valor-point
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Should valor upgrades be removed permanently?
I'm a raider at heart. Sure, I took a break back in Burning Crusade, but when I returned to raiding it was with a vengeance, albeit in a slightly less hardcore fashion. Mists of Pandaria started out with several different raids that are continuing to keep my guild occupied and will likely keep us occupied right up to patch 5.2's release -- and that's an excellent thing. Dragon Soul, no matter how interesting a few of those fights were, was simply not enough to keep my guild occupied right up until the end of Cataclysm. In fact, Mists of Pandaria started out with a whole flurry of activity to keep everyone well and truly busy for the first couple of months. Daily quests were something that I threw myself into without flinching -- partially out of interest for the stories and quests, but also, yes, because I wanted to make sure I upgraded my gear as quickly as possible. Doing this flurry of dailies meant that I was capping valor incredibly early in the week, and spending it as fast as I obtained it. But there's kind of a problem with that now, and it's being addressed to some small degree in patch 5.2. See, part of that whole raiding process is making sure you're in the gear you need. Now, it also includes upgrading your gear as quickly as you can, putting even more emphasis on capping valor just as quickly as possible. Is all that pressure a good thing?
Blood Pact: Reputable gear and more for raiding
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill opens up Shado-Pan dailies and then promptly decides that things like having 4-slot farms for all her alts and leveling her shockadin are more important. What a slacker. Three weeks ago, I wrote briefly about the rewards from having reputation with Pandaria's factions. Three weeks ago, all I had was beta to go on, and on beta all the factions had dailies open to me independently of each other. When Mists of Pandaria went live, we found out that it really should have been named the Golden Gate Lotus faction, complete with "You Shall Not Pass into August Celestial reputation" signs. Then we had a hotfix of the Justice Points and Honor Points gear to bring them in line with each other ilvl-wise, a hotfix that removed reputation requirements for justice point gear, and some more hotfixes opened up some of the valor gear behind faction reputation lines. While your heading was spinning with all the faction-made gear changes going on, I was writing it all down to figure out which pieces I should be questing for.
Quartermasters and where to find them
Okay, if you're running dungeons for justice or valor points, PvPing for honor or conquest, or grinding reputation with one of Pandaria's many factions, one of the questions that you may be asking is where do I go to buy stuff? If you are, then we have a list of vendors for you. First up, the Shado-Pan Quartermaster is Rushi the Fox, at the Shado-Pan Garrison in the Townlong Steppes. He sells a variety of items for justice and valor points. Commander Lo Ping is an all in one Justice Quartermaster selling every faction's justice point gear, at Niuzao Temple also in the Townlong Steppes. Commander Oxheart is a Valor Quartermaster who also sells tier gear for tier tokens at Niuzao Temple in the Townlong Steppes. She's standing right next to Commander Lo Ping, in fact. The Klaxxi Quartermaster is Ambersmith Zikk in Klaxxi'vess, right in the heart of the Dread Wastes. The Golden Lotus Quartermaster is Jaluu the Generous in front of Mogu'shan Palace in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. The August Celestials have two vendors, one for Horde and one for Alliance. Sage Lotusbloom can be found in the Shrine of Two Moons selling to the Horde, while Sage Whiteheart is to be found in the Shrine of Seven Stars - both are in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. For PvP vendors, both Horde and Alliance can be found on the Serpent's Spine itself. For Alliance, Honor Quartermaster Hayden Christopher, Conquest Quartermastery Lucan Malory, and Glorious Conquest Quartermaster Ethan Natice are all to be found on the Serpent's Spine in the Valley of the Four Winds. The Horde Quartermasters Lok'Nor Bloodfist (Honor), Doris Chiltonius (Conquest) and Acon Deathwielder (Glorious Conquest) are on the wall between Townlong Steppes and Kun-Lai Summit. Also remember that during the patch 5.0.5 hotfixes, several reputations has their requirements for various Valor point purchases dropped. The Klaxxi now sell necklaces at honored, the August Celestials sell bracers, the Shado-Pan sell cloaks and the Golden Lotus sell rings, all of which are iLevel 489 epics. So check those vendors in case you may have missed an epic you can pick up. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Encrypted Text: Top rogue gear in patch 4.3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. If you studied my Excel usage patterns, you would be able to easily predict when a new patch is scheduled to drop. As soon as the release date is relatively fixed, I start working on my gear acquisition plan. My rogue takes priority when it comes to gearing up quickly. I'll spend as much gold or as many valor points as necessary to make sure I'm ahead of everyone else. I typically spend my holy paladin's first batch of available valor points on the BoE valor piece for my rogue. Healers don't need gear anyway, right? If I can get my gear faster, my raid will be able to down bosses faster, and I'll get my hands on the Fangs of the Father sooner. It's a win-win scenario, and so when it comes to my rogue, I spare no expense. Please note that there are now three different levels of gear available, with the introduction of the Raid Finder difficulty level. The gear is identical between all three tiers and is simply scaled up or down appropriately.
Patch 4.3 PTR: Zandalari heroics no longer in own tier; all heroics award 150 VP
The new Hour of Twilight / patch 4.3 heroic dungeons will have their own category in the random Dungeon Finder, while the Zandalari heroics tier has mysteriously disappeared. Now, when queueing for a random Cataclysm heroic, the system will include the two Troll instances if your item level is satisfactory to enter. In addition, the Hour of Twilight dungeons, as well as any Cataclysm heroic, now reward 150 valor points per completion, up to seven times week. Any heroic will now grant the same amount of valor points. Moving the Zandalari heroics into the general heroic pool seemed like it would happen eventually, considering that having multiple tiers of dungeons to queue up for could get confusing over time. Now, players will be placed into dungeons based on their ilevel and not necessarily which dungeon category they queue for. This presents an interesting dilemma, though. Players who want to do a quick heroic right now can queue for a random, non-Troll heroic and be in and out with half the VP (and half the stress -- I'm looking at you, Jin'do) in half the time of a Troll heroic. In 4.3, it doesn't appear that you'll have the option. Then again, everyone at a high enough gear level to care about this stuff will just queue for the Hour of Twilight heroics anyway, right?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: How to spend your valor points
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. Patch 4.2 is in full swing by now, with most players having unlocked either the Shadow Wardens or the Druids of the Talon for the various vendors. Many guilds are already working on heroic modes, and even more are fighting their way through the raid to one degree or another. And what does this all mean to us warriors? Well, it means new gear, for one thing. The past couple of weeks, we've discussed gear you could pick up in the Firelands raid itself as well as via reputation rewards and unlockable vendors (and a quest chain). Now, it's time to discuss what you can buy for valor points, since we're getting close to the third week and you should have been able to pick up some points as well as had a shot at Occu'thar. Before we go into the big list o' loot, I wanted to say that a couple of weeks in, I'm feeling like I'm getting a handle on how warriors perform in the Firelands raid. It's like I figured: Once again, warriors need to get geared up to equal other DPSers. I feel that for right now, arms DPS is the easiest to sustain, then SMF fury, and finally TG fury. I expect TG will pull ahead once I'm using a couple of Firelands weapons. On a fight like Rhyolith or Staghelm, I can sustain more DPS than on an Alysrazor or Shannox, where I have to target switch more, move around to chase down mobs or avoid damage and even interrupt. I think perhaps the nerfs to fury were more than was needed, but we'll see once a couple more weeks are gone and we're talking about set bonuses and Firelands level weapons. Speaking of set bonuses, let's start talking about valor point rewards.
Patch 4.2: No justice points over the cap, more info soon
There has been a lot of speculation, confusion, and referencing of comments and posts made by Blizzard in the past over what's happening to valor and justice points in patch 4.2. We know that valor point gear will be made justice point gear, but the actual mechanics of the valor point to justice point conversion has been quite murky. In our daily Q&A column, The Queue, it's our most-asked question by far. Bashiok provided a little clarification today in the form of these two comments. Bashiok No, Justice isn't removed. You'd want to spend Valor before 4.2 hits if you're going to convert over the 4k cap. We have a blog post planned that goes into it a bit more we'll be posting this week. source Bashiok Quote: So... you're going to get JP over the 4k cap? No. source The key thing to take away here is that if you're not going to be allowed to have more than 4,000 JP when patch 4.2 drops. It appears, although is not explicitly stated, that valor points will be converted to justice points, as long as you have no more than 4,000 justice points. Extra valor points after that will be lost. The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!
Patch 4.1: Blizzard explains new valor point mechanics
The era of the daily heroic is over! After much speculation that the one run per day random dungeon valor point rewards would turn into seven runs per week randoms instead, it turns out we are all getting exactly what we hoped for. Blizzard has finally commented on (and explained) the incoming valor point change, which will hopefully make gearing up and gaining valor points easier for players who don't have the time or want to play each and every night to run a random for their points. Lylirra explains:
Cataclysm: Justice and valor point drop rates revealed
Blizzard recently announced the justice and valor point amounts for all types of raid and heroic content for Cataclysm. Justice and valor points are replacing the current badge/emblem system, allowing players to purchase items and gear for points. When a new tier of raid content is launched, valor points become justice points, reducing the emblem clutter that had been so rampant in Wrath of the Lich King. Hit the jump for the official blue post.
