The Queue: Elf-on-bear action

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

I guess I lied about the action part, but this image is DEFINITELY of an elf on a bear. So what if I stole it from Phat Loot Phriday? Do you know hard it is to come up with Queue headers?

Rezai asked:

Why does everyone think that the next WoW expansion is going to be announced at Blizz Con?

I only ask since if I remember correctly (not saying I am) on of the things that everyone said was weird was that very little of ICC (the next raid to be released) was actually talked about (since everyone was so excited about cata). Since we are no where near the last raid of the expansion, should we expect the next expansion announced a lot sooner? Am I misremebering things? Is misremember a word?

Basically, we're expecting an announcement of the next expansion at BlizzCon because by then it'll have been two years since the last expansion announcement. Blizzard announced BC at BlizzCon '05, Wrath at BlizzCon '07, and Cataclysm at BlizzCon '09, so it only makes sense that the upcoming expansion would be announced at this year's.

BlizzCon is pretty much the only major gaming event Blizzard participates in nowadays anyway; if we didn't hear about an expansion at this BlizzCon, then we probably wouldn't hear about it until next BlizzCon, which is an awfully long way away.

Ferani asked:

Has Blizzard ever considered the option to "upgrade" old armor tiers to the new tier's ilvl. I would love to be rockin the priest t5 in current raids.

Probably not, given that armor is meant to be a prestige symbol, an indicator of your current progress in the game. If you could just wear whatever tier armor you wanted all the time, regardless of the relevancy of the tier in question, that indicator would be lost. Like it or not, it's how the game works, and it's what keeps the artists, er, arting.

Bryn asked:

If you are capped for the week on Conquest Points, can you still add more by converting Valor Points for Conquest Points? Or does this Valor to Conquest conversion count toward the weekly cap? Thanks!

Converted points still count towards the cap, and you won't get points over the cap with a sneaky conversion, either.

asbj0rnbendtsen asked:

I have heard from many tanks that expertise is good for tanking because everytime the boss parries one of your attacks, he will make an extra attack on you. So my question is: Does that rule still apply? or has it been removed in a distant patch?

Parry-haste, or the fast melee swing that certain bosses would perform after being parried, was removed from the game, or at the very least is not present at all in this tier of content.

Expertise (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, commenters) isn't really worth capping as a tank due to other mechanics like Vengeance doing a pretty good job of maintaining your threat as you progress through an encounter. It does help for establishing initial threat, but that boost isn't really worth gemming or reforging for, since it would be at the expense of other stats that help you much more in the long term, such as dodge or mastery.

Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!