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Season 3 Mythic+ Seasonal Affix Beguiling Speculation
PTR
Posted
2019/05/30 at 9:32 PM
by
Squishei
More information about the Beguiling Affix was announced earlier today in a Forbes interview with Ion Hazzikostas, stating that the Beguiling affix will be Frost, Arcane or Shadow themed. Based on this new information, we can speculate on how the Beguiling Affix works based on some possible datamined spells.
Forbes Article Details
Click here to read the full Forbes interview
Beguiling is the Season 3 Mythic+ Affix, and currently it is not testable on the 8.2 PTR. In this interview, we learn that Beguiling adds different types of handmaidens (shadow, arcane, and frost) will be present in a variety of trash packs. Each has different effects and will rotate positions from week to week.
What is the new Season 3 mythic dungeon affix like?
Hazzikostas: Beguiling represents the minions of Queen Azshara invading the dungeons of Kul Tiras and Zandalar. There are three types of handmaidens that will be present in a variety of pulls in different configurations from week to week.
There's one that has shadow power, one that is arcane, and one that is frosty. They have fun, different effects that will change the way you approach certain pulls. They'll make it so that certain pulls that you probably haven't done in the last five months, because you always skip them, you might actually have to do.
Beguiling Speculation
Beguiling was datamined to have the following description:
Azshara's Emissaries are present throughout the dungeon.
The following is
all speculation
based on known information and datamined spells, abilities and NPCs.
NPC Names
We started off by finding 3 NPC names, one for each type mentioned in the Forbes Interview: Arcane, Shadow, Frost whose name and text contains both Emissary (from the Beguiling description) and Handmaiden (from Hazzikostas' description).
Arcane
:
Enchanted Emissary
Shadow
:
Void-Touched Emissary
Frost
:
Emissary of the Tides
The Decrees
Looking in our datamined spell lists, we found 3 spells that are related to Queen Azshara and are themed in Arcane, Frost and Shadow. Seems like almost too much of a coincidence, right?
Arcane
Queen's Decree: Blowback
: Grants nearby allies Queen's Decree: Blowback, reflecting 200% of damage dealt back at the target.
We also found another spell that directly references the
Enchanted Emissary
, which will help with the mechanic above called
Enchanted
.
Shadow
Queen's Decree: Hide
: 8 sec cast. Deals Shadow damage equal to 50% targets' health to enemies in line of sight within a 60 yard radius.
This ability triggers
Queen's Decree: Hide
increasing Shadow damage dealt by 50%.
Frost
Queen's Decree: Unstoppable
: Grants nearby allies Queen's Decree: Unstoppable making them immune to crowd control effects.
This includes interrupts, silences, disorients, stuns, dazes, incapacitates, sleeps, snares, slows, and roots.
Queen Azshara will be issuing decrees during two raid encounters in Azshara's Eternal Palace and though the Decrees are different, the Arcane and Frost decrees seem very dungeon focused.
Back in Legion, a datamined affix called
was added, but it never made it into the live game. The
Queen's Decree: Unstoppable
would allow the CC immunity to be more controlled, allowing you to focus down the
Emissary of the Tides
to allow interrupts and stuns.
Before the
Reaping
affix was testable, we found spells called "Aura of Reaping" and "Reaping" which made us
speculate on what the Reaping affix
was going to be. This was false and scrapped for the current implementation of Reaping, but it seems like Blizzard wanted to use this idea going forwards. Blizzard took these "Aura of Reaping" and "Reaping" spells and changed their name to
Queen's Decree: Blowback
and buffed the reflect from 75% to 200%. It's the same spell ID, which makes us think they're updating it to use it again in this patch for some reason -- that reason being Beguiling. You can see these changes in the changelog
here
and
here
.
In our speculation, these Decrees are the main mechanic of the Beguiling affix, but there's probably still a lot more missing in terms of what the Emissaries do. Do they chain cast magic damage spells? Do they melee hit? Are they Decrees active all the time until the emissaries die, or only some of the time? There seems to be some related spells like
Queen's Blessing
, but it's hard to know if this is for the affix, Open World mobs, or Raid Trash. These are questions we'll have to find out when the Beguiling affix is testable on the PTR.
The Gifts
Searching even further, we found a couple more interesting spells that may be related to Beguiling. The first one is
Queen's Decree
. This doesn't appear in the dungeon journal for any raid encounters with Decrees involved and uses the exact term "Queen's Decree", which the raid decrees don't include.
Queen's Decree
: When the decree is removed Azshara will grant her gift to a nearby enemy.
Note that seems said that Azshara will grant her gift to a nearby "enemy", not "ally". This indicates that she will be granting gifts to us, the party and not the mobs that the emissary is with.
What gifts are there? We've found 3 and there's one themed around Arcane Magic, one themed around Frost Magic and one themed around Shadow Magic. It definitely seems to fit the theme of Beguiling.
Queen's Gift
: Bestowing the gift of Queen Azshara onto the target, healing them for 5% of max health every second for 10 seconds. There's another similar spell named
Queen's Gift
, which seems to indicate when the channel is complete, it causes the following effects:
Size increased by 50%.
Cannot be slept, gripped, disarmed, disoriented, snared, slowed.
Health increased by 100%.
Triggers
Arcane Wrath
every second dealing damage to all enemies within 60 yards.
Gift from Below
: Reduces the max health of the target by 5% for 3 min. Causes the target to inflict 5% increased damage for 3 min. These effects stack.
Gift of the Tides
: Heals 15% of health every 1 second for 5 seconds.
The
Queen's Gift
and
Queen's Gift
seems more tailored to be a buff for mobs rather than a buff for players, and it also doesn't follow the same naming convention as the other two gifts. However, we weren't able to find another "gift" that relates to Arcane magic. On the other hand, the
Gift from Below
is very likely to be a buff meant for players as one of the effects is to increase pet damage by 5%, which is an effect used to increase player pet class damage by the same amount as non-pet classes.
Conclusion
Let's go back to Hazzikostas' quote from the Forbes interview.
They have fun, different effects that will change the way you approach certain pulls. They'll make it so that certain pulls that you probably haven't done in the last five months, because you always skip them, you might actually have to do.
Assuming the Decree into Gift mechanic is how the affix works, you have a risk/reward mechanic present in the dungeon. Do you want to pull this pack to refresh your Shadow buff and add a stack? Alternatively, you may be forced to pull a pack because it's CC immune with a Frost Emissary present and you're unable to
Sap
it. This seems to fit in line with what Ion Hazzikostas is saying.
Queen's Decree: Blowback
seems the most punishing of the Decrees and you'll have to have someone constantly knock the emissary out of the group and likely kill it first, but if the Arcane Gift does give one player a massive Arcane Explosion AoE around them, that could help destroy the rest of the pack rather quickly. On the other hand, in a heavy caster dungeon like Motherlode or Shrine of the Storm,
Queen's Decree: Unstoppable
is potent as having targets be interrupt and stun immune could be deadly. Lastly,
Queen's Decree: Hide
on its own is likely easy to deal with, but depending on where these Shadow emissaries are placed, there may be nowhere to line of sight or risk pulling extra mobs.
The Decrees might be awful at times, but assuming the "Gift" you get after is potent, then you could in fact have a lot of fun after the Decree is complete.
Remember this is all speculation based on known information, and it's likely that some portions, if not all of it, will be incorrect. We'll confirm how Beguiling works after it becomes testable on the 8.2 PTR.
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Comment by
AdrianAdi52
on 2019-05-31T15:32:39-05:00
Are these spells/buffs for players? A
Comment by
jabarri1
on 2019-06-01T08:31:03-05:00
Note that seems said that Azshara will grant her gift to a nearby "enemy", not "ally". This indicates that she will be granting gifts to us, the party and not the mobs that the emissary is with.
So mobs are not enemies to us? When Blizzard references mobs in tooltips or dungeon/raid journals, it is ALWAYS as enemies. No matter what. Allies is ONLY used to refer to player characters.
*Ring, ring, ring.* Shame, shame!
The gift is a buff the emissaries carry, upon death it is granted to an enemy. So we are allies to Azshara? Could you at least try to understand the text before shaming the author?
No, I think their reading is correct. It doesn't say Azshara gives a gift to
her
enemy, it says it gives a gift to an enemy. The players are reading the tooltips, the mobs are the enemy and it makes far more sense for Azshara to buff enemy mobs and to punish the players for ignoring her decrees.
It specifically states
When the decree is removed Azshara will grant her gift to a nearby enemy.
So Azshara, the person who doesn't like us, will grant her gift to a nearby enemy...we're her enemy.
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