Will legendaries work in the WoW Dragonflight pre-patch?

Borrowed power is a World of Warcraft system introduced back during Legion in 2008. It denotes a system that empowers your character with a specific list of spells and passives during one expansion. At the beginning of the next expansion, this system is either removed, disabled, or replaced with another similar system. So, during Legion, we had Artifact Weapons, Artifact Power, and two separate legendaries. In Battle for Azeroth, there was Heart of Azeroth, Azerite Armor, and Corrupted gear.

Shadowlands was no stranger to the borrowed power system since it introduced two separate legendaries, covenant abilities, and conduits. With Dragonflight pre-patch going live on Oct. 25, and WoW getting a bunch of updates like HUD UI changes, “press and hold” spellcasting, interact keys, gamepad support, Rated Solo Shuffle, and most importantly, updated spells and talent trees. 

So, with the finally updated spells and talent trees, you’re probably wondering what will happen to all of your hard-earned legendaries and their effects in the pre-patch.

Legendaries in Shadowlands

Shadowlands launched with only one, class-specific legendary. To obtain this legendary, you first needed to grind the legendary recipe in dungeons, raids, or Torghast. Once you had your recipe, you’d head to Torghast to grind your Soul Ash, or Soul Cillinders later in the expansion. Each time a new content patch dropped, you had to once again grind Soul Ash and Soul Cillinders in Torghast to update your legendary. Once you have your Soul Ash and recipe, you needed to buy two stat missives and a piece of runed gear. Finally, you’d pay a visit to Runecarver in the Runecarver’s Oubliette, where he’d craft you your legendary piece of gear. Although you could easily switch between legendaries, each time you wanted to create a new legendary, you’d need to rinse and repeat this entire process. Later in the expansion, Blizzard added a legendary belt that would give you a legendary effect of your chosen covenant. 

Will legendaries work in the Dragonflight pre-patch?

The Dragonflight pre-patch drops on Oct. 25. Once it hits the live servers, together with updated talent trees and spells, your Shadowlands legendaries will only work in the Shadowlands zones—Oribos, the Maw, Korthia, Maldraxxus, Ardenweald, Bastion, and Revendreth. The reason why Blizzard is disabling Shadowlands legendaries outside the land of the dead is largely because many legendary passives are already hiding in your talent trees. So, to avoid unnecessary balancing and overlapping, the devs simply disabled it outside Shadowlands.