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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe Queue: Common patch 4.1 questions
by Alex Ziebart 
Mar 2nd 2011 at 11:00AM
We've been seeing the same questions about patch 4.1 repeated fairly frequently over the last few days, so I'll be trying to tackle a small batch of those today.
Everyone in the entire world asked:
What will happen to our valor points in patch 4.1?
Since Blizzard is not adding a new tier of points, your valor point tally the day patch 4.1 launches will be rolled down into your justice points. I know that for certain. I'm pretty sure that if you end up over the cap of 4,000 justice points when your valors are rolled down, you will be able to go over the cap. But you won't accrue any more justice points until you've spent some.
Erevan asked:
It was announced in the PTR patch notes that the revamped 5-man versions of ZG and ZA will have an ilevel requirement of 346 and drop 353 epics (fantastic approach, IMO, to allowing better 5 man drops without immediately invalidating current raid equipment).
Here's my question: do the above ilevel numbers reflect the regular or heroic versions of ZG and ZA, and what gear requirements/loot drops can we expect from whichever one it isn't?
I don't believe there will be a normal version of these instances -- they're heroic only. What Blizzard is doing with these new 5-mans is providing a method of advancement for players who don't raid. They expect you to run the 5-man dungeons that were in at launch until you can do them on their heroic difficulty. Once you've conquered those and reached an ilevel of 346, you can step up and do Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub heroics. Essentially, heroics are becoming tiered content, just like raids. Tier 1 is all of the heroics that were in at launch. Tier 2 is Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub. Tier three will be whatever comes in patch 4.2 (or patch 4.3).
Personally, I think it's a great step for people who can't raid. Zul'Aman will even have a timed run again, which should add yet another layer of challenge to the instance. I like it.
Steve asked:
How confident should we be that new raid content will be included in 4.1? Thus far, and unless I've missed something, any mention of new raids has been excluded from the patch notes. We know that Firelands and the new Caverns of Time raids are coming, and we've seen some new tier 12 trinkets, so clearly something is in the works. But is it possible that they would limit the new content to the new 5-mans in 4.1 and hold off on new raids until 4.2?
It's entirely possible that Blizzard is going to change up its way of doing content patches. It might break up raid content and non-raid content into their own patches. But I wouldn't assume that's what's happening yet. Patch 4.1 went up on the PTR fairly bare-boned. There was a lot to datamine but not much actually available for play. Only an early iteration of Zul'Gurub and its associated quests were available the night the PTR went live. No Zul'Aman, no gear, not much of anything. I fully expect that Blizzard rushed this one out onto the PTR and it's going to be there for a long time -- long enough to add in some of that raid content.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 12)
Sir Broose Mar 2nd 2011 11:20AM
Yes. This was the new plan Blizzard outlined when they announced this new system of points back during the end of Wrath. Previously, we had a new currency that was released every time a new tier of gear was released. The new currency would be used to buy the new level of gear, and the old currencies would still be good for the older gear. That resulted in myriad currencies to keep track of by the time all the tiers were released for any particular expansion.
The new system works like this: The most current tier of gear available will always be purchasable with Valor Points, and everything else will be purchasable with Justice Points. This means every time a new tier is released, the current tier drops down to Justice Point level, so the new tier can be the only thing purchased with Valor.
For that reason, all your Valor Points also drop down to Justice Points, so you don't immediately have a stash of currency available to buy the brand new tier that was just released. Your Justice Points will now buy everything except the brand new tier - including the tier that just dropped, which was previously only purchasable with Valor Points.
I know that's a long answer, but I hope it helps.
Geiss Mar 2nd 2011 11:21AM
I'd venture to say that the current Valor gear (359 iLvl?) will be pushed down to the Justice vendor, and the 346 justice gear will probably be thrown out. This is just a guess...
Caliea Mar 2nd 2011 11:26AM
Thanks WaterRouge (red water? O.o). That definitely helps. And makes sense.
And I'm happy - I'm fine with not having the cutting edge stuff, as long as I can stay semi-competitive with my few hours played each week.
Caliea Mar 2nd 2011 11:40AM
Thanks to Sir Broose and Geist too (yay for time delay and for no edit button!)
trefpoid Mar 2nd 2011 12:36PM
so I'll be able to buy tier11 with justice points? omg *O*
CDave Mar 2nd 2011 12:52PM
I understand the conversion and why and etc, but what I want to know is will the current Tier of Justice point gear cost LESS justice points once 4.1 hits? I mean if the now current gear will cost JP, will they drop everything else down so it's less expensive? With the cap on the amount of JP you can have, it's not like they can just keep upping the price of outdated tiers. If they don;t change prices, then it'd be kinda of weird for, say, T3 gear to eventually cost the same amount as T2.
Boobah Mar 2nd 2011 3:30PM
"...but what I want to know is will the current Tier of Justice point gear cost LESS justice points once 4.1 hits?"
Almost certainly not. The variations in badges per item during Wrath was entirely a factor of "How many badges can a character earn in a lockout?" If you can beat the content that awards JP already, there's not much point in encouraging you to waste JP on pieces you're going to replace with pieces costing JP. Late Wrath it was cheaper to buy some t9 than t8 or t7 equivalents.
And they're unlikely to pull the 346s off the vendors because, aside from the five pieces of tier gear, you'll get different slots each tier. For example, at 346 you get off hands, neck pieces, and belts while at 359 you get boots, cloaks, rings, and relics.
WaterRouge Mar 2nd 2011 11:11AM
So wait, when you said our valor points will be turning into justice points you mean they'll be disappearing forever right? RIGHT?! I mean, seriously, how could Blizzard be so kind as to actually allow us to keep all our hard work in some form?!
And that, WoWInsider community, was my sarcastic response to Alex saying EVERYONE IN THE WORLD was asking that first question.
Also, question for Mr. Rossi. You said that paladin guy leveled to 85 and is doing heroics in a week? Is that week like 7 days /played or 7 days of real life which equates to like 9 days? Because after hearing that I decided to start a worgen hunter with heirlooms. Right now he's level 28 with oohh about 9 hours played so I'm getting suspicious!
fallemwarrior Mar 2nd 2011 11:23AM
My personal leveling method involves questing, and doing instances that have quests in them once and then not queing for the instance again.
Also this is a petition for more quests in Halls and Throne, u get one quest ONE!(chain a little BUT ONE!) if u finish the entire zone
Task Mar 2nd 2011 11:26AM
I can say that it's entirely possible if he's skipped a few quests in every area he's been through, then powered his way through Outland and Northrend.
I'm currently 56 almost 57 with my worsen hunter with the shoulders and chest heirloom pieces, and it took me approx. 4 days from 25. For the record though, I played 3 hours a night on weekdays because I work evenings and a couple of Saturday's.
Task Mar 2nd 2011 11:29AM
*Worgen not worsen hunter :(
WaterRouge Mar 2nd 2011 11:41AM
That's what I'm doing to. Queueing for a specific dungeon I know has quests available and questing in-between. Thanks to those dungeon runs I only do about 10 quests in a zone before moving on.
I'm sure it's possible I'm just wondering if this guy was like super ultra power leveling or doing it casually.
I feel guilty about doing it though. I have 5 classes that are waiting to hit level 85 (and are higher than level 80) and I'm just neglecting them. Poor things...
razion Mar 2nd 2011 11:42AM
I have personally done a 1-85 in a little over a week, playing about three hours a day respectively. I only did dungeons one time through each for the quests in them, and only did battle-grounds when I had a quest for them as well. The rest of the time I was just chain-questing my way through content. I'm sure that if I was using an in-game leveling guide like Zygor, I would've gotten it done in four to five days at most. If I was using heirlooms as wasn't worried about my professions during that time, I'm confident I would've gotten everything done in four days. That said, I've heard of people who have done it in three days, and I'm sure the record-holders have done it even faster.
techvoodooguy Mar 2nd 2011 11:51AM
It'd be faster on a loladin because you can queue in the DF as Tank/Healer and have an instant queue from 15-85.
Lemons Mar 2nd 2011 1:07PM
I think for someone who has a lot of experience leveling alts getting to 85 in a week is doable, but for those of us that don't level alts so much it would probably take much longer than that.
I know for a fact that I couldn't level a character from 1-85 in a week even if stayed up the entire time...I simply haven't leveled a character through low-level cataclysm content and despite improvements in quest design it would still take me longer to complete quests than someone who has done them before and knows exactly what to do.
So I think the statement "you can get to 85 in a week!" is kind of misleading. Yes, you can, in the same way that the average person can bench 200 pounds with enough training.
MichaelBerean Mar 2nd 2011 2:57PM
Getting 1-85 in a week of real-life time is not what most people will do. Doing it in under a week /played is fairly common though, especially with BoA gear and/or rested xp.
A lot of this has to do with it taking longer on your first toon. Then once you have one toon at max level there are a wide variety of reasons to spend some of your real-life time on that max-level toon. If nothing else I personally spend a lot of time logged in but focused on chatting with people, whether in real life or ingame. And then each of my max level alts really needs a daily heroic. Of course there are the raids and doing what it takes to be ready for them ....
Shunt Mar 2nd 2011 11:17AM
New question for The Queue:
Where can I find good walk-through videos for boss fights? When I search for videos that will help me learn a new boss fight, more often than not, what I find has the in-game sound replaced with (mostly bad) music or is an old version from the PTR. If I'm looking up a boss fight video, I want to learn everything I can about the fight and that includes sound cues in the original audio. And I don't want to be surprised in the middle of a fight because Blizzard changed some key mechanic from what was in the PTR for the full release. So, is there one place that has all of this or do I have to just cobble together links from different sites?
Skarn Mar 2nd 2011 11:29AM
Here's some good resources for you for boss strats and videos:
www.tankspot.com
www.learntoraid.com
www.wowhead.com
www.wowpedia.com
The information on Wowhead and Wowpedia will vary a lot. Some bosses have full blown strats while others just have a bit of info and some comments. Some of the comments are often pretty valuable though. Sometimes the specific strat in a video just won't work for your raid, but the extra comments often suggest some alternatives that may work better. For example, the "range stack" strat on Valiona/Theralion did not work for my raid. We shifted to having the range spread out and run into melee for meteorite and the boss went from unkillable to easy-kill.
shawn Mar 2nd 2011 11:29AM
Tankspot.
Spelio Mar 2nd 2011 11:38AM
I would suggest Tankspot.com. They have tutorial videos on almost all current 10/25 man content (and older as well) and provide explanations for dealing with the mechanics of each fight. There are other sites as well but Tankspot has yet to let me down.