Dragonflight’s first major content patch, Embers of Neltharion, and season two are just around the corner, with the patch dropping on May 2 and the season starting on May 9. As we’re nearing the launch dates, Blizzard is making some final tweaks to the raid loot system.
Thanks to Wowhead’s discovery from April 18, we know that the raid loot timer in Patch 10.1 is getting increased from two hours to four hours and will tick down even when you’re offline.
Seemingly a small and insignificant change, this will in fact have a huge impact on gearing in the next patch. While this will help smaller guilds to exchange loot at the end of raid night which lasts approximately three hours, players who logged off immediately after the raid to save the loot and select a best-in-slot piece of gear from the Great Vault won’t be happy as they might get the same piece of gear from the Vault.
This change, however, will have the most impact on high-end guilds and most likely Race to World First as players are used to logging off for days after the raid and switching around the obtained loot to optimize damage and healing.
While most players are mourning because of this new raid loot timer, PUG players should be happy as they will now have a longer window to exchange loot if they didn’t equip it immediately after winning it.
So, with Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible releasing on May 9 on all three difficulties and the raid loot timers being so aggressively switched up only three weeks before the race, it’s safe to assume the world’s best guilds are busy with planning and finding new ways to deal with this.
