Nightmare Rift Changes Incoming

There’s a few incoming changes to Nightmare Rifts with this week’s hotfix (generally updates on Wednesday). Check them out below as posted by MikeD:

Here are some changes coming to Nightmare rifts in the next hotfix.

• Illusory Motes and other Nightmare rift items that were intended to Bind on Account will actually be Bound to Account.
• Planarite from Nightmare rift stage completion will be doubled in the earlier Tiers, and more than tripled in the later Tiers. We’ll keep an eye on this and adjust as needed.
• Due to some exploits, I’ve reset the leaderboards for Nightmare I and II rifts.
• Slightly reduced the requirements of some Nightmare I, II, III, and IV achievements.
• Nightmare rift dailies now award some Illusory Motes and Void Stones.
• Nightmare rifts in Mathosian and Storm Legion zones will be a little tougher, and Nightmare rifts in 3.0 zones will be a little easier. Keep in mind that the rewards from bosses and caches are generally better when played in 3.0 zones.
• Rift Prison and Rift Tomb will no longer affect Nightmare rift creatures.
• Semblance of Power and Semblance of Mending item buff duration will increase with each upgrade.
• Reduced AoE range of the Maddening Shield and Maddening Heal abilities. These abilities will also now teleport you out of the rift if you fail to turn away.
• Sphere of Insanity will appear more often, at greater range, and now also applies a healing debuff.
• Reduced the damage of some boss abilities that were hitting too hard, and made Bastnath’s positive/negative mechanic more reliable.

[Source: MikeD]

A few things to note for players before this week’s hotfix:

Illusory Motes

Illusory Motes are used to upgrade essences and crafted seals. It takes quite a lot of them to upgrade the higher-tier essences (100+).

If you are looking to stock up on them, check your auction house or ask to buy some from other players before they become Bound to Account in this week’s hotfix.

Conversely, if you feel you will have more than enough Illusory Motes to upgrade high-tier essences once you have enough The Ghar notoriety and unlocked Nightmare Master achievements, then this is your last opportunity to sell them for a bit of plat.

Nightmare Rift Dailies

As is always the case when we learn about changes coming in, you probably want to hold off on turning in your Nightmare Rift Daily after reset on Wednesday (4AM Server Time) until after the hotfix (usually 7-7:30AM PST for North American shards).

The Nightmare Rift Dailies rewarding Illusory Motes and Void Stones will be quite valuable (depends on how many Illusory Motes they reward).

Nightmare Rift Stages

If you’re looking to push stages for the early Nightmare Rifts (Rank I and II), you should probably try to do so now before they increase the difficulty with this week’s hotfix.

Check out Dev MikeD’s thread on the changes here to provide any feedback you might have on these latest, upcoming changes.