valor-points
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Blood Pact: Reputable sources of warlock loot in patch 5.2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill splits the warlock loot over two weeks to keep things light. Various people have been referring to Throne of Thunder as Thund'uar, a name I fully intend to steal and use. It's just a perfect blend of the new raid and its supposed raid model, Ulduar, with the expected troll-like apostrophe thrown in for good measure. But this week I won't be listing out the Thund'uar loot drops; I'll just drop in with a lighter piece covering gear miscellany and the new faction offerings. Next week, we can discuss how the PTR patch buffs and nerfs fit in with the expected performance of warlocks in Tier 15 while listing out the loot, instead of dropping a lump of lists in your lap.
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?
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?
The Queue: Valor points and Wite-Out spills
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. When Jaina's new white hair was first revealed on her character model, I thought it looked ridiculous. Over time, though, I think I'm getting used to it. I still wish the border of white and blonde matched the flow of her hair better, it looks like an unfortunate Wite-Out spill at the moment, but it doesn't seem quite as bad to me as it once did. Eh! @urban_infection asked: What should we do now that VP will not be reset? Spend them or save them?
Patch 5.2: Valor and Conquest Points will be reset
Given that patch 5.2 includes a new raid and a new PvP season, it is no great surprise that Valor and Conquest points are being reset. However, one element of said reset is not proceeding quite how recent arrivals to Azeroth might expect. Blizzard PvE Valor -> Justice All Valor is converted to Justice Justice -> Gold Justice above the 4000 cap is converted to gold at a rate of 47 silver per point So let's say the realms go down for the 5.2 patch and you have 450 Valor and 3800 Justice. Because of the 4000 Justice cap, you'd log back in after the patch is released with 0 Valor, 4000 Justice, and be 117 gold and 50 silver richer after the conversion. With 5.2 we won't be changing current Valor items to cost Justice, but they will be much cheaper (discounts from 50-75% off their current costs). You'll need to acquire Valor after the patch is released to buy pieces for their discounted rate, or to buy the new 5.2 Valor items, but we're also introducing new items to spend your Justice on, including heirlooms and Pet Battle stones. source This seems to follow the logic of Blizzard's raid nerf strategy, where players' prior efforts are not wholly negated, but will doubtless ruffle a few feathers. There is also further information provided about Charms, and PvP points.
Patch 5.2 Prep: Get ahead of the game
Patch 5.2 will bring new dailies, new factions, another raid, and a kitchen sink. It's pretty much a super patch. With so many additions, you may start to feel overwhelmed at the thought of class changes on top of new grinds -- and you know, pets and stuff. Never fear, we're here to help you prepare! Before we get too deep into this, remember that everything we've learned about patch 5.2 is from the PTR. Things can change! Farm (or buy) Ghost Iron. Both blacksmithing and engineering will see new unique crafting materials similar to the scribe's Scroll of Wisdom -- Lightning Steel Ingot and Stabilized Lightning Source, respectively. Both require 10 Ghost Iron bars, so snag some Ghost Iron now, and use some of it to transmute into Living Steel. Many new crafted items will require it. Get ahead in your Wrathion quests. In 5.2, Wrathion will ask for 40 Trillium Bars in a quest on the way to the legendary meta gems, so start gathering the ore now to get a head start. Get your Tillers rep to Exalted and unlock all plots. Although farming may not be appealing to everyone, Tillers rep is one of the easiest to max out. At Exalted, we'll be able to use work orders to gain rep in patch 5.2.
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.
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.
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.
The Queue: Glory to the Alliance
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. Stop making a mess of our flags, you jerks. BlazeNor asked: With this farming aspect added to the game that seem to be done with phasing, do you think this could open the door to housing? For example allowing players to own a piece of land and building on it though reputation and dailies.
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.
Patch 5.1 coming to the PTR soon
When they said they wanted to get patches out faster, they appear not to have been kidding, because patch 5.1 is already slated to head for the PTR soon. And it looks like it's going to be chock full of improvements. The Brawler's Guild, allowing you to engage in solo PvE content against various difficult monsters, similar to the Proving Grounds concept from a while ago. The ability to upgrade the rarity of pets in the pet battle system via an as yet undisclosed method. Wrathion's legendary questline will advance. You'll be able to spend valor points to upgrade items. All of this and news of the advancement of the Horde/Alliance conflict. If you're wondering how that will move forward, patch 5.1 will have the answers for you. Coming soon to a PTR near you. The complete text of the announcement is behind the break.
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.
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!
Mists of Pandaria: Ghostcrawler on valor point acquisition
One of the topics we see and hear a lot of questions about is how we'll gain valor points in Mists of Pandaria. Some posters on the forums are estimating over 30 hours for two pieces of valor gear. Poster Ghatok found this a bit troubling and asked for clarification, and Ghostcrawler gave him exactly that. The short answer is no, it's not accurate. The long answer goes into more detail, and so here it is in full. Ghostcrawler - 30hrs for 1 piece of valor? accurate? To answer the original question, no those numbers are not accurate. Without getting into all of the details, we have features like a bonus for the first activity of the day to encourage players to experiment with lots of different types of content rather than just solving which is the most efficient and running that until you're very sick of it (we call this the Mechanar Syndrome). We can try to put together a blog or some other way to convey all of the different ways to earn valor and how it all fits together. Now, we are asking you to participate some in daily quests, scenarios, raid finder, challenge modes and the other new systems we're introducing in Mists of Pandaria. One of the pieces of feedback we heard loud and clear from Cataclysm is "I'm done raiding for the week and want to play WoW, but there is nothing to do." I know it's easy to dismiss everything that we're trying to give you to do as grinding, and I don't think we'll be able to change your mind on that until you get in the game and actually try out the content. We're pretty excited about it. Also note that players who raid the most will likely need to earn the least valor, because they'll have so many opportunities to get actual item drops. For those of you only interested in raiding full stop, we were able to deliver a bunch of bosses for 5.0. So I think it's cynical to say that we're just adding grinding mechanics to stretch out the lifespan of the content. It's more that we're trying to give you something to do in between raids that feels like you're still making progress on your character. source I'll admit that I personally intend to work out the fastest way to get the most valor possible and do that. That is how I play the game. And I'm perfectly happy to play it that way. But for people who complain there's nothing to do, it sounds like Mists of Pandaria is aimed squarely at squelching those complaints. I will admit, I want that blog post explaining how this is all going to work, and I really want to know if justice points are still going to be part of the picture or not. I still have them on my beta characters, but I don't know if that means anything. 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!
Mists of Pandaria: Valor of the Ancients increases valor points for alts
If you have a lot of alts and often feel like you have a hard time capping valor points on them, the Valor of the Ancients buff is intended to help you out. It will increase the valor points gained by every character you have on a realm after one of your characters maxes out their valor points for the week. In addition, MMO-Champion reports that a new maximum valor point cap is being introduced for Mists, so after you've gotten up to 3,000 valor points, you might as well spend some. This is probably going to push me even further toward consolidating my alts onto as few realms as possible. 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!
Will Mists of Pandaria end dungeon queues?
I have this habit of dealing with my insomnia by running heroic dungeons. Sometimes I tank (especially if the bribe for doing so is enacted), and sometimes I DPS. Either way, I have a reasonably solid set of gear for both, full of heroic DS gear. Lately I've noticed a strange trend: People constantly ask me why I'm there, inform me that my gear is too good for the dungeon, and otherwise give me a hard time. Now, perhaps it's because I don't restrict myself to Hour of Twilight dungeons. This is because I don't need the gear from heroics, and so I might as well get to see dungeons I haven't gotten to see for a while. Now, if the confusion was just happening when I was DPSing, I'd be less baffled. I mean, if you're tanking your way through normal heroics to try and get geared enough for HoT dungeons and eventually the Raid Finder, sure, I could see being somewhat nervous of the dude in 410 gear who just dropped in. Really, I could get that. What possible reason do people have to freak out when a tank in 410 gear shows up? Do you honestly think I'm running Lost City of the Tol'vir to take your gear? Is that actually happening?
The Queue: 64-butt client
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mathew McCurley (@gomatgo) will be your host for today. Which World of Warcraft client does Mike Sacco use? Abbadon asked: Do you think we'll ever get any gold or auction related titles? I've been thinking it would be cool to have the title "Auctioneer" for posting some ridiculous amount of auctions, or maybe to stop players from just posting crap, successfully selling X items via the AH. And while it's not a lot of players, there are more and more getting gold capped... Something like "the Gold Hoarder" would be pretty cool for hitting the gold limit. I don't believe we will ever see gold-related achievements because gold hoarding and amassing fortunes in WoW is part of a meta-game many participate in, but by no way Blizzard wants to say, "Here's another reason to artificially inflate your gold amount by purchasing gold for these rewards." There already is a title in game for what used to be a large sum of gold -- of the Shattered Sun costs 1,000 gold after achieving exalted reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive.
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.
Gold Capped: Selling valor point gear
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Every single content patch, Blizzard turns the tables on gold makers and, for a brief period of time, allows any player to make tens of thousands of gold by selling valor point-bought BoE gear. We've all seen the ads in trade of people looking to buy them or sell them, but most people focus on their own gear first and only think about selling them once they've gotten a few upgrades. Is this unwise? What if I told you that you could get several thousand gold and still have as much valor gear at the end of the month as your guildie who didn't sell a single BoE? It's all about timing. The valor point weekly cap is 1,000, and in the beginning of the week that valor BoEs are available for purchase, the prices are extremely high. They stay high for a few weeks but quickly plummet as people start to use more points to buy gear for selling. They bottom out eventually when people stop having upgrades available for valor.
