Posts with tag valor-points

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you studied my Excel usage patterns, you would be able to easily predict when a new patch is scheduled to drop. As soon as the release date is relatively fixed, I start working on my gear acquisition plan. My rogue takes priority when it comes to gearing up quickly. I'll spend as much gold or as many valor points as necessary to make sure I'm ahead of everyone else.

I typically spend my holy paladin's first batch of available valor points on the BoE valor piece for my rogue. Healers don't need gear anyway, right? If I can get my gear faster, my raid will be able to down bosses faster, and I'll get my hands on the Fangs of the Father sooner. It's a win-win scenario, and so when it comes to my rogue, I spare no expense. Please note that there are now three different levels of gear available, with the introduction of the Raid Finder difficulty level. The gear is identical between all three tiers and is simply scaled up or down appropriately.

Bashiok has just announced new valor point and conquest point changes coming with patch 4.3 that aim to de-emphasize the collection of valor points as a primary way to gear up for content. Both 10- and 25-man versions of the Dragon Soul raid will give 100 VPs per boss, down from 115 and 135, and Firelands bosses will only give 50 points each. The changes are intended to encourage killing bosses for loot rather than killing bosses for valor points to purchase loot. One can also surmise that the change is being introduced to give players more of a reason to try the new Raid Finder feature, where bosses drop loot with a unique power level.

On the PvP side of the equation, the number of conquest points received for the first daily Battleground is increasing to 100 up from 25, allowing players to work toward their conquest point caps quicker while not feeling like they have to run Rated Battlegrounds or Arenas. Both Rated Battlegrounds and Arenas will still earn players points more quickly, but this change should allow those players who prefer regular Battlegrounds to not be left in the dust.

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.

I play a lot of alts. I don't have as many alts as my friend Kol does (in Wrath, he had a max-level alt of every class in the game and several more besides), but I have four warriors at max level, a shaman at max level, two paladins in the high 70s, a druid who just dinged 73, four or five DKs between 60 and 80 on various servers, and a mage I don't like to talk about.

I also raid. My raiding is semi-casual from my perspective, three nights a week for three or four hours a night, but we're pretty exclusively doing hard mode content -- so for some people, that's fairly hardcore. I won't pretend it's easy for me to do much beyond 5-mans and BGs with any of my alts. I play about 20 hours a week, more than some, less than others, and am pretty happy with my main and what he can do.

One of the problems when playing one of my alts is that they're simply not capable of even coming close to my main. Struggling through yet another Zul'Gurub slog on my Worgen becomes almost impossible when I know I could blast through it on my Tauren -- but the Tauren wouldn't benefit, whereas the Worgen needs the gear.

The announcement of Raid Finder for patch 4.3 has me thinking about how many of my alts will actually get to see raid-level content. New heroics will also debut with patch 4.3, and for the first time in Cataclysm, a heroic dungeon will offer gear on par with raiding. (Up until now, even the ZA/ZG tier of heroics offers gear a step below the Tier 11 raids.) This means that we're about to enter into a new way to play your alts.

Community manager Bashiok has posted a number of clarifications as to how valor points are going to function come patch 4.3. Blizzard seems to be caught in an endless loop of reassessing its approach to justice and valor points, and this patch is really going to drive that home. In short:

Patch 4.3 Valor Changes

• Looking for Dungeon -- 150 VP per run, with a cap of seven runs per week. All Cataclysm heroic dungeons introduced in 4.0, 4.1, and 4.3, will provide 150 Valor per run.
• Looking for Raid -- 250 VP per run, with a cap of 500 per week. The 4.3 raid, Dragon Soul, will be split into two separate raids for the Raid Finder. While individual bosses do not drop Valor when using the Raid Finder, you will receive 250 Valor for completing each Dragon Soul raid. Each boss will only drop loot for you once per week, but you will continue to get the 250 Valor for completing each Raid Finder raid, up to the 500 cap.
• 10 player raid boss -- 115 VP. There are nine bosses per week, counting Baradin Hold.
• 25 player raid boss -- 135 VP. There are nine bosses per week, counting Baradin Hold.
• Valor Points cap at 1000 per week.

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Blizzard's stated aim is to return to the days of valor points being a consolation prize rather than being central to the gearing process. You can find the full blog post on Battle.net or behind the cut below.

The new 5-man instances, End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight, now award 150 valor points for each random completed, up to seven per week. The valor point cap per week has been increased to 1,000 points -- but interestingly, the cap for using the random Dungeon Finder is higher than the actual cap. This could be a bug, or it could be intended to allow players to gain that extra 50 valor points through the Dungeon Finder, but I'm assuming that things just aren't complete (because after all, this is the PTR).

End Time, the first instance in the sequential set of 5-mans, took my group about 20 to 25 minutes to make our way through. Three bosses and only about seven to eight trash packs later, we were happily finished and 150 valor points richer. This time frame is radically different than the Zul' heroics we are currently used to, making the play experience, in my experience, more fulfilling in a shorter amount of time. We have not yet run the other two dungeons, but if they are as streamlined as End Time, valor points will be a less stressful experience in the future. We will have more information as it becomes available.

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Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!

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One of the most intriguing non-story tidbits to come out of the recent flood of patch 4.3 news is the fact that tier 13 will not be purchasable with valor points. If you want your tier 13 set, you will have to raid for it. Zarhym has clarified how this will all work in a forum post. Here's the juicy stuff:

• All pieces will drop from multi-class set tokens. Ten-man raids will see a slight buff to drop rates to compensate for the lack of purchasable tier pieces.
• Valor point gear will feature a wider array of gear for a wider array of slots, meant both for people who are having trouble with token drops and for people who don't raid at all.
• There will be three tier 13 sets for each class: Looking For Raid level, normal level, and heroic level. Each will have a different item level, but you'll be able to mix and match pieces from all three sets for your set bonuses as needed.

For the complete text of Zarhym's post, check after the break.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

Now that patch 4.2 has been out a few weeks, if you've been faithfully raiding or queuing up for your random dungeons, you should have a pretty good chunk of valor points ready for use. That means it's time to start thinking seriously about what you should buy. This week, we'll be taking a look at the new valor point gear from patch 4.2 and figuring out what each brings to the table for you.

Good news for everyone tired of all those trolls: Tier 11 normal modes will once again give valor points. According to Community Manager Daxxarri, raids will receive 35 valor points on 10-man bosses and 45 valor points on 25-man bosses. This hotfix should be live within the next few hours.

For the full text of the announcement, check after the break.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome.

I'm not a big fan of patch days. I hate needing to update all of my addons, I hate the endless spam of "hay were's the new vender?" in trade chat, and I hate how overcrowded the new zones are.

While I think there's plenty to dislike, patch days aren't all bad. With patch 4.2's release date closing, we can look forward to Firelands and the new quest hub in Hyjal. The introduction of new reputations and raid bosses mean that there are both new challenges to be overcome and new rewards to be obtained.

The good news is that the gear we'll be seeing in patch 4.2 is much better itemized for holy paladin than what we saw in the first tier of Cataclysm raiding. Holy paladins are the only spec that uses plate gear with intellect on it, and so it's always a bit interesting to see gear that's not that good for us. Our potency should improve significantly from both the pure ilvl boost from the new gear, but also due to the better selection of secondary stats.

There's terrific news this morning for those planning on raiding The Firelands when patch 4.2 launches: Blizzard has quietly increased the amount of Valor Points earned from downing tier 12 bosses and Occu'thar, the new boss in Baradin Hold.

Patch 4.2 Public Test Realm Guide - [Updated 6/14]

Valor & Justice Points

• The number of Valor Points awarded for killing a boss in the Firelands is 70 120 in 10-player mode, and 90 140 in 25-player mode.
• The number of Valor Points awarded for killing Occu'thar in Baradin Hold is 35 120 in 10-player mode, and 45 140 in 25-player mode.

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The previous, lower values caused a lot of hand wringing on the official forums. As people rightly complained, they did not allow raiders to reach the weekly cap simply by running the new tier 12 content. Players would have to choose between five-man heroics and stale tier 11 content to cap their VP, something many considered a time-consuming tedium.

The new values allow ten-man raiders to (almost) reach the new 960 980 point VP cap with a full clear of all new tier 12 content; 25-man raiders can reach the cap by beating any seven of the eight.

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The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!

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