system. Each week my group gets together on Tuesday to see what keys we have. Each dungeon plays out different depending on the various affixes. Some affixes and some dungeons don’t mix well — Bursting and Arcway, Teeming and Lower Kara, Tyrannical and Upper Kara or Halls of Valor. The ability to customize the key to our group makeup and favorite dungeons would be exciting.

Another way these items might be used is this is adding a fourth affix. If so, what would be the added reward for running with a fourth affix? More loot at the end of the run? Greater chance at Warforged or Titanforged gear?

The Set Map items are for Legion era dungeons only, and they are coming to the end of their life as current content. The goal of these items might be to get players who haven’t tried Mythic Plus before to try them with a level, dungeon, and set of affixes they can best handle. These items could also be a way to let players still interested in this content after Battle releases to customize it to their liking since fewer groups will run it.

There is also the real possibility these items will never see the live servers. These could be special items intended for testing only… but then we would expect to see them with Battle dungeons and not Legion. These could also be intended for the special Tournament realms used by the Mythic Dungeon Invitational. For Proving Grounds, the developers have set the affixes, but perhaps in later stages the players could customize their keys? We’ll be keeping an eye out for more information on these items!