World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

We’ve just updated our Patch 6.2.3 preview blog post with the following details:

• Upgrading an item costs 250 Valor for +5 item levels.
• Hellfire Citadel items, Dungeon loot, Baleful items, and crafted items can each be upgraded twice, costing a total of 500 Valor for +10 item levels.
• There is no hard weekly cap on Valor, but the sources of Valor are inherently not infinitely repeatable.
• Valor can be earned in the following ways:
  • Mythic Dungeon (Valor awarded with dungeon completion, once per dungeon per week) – 300 Valor Points
  • Complete the weekly Event quest from Seer Kazal (Pet Battle Event excluded) – 500 Valor Points
  • Heroic Dungeon (complete your first random Heroic of the day) – 100 Valor Points
  • Raid Finder wing (once per week per wing) – 150 Valor Points for Hellfire Citadel wings, 75 Valor Points for Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry wings

If you have any further questions on this, feel free to ask them here.

Please note: On the current PTR, Mythic Dungeons are awarding only 150 Valor Points. This will be fixed to the intended value of 300.

Does this include the PvP events? So you win 10 skirmishes and get 500 CP and 500 VP?
Yes.

Why is the Pet Battle event excluded, but not the PvP events?
The Pet Battle challenge is excluded because it and pet battling are account-wide.

A hard cap on earning Valor (or any currency) essentially sets a weekly benchmark, and falling short of that benchmark leaves you feeling like you've left something on the table. If we artificially cap earning at 1000/week, then we're saying it takes ~8 weeks to fully upgrade your gear, assuming "maximum" effort each week. If you miss a week, then you're a week "behind." If you're busy, or sick, or just don't feel like it, and you fall a bit short of the cap one week, then you are delaying completion by precisely that amount. The existence of the cap makes the whole thing feel more mandatory in a sense, with motivation level then plummeting the moment you hit that weekly cap. Despite all these reasons, sometimes we do need caps as a pacing mechanism, particularly early in an expansion or where the impact on player power is massive (e.g. buying Conquest gear in a new arena season).

Without a cap, there's an inherent diminishing return curve at play. You can start off doing the most efficient and engaging activities first, until you've exhausted those, leaving you with activities that are progressively less efficient and/or less suited to your playstyle preferences, combined with the fact that you also inherently are exhausting your free time as you go, with your remaining time presumably becoming more valuable as it dwindles. At some point, you generally hit a threshold where the reward for the next incremental activity no longer seems worth the time investment required, and you're done for the week. For many people, that threshold will be reached at lower than 1000 VP per week, and their experience is no different whether or not there's a cap. For others, that threshold will be reached at a point above 1000 VP, and the lack of a cap gives them the freedom to decide when they're done rather than having it dictated to them. Some will benefit from the fact that they're allowed to convert a weekend of free time into a bunch of Valor to make up for that week when they were busy or traveling, coming out even or ahead rather than being permanently "behind" due to a cap.

(The particular nature of Valor upgrades also adds another element of diminishing returns - your first 2k Valor will likely go into your weapons and trinkets. After that, every additional point of Valor you earn is progressively less impactful as you work your way down from chest/helm, to gloves, to bracers.)

In this case, we opted for the design that offers more freedom to select the sources of Valor that most suit your preferred playstyle, goals, and available time. If you're into Mythic dungeons, then Mythic dungeons are going to be by far the most lucrative source of Valor, and should let you cover your needs quickly. But for players who don't want to run Mythic dungeons, queued alternatives (such as Heroics and Raid Finder) allow for a way to still earn Valor.

I understand the sense of obligation to maximize performance in a competitive raid environment, but the game asks competitive raiders to make those choices constantly: do you craft every upgrade at the first opportunity, use the best gems in items you might replace soon, use the best food or Augment Runes on every pull, keep running lower difficulties on the off-chance of a Warforged/socketed perfect drop that could be an upgrade, keep up with multiple specs or alts to allow you to optimize for specific encounters, and so forth?

Virtually everyone draws a line somehow and compromises in most of these areas, making a judgment about the point at which further expense (whether of gold, or time, or effort) is no longer worth the benefit. This system presents another one of those choices. The need to "save players from themselves" is a familiar refrain - but past experience has shown that people are better at managing their schedules and gameplay choices than many of the comments in this thread would suggest.

And what about people like me whos preferred playstyle is to do organized Raiding? Why did you ignore the one question that's plastered all over this thread: why does Normal/Heroic/Mythic HFC not reward Valor?
The focus of the patch is on dungeon content. Raid Finder was included as a source to add a few more options for Group Finder queuing, and if getting a few well-geared tanks and healers to hop back into Raid Finder improves queues a bit for the core Raid Finder audience, that's not the worst thing in the world. But if you hate Raid Finder, there are literally thousands of Valor available weekly without setting foot in Raid Finder.

Part of the point is to provide a reason to revisit content that you may not have had much reason to do in a while, rather than just providing an extra reward for continuing your existing routine.

Creatures and NPCs
Shadowmoon Valley

• Captain Bonerender is now immune to Death Knight's Control Undead ability.

Garrison
Naval Missions

• Ghostly Naval missions should now appear for all characters on an account if one of the characters have unlocked the Ghostly Spyglass.

Items

• [Requires a realm restart] Exquisite Costume Set: "Deathwing" now maintains its cosmetic transformation while mounted.

During BlizzCon 2015, we’ll be hosting another World of Warcraft Q&A panel on Saturday, November 7 where we’ll be answering as many Legion questions as we can. This year we’ll be not only collecting questions from those attending the show, but we also want to have questions from those of you who will be watching from home. To do this, we need your help and your questions.

To submit your own question, simply post in this thread beginning today (Tuesday, October 20) through Thursday, October 22. We’ll compile these questions and present them again shortly after for you to vote on the ones you most want answered. Once the voting has ended, we’ll pull the top questions to present during the panel.

Some things to consider when submitting a question:

• Please keep your question brief and to the point. These will need to fit on a large index card.
• With so many questions, we won’t be able to ask them all, but we’ll be doing the best we can.
• Make sure you’re asking a question versus making a statement.
• Please make sure the question is Legion specific. We won’t be asking general questions.

Thank you to everyone who takes time to submit.

The Halloween season has finally arrived, and we’re ready to cut straight to the heart of the holiday. If you're dying to pick up a knife and hack, gash, slash, and jab at something, then you might be excited to hear that as of October 19, Blizzard's 2015 Halloween Pumpkin Carving Contest has officially begun! Unleash your magical axes, psi blades, chitinous claws, and other creative cutlery to carve up Blizzard-themed jack-o''-lanterns of epic awesomeness. If you're unclear as to what epic awesomeness looks like in the flesh, you can check out previous pumpkins for some inspiration..

We’ll choose five of the grandest Cucurbita to earn one Stiches Plush with In-Game skin. Don’t delay; start carving right away! The thirteenth annual pumpkin carving contest ends on October 29, so be sure to check out the contest page for rules and eligibility and get straight to slicing.

Whether you’re geeking out on the show floor at BlizzCon or tuning in from home, this is a performance you won’t want to miss: Linkin Park is closing out BlizzCon 2015!


The Grammy Award–winning rock band—and the biggest band on Facebook, with 63 million fans and counting—will be taking the stage the evening of Saturday, November 7, to provide an epic send-off for everyone at this year’s convention. Even if you didn’t score tickets to the show, Blizzard gamers and Linkin Park fans around the world can still get a front-row seat from home with the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket.

BlizzCon is the biggest Blizzard party of the year, packed with in-depth developer panels, intense eSports tournaments, the legendary Friday night contests—this year hosted by Wil Wheaton—and what’s sure to be an epic finale from Linkin Park. The Virtual Ticket lets you watch it all online, live and in high definition. Order a Virtual Ticket and you’ll also receive a treasure trove of in-game goodies for World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm.

Check out the press release for more information on this year’s closing concert featuring Linkin Park. We’ll see you at the show!

Creatures and NPCs

• Fixed an issue that could occur with Arachnis where players were unable to loot multiple items.

Achievements

• What A Strange, Interdimensional Trip It's Been: Fixed an issue where Spooky Pepe found during the Hallow's End event was not contributing credit towards completing this achievement.

So do you see Blizzard going the direction of pumping out a large multitude of titles or generally perfecting its current ones?
Blizzard has always been about their own timeframes and polished games, I don't see that changing any time soon. (Muffinus)

What new hunter pets can we expect for #Legion? Wind riders, thunderlizards, maybe hippogryphs? I'd really like those! #Warcraft
Not at liberty to say, but always appreciate thoughts on what you'd like to see tamed, I'd wait for beta for new models. (Muffinus)
New models? wotNOT THUNDERLIZARDS? PLZ THUNDERLIZARDS.
Secret expansion info: there will be some new models. And demon hunters. Pls dont share, v secret. (Muffinus)

According to Dave Kosak voidwalkers aren't demons so...why do warlocks summon and control them? Can you give a reason why?
The concept of old gods as separate abberations came about after Classic, but the Warlock class' blueberry felt iconic and right (Muffinus)
Maybe warlocks touch on Void magic a bit in their unorthodox practices? (Muffinus)