Heart of Azeroth Guide for Battle for Azeroth (BfA 8.3)

Patch 8.3 introduces a new Minor slot for players that can be obtained at Level 75 of the Heart of Azeroth, as well as 2 new Stamina traits at Levels 71 and 80. The Heart of Azeroth will cap at Level 80 in Patch 8.3, increasing from Level 70 currently. Seven new Essences have been added for the Heart of Azeroth.

Patch 8.2 has added the Essence system to the Heart of Azeroth, which allows players to collect items that can be socketed into the Heart in order to obtain new talent-like Major and Minor powers. The socketing slots will be unlocked at different levels of the Heart, which are as follows:

• The first Major slot is unlocked at Level 35, which will activate both the Major and the Minor power of your main Essence.
• The Minor slots will be unlocked at Level 55 and Level 65 of your Heart of Azeroth.

It is also worth noting that you will unlock additional nodes on your Heart that grant you additional Stamina (+3%) at Level 52, 57, 62, and 67.

You can find more information on obtaining and upgrading Essences in our dedicated Essences guide for Patch 8.2. This guide contains walkthroughs of obtaining the items that grant you each Essence, how to upgrade them, what their effects are, and which classes will benefit most from each.

The required level for armour traits to unlock in the future will no longer increase and will instead remain at the current levels.

Prior to starting your journey through the Battle for Azeroth zones, you will need to have completed the Battle for Lordaeron scenario, which will unlock the questline to earn the Heart of Azeroth. The questline will take you to Silithus, where you will meet Magni and enter the Chamber of the Heart of Azeroth. Here, you will discover and empower the Heart, earning you your new legendary necklace and unlocking questing in Battle for Azeroth.

When you first receive the Heart of Azeroth in the chamber, you will receive an item level 280 piece of gear. It will always have your spec's main stat, Stamina, and all the secondary stats, except Versatility. Just as you did in the chamber, you will need to empower the necklace with Azerite, which can be obtained in a multitude of ways throughout Battle for Azeroth, such as:

• one-time quests while levelling;
• world quests at maximum level;
• the mission table;
• Battlegrounds and Arena matches;
• Warmode caches found in world PvP;
• killing rare NPCs;
• dungeons and raids of all difficulties;
• Warfronts and the quests to complete them;
• Island Expeditions;
• weekly Treasure Mission quest.

These are just some of the ways that you can earn Azerite, but it is essentially found in almost every activity in the game, as long as you are in Kul Tiras or Zandalar.

There is a table below that details the amount of experience required to level your Heart of Azeroth up in Patch 8.2, in order to unlock the new Essence slots. The table assumes that you are doing this at the start of the patch, with no catch-up buffs and a Level 50 Heart of Azeroth.

As you continue to advance in Heart of Azeroth levels, you will require more Azerite to get through each level. In Legion, a system known as Artifact Knowledge would increase the amount of Artifact Power (now Azerite) you would earn in order to speed up the levelling process for those that were behind.

In Battle for Azeroth, the Artifact Knowledge system is still present in effect, but it works slightly differently. Rather than reaching the huge numbers that were happening in Legion, the amount of Azerite required to level your Heart of Azeroth is reduced each week. This allows players that are just returning or levelling alts to quickly get their Heart up to a competitive level.

For Patch 8.2, the Artifact Knowledge multipliers are as follows:

Each level of the Heart of Azeroth gained through Azerite grants it another 2 item levels. This means that, if you get your Heart to level 20, it will have gained an additional 40 item levels. For each item level, the main and secondary stats on the item will increase.

Azerite is not the only way to increase your Heart of Azeroth item level; the Champions of Azeroth reputation will also increase the item level, depending on what your current reputation level is with them.

For each reputation level you reach, you will gain an additional 15 item levels, except for when you reach Exalted (when you gain no item levels). This means there is an additional 45 item levels to achieve through this reputation.

If you are only concerned with item level, then the only requirement for this reputation is Revered. In Patch 8.1, this progress is now account-wide. If you have unlocked the upgrade quests on one character, it will unlock them on all other characters on the account.

You can find out more about this reputation in our Champions of Azeroth guide.

Once you have obtained your Heart of Azeroth, you will be able to earn and activate Azerite armour pieces while leveling and at maximum level. These pieces of gear have multiple traits on them that provide offensive, defensive, and utility bonuses that can impact the way in which your class will perform.

Depending on the piece of gear, its quality and its item level, the piece of gear will differ in the following ways:

• If it is a rare piece of gear, it will have 4 rings of Azerite traits to choose from. An epic piece of gear will have 5.
• The item level will impact certain aspects of the traits, increasing the power of them to suit the increase in item level.
• The item level will change the required Heart of Azeroth level to unlock the rings of traits on the piece of gear.

Azerite armour can be obtained from a variety of sources, with item levels varying based on the difficulty. The current item level and loot system is as follows:

• Dungeons
  • Normal difficulty: these will award item level 370 Azerite armour pieces at level 120.
  • Heroic difficulty: these will award item level 385 Azerite armour pieces.
  • Mythic difficulty: these will award item level 400 Azerite armour pieces.
  • Mythic+ difficulty: Azerite armour cannot drop in these dungeons, but you will receive an amount of Titan Residuum currency from your weekly M+ chest, depending on the difficulty level completed. You can read more about this currency below.
• World Quests: these will award up to item level 385 pieces of Azerite armour, with emissaries granting caches containing up to item level 415 pieces of gear.
• World Bosses: these will reward item level 355 pieces of Azerite armour, with the Warfront bosses granting item level 370 Azerite gear in Arathi Highlands and item level 400 gear in Darkshore.
  • The 2 new Nazjatar world bosses will award item level 415 pieces of Azerite gear.
• Raids: currently, Azshara's Eternal Palace drops Azerite gear according to the following difficulties and item levels:
  • Looking for Raid: 400 item level.
  • Normal: 415 item level.
  • Heroic: 430 item level.
  • Mythic: 445 item level.
• Nazjatar
  • Benthic armour tokens will allow players to obtained upgradable Azerite armour, which will start at item level 385 and can go as high as item level 420.

Titan Residuum was introduced in Patch 8.1 and acts as a means to target specific pieces of Azerite gear. Players can now use this currency to purchase pieces of Azerite gear at varying item levels, from 385 to 415. The costs of buying the gear is as follows, with all values listed representing the amount of Titan Residuum required:

• Item level 415: 1,725 (Random)
• Item level 430: 9,000 (Random)
• Item level 445: 47,500 (Random), 200,000 (Specific)

As shown above, players can purchase tokens that generate a random piece of Azerite gear at the chosen item level or they can save up and buy a best-in-slot item level 445 piece of gear, which they can choose from any Mythic+ loot table.

Titan Residuum is obtained in the following ways:

• Disenchanting or salvaging Azerite gear that was obtained in Patch 8.1 or later. This grants the following amounts of Residuum:
  • 340: 1 Titan Residuum
  • 355: 3 Titan Residuum
  • 370: 12 Titan Residuum
  • 385: 35 Titan Residuum
  • 400: 115 Titan Residuum
  • 415: 365 Titan Residuum
  • 430: 2,000 Titan Residuum
  • 445: 10,000 Titan Residuum
• Your weekly Mythic+ cache, which guarantees an amount of Residuum based on the completed key level. A Mythic +10 weekly cache grants approximately 17,000 Titan Residuum.
• The weekly treasure map mission from completing the Island Expedition Quest will grant you a mission that can reward Titan Residuum for completing it.

The traits found on Azerite armour are separated into 4 main categories, depending on which ring they belong to. They are as follows:

1. Outer Rings: these traits contain the most impactful traits for most classes, with all the content, zone and specialisation-specific traits being on this ring.
2. Middle Ring: these traits are shared between roles, with traits that directly impact the output of DPS and healers, or reduce the damage intake for tanks.
3. Inner Ring: all the traits here are defensive traits, regardless of your role or spec.
4. Centre Ring: this trait is the same for all players, on all pieces of gear. It will be the Azerite Empowered, which will increase the item level of that piece of gear by 5.

The gear will always move through the rings in the same order when assigning levels for the Heart of Azeroth to unlock traits. The first of the two Outer Rings will always have the lowest requirement, while the Centre Ring will have the highest.

Each ring will have a set Heart of Azeroth level that it unlocks at. This level requirement is determined by the item level of the piece of gear and it will increase as the item level does. Currently, Azshara's Eternal Palace raid gear has the following level requirements for the 5 rings, depending on the item slot.

For the helm slot, it is as follows:

• Raid Finder: Level 15, 26, 30, 34 and 38.
• Normal: Level 15, 29, 32, 35 and 38.
• Heroic: Level 15, 30, 34, 38 and 42.
• Mythic): Level 15, 31, 36, 41 and 46.

For the shoulder slot, it is as follows:

• Raid Finder: Level 15, 28, 32, 36 and 40.
• Normal: Level 15, 31, 34, 37 and 40.
• Heroic: Level 15, 32, 36, 40 and 44.
• Mythic: Level 15, 33, 38, 43 and 48.

For the chest slot, it is as follows:

• Raid Finder: Level 15, 27, 31, 35 and 39.
• Normal: Level 15, 30, 33, 36 and 39.
• Heroic: Level 15, 31, 35, 39 and 43.
• Mythic: Level 15, 32, 37, 42 and 47.

The Heart of Azeroth levels listed above are in the same order as the ring list we added above this section. The Outer-most Ring requirement caps at Level 15 (depending on the gear slot), which is intentional from Blizzard, as they wanted players to unlock the main damage increase from the first Outer Ring without needing to farm a great deal.

The required levels to unlock rings will no longer increase after Patch 8.2, as the new Essences system has replaced the higher levels of Heart progression.

If you have made a mistake in your trait selection, want to swap specs, or have just been hit by a hotfix to a trait, you will no doubt want to change the active traits on your Azerite armour.

In order to do this, you must visit the Azerite Reforger, located next to the Transmogrification NPC in Boralus (Alliance) or Dazar'alor (Horde). You can reset your chosen powers here and allow yourself to either swap spec-specific traits or select completely new ones on all rings.

It is important to note, however, that the price of doing this can increase hugely if you do it multiple times. Every time you reforge a piece of Azerite gear, you will double the gold cost of doing so. The first use of the Reforger will cost only 5 gold, but this can quickly add up to tens of thousands of gold.

This cost will slowly decay, halving every 3 days, but this is very slow compared to how quickly it can increase. Make sure you pay attention when making Azerite trait choices, so you do not waste gold on doing it again. To avoid the cost of resetting your Azerite traits, you can simply keep multiple sets of gear and swap between them when you are doing different content. This also works when playing multiple specs.