Battle for Azeroth Season 3: Everything you need to know

Seasons in World of Warcraft work differently than their counterparts in Diablo 3. Rather than an opportunity to start fresh on new characters and see how high you can get your Paragon levels, they simply mark a rollover for Mythic+ dungeon and PVP rewards. At the end of a season, PVP titles and mounts are given out according to your rank, and at the beginning of the season new rewards and improved gear offers a carrot to keep you playing.

Typically seasons will end with major patch releases as new raid tiers get opened. Battle for Azeroth is currently in the second season, but that’s coming to an end soon™.

We know that Season 2 will end with the release of patch 8.2, which also means that the patch is right around the corner. We’ll be jumping into the deep end of Nazjatar in no time.

But your chances to get Season 2 rewards are also dwindling.

So what’s changing?

For people who mainly do PVP, not much! The current season’s tabard rewards and titles will no longer be available. You’ll no longer earn the Vicious Black Bonesteed and Vicious Black Warsaber from winning rated PVP matches. It’s likely you’ll be able to get them still down the line with the general Vicious Saddles, but any new rated wins in Season 3 will go towards the new Vicious War Basilisks.

After Season 2 ends PVPers will have two weeks where your overall ranking won’t change. You could use the off-season as a break to try out new class combinations for Arenas or familiarize yourself with any class changes that came in the patch. Rest up though, because when season 3 starts, the climb begins again!

The big changes are for raids and dungeons

Azshara’s Eternal Palace and the Mechagon Mega Dungeon are part of Season 3, but just like PVP there’s a two week off-season. During that time, you’ll still be able to earn Ahead of the Curve and Cutting Edge for clearing Battle of Dazar’alor and Crucible of Storms on Heroic or Mythic difficulty — all the way up until the Eternal Palace becomes available. But unlike the Ahead of the Curve: Argus the Unmaker achievement, there’s no mount associated with these achievements — only bragging rights.

For people who like running their high-level Mythic+ keys, the Reaping affix will be going away. You’ll also no longer be able to get the achievements for conquering and mastering keystone dungeons on time in Season 2. No longer will Bwonsamdi taunt you when you die, or make the souls of defeated enemies attack you. The new seasonal affix is Beguiling and will feature minions of Queen Azshara sprinkled throughout Mythic+ dungeons. These are powerful emissaries who will drastically change how you approach pulls.

Beguiling is going to be a big change from Reaping. The new affix will be more single-target focused, as you’ll need to handle the Emissaries of Azshara quickly. There are three different varieties, each with its own annoying power.

• Enchanted Emissaries have Queen’s Decree: Blowback. Everything around them will reflect 200% damage to their attackers. You’ll have to keep the Emissary in combat for 30 seconds to run out its energy bar, which will cause it to teleport out of the dungeon. The Emissary itself won’t reflect damage to you, but attacks will knock it back. You’ll want to knock it away from the pack it’s in so you can attack them as normal. Just be careful you don’t accidentally knock it into a whole new group of enemies!
• Void-Touched Emissaries have Queen’s Decree: Hide. They’ll periodically pulse damage to anyone within line of sight of them. The damage they do is huge — and increases with every hit you take — so you’ll want to make sure you try and fight them next to corners. They also have the Void Sight ability, allowing them to see through stealth and invisibility. Not being able to skip certain pulls could potentially throw established dungeon paths into disarray.
• Emissary of the Tides is the most straightforward of the three. These emissaries have Queen’s Decree: Unstoppable which makes everything around them immune to all forms of crowd control, interrupts included. Bring them down quickly and hope that you brought a tank with a lot of health. Both Void-Touched Emissaries and Emissaries of the Tide will need to be brought down to one health in order to force them to teleport out of the dungeon.

I’m going to miss the Reaping affix. I liked it a lot more than G’huun’s Infested creatures from Battle’s first season. It wasn’t obnoxiously in your face and allowed you to do some extreme things like fighting your reaping waves at the same time as bosses. Beguiling looks like it’s going to require some clever pulls to make sure you don’t get a pack that’s too hard to deal with.

We’ll likely see patch 8.2 by mid-July at the latest. It currently isn’t flagged as a release build on the Public Test Realm, but the latest update wasn’t very large. I’m really looking forward to getting into the new raid, and can’t wait to take a jaunt through Mechagon. Until then, I still have a couple of dungeons to get my Keystone Master achievement.