How to cleanse your Corrupted gear in patch 8.3, and why you may not want to

In patch 8.3, we’re getting a Corruption system for gear which will replace the current Titanforging mechanic and also give players a degree of control over their armor.

Here are the basics. Corrupted items have a “good” effect on them, which is also countered by the “bad” effect of the Corruption. Corrupted gear has a random affix, with a random amount of stats (tiers of potency), with a random amount of Corruption (based on the tier). The better the affix, the higher Corruption you get, which can have nasty effects on you or your raid if you have too much. This makes it so you can’t wear too much Corrupted gear and become OP. Wowhead notes that Ion Hazzikostas said that the amount of Corruption is supposed to be fixed based on what “tier” of stats you get, but currently it’s not reflected at all on the PTR.

However, in the wake of all this RNG, they also offer a way to opt out entirely by cleansing both the positive affixes and negative Corruption from Corrupted gear. Called Titanic Purification, you open it up by completing a new quest line in patch 8.3, which will phase the Chamber of Heart. From there, you have the option to cleanse any Corrupted gear for a small fee:

• Talk to MOTHER and click her dialogue option to cleanse a Corrupted item.
• Place the item in the UI box (like Azerite reforging), which will then tell you exactly what it is removing.
• Spend 5 Corrupted Memento to purify the item of all effects.

Corrupted Mementos will be acquired from running Horrific Visions, and should be relatively plentiful if you’re running them regularly. For example, completing the main objective (killing the main NPC) gets you 500 Corrupted Mementos, side objectives get you 200, and just going in there without completing anything gets you around 50. Corrupted Mementos can also be used to buy things like a new Wicked Swarmer mount and possibly an item that can add gem slots to all your gear.

But is it worth it?

Honestly, it kind of feels like they made the Corrupted gear system complicated for the sake of being complicated. It also seems like an awful lot of work and new mechanics for something that will only last until the end of the expansion. Players have long complained about Titanforging and RNG, but this system just adds more RNG into the mix. Current Titanforging doesn’t come with a negative affix that punishes you for wearing it. While Corrupted gear does give players the option to opt out, it also adds the complications that the old gear reforging had. And they took out reforging because, as they claimed, you shouldn’t have to visit another site to see what is an upgrade. Well, people do that now and they will definitely do that in 8.3.

What’s interesting is that it appears the new cloak from Wrathion will help negate the effects of Corruption on Corrupted gear, as opposed to only being useful in the Horrific Visions scenario and against N’Zoth in the raid. This means that as you level up your cloak, you’ll also be able to wear more Corrupted gear, making you stronger and providing an overall nerf to content through the Corrupted buffs. This is great if you get a bunch of Corrupted gear afterward. However, many players will be wondering if they should start saving every piece of Corrupted gear they get until they can safely wear it with the cloak.

There will be a lot of variables since the affixes are random, and some will work better for certain classes. I expect a lot of people will just sim these. I’m sure some sort of ranking will be up for most classes, especially if the Corruption values become static for each level of affix. If your spec values one stat above all others, you may end up cleansing every piece that doesn’t have that stat. If the positive affix is mediocre, you may want to cleanse it so you don’t have to deal with the negative aspect of Corruption. If you don’t want to deal with the system at all, you can simply cleanse every piece of Corrupted gear that you get. Given that it’s RNG on RNG on top of RNG, I wouldn’t blame you for doing so.