As discussed on our podcast over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at altering the Blood Thirsty Challenge in a manner to achieve a few of our goals:

1. Change the challenge significantly enough so a Blood Thirsty challenger could not qualify for the Iron Man challenge if they were to use the FULL rules.
2. Provide a “buff” or nerf to the challenge just enough to allow challengers a reasonable chance of survival when killing through Legion zones.
3. Provide a “buff” or nerf to the challenge to get more challengers up to Legion zones.

We have never had a Blood Thirsty Champion and if we keep the rules as they are now, we never will. In order to accommodate Goal #2, we need to find a significant enough buff to combat that will allow a challenger to have a fighting chance, but not enough to make things a cake-walk.

Initially we were looking at allowing talents to all Blood Thirsty challengers, however, testing has shown that talents really do not provide enough of a combat benefit that is needed for a person to get through Legion zones. Additionally, testing was done on allowing green gear or some variation of that (one weapon only; 2-3 green items allowed; all gear green). There were some suggestions on limiting the changes to level 100+, however, I wanted to keep things as simple as I could.

So effective immediately, all Blood Thirsty characters will be allowed to equip green/uncommon gear in ALL equipment slots.

Overall, what we’ve found is that Green gear is the way to go. Limiting green gear to either a single weapon or 2-3 pieces of gear overall (which has it’s own inherent tracking problems) would effectively make the challenge Hunters only (not desirable). Granting access to a full set of green gear gives challengers leveling through Legion a fighting chance. It changes your fight time from over a minute (plus survival cooldowns) to around 30 seconds. This is a one-on-one fight, so it will still be extremely important to keep your wits about you as you level through Legion zones.

Allowing green gear to all levels is more about keeping things as simple as possible than providing a boost. This should also provide enough of a boost so we see more participation in the challenge at higher levels as most folks really only make it to around level 30 or so and then give up after dying as it’s quite the slog currently.

Additionally, we have applied the “Back to Basics” Iron Man Challenge rule changes to the Blood Thirsty challenge, meaning you can now use your Heirloom and flying mounts (among other changes) if you so desire. Please keep in mind this doesn’t mean we are increasing quest completions, so use your quests wisely.

A huge thank you to Nisey​ for helping to test many different variations on the PTR.

Good luck and happy grinding!