World of Warcraft: Corrupted Items Explained

You might have heard that corrupted items are live on the PTR, at least partly, and we get some information on the new system before it will release with patch 8.3. Some think this is the next form of Titanforging Ion was referencing during his last presentation, but it might also be special gear you use going into the shadow world. We are not sure yet, but the gear is very interesting to say the least. We try to explain as easy as possible what the gear is and why you need it.

The funcionality of the gear is pretty self explanatory with the name. Your gear is corrupted, giving you a buff but also weaken your character in some way or form. The more corrupted gear you get, the more corrupted you become. This will bring some negative side effects with them, like debuffs you don’t want te bring to the raid. Getting a lot of corruption isn’t that handy, but there is ways to fight it. At this moment, the PTR doesn’t tell us how to battle the corruption, it only tells us what bonus it gives, and how it gives a dissadvantage.

This is what a corrupted item looks like:

In red you see the amount of corruption while on the bottom in green, you see a buff you get for wearing the item. The more corruption you get, the worse your character becomes. So you’ll always have to decide if a Corrupted Item is worth it. The corruption will even show on your character, like you can see below (pictures courtesy of WoWHead).

These are the bonusses you will get from these items:

Your Avoidance is increased by an amount equal to X% of your Haste.
Increases the amount of Haste you gain from all sources by X%.
Increases the amount of Mastery you gain from all sources by X%.
Increases the amount of Critical Strike you gain from all sources by X%.
Increases the amount of Versatility you gain from all sources by X%.
X% of total Health Regeneration now continues during Combat.
Increases your healing received from all sources by X%.
Increases your Leech by X%.
Your spells and abilities have a chance to grant you a Flash of Clarity, reducing the cooldown of your next 3 spells cast by 2 sec.
Increases the damage you deal with Critical Strikes by X%.
Reduces your damage taken from periodic effects by X%.

These are examples of negative effects you can get:

Grasping Tendrils – 0 corruption and more
Taking damage has a chance to slow your movement speed for 5 sec. The magnitude of the slow increases with further corruption.

Corrupted Zone – 20 corruption and more
Your spells and abilities have a chance to create a corrupted zone at your location, dealing Shadow damage to you every 2 sec. The size and damage of the corrupted zone increase with higher Corruption.

Grand Delusions – 40 corruption and more
Taking damage has a chance to summon a Thing From Beyond, which pursues you for 10 seconds, its speed increases with further corruption.

Creeping Death – 60 corruption and more
Damage taken increased by X% and healing reduced by X%. X scales based on corruption.

These are debuffs you don’t want to have, so we are curious what we can do to fight the corruption. There are files that indicate we can cleanse or weaken the corruption, but there are no details about that yet.

How do you feel about these items?