Titan Rune Dungeons will add a “Heroic Plus” difficulty to Wrath Classic dungeons — now live on the PTR

Wrath Classic is adding a new difficulty to dungeons in Phase 2 with Titan Rune Dungeons, which allow players to gear up with 10-man raid level loot from Phase 1 — helping to keep Wrath dungeons relevant throughout the game. Blizzard has talked about increasing dungeon difficulty and improving loot before, originally calling it “Heroic Plus,” but now the feature is live on the PTR for testing.

Titan Rune Dungeons are a little like Mythic+ in retail WoW, but without the bother of collecting keystones. In Wrath Classic, each dungeon will have a specific Rune boosts the difficulty in a way that matches the dungeon’s theme — for example, Azjol Nerub will have a Rune that adds more web wraps, while Utgarde Keep will have a Rune that increases frost damage to players. Beyond these dungeon-specific challenges, the health and damage of mobs in the dungeon will be increased. And for dealing with the added difficulty, raid-level gear from 10-player Naxxramas, Eye of Eternity, and Obsidian Sanctum is added to boss loot tables.

How to run Titan Rune Dungeons will also be familiar to players who have done Mythic+. When you zone into a Heroic dungeon at level 80, there will be a Mysterious Titan Relic. When all five players in the group click on it, the dungeon becomes a Titan Rune Dungeon with increased difficulty and loot. For the PTR testing, only one person has to click on the Rune in order to speed up the process, but when the feature goes live the entire party will have to agree to activate it.

But what about those 10-player raids, whose loot is now in 5-player dungeons? In Wrath Classic Phase 2, the 10-player Phase 1 raids will drop loot from the 25-player Phase 1 raids, so smaller raid groups and guilds will be able to get their hands on the exact same gear that 25-player raids will. They’ll just have to wait until Phase 2 launches.

This should keep dungeon gear viable and make both 5-player and 10-player content feel viable in future phases of Wrath Classic. Assuming the system works out, we can guess that in Phase 3, Ulduar 10-player gear will be available in Titan Rune Dungeons — though we can’t make a guess at how that will impact the dungeons that will roll out later in Wrath Classic. In Wrath’s original launch, dungeons and raids were quickly outstripped by newer content — Ulduar in particular had a very brief time in which it was worth running for the gear rewards — which Blizzard is trying to fix with this system. And if gear keeps shifting like this as Wrath Phases roll it, it may balance things so that all game content stays relevant for longer

If you’re interested in helping test it, the Titan Rune Dungeons are already on the PTR. Blizzard is specifically interested in feedback on how hard the Titan Rune Dungeons are for players in basic blue gear, so the PTR has been wiped and you won’t be able to transfer your character over: instead, you’ll have to use a template character. There will be gear vendors with the proper gear for testing blue dungeon loot running these upgraded difficulty dungeons.

Have fun, try not to die, and I’m sorry for whatever happens in Drak’tharon Keep Titan Rune difficulty.