The biggest winners and losers of WoW Dragonflight Patch 10.1.7

Roughly two months after players got into the “timey-wimey” charades with World of Warcraft Dragonflight Patch 10.1.5, we have a new patch to unpack—10.1.7. The patch is rather small, especially compared to the past mid-season patches, but we still have clear winners and losers of the Fury Incarnate patch.

This patch, if you didn’t already sneak a peek in the patch notes, brings the Dreamsurge events for catch-up gear and more cosmetics, the long-awaited Heritage Armor for Night Elves and the Forsaken, and fresh-out-of-the-oven ping system as you finally learn how to play WoW like a true League of Legends fan. Besides all this, the patch introduced some class balancing changes, but players can’t really look forward to any big-scale reworks like Mages and Paladins got earlier this year. 

The biggest winners of WoW Dragonflight Patch 10.1.7

Alts

Patch 10.1.7 is the catch-up patch intended to bring your alts that have been collecting dust up to speed. Dreamsurge events can bless those poor alts with more than decent gear. But that’s not all, Dawn of the Infinite dungeon is releasing on a Heroic difficulty, which is, luckily, farmable, and you can snag 402 item level Veteran gear that can be upgraded up to 424 item level.

Collectors

The biggest change this patch has brought, at least in my eyes, is returning hundreds and hundreds of long-lost and forgotten items that were devoured after Cataclysm hit Azeroth with the Deathwing’s arrival. The full list of restored items is still a mystery, but it could be that items like Elemental Attuned Blade, Walking Boots, Blackened Defias Boots, and Spider Web Robe will make a dashing return.

The avid collectors can also look forward to collecting all those appearances from Dawn of the Infinite megadungeon since it will now be farmable, and not to even mention the Quantum Courser, a mount that has an incredibly low drop rate, but can turn into a mount from the past you’ve been missing. 

And as the icing on top of the cake for collectors, this patch is introducing Heritage Armors for Night Elves and the Forsaken that are absolutely stunning and make me feel jealous I’m not playing a Night Elf. 

Mistweaver Monks

After being one of the worst healers in the game for almost a full year, Mistweaver Monks are finally blessed with a couple of tweaks that will not make them a top-tier healer, but will at least make their lives bearable. 

The biggest changes revolve around Mana Tea ability, their only source of mana regeneration. So, after this patch ships, Mistweaver Monks will get the new and improved Mana Tea ability that will give you one stack of Mana Tea for every 25,000 mana you spend. On top of this, critical strike procs can give you one extra stack, so you’ll surely be chugging that tea. This ability will also restore mana and decrease the cost of your abilities by 50 percent. 

There’s also a new talent, Energizing Brew that will increase the speed at which Mana Tea channels and it will generate 20 percent more mana. 

Overall, these changes are shifting this spec more to a caster build, rather than melee healer playstyle which was Mistweaver’s identity during Shadowlands and Dragonflight.

The biggest losers of WoW Dragonflight Patch 10.1.7

Priest

The only spec that got unlucky with this patch is Holy Priest. Although this class got only one change, it’s critical to how it plays. With Patch 10.1.7, Angel’s Mercy has been redesigned to only reduce the cooldown of Desperate Prayer by 20 seconds.

Originally, this ability reduced the cooldown of Desperate Prayer based on the amount of damage taken. This means Priests would have their defensive cooldown up more often, and this change is just a straight nerf for their survivability in both PvE and PvP.

Trolls and bullies

You know all those players who like to whisper to you to flame you or comment on your gameplay? They will now meet their demise!

Starting with Patch 10.1.7, chat will now have real-time chat moderation and harassing whispers from players who are not your friends will now entirely be hidden. You can still see the original content of the message, but you’ll get a warning message and an option to immediately report this player.