Patch 4.3 Valor Changes

[TitanG545]

Perhaps I am not able to comprehend things as well as I thought, so let me break it down into numbers: ALL heroics give 150 valor and can be ran 7 times capping out at 1000 4.0 Heroics - 150 4.1 Heroics - 150 4.3 Heroics - 150 If I have already been running the heroics since 4.0 chances are I have valor coming out of my ears, even with the reset last patch. I think it would be safe to assume that I have bought all the valor pieces I can, prior to running raid bosses what incentive do I have to run 4.3 heroics. The chance of the group not being terrible and wiping is much lower than grouping 7 times for 4.0 heroics, and then using the valor to buy the new valor gear. Speaking of valor gear if it is a higher tier than the loot dropped during LFD, besides lore why would I even queue for LFD. Perhaps you need the chaos orbs watch the AH, being a LW I have about 100 orbs even after making stuff for my friends and the random person spamming in trade chat. I guess I will run the new heroics all at least once and then just go back to 4.0 and blow through those, stacking my valor for the new valor gear.

[TitanG545]

Also the ilevel for the new heroics appears to be 1 number below the current valor gear. Valor WILL be downgraded to Justice Points per the last line in the post.

[Farabee]

I wonder if theres gonna be a sick valor 2hander axe ^.^

Blizzard will never give you a weapon that isn't a ranged slot for Valor.

Anyways, I think the removal of tier pieces from Valor is yet another step backwards for WoW. I mean, literally a step backwards; that structure hasn't been the case since the end of TBC in 2008. Just like that, we're back at relying on the mercy of token drops to get our bonuses, and we're back at certain classes having offset pieces for all 3 specs before some classes get a single token. Hopefully Blizzard realizes this and makes the token universal ala TOC, but somehow I think the idea of 25 people rolling on a tier piece in Raid Finder will make them recoil in horror and they'll stay with the utterly stupid conq/prot/vanq system that is now 4 years old.

[Deleted]

The whole idea of caps is to lessen the stress on people, think about it. You say people may want to run HCs all day and get full 378 or whatever ultra-quickly but those who wouldn't will feel left behind, especially if they're just as competative when it comes to gear but don't want to put in hours of farming and as a result they will most probably feel forced to grind and grind and grind and feeling forced to do that is not what the game is about, in the end of the day it's about fun, and whilst gear is rewarding if you're not having fun doing it then something is wrong. Plus it stops people out-gearing content quicker thus making it last longer, the challenge is still there untill the routine nerfs and the fun is kept.

[VanishO2]

What Blizzard REALLY needs to do is figure out something better than RNG on loot drops. I know it's been said a thousand times, but it's true. RNG is archaic in this day and age. For example, it's just plain stupid when you down a boss and say it drops plate gear, and everyone in the group can only wear mail or lower (feral tank in the group obviously). How about instead of saying,"Oh that's RNG for you, better luck next time", they actually implement a system that tracks what kinds of classes (and maybe even specs) that are currently present in your group and have loot drop according to that? Makes a shit ton more sense to me, than seeing the same damn piece of loot drop, week after week after week, that everyone in your group keeps passing on because no one needs it. It really becomes ridiculous when it takes you half or more of a patch to get even MINOR upgrades for yourself because of RNG. Fix RNG Blizzard, and you will have fixed the loot issue. /nuff said

Because since some classes can fill ALL roles, players could cheat the system to always drop what they need. Period.

If Blizzard went back to the "bring the spec, not the player" system, that wouldn't be a problem since bringing 3 paladins, 4 druids, etc. would gimp you out of important buffs/debuffs and you would never down a boss.

[crazy23]

I like these changes! Finally they realise what's important! Raids dropping raid gear, vendors providing lower ilvl gear that readies you for said raids! Valor points being something for those that do not get drops from the highend raids etc etc...I really like it! And it's awesome that there will be ranged weapons (I hope HUNTER weapons), and boots. It never made sense to have a full tier set, or a half tier set, available from a vendor in the first place.

I would not get your hopes up, knowing blizzard ranged weapons means throwing and wands..just you watch. I doubt highly there will be bows etc, as there is no mention of melee weapons either. But cross your fingers I guess.

[KWC3587]

"In the past we have offered some tier pieces on the Valor vendor for players that just couldn’t justify the time or logistics necessary to participate in raids, but we’re hoping that the introduction of the Raid Finder tool helps remove that barrier. We think most players would agree that killing a giant monster and looting its corpse is more exciting than slowly farming a currency to purchase a reward. Currencies have their place, but we want them to be a secondary avenue of progression to boss killing."

Translation: "We need to find some way to force people to use the random raid finder since anyone with half a mind won't go near it willingly after using the LFD tool more than once."

[VanishO2]

It could potentially be a good move, returning dungeons to what they should have been in the first place. Everyone that just wants vp will queue for the fastest one while people who actually need gear from the others will queue for them. By indirectly forcing people to run something that they have no use for isn't fun and is quite frustrating.


Making badge gear a consolation prize rather than a primary gearing method is a very good change as well.



People that need za/zg gear to meet the queue reqs for the 4.3 five mans will still run them for a while. Additionally in the previous post or the one before that there was the mention of shortening troll dungeons so you only had to kill two animal avatars before hexlord in za and only two priests in zg before the last boss. So that might make things faster.

Never will be a good move. Only those who just say "f$#@ the game, I want my epics" would see that as good move. For the game by itself, it's a very bad and inconsistent move to award a 397 piece for doing a 329 dungeon.

You do a 329 place to earn a 397 piece while when you're doing the raid itself (by LFR, since it's the same audience of LFD), you'll get gear lower than 397? Does that make any sense at all?

By returning the dungeons to "what they should have been" would be just say "bye bye, it was a good run" for old ones and only focus on the new ones if you want the current content gear. By forcing it a lot, giving a little valor point for doing the old ones, but never to the extent to actually cap your valor the same way someone doing the actual 397 raid (or even the 3 378 heroics) would.

This is not "giving path options" since you're not doing stuff of the same dificult level for it, it's just cheesing the system since the raids won't stay as something you will see only if you try it for real, because they'll probably nerf normal and heroic dragon soul as soon as Paragon defeats H-Deathwing the same way they did with FL. With the fact that LFR will be behind 4.0 heroics for ilvl gear will probably lead to this. Most of the players they're trying to please with this don't care about "finishing a set" or "tier bonuses", they just want the highest ilvl possible for each slot to get their highest average ilvl possible (and not with the objective to down a raid boss). They won't be happy about "seeing the content" in LFR because it was just an excuse to demand the higher ilvl drops from the raids.

It's like doing a random BG and earning your max conquest cap (not arena cap, but the rated bg one) the same way someone doing rated bg or arena. Random BG is a complete diferent thing than Rated BG/Arena. Sure players that fill the role I said earlier (f$%# the game, I want my purple) will say "but that is excelent!" In fact they would even agree with dropping conquest gear or h-deathwing ilvl gear from Vortex Pinnacle bosses, they don't care about the impact of that for the game.

Think about it for a moment, what do you get for not playing the game? Nothing right? So, using logic, what do you get from current tier if you're not doing it? Nothing, right? Doing it a hell easier now, if you're not doing a single Cataclysm thing (you just stay there in Northrend, OL, etc... just do those dungeons forever), what do you get from Cataclysm? Nothing again. Now doing it a little harder, you're only doing 4.0 heroics and T11 raids, what do you get there? 397 or 346/359/372? 346/359/372! You don't want to do anything related to Dragon Soul patch, so there is no logic way to give you a path to earn it's gear. But Blizzard went to the extreme to award you a few valor points for doing 4.0 heroics and T11 heroic raids in 4.2. They said "you shouldn't be earning anything related to the new content since you're not doing it, but we'll give you something anyway, altough it will take way more time since you wouldn't be getting anything anyway if we did it right".

And they just threw that away by "f#@$ this crap, get everything you want from everywhere!" wich makes no sense and it's only there because right now, the group of players leaving the game is the one that say "f$#@ the game, I want my epics" and they just want to keep everyone. When the other types of players start leaving again (as they did after half of the WotLK), they will shift back to "no guys, you need to earn that now".

[Freese]

"In the past we have offered some tier pieces on the Valor vendor for players that just couldn’t justify the time or logistics necessary to participate in raids, but we’re hoping that the introduction of the Raid Finder tool helps remove that barrier. We think most players would agree that killing a giant monster and looting its corpse is more exciting than slowly farming a currency to purchase a reward. Currencies have their place, but we want them to be a secondary avenue of progression to boss killing."

Translation: "We need to find some way to force people to use the random raid finder since anyone with half a mind won't go near it willingly after using the LFD tool more than once."

Actually, this is not what this blue is saying at all. I don't want to run 5 man heroics every week just to get raid gear. That content is not challenging to me. Gone are the days of getting valor capped before the weekly raid so I can get gear. I am thankful for this. As the blue said, it's much more fun to get gear off a boss than run boring content over and over again.

[runnerpadilla]

The cap is to keep the game balance. If they removed the cap the no life players who are on 24/7 would eclipse everyone else in terms of gear. Day 2 of patch and you have ppl in full current lvl gear? That is the major flaw of having an easily obtainable currency in any game. Gold not really counting cause it doesn't directly translate into top lvl gear, some prof. pieces, but that is about it.

Blizzard has stated multiple times that raid lock outs and point caps are not for game balance- though they do serve that purpose. They are actaully there to give people who feel they 'need' to raid in order to maintain some kind of status quo.

It's true that nobody needs to raid, in any context. However, group participation does strange things to a person's psychology. Blizzard is merely acknowledging that fact by placing caps on how quickly these rewards can be earned.

Though, for my two cents, I really dislike the idea of loot becoming more random. When Blizzard says it thinks people like looting something off of a giant boss corpse that it's somehow more fun than purchasing the item for some sort of currency, I couldn't disagree more. There's nothing inherently more fun about farming a raid boss over and over again in a group of 24 other strangers in the hope that the RNG will go your way, as opposed to farming the same heroic bosses over and over again, always knowing that if something decent doesn't drop for you, you're always getting closer to your goal of purchasing the piece. In fact, I rather prefer the choice I get to make when I use the points to select my gear. Waiting for it to randomly drop does absolutely nothing for me. Period.

[Razamith]

Although not announced the next logical step some people are missing (those saying "goodbye Zuls!") is that there's only going to be one "heroics" queue, which will have equal chance at original, zul, or new depending on your average iLvl qualification. IE: if you meet the 333 and 346 but not the (unannounced/guess) 352 then you'll randomly get original or zul for 150VP. The next outcry will be that you have to choose between queue specific for new heroics and 378 drops OR queue random for 150VP (with a small chance at getting the new ones as a bonus).

[Bitlovin]

So this means the only way to get tier 13 is through raid drops? There won't be any on vendors?

That is correct.

[runnerpadilla]

This! Enough with this Capaclysm! (bad pun, I know)

A pun is a play on words. Since Capaclysm is not a word, there's no pun. It's just bad. But at least you knew.

No loss of yardage. Repeat the down.

[Deleted]

Yes they do 8 x 135 = 1080, cap is 1000

No they don't on 10 mans

8 x 115 = 920.

You have to do at least 2 raids dungeons (dragon soul and Baradin Hold) to reach the cap.

I still cannot get the logic of awarding more points to 25-mans. In 25 mans, people gearing up faster because of the triple amount of drops when compared to 10-mans already.

On the other hand, I never understood the reasoning of awarding valor points from dungeons in the first place. but that is just me I guess.

[Dawnseven]

Already fed up of being forced along linear routes in the tedious and boring Cata Blizzard now wish to 'encourage' people that for whatever reason do not wish to be in guilds and suchlike to use the LFR feature. Who in their right mind will actually subject themselves to pvp geared, abusive, inept, or unprepared idiot randoms that already populate the dungeon finder. Let people gear through VP in whatever method they chose instead of penalising those that do not want to go along the line that Blizzard want. Don't patronise and make stupid comments such as "I think you will agree" because actually I don't and stop assuming that people cannot think for themselves. Sick to death of Blizzard and bored out of my mind with Cata - I have invested a lot of time in my toons and have been hoping it will improve. It just gets worse and again the VP changes penalise the casual player who is not interested in playing along with Blizzards idea of how people ought to play.

Hm. Sorry, but this ^.

I once raided my ass off. All through TBC and through half of WOTLK it's all I did. I burned out so bad that the thought of raiding now threatens to give me hives. So don't try to FORCE me to raid. I know by not raiding I don't get the latest and greatest gear. I'm perfectly fine with being penalized by working 10x longer to get what I get through VP, but making certain things completely unobtainable without raiding is wrong. Tier 13 is about to drop and a whole lot of people seem to be highly offended at the thought that I might don a pair of Tier 11 shoulders without raiding. What difference does it make?? How does that negatively affect the game or other peoples' enjoyment of it?

[Deleted]

No they don't on 10 mans

8 x 115 = 920.

You have to do at least 2 raids dungeons (dragon soul and Baradin Hold) to reach the cap.

I still cannot get the logic of awarding more points to 25-mans. In 25 mans, people gearing up faster because of the triple amount of drops when compared to 10-mans already.

On the other hand, I never understood the reasoning of awarding valor points from dungeons in the first place. but that is just me I guess.

Unless they bump the droprates, you get 1 drop per 5 people in the raid (Tier tokens can break that rule), so on normal drops, there's no benefit. I'm not sure why the disparity in VP, though - I expected equal, but apparently not

Edit: Oh, yeah, that OT post - interesting that they separated Tier and VP gear. Not sure if I approve yet - will have to see the loot tables, really! In principle, I don't care - if it's what they want to do, then fine.

[Runeweaver]

Two seperate raids? Hmm...

[Eazy]

That is correct.

Personally I think you're wrong, because if there will be VP what we should do with them? I'm pretty sure that there will be a vendor.

[Gurbz]

Personally I think you're wrong, because if there will be VP what we should do with them? I'm pretty sure that there will be a vendor.

Except that it says that the tier pieces will not be available from a vendor in the blue post. Blizzard has been saying the same thing since they began talking about 4.3. If you want T13, you have to raid.

There will be a Valor point vendor, but it will be for non-set pieces.

[Bullarkie]

I'm curious to find out if raids completed using /LFR will give achievements.