Hitting level 100 on one character will unlock this system. Once unlocked, the system will be available to all characters, and the equipment pieces themselves will require level 20. If your goal is to have waterwalking while leveling, you can just enable the waterwalking Mount Equipment (there will be one available via Anglers reputation that will be bind-on-account), and it’ll work exactly as before, with the benefit of making all of that character’s mounts walk on water.
It does not say anything about the buff being destroyed if you take damage. I see no evidence that this will happen, and I think it would be crazy of them to do something so absurd.
It does make it clear that the device is per character. (Which I think is a bit of a pity. It might be nice to have different buffs on different mounts.)
Gotta say, this sounds like a bad change IMO. It’s yet more homogenizing and sucking the RPG aspect out of the game.
Not every utility needs to be available to every class/mount. “Inflatable Mount Shoes” is just so dumb. I don’t even own the Water Strider and hate this change.
All this time, it would’ve been better to just introduce more water walking mounts instead of messing up with gameplay systems that work.
I prefer the idea of earning new mounts that make sense that they can walk on water (hovercrafts, etc) than have some goofy system that’ll make my yak run across the sea.
Blizzard’s line of thinking is most likely the following.
“Why release a new water walking mount when people only ever use the waterstrider?”
With other ground/flying mounts there is often prestige included in getting them, such as a boss drop.
Whereas water walking mounts have only ever been striders, in both MoP and WoD.
it’s only been striders because blizzard never bothered to give the concept of water walking mounts a bit more love. If they made a new fancier water walking mount, I’d use that instead (unless they somehow managed to make it uglier than the waterstrider). It would also give us something to work on. There was a thread where people gave suggestions about new water walking mounts, there were plenty cool ideas.
Granted, some people may think it’s annoying to have to switch to another mount whenever they have to walk across a body of water, but I like the idea of having mounts specific to certain functions.
It’s fun until you get zones filled with lots of water, such as Suramar, where you’re forced to be on that one mount constantly because you’re being harassed by guards every corner turn.
Well, what I’m suggesting is that they’d add more water walking mounts so that we wouldn’t be stuck with that plain ol’ waterstrider, so I don’t think we really disagree in that regard.
as much as i could dislike losing the waterstrider ablity on <100 toons, I like this change as it will overall add mount customization, it’s a step in the right direction, and the system is expandable.
