Find the least disappointing item.
Season 2 changes that calculation this week.
Starting with the second Season 2 Great Vault on August 25 in North America and August 26 in Europe, eligible players can choose a Nebulous Voidcore instead of taking one of their gear rewards.
And depending on what is sitting inside your Vault, that little purple currency may be considerably more valuable than the pair of boots Blizzard has kindly offered you for the fourth time.
The important requirement is that you need to have at least three Great Vault reward panes unlocked before the Voidcore option becomes available.
After that, the question is no longer simply:
Which item should I take?
It becomes:
Should I take any of these items at all?
Nebulous Voidcores Are Finally Available From the Great Vault
Blizzard deliberately disabled the Voidcore option for the first Season 2 Great Vault.
That restriction ends this week.
As Blizzard explained in its Season 2 Great Vault rollout, Nebulous Voidcores become available beginning with the August 25 reset for players who have unlocked at least three Vault panes.
The Voidcore acts as a targeted Bonus Roll currency.
Instead of accepting whatever random item appears in your Vault, you can take the Voidcore and spend it on content containing something you actually want.
That is a fairly substantial change to the weekly gearing decision.
The Vault offers certainty.
The Voidcore offers another chance at something better.
Welcome back to probability management.
A Heroic Raid Bonus Roll Can Give Myth 1/6 Gear
The reason the Voidcore is so attractive is that Bonus Rolls in Season 2 do not simply reproduce the ordinary boss drop.
In The Venomous Abyss, they can reward gear matching the stronger Great Vault reward level.
That means using a Nebulous Voidcore on a Heroic Venomous Abyss boss can produce item level 318 Myth 1/6 gear.
Heroic bosses themselves normally drop Hero-track equipment.
The Bonus Roll jumps beyond that.
We already looked at how Blizzard cut raid Bonus Rolls from two Voidcores to just one in Season 2, which made targeting specific raid bosses substantially cheaper.
Now that players can actually begin obtaining those Voidcores from the Vault, that system becomes part of the weekly gearing routine rather than something sitting in a guide waiting to become relevant.
A +10 Bonus Roll Can Also Give 318 Myth Gear
Raiders are not the only players who benefit.
Using a Voidcore after completing an eligible +10 or higher Mythic+ dungeon can also produce item level 318 Myth 1/6 gear.
That is the same item level available from the +10 Great Vault row.
So imagine your weekly Vault contains three 318 items.
One has bad secondary stats.
One fills a slot where you already have something decent.
And one is technically an upgrade in the way that finding 20 kroner in an old jacket is technically a financial windfall.
You can take one.
Or you can take the Voidcore and use it for another targeted chance at the dungeon trinket, weapon or other item you actually care about.
That is why we previously argued in our Season 2 Great Vault strategy guide that the best choice would not always be the highest item level sitting in front of you.
This week, that argument becomes real.
Mythic Raid Bonus Rolls Get Completely Ridiculous
The numbers become much more dramatic for Mythic raiders.
The current Season 2 Bonus Roll structure looks like this:
- Nightmare Prey or Tier 8 Bountiful Delve: ilvl 305, Hero 1/6
- Heroic Venomous Abyss: ilvl 318, Myth 1/6
- +10 or higher Mythic+: ilvl 318, Myth 1/6
- Mythic Venomous Abyss bosses 1–6: ilvl 334, Myth 6/6
- Mythic Coiled Altar or Ula'tek: ilvl 344, beyond the normal Myth 6/6 ceiling
That final line is where things become slightly absurd.
The Coiled Altar and Ula'tek use Season 2's special late-boss reward scaling, meaning their Mythic loot can reach item level 344.
As the current Season 2 Voidcore reward breakdown shows, a targeted roll on those encounters can therefore be worth more raw item level than almost anything sitting in an ordinary weekly Vault.
Of course, there is the minor requirement of actually killing Mythic Coiled Altar or Ula'tek first.
Blizzard has not completely abandoned the concept of effort.
This Does Not Mean You Should Always Take the Voidcore
This is the important part.
Do not blindly take a Nebulous Voidcore just because it exists.
If your Vault contains a Best-in-Slot weapon, a crucial trinket, the tier piece that completes your four-piece or simply an enormous guaranteed upgrade, taking the actual item can still be the obvious decision.
A Bonus Roll is targeted.
It is not psychic.
You are trading a guaranteed known reward for another attempt at a chosen loot pool.
Sometimes that is brilliant.
Sometimes it produces wrists.
The better question is whether your Vault item is valuable enough that you would regret giving it up.
If the answer is no, the Voidcore suddenly becomes extremely attractive.
Three Vault Slots Is the Important Requirement
Not every character automatically receives the Voidcore option.
You need at least three unlocked Great Vault reward panes.
That means characters that did only enough content for one or two choices will still be choosing between the rewards actually presented to them.
This also gives players another reason to expand the Vault instead of stopping after the first available slot.
You do not necessarily need all nine.
But reaching three unlocks creates an entirely different reward option.
For alt armies, that may change how much weekly content is worth doing.
Three useful Vault slots are no longer merely three rolls at random gear.
They also unlock the ability to reject all of them professionally.
The Great Vault Is Now a Gearing Decision Instead of a Loot Reveal
This is probably the most interesting thing Blizzard has done with the Vault in Season 2.
Previously, opening it was largely a reveal.
You completed your activities.
The game generated several items.
You selected the best one.
Now the Vault sits inside a larger gearing economy involving targeted Bonus Rolls, raid loot tables and the value of future opportunities.
We have already seen Season 2 hand out upgrade currency through routes like the 50 uncapped Mistcrests available from the Cracked Keystone quest.
Nebulous Voidcores add another layer.
You are no longer evaluating an item only against your current gear.
You are evaluating it against what one targeted roll could potentially buy you elsewhere.
That is a much more interesting choice.
It is also why your Great Vault may take fifteen minutes to open this week.
Check Before You Click
When you open the second Season 2 Great Vault, resist the traditional instinct to click the largest item-level number immediately.
Look at what you actually received.
Check your Best-in-Slot targets.
Look at which raid bosses and Mythic+ dungeons you can realistically Bonus Roll.
Then compare the guaranteed reward with the targeted opportunity.
If the Vault contains something exceptional, take it.
If it contains three varieties of disappointment, the Nebulous Voidcore is finally there.
For the first time this season, walking away from the Great Vault without taking any of its gear may be the smartest gearing decision you make all week.
Post a Comment