justice-points
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Last minute ideas for your justice points
Justice points are going away forever, perhaps as soon as next Tuesday. You can hold onto them and get the gold conversion if you want. They'll net you 47 silver per point, or 1880 gold for a full cap of 4000. It's a decent chunk of change, but there may be a few things you want to purchase with them while you still can. The most obvious one is heirlooms. PvE heirlooms will be unavailable from the justice point vendors in 6.0, and your only option to get those will be to spend Darkmoon Prize Tickets at the Darkmoon Faire or Champion's Seals at the Argent Tournament. These heirlooms will return in another form sometime in the future, just not for 6.0. The one you may have missed is the Reins of the Wooly Mammoth mount sold in Dalaran. If you're trying to pad your mount collection for the collection achievements and you still don't have this one, it's a good way to spend your points. It costs 2175 justice points, or a little over 1,000 gold after the conversion. Once 6.0 hits, this mount is going to cost 8,000 gold instead of justice points. Now is the time to get it. The last thing is useful if you didn't play much at level cap during Wrath of the Lich King. The commendation badges for the various Wrath reputations are being removed completely. They only cost a mere 16 justice points for 520 reputation points and are also sold in Dalaran. There's badges available for Wyrmrest Accord, Sons of Hodir, Kirin Tor, Argent Crusade, and Knights of the Ebon Blade. It's a quick way to get exalted with these factions. Again, there are some mounts you may be interested in from both Wyrmrest Accord and Sons of Hodir which require revered or exalted reputation. It's certainly quicker than grinding out those reputations the old fashioned way. All other items which currently cost justice points should cost gold in 6.0, so you don't have to worry about missing out on any potential transmog opportunities.
Loot, points, bonus rolls, and other options
Before The Burning Crusade, there simply wasn't any other way to get gear for your character but for it to drop past a certain point. Sometimes you could buy a BoE piece on the auction house - my first epic was a Brain Hacker my wife bought me on the AH. But in general, if you wanted a piece of gear, you farmed for it. You ran dungeons over and over again, hoping a piece would drop, and hoping you would win the roll - and if neither of those things happened, you just kept running. It was possible to run the same dungeon every day, over and over again, and never get that drop you wanted - one friend of mine never completed his dungeon set, even when he was working on raiding Ahn'Qiraj, because the shoulders simply would not drop. But during BC the Badges of Justice were devised, and for the first time players had a way to get around the luck of the draw. Over the course of the expansion, new gear was placed on vendors, gear that could be purchased for Badges, and this meant that players kept running as much content that dropped those badges as possible. It's fair to say that the badge system kept Karazhan going as a desired raiding location - people would bring their geared mains, even, just to get the extra badges. When the Isle of Quel'Danas vendor opened, all of my friends and guildmates (who were raiding TK and SSC and moving up into Hyjal and the Black Temple) picked up gear from the IoQD vendor, because it was easily as good if not slightly better as the drops we already had. It filled weak spots (those pants or boots or belt that never dropped) or provided us with weapons absolutely as good as drops we hadn't even seen yet. The badge system got ever more complex in Wrath, with each new raid tier also seeing the debut of a new type of badge and new gear that badge could be spent on. As a result, the two tiered point system (justice and valor points, honor and conquest points for PvP) was introduced in Cataclysm (technically, during the tail end of Wrath) to simplify everything. It worked, to a point. Now, in Mists of Pandaria, we've seen justice and valor points be superseded by the bonus roll mechanic, one that will be revamped in Warlords of Draenor. One could argue that the bonus roll system puts the emphasis back on whether or not an item drops as opposed to simply collecting points to buy an item - it removes the certainty of reaching enough points to make a purchase, as well.
Poll: RNG gearing or points-based gearing?
There seems to have been something of a shift of late in Blizzard's gearing philosophy. We've moved from a heavily points-based system, where players had to earn currency -- specifically valor -- to buy items. They also had to earn reputation, which was another thing we can compare to points, although they're not a currency you can spend. Now, we've got Valor only used as an upgrade system, players are reliant on drops for the initial item to upgrade. The Timeless Isle does award currency, but you're more likely to rely on RNG-based drops to get gear from there. Not to mention the RNG nature of Warforged gear. And it looks like this is only going to move more towards RNG with Warlords' removal of currencies, removal of reforging, and the addition of sockets and tertiaries as RNG elements on top of the Warforged system. PvP gear remains mercifully points-based, and in a play system where gear equality is so important, we can only hope it remains the case. But in PvE, what's the good and bad of each? Well, points-based gearing is predictable. It gives you certainty and goals to work towards. Just so long as you keep grinding points, you know categorically that you will get that piece of gear. You can see your points build up, and it's satisfying. On the downside that predictability makes it less exciting. In PvP, that's no bad thing -- you certainly don't want the opposition to get their weapon and 4-set first while you get 2 rings, a neck and some bracers!
The struggle between gear disparity and good play
Okay, truth time - I can solo any five player heroic dungeon in Mists of Pandaria, as long as it doesn't have mechanics that prevent me. If I'm even concerned that I'll take too much damage and die, I'll pop on my tank set and go prot, but many times it isn't even a concern. Blow all my DPS cooldowns, blow my defensive cooldowns when I'm at about half health, boss falls over. Done it in Mogu'shan Palace and Scarlet Monastery. And I'm hardly the exception here - the fact is, the Mists of Pandaria dungeons were introduced at the beginning of the expansion and tuned so that players in ilevel 450 gear could complete them. I'm at around ilevel 576. Even players who are just in flex or LFR gear out gear these instances immensely. If a DPS player in full SoO LFR gear goes into Mogu'shan Palace and decides to pull more mobs than the tank was ready or waiting for, he or she can probably DPS them all down before dying themselves, especially if they get a few heals. Meanwhile, even the tanks can often put out enough damage (while taking so very little and having various means to heal it up) that they can basically solo the whole place if they want to, leaving absolutely everyone in the group feeling very little need to actually play as a group. As many, many people point out to me on twitter, it's just assumed that everyone is going to pull like crazy, so even undergeared players in a specific role often assume it's going to happen and react. Maybe your tank doesn't want to pull like a fiend, but they saw your gear and thought they had to in order to keep control of the dungeon. The lines of group communication have broken down into a silence that masks intent - runs are zoned into and pulled with grim efficiency. Into this veil of silence enters you, the player. So what can be done about it?
Proving Grounds will not solve the real problem
Olivia Grace wrote an excellent post last week about the upcoming change that will link a silver performance in Proving Grounds to the ability to queue for heroic dungeons. You should definitely go read it, because I cheerfully cede to her points. It's not hard to get silver in proving grounds. Linking a silver performance to heroic dungeons will allow them to make heroics more challenging. These are all good things. Now I'm going to say something - the biggest problem in heroics isn't players who don't know what they're doing. It's players who do. Specifically, it's skilled and geared players who massively, massively out-gear said heroics and want to ignore the mechanics and chain pull every mob in the place, players who are completely inconsiderate of the other players in their group. Players who are skilled, but who let their fevered egocentric natures run wild, hurling insults at lesser geared players for 'not keeping up.' Players who make the dungeon an unpleasant festival of wipes because they refuse to understand that some of the people in the dungeon are only just geared enough to be there, and can't heal through thirty mobs hitting them at once or kill those thirty mobs fast enough. It's players who have a really well geared main, but come to the Scarlet Monastery Cathedral on their brand new monk and refuse to understand that they're not nearly as powerful now. It's not skill, it's attitude.
Simplify point-based currencies in Warlords
We've covered in the past how the best way to gear for PvP is to grind justice points, and I have recently experienced this - since I wanted to get some pieces of Season 14 for transmog (and to do some PvP on the side, since I like running random BG's) I spent the past couple of days capping honor so that I could pick up several pieces as soon as possible. This led to running dungeons for justice points. Lots of dungeons. And this led me to realize that justice points themselves have a lot of uses - picking up older gear to catch up, converting to honor for PvP gear - but they feel strange and antiquated. There's literally two ways to get them in the current endgame - run scenarios or dungeons - and they only upgrade blue dungeon gear, so their use as an upgrade currency is fairly limited. While you can in fact also buy them with honor, that would have been self defeating in my case.
Patch 5.4 PTR: Reputation gear cost changed to Justice Points
In case you missed the latest update to the patch 5.4 PTR, a major change was added that ought to help players looking to level and gear alts. According to the notes, all reputation gear will have its reputation requirement removed entirely in 5.4. This means that any faction-specific epic gear will no longer require players to earn reputation with that faction in order to purchase it. The only exception to this is the Shado-Pan Assault, which will have its requirements reduced to Friendly or below. But believe it or not, that' s not the biggest change to the gear! All Valor gear will now cost Justice Points instead of Valor -- and all blue gear that currently costs Justice Points will be reduced in cost by 75%. Again, the only exception to this is the Shado-Pan Assault gear, which will still cost Valor, but have its cost reduced by 34%. Please note that all other items, including mounts, tabards, and various unrelated baubles will not be changed -- and all items that currently require an Exalted reputation will not receive any changes. However, this change suddenly gives Justice Points a definitive use again. Since 5.4 is currently believed to be the last raid patch of this expansion, the changes make sense -- players that have come in very late in the expansion should find it much easier to gear up and get caught up with the latest content. I know I've got a few alts that will definitely see a little more play time once these changes are in place. There has been no notification that Valor points will be reset with the next patch, however things may change at any time -- we'll let you know if we see any further changes.
The problem with valor points in Pandaria
Valor points, a once-elegant solution to gearing woes that arose in prior expansions, has become something of a thorn in players' sides in Mists of Pandaria. Considering how far this expansion has gone to advance the elements of player choice and freedom, it's strange that a something that was once so simple is more of a grind than ever. Why is that, exactly? In my opinion, it's an issue of double-dipping. Valor isn't a currency with a simple acquire-and-spend flow anymore. Instead, there are additional barriers that stand in your way, effectively doubling (at least) how much work must be done to spend what you put in the time to earn. Looking back on the launch of Cataclysm, the barrier to entry for high-end content was fairly high. Heroics, as they were released at launch, were fairly difficult for groups assembled via the dungeon finder. The launch raid zones were also considered quite difficult for players that were new to raiding, and the raid finder tool hadn't yet launched. What wasn't difficult, however, was acquiring the gear to participate in that content. Justice points were used to bring you up to the current tier of content, and valor points were a supplement to your boss drops within the current tier. As soon as you earned enough points to purchase your gear, you could go and do it. No reputation barriers, no requirement to participate in content that didn't interest you, nothing like that. So why, in Mists of Pandaria, has that changed?
Patch 5.2: Valor points to convert to Justice after cap
One of the things that kind of saddens me is when I'm capped on Valor for the week and I get no rewards for scenarios or dungeons or LFR. Now, it doesn't ruin these activities for me, but now that I really can't upgrade my gear on my main via them and my alts have run them into the ground without seeing any rewards, I'd at least like to feel like I was getting something. Yes, I know, I'm greedy. Taepsilum over on the EU forums just posted that Patch 5.2 is going to fix that problem. Taepsilum - Need a better way to get justice points There are some changes planned for 5.2, for example, we would like to make Valor points convert to Justice as long as you're Valor capped. source It's one of those small quality of life changes that doesn't really alter the game, but will make farming up Justice Points when I want to pick up an old vendor item for transmog or trade in Justice for Honor more convenient. Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Developer Q&A with Wowjuju
Blizzard Community Manager Zarhym emailed WoW Insider yesterday to give us a heads up about a lengthy developer Q&A which was published over at Wowjuju. This is a hugely in-depth interview, so let's dive right in with our synopsis. Classes A couple of questions came up regarding the Monk ability, Zen Pilgrimage. This ability allows monks to travel to the Peak of Serenity in Pandaria, and on re-use, returns the player to their previous location. Death Knights, understandably, were asking for the same to apply to their Death Gate, which takes them to the Ebon Hold, and unceremoniously abandons them there. Monks, conversely, were bemoaning the confusing effect of the ability if they don't use it a second time, and hearthstone back instead. The devs said that both concerns were reasonable, and that they would look into rectifying the issues. WoW Insider thinks that Monks are missing a trick with what could essentially be a second hearthstone! Hunters queried whether the increase in available pets might lead to more stable space, which, to the consternation of sentimental beast masters everywhere, was met with a resounding "No." There was also some discussion of the hunter ability Scatter Shot being dodgeable, while a rogue Blind wasn't. Rogues and hunters work very differently, rogues are reliant on expertise and positioning to avoid being dodged or parried on a plethora of other abilities, so the devs didn't really feel this was a valid comparison.
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.
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.
Encrypted Text: Mists of Pandaria guide to a raid-ready rogue
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. I'm not a fan of gearing up. I hate watching my gear fade into obsolescence. I hate swapping out my legendary Fangs of the Father for a set of blue weapons that were given to me after I washed a few yaks and played the role of a pre-employment drug screener for some amped-up goats. Bill Gates infamously picks lazy people to do difficult jobs, because they'll find the easiest way to do it. I am that lazy person. I am always looking for the quickest way to get my rogue into raid-ready shape. The quicker that my rogue is geared up, the quicker I can get back to Eviscerating leveling players of the opposing faction. With a couple of weeks of grinding daily quests and some heroic dungeons mixed in, your rogue can be ready for the first tier of MoP raiding.
Incoming hotfix buffs JP gear, nerfs honor point gear
If you thought the item level of endgame PVE gear purchasable with justice points was a little low, Blizzard apparently agrees with you. Bashiok just let the official forums know that a hotfix is incoming, bumping the ilvl 450 PVE rares to 458. Additionally, the hotfix brings down the item level (and rarity color!) of the ilvl 464 epic PVP gear available for honor to 458 and rare. In conjunction with the hotfix removing the reputation requirements to access the JP gear, it should be considerably less of a hassle -- and involve a lot less PVPing -- to gear up for heroics. The downside is that the PVP gear you probably bought just to cheat the queueing system is a little worse. I can live with that. The full post from Blizzard is after the cut.
Hotfix removes reputation requirements for justice point gear
One of the most controversial decisions in Mists of Pandaria was the idea of putting JP and VP gear behind reputation gates, making you grind to honored with specific factions depending on what you wanted to buy. Blizzard has just put a hotfix in place that removes this requirement for justice point gear. You can now visit quartermasters as soon as you like and buy whatever JP gear you can afford, regardless of your reputation. This should allow new level 90 characters to hop into heroic dungeons much more readily. The full announcement is behind the break, along with a quick guide to finding the reputation quartermasters to grab your gear. You can also visit Commander Lo Ping at Niuzao Temple to buy all JP gear at once.
Patch 5.0.4 currency conversion clarified
While we put together a comprehensive guide on what to expect with patch 5.0.4, there was something missing from the list. Currency conversion had yet to be explained on the current patch notes -- while we knew it was coming on Aug. 28, we didn't know the exact details. Blizzard has finally clarified the conversion rates, going one step farther by outlining what currency conversion will look like all the way up to patch 5.1. Valor points will be disappearing, converted to justice points, and conquest will be converted to honor. There will be no gold conversion for excess points, because the cap for justice and honor points will be removed until Mists of Pandaria launches. Blizzard Entertainment The currency conversion coming with Mists of Pandaria is going to happen in three stages, and this is how we plan for it to progress: With Patch 5.0.4 on August 28 Valor points will be converted to Justice points, and Conquest points will be converted to Honor points. Neither of the resultant currencies (Justice and Honor) will have an enforced hard-cap at this time. The current Arena season will end. Players will no longer be able to earn Valor or Conquest points (bosses will drop Justice, Arenas will be closed). Items formerly purchasable for Valor/Conquest will be available for Justice/Honor. With Mists of Pandaria on September 25 Valor can be earned again. Characters can earn up to 1000 Valor per week, and carry a maximum of 3000 Valor. Daily quests, random Scenarios, random Heroic dungeons, and all levels of raiding will reward Valor. Valor will be used to purchase ilvl 489 gear in Mists of Pandaria. The Klaxxi, Golden Lotus, Shado-Pan, and August Celestials factions will sell this gear. Revered reputation with each faction will be required. Conquest will become earnable. There is a cap of 4000 Conquest points. Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds reward Conquest. It will be used to purchase ilvl 483 gear from Pandaren battlemasters on the Great Wall. With Mists of Pandaria, Patch 5.1 We currently plan to upgrade the Valor system as Ghostcrawler described in Mists of Pandaria Looting Explained in the 5.1 patch, allowing you to upgrade your gear using Valor points. We'll have additional information once Mists of Pandaria launches and we get closer to the 5.1 patch release. Do you have questions or comments about currencies in World of Warcraft? Please let us know in this discussion thread. source Hopefully this clears up everyone's questions about this process. If not, you can always check out the discussion thread on the official forums and ask away! 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!
The Raid Finder, the Dungeon Finder, point caps and you
I have a theory that either our various caps for justice and valor points are too low, or the amount we get per activity is too high. I'll relate my thinking. I have several level 85 characters I'm running through the Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder tools. Clearing both halves of the Raid Finder Dragon Soul gets me 500 valor; I then run four random heroics, and I'm capped. This means that playing my main any further that week is effectively a waste of time. (I usually cap my valors out before I even raid for a week, which makes raiding just about the gear, but I'm OK with that.) My problem is, I like my main. I'd play him more if there was anything to do. As it is, I tend to cap out on justice points rather than run on one of my alts, and even then, they usually cap on valors as well. (At least two of them do.) I even sometimes cap on honor, and with the new conquest point gains for Random BGs, I could cap on conquest if I really set my mind to it. And while I understand why we have both weekly and total caps on points, it often feels like I'm being penalized for liking the game and wanting to play it.
Patch 4.3: Point conversion sell-back policy
When patch 4.3 releases in the near future, you will not be able to sell items that you purchase with valor points back to a vendor for a short period of time once the patch launches and the valor-to-justice point conversion happens. This restriction is being put in place to curb the practice of buying valor point gear, waiting for the conversion from valor points to justice points, and then selling back the items for valor points. The last time the point conversion happened in patch 4.2, Blizzard ran into this problem and players got around the valor point conversion. One of the criticisms of the point conversion last patch was that Blizzard had not given ample notice to players detailing issues with the new PVP set gear and some botched conversions that happened early. It appears that this time, Blizzard is getting ahead of the patch by a wide margin, letting players know about these new policies and procedures much earlier, so no one should be surprised when it happens. Early information is always welcome information. Check out the full item sell-back policy for the patch 4.3 point conversion in the blue post after the jump.
Ol' Grumpy's guide to outdated content and you
Hey again, boys and girls. In case you don't know (and why would you?), I'm Ol' Grumpy, that permanently irascible old codger who brought you fun times like player reeducation and instance protocols. Today, I'm here to pour the soothing balm of my words over the troubled waters stirred up by the recent news that in patch 4.2, all current non-heroic raid content is getting a 20% nerf. What exactly does this mean? Well, it means several things. Current heroic raid content will remain unchanged. Heroic Cho'gall, heroic Atramedes, heroic Nefarian will all be as difficult as they are now. So you won't see guilds that are 9/12 normal mode waltzing into heroic BoT and killing Sinestra the day 4.2 goes live. She's still going to be ludicrously hard. The raids we currently have will become outdated content the day Firelands becomes available, the same way Naxx became outdated when Ulduar came out and Trial of the Crusader became outdated when ICC came out. They will no longer even reward you with valor points, and all current valor point gear will switch to being purchasable with justice points (the same points one can get for running normal 85 dungeons). This means that entry-level raiding will be obsolete, and the only people doing it will be people just starting out or a few completists. Therefore, it is in the interest of the game to let people see this content once it becomes obsolete and move on as quickly as possible. You can return your seat to its normal, upright position now. If anyone is telling you that this is an outrage, a slap in the face, a nod to the casuals, the ruination of the game, or the horns of the dread Armagedillo poking forth, they're wrong. And possibly a hysterical maniac who overreacts to a simple armadillo pet.
The Queue: Firelands questing and more
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. I was going to yell at Adam for making me wade through Game of Thrones spoilers in the comments of yesterday's Queue, but the first book has been out for what, 15 years now? Frankly, I have nobody to blame but myself at this point. Many readers asked: How far into Hyjal questing do I need to be to unlock the ability to do the new daily quest hubs in patch 4.2?
