Severed Strands buff will make The War Within’s first raid more accessible over time

Once you’re done marveling at all the verticality in Nerub-ar Palace, The War Within‘s first raid coming to World of Warcraft in September, you might be left to wonder: how am I actually going to beat all these bosses?

Over the past couple of expansions, Blizzard’s approach to raid balancing has been what you might call data-driven: essentially they’re watching at all times to see what completion percentages look like on a certain timeline, and if certain bosses are proving to be roadblocks, they get nerfed… eventually. For The War Within, it appears they’re returning to a strategy that we first saw in Uldir back in Battle for Azeroth, providing a sort of “progressive nerf” by way of a new buff, Severed Strands.

What does the Severed Strands buff do?

Severed Strands is a stacking buff that provides increased healing and damage while inside the raid, stacking up to a max of 18% after completing its associated quest eight times — a tiny amount below the 20% cap Morgan Day initially revealed in an interview.

How do I get the Severed Strands buff?

Getting this buff seems to rely on Nerub-ar Finery, which the players can get as drops in the raid and smuggle out to the Severed Threads Nerubian faction in the Azj-Kahet zone on our behalf to in turn have them aid us in the form of a buff. The source of this item will be killing raid bosses, with player able to expect a small amount of additional damage and healing every two weeks if they obtain every available Nerub-ar Finery — 8 per week. Of course, the cap on how many you can receive each week will rise, so players needn’t worry about not reaching that max every week, and those who enter late or fall behind will find that an increased drop rate will help them stay on par with their fellow raiders.

We haven’t really seen this kind of thing in a raid since Reorigination Array in Uldir, which was a passive tied to Azerite Armor from the raid that would buff your secondary stats every 3 bosses killed. We don’t know how fast Severed Stands will accumulate in comparison, but the currency itself stacks to a maximum of 8, which might feel correct given how much stronger this buff has the potential to be. It’s interesting to see Blizzard placing the “nerfing” of the raid back into players’ hands again, essentially saying that as long as you can kill bosses you should get credit towards Severed Strands in some capacity.