wow The Formless Void Essence Blue Posts: October 22nd

[Stan 5,240]

Patch 8.3 comes with a new Essence which allows you to borrow the currently slotted Essence of your target, even if it's not available to your current role. It doesn't work with passive Essences and requires coordination to ensure the cooldown incurred doesn’t interfere with whatever you're doing next.

The Essence can be obtained from Ny'alotha, the Waking City. Blizzard explained how the targeting works and shared more information about the Essence. The Formless Void is a general Essence, meaning it's available to all specializations. Tanks, for instance, will be able to borrow Healer Essences, and so on.

The Formless Void

Rank 1

• Major Power: Replica of Knowledge - Replicate the energy in your target's Heart of Azeroth, gaining access to rank 1 of their currently slotted Major Essence for the next 15 sec. The Formless Void will go on cooldown for 50% longer than the base cooldown of the Essence you replicated. Does not work on passive Essences.
• Minor Power: Symbiotic Presence - Each time any ally within 40 yds uses an Azerite Essence, gain 89 pri for 20 sec. Unique: Corruption reduced by 10.

Rank 2

• Major Power: Replica of Knowledge - Replica of Knowledge can now copy up to rank 2 of your target's current Major Essence, and the increased cooldown is lowered by 10%.
• Minor Power: Symbiotic Presence - pri bonus increased by 25%.

Rank 3

• Major Power: Replica of Knowledge - Replica of Knowledge can now copy up to rank 3 of your target's current Major Essence, and the increased cooldown is lowered by 10%.
• Minor Power: Symbiotic Presence - When an ally within 40 yds uses an Azerite Essence, you and that ally gain 0 Haste for 20 sec.

Check out our Patch 8.3 Content Hub to learn more about Visions of N'Zoth.

Blizzard (Source)

So, I guess the question is, what type of scenarios might unfold that would be appropriate for this essence?
What would you consider the use case for it, and how will you react when its obviously either too strong or too weak for that use case?

The Formless Void mostly exists for the purposes of flexibility, which is why all roles can use it. It requires a lot of planning, it requires you to coordinate and know who you plan on borrowing what Essence from, and for what situation, and make sure that the cooldown incurred doesn’t interfere with whatever the next situation you have to manage is.

As a note, you can also borrow something from a player of the enemy faction. The targeting is very unrestricted other than the obvious - it has to be a player, they need to have an Essence currently slotted that is valid to copy (fully passives Major Essences are ineligible).

Does the “Formless Void” essence require the correct role to copy an essence. For example, could you copy the tank Azshara raid essence as a dps to gain access to a defensive cooldown for a particularly nasty damage taken check, or could you copy a dps essence as a tank or a healer in order to push a particularly challenging dps check.

You can borrow any eligible Essence, even if it is not normally available to your current role. For example, a Protection Paladin player can borrow a healer specific thing such as the new Spirit of Preservation, or a DPS specific thing such as Essence of the Focusing Iris.

[Bobbis 208]

Hmm TANKS WITH LAZURS!

Could be fun for M+ ? and at rank 3, probably still a shorter CD than Anima... not checked the maths