Patch 5.1 PTR: Upgrading items with justice and valor

One of the most interesting features of Patch 5.1 is the ability to upgrade your items with justice and valor points (as well as upgrading PvP items with honor and conquest points) and in order to give you a sense of what the current state of this feature is on the PTR, I went looking for the upgrade vendor. They're not hard to find -- look for the ethereals who do transmogrification and reforging, and you'll find them standing in the same areas. I confirmed this by going to Orgrimmar and the Shrine of Seven Stars, and there they were.

Since I was on a premade character with no honor or conquest gear and no epics, I could only test the justice point interface. Still, it's worth taking a look at how the process will work. As you can see from the above screenshot, the current interface will look familiar if you've reforged your gear at any point. But there are some differences.

As you can see from the above image, unlike reforging you can't select how your upgrade works. It simply adds ilevel to an item, and boosts its stats across the board to make it fit. At present, you can upgrade an item eligible to be upgraded with justice or honor points once, and an item that can be upgraded with conquest or valor points can be upgraded three times. According to MMO-Champion, justice/honor point upgrades cost 1500 points for one upgrade, and upgrade 8 item levels, while each valor/conquest item gains 4 ilevels for 750 points per upgrade, again to the maximum of three.

I didn't see any limitations on what items could be upgraded. Rings, necklaces, and even trinkets were eligible when I used the interface.

At present, there's no way to tell via the interface how the proc on this trinket is changed by the increase in iLevel. I assume it is, but without the points to buy the upgrade (since I'm still on a premade with no points banked) I can't determine how the proc will be increased to make it a fair 471 trinket. The current interface works best on items with static stats, showing you exactly how they'll be upgraded. Hopefully that will be improved, as I don't think it's fair to have to upgrade an item to see how it will be upgraded. Also, while the justice points upgrade 463 gear, I'm not sure yet what currency (if any) will be upgrading raid finder gear. It may not even be upgradable.

There's also no mention of a method to undo an upgrade and get a refund, and that may or may not be incoming (remember, this is the PTR, nothing's finalized yet) so it will be up to us to consider if we're better off waiting for an upgrade or not. But it does mean you'll have more use for your various point pools, which I think is good, and the feature has the potential for a lot of life down the road as further content patches release.

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