valor-cap
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Will we see a valor cap change?
Recently on twitter, Bashiok raised my hopes with a simple tweet. .@Itaku Agree a cap increase buff could be cool, but increasing the Valor cap is non-trivial. Would require a client-side patch. - Bashiok (@Bashiok) July 11, 2014 Because frankly, this late into the expansion, getting an alt fully geared up should be something we can do at whatever pace we want. I get Bashiok's point about how it's not as easy as just flipping a switch, but frankly, I don't think the current valor cap serves much of a purpose. The weekly/total caps of 1000/3000 serve a gatekeeping role that was much more important back in Mists of Pandaria's salad days, when the content was new and we were concerned about getting metaphoric tummyaches. Now, it's the equivalent of leftovers, and if people want to just pile on those leftovers, we should be applauding their efforts and letting them. I say, remove the weekly cap entirely, raise the total cap to 4000 and let people run wild if they so desire. Treat valor as a buffet. (I may have been hungry when I started thinking about this issue.) We'll see a complete redesign to Valor in Warlords anyway, so might as well just relax the gateway for now.
Valor-capping a realm's worth of 90s every single week
And you thought the guy with 50 level 85+ characters was crazy. Last week, we met a player who's packed his entire account (five realms and 50 character slots, all told) with level 85+ characters. This week, we visit yet another plane of insanity: a player who's valor-capped every character on a realm (11 level 90 characters) in a single week -– more specifically, every single week, because Bluespartan of Lightbringer (US) has been valor-capping his entire crew like clockwork every week for the last four weeks in a row. "Didn't really set out to do it, but with the changes to patch 5.3, it became viable despite working full time," he muses. "Under the pre-5.3 options for capping valor on the first toon, I would have run one heroic dungeon and one normal scenario for 80 + 50 valor. But now, a single heroic scenario gives about the same valor as both of those, plus better gear rewards." Is this the dawning of the Age of the Altaholic? Maybe it's the fact that both of these altaholic players play characters named with forms of the word "blue." Or maybe it's just that Bluespartan is a college math teacher and enjoys figuring out a formula for success. Whatever it is, let's take a look inside the week of the player who just might be WoW's reigning King of Valor.
WoW Insider Round Table: Diminishing returns on valor?
The WoW Insider staff at the Round Table this week are Dawn Moore, Matt Low, Sarah "Sally" Pine and Olivia Grace. We all sincerely hope you notice that we got lower thirds. Welcome back to another WoW Insider Round Table! In this second round table, we're talking diminishing returns on valor. Managing Editor Adam Holisky posted a brief editorial last week on this topic, and it was interesting enough that we decided to bring it up for discussion. We began by explaining just exactly how such a system would work, as clarified in Adam's original article, and then delved into the pros and cons of such a system. The Round Table was pretty universally opposed to such a system, based purely, of course, on our own gaming experiences, and while we tried our best to isolate redeeming qualities, we failed pretty miserably. And, finally, on comparing previous expansions' dungeon valor methods, the surprise winner was Cataclysm! We're really hoping you continue to enjoy this new format, and do remember that you can actually watch the Round Table live on our YouTube channel every week. Keep an eye on Twitter for announcements of when we're going live. And if you have any ideas for future round table discussions, let us know!
Valor points and player choice
I get very frustrated with the valor point system. One of my characters is at the point where the only thing to do with valor points is upgrade gear, while the other struggles to accumulate enough valor to buy anything. Worse, they're on different servers, so I don't even get the buff when I cap valor on my main. Plus, in order to even spend valor, I had to grind a whole bunch of reputations so for a while I had valor and couldn't even spend it. So it was with interest that I saw this forum thread detailing one player's issues with valor, which were interesting to me precisely because they weren't a problem I was having - instead, the argument seemed to be that the player was wasting effort and doing enough in a week to generate over 2000 valor, but the cap meant that more than half of that weekly play was meaningless. That kind of surprised me, because I only cap valor when I clear all the raid content, but I could see it after thinking about the issue. What was even more interesting to me was the idea presented that the valor cap served as a punitive measure punishing players who were running enough dailies, doing the daily scenario and heroic, and hitting each LFR in a week. Vaneras responded, and those responses are worth discussing I think.
