Blizzard fails at Valor?

[gaymer77]

Busting your butt raiding new content is for the drops, not the valor. Its just a nice added perk of not having to run 1-3 extra heroics that week. I would definitely prefer 980 from heroics + uncapped from firelands to reward raiders..

Except the fact that you have to buy tier pieces with VP to upgrade them to the heroic versions which means you will have to buy them with VP if you want 2p or 4p in addition to any of the other VP items (wands, ranged, relics, etc, non-tier pieces)

[eternalwhitemoon]

At the same rate? Your argument is invalid.

Raiders do not only obtain gear from the points, but also from the drops. If you get even a single raid drop, you're already ahead of the non raiders. How can people keep overlooking this simple fact?

Drops are unreliable. 19 Cho'gall kills, no bracers. /wave

That wasn't really my point though. That statement was my personal emotion on the matter, not an argument based on logic.

I still say there was no need to change it and I don't understand the logic behind the change.

[Deleted]

I'm just really disappointed by the reduction in the cap. Will take more weeks to get the gear from the vendor

[Dannz]

well.. looking at the free items from daily quest hub vendors, craftable items + capping VP from zg/za, the ppl that don't raid will have an average of ~360 ilvl before ever setting foot into firelands, it's kinda stupid...

[Auralan]

Drops are unreliable. 19 Cho'gall kills, no bracers. /wave

That wasn't really my point though. That statement was my personal emotion on the matter, not an argument based on logic.

I still say there was no need to change it and I don't understand the logic behind the change.

Hm, maybe so. Those 19 kills probably did drop stuff for the rest of your guild, though. So as a whole your raid got better from it at least.

Anyway, on topic: there wasn't a need for it, but it really doesn't have any affect on raiding characters in the slightest, apart from non raiding alts. Still, those don't even really need the gear, so I couldn't care less.

Further, this will slow down the rate at which non raiders can get the gear, while raiders can still get a decent amount from killing bosses in Firelands. Do not underestimate the new token system. It will make the whole process of upgrading existing gear a whole lot smoother, and less reliable on big / "unfair rng" (I call it bad luck) loot tables. Seriously, what's the problem? Isn't this what everyone wanted, less gear for non raiders?

I guess there always has to be something to complain about.

[eternalwhitemoon]

Hm, maybe so. Those 19 kills probably did drop stuff for the rest of your guild, though. So as a whole your raid got better from it at least.

Do not underestimate the new token system.

On point A, fair enough.

On point B, I missed that part. What change is happening to the token system? Can you kindly provide me a link?

[Dannz]

On point A, fair enough.

On point B, I missed that part. What change is happening to the token system? Can you kindly provide me a link?

heroic raid bosses dropping fire motes that you use to upgrade current none-heroic items that drop from trash, and can be bought for valor points, effectively making it the same ilvl as your heroic raiding gear will be, instead of 13 ilvl below :3

[tilgare]

If you think about it logically rather than angrily, they're tweaking the numbers to put us exactly where we were with tier 11. Even if you were clearing out 12/12 in 25-man within the first month, you were getting 1080 VP. That meant that you had to do 3 daily heroics for 70 a piece to hit the 1250 VP cap for the week. Now, if you're clearing 7/7 T12, you'll end up with 630 VP, meaning you'll need 3 Zandalari heroics at 140 a piece to hit the new cap of 980 VP.

The only real change is that you can't really knock out a heroic this time by also doing BH, it still puts you just barely behind the cap.

Also, yes you can pick up all the VP gear via heroics alone, but that is really of little concern. The real gear will be dropping in Firelands. What this does mean, is that while guilds are progressing, they aren't out all of those valor points for the week.

[Azoth]

If blizzard wanted us to focus on current tier they would have given us more bosses. 7 bosses @ 90 (for 25 man) is only 630 Valor Points... If we want to cap VP for the week, Blizzard is FORCING people to run random heroics or go back to do T11 heroic raids.

[Psilar]

The main reason the Valor point cap was changed is because its parts of blizzard design plan to make less content seem like more. How to make a patch with only 7 new bosses and dailes seem large? Force your players to play it longer to get the items they want by lowering the VP cap and putting the dailies on an RNG system.

This is the reason. I agree, extra valor points should be obtainable through more than just heroic dungeons. I think Blizzard realized with the 7 dailies in a day change, that more people are capping there toons, and they're pre-emptively trying to slow things down.

[Auralan]

On point A, fair enough.

On point B, I missed that part. What change is happening to the token system? Can you kindly provide me a link?

Ugh, took me long enough to remember the name...

http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=71617/cr...ized-firestone

There you go.

[Durandro]

While I'm not raging super hard about this, I agree that this is a bad move.

The 1250 cap was just about perfect. Admittedly we'll have fewer raid bosses to kill, but it'll encourage raiders to do 5 mans AS WELL as Firelands. Also having a visible benefit to raiding over just doing 5 mans (short of drops, which are unreliable anyway) encouraged people to keep raiding content even when they'd gotten everything they needed.

And yeah, I want as much Valor as I can get. I have an offspec to gear, and BoE's to sell.

Its fine letting non-raiders get some T12 and nice items from doing 5 mans. But putting a choker on people who raid exclusively seems very flawed. If they are going to do a limit like that, increase the Valor from Firelands bosses so it matches a Zandalari random. 'Focusing' someone to do something they don't want to is bad in a game. (edit: Or reduce what you get from a 5 man random by half.)

[Deleted]

heroic raid bosses dropping fire motes that you use to upgrade current none-heroic items that drop from trash, and can be bought for valor points, effectively making it the same ilvl as your heroic raiding gear will be, instead of 13 ilvl below :3

That is only for trash drops and valor vendor items, not set items.

Maybe it's just me because I play since vanilla, but I had enough of ZG and ZA when the instances came out the first time and we did them a million times. We average 4 chars in our guild and running those 2 instances the last few weeks 3-4 imes a day maybe has its effects. It's just pathetic how much value Blizzard puts on a 5-man instance.

A lot of people are missing the point. This thread has nothing to do with the fact that you can farm 270 less in 4.2 but rather with the fact that Blizzard did not make any effort in giving us a new 5-man for our daily heroic. The old raids are a joke since they give fewer points than ZG and ZA. And a godd example is ICC, Blizzard released 3 5-man instances with ICC. They just failed this time. ZA/ZG should have come with 4.2.

[radical]

They need to give trash players some incentive to play the game. I mean they can't raid, they can barely do zg/za, so give them some pity VP and let the good loot drop in Firelands. They will always be trash, no matter what gear they have. Just remember that.

[Gharld]

Seeing two issues here people seem the have here...

1) Current Raid full clear will give less than ZA/ZG
2) There is "no point" to doing old heroic raids

To both of these I have to ask, what are VP used for? The simple answer is to buy several pieces of current end game loot. That being said, I really dont see the issue here. So lets look at our types of players:

Current Content Raiders: Raiding Firelands/Firelands heroics, getting gear equal to or better than VP vendor, as well as tier from VP vendor (assuming 1 or 2 pieces require a token from a specific boss). May do Alt runs through old raids on normal, or even heroic, depending on the guild.

Casual Raiders: Doing some Firelands potentially, also running some of last tiers raids for some upgrades over current gear. Alt runs for old raid normals

Non Raiders and/or Social Players: Very little raid content seen, may do heroics. Potential with change to old raid's normal modes, may get into a few PuGs.

So the issue appears to be that people who do only heroics, aka the Non raiders/Socials, will be getting VP vendor loot at the potential same rate as a raider. Infact if all 3 groups do as indicated in the descriptions, chances are they will. Now in order to hit the cap, the Raiders will also have to run a few heroics to hit the so said cap. It seems to me alot of people are angry that this step, the running of ZG/ZA to get VP faster than going through the trouble of running old raids, is the issue. But the underlining point is that quite frankly, if you are hoping for the VP vendor to deck you out in full current end game gear, you are flat our wrong. At the most, the VP vendor will get you anywhere around half full of epics.

So really at the end of the day, if you deck out each of these groups in all the VP vendor gear, you will have:
Full current content geared Raiders
Full epic'd causal raiders with half current half last tier
Half current, maybe a few pieces of 359s from JP's, 353s on the Non Raiders

So yes, for current content raiders, old heroics will indeed become useless, due to no need for the gear in there, with maybe the exception of a BiS trinket whos only compitition may be off a Firelands boss who is either too hard as of that moment for the raid, or in a potential rare case, only the heroic version is better than the last tier's trinket. There is also the possiblity for alts of these raiders to hit up heroics upon having enough gear beforehand to do T11 heroics and down them, if not also a few Firelands bosses.

The Casual raiders on the otherhand have plenty of reason to try heroics, as they will contain upgrades to w/e current T11 they have and cant replace with VP gear or gear from Firelands due to quite frankly not being "good enough" to down the whole instance, save for a boss or two. Indeed even the T11 heroics may prove to be too much of a challenge for alot of Casual Raiders, but there will be a decent amount who will be able to do so.

Non Raiders on the otherhand will be running T11 normals at the most. Not so much as tapping T11 heroics or normal Firelands.

So really depending on which of the 3 groups above you fit in, you may or may not have any value of running T11 heroics. But really, again, if you are running T11 heroics just for VP as a guild, you are doing it wrong. T11 heroics should be ran, if anything, for the gear that the content drops, which can be picked up by the Casuals who are good enough and Alts of Current Content raiders. So if anything, Blizz did not "devalue" T11 raids by making ZG/ZA give more valor points, but rather you the player did by expecting to run raid content just to farm VP in the first place.

[Dacomp89]

Right, it's for the drops and the experience, but having the extra valor to round out your gear (since if you're not raiding you don't need it anyway) is more ideal.

What I'm saying though, is if you do your 7 dungeons (and you should, with your guild, if your guild isn't level 25 yet), valor points from Firelands is 100% completely wasted. That doesn't seem like a good design decision to me.

Why should people who are clearing Firelands do 7 dungeons per week. There is no reason. If your guild isn't 25 yet, you realize that the same 5 people don't need to do all 7 guild dungeons. You get your points from Firelands and then you'll only have to do a couple dungeons per week to get to your cap. It's the same reason that one of the incentives of 25 man is more valor per boss than 10 man, so you won't have to spend as much time doing random dungeons.

[Shmiles]

So, the cap was reduced to 980, which one can reach with 7x ZG/ZA, and the old raids give 35 valor on 10-man and 45 on 25-man heroic only.

WTF? Is there any reason to put an effort into doing heroic Blackwing and Bastion? To be honest I'd rather do those raids in heroic to get valor but it just seems like a waste of time. Some items are nice and come close to firelands gear but time spent does sure as hell not equal the reward. Anyone else pissed of about this stupidity? I'm sick of doing ZG and ZA over and over and we'll have to keep doing those for quick access to valor points.

Thanks Blizzard, you fucking IDIOTS.


EDIT: The major point is that Blizzard devalued raid hardmodes below ZG/ZA. No one is claiming that you should skip firelands because you can cap your valor with ZG/ZA.

There is already a thread on this.

[Grishnok]

While I'm not raging super hard about this, I agree that this is a bad move.

The 1250 cap was just about perfect. Admittedly we'll have fewer raid bosses to kill, but it'll encourage raiders to do 5 mans AS WELL as Firelands. Also having a visible benefit to raiding over just doing 5 mans (short of drops, which are unreliable anyway) encouraged people to keep raiding content even when they'd gotten everything they needed.

And yeah, I want as much Valor as I can get. I have an offspec to gear, and BoE's to sell.

Its fine letting non-raiders get some T12 and nice items from doing 5 mans. But putting a choker on people who raid exclusively seems very flawed. If they are going to do a limit like that, increase the Valor from Firelands bosses so it matches a Zandalari random. 'Focusing' someone to do something they don't want to is bad in a game. (edit: Or reduce what you get from a 5 man random by half.)

If you havent noticed this is Blizzards new design for Cata. Force players to do things they dont want to so they keep playing and keep a blind eye to the fact that cata has little to NO content to do.

What is happening now is a perfect example on top of forcing pvp players to do RBGS to cap conquest. Instead of fixing broken worthless shit that they put in the game or removing it, they simply find a way to make you do it. Fixing it or replacing it takes money and Acti-Blizzard wont have that.

[Deleted]

valor point cap is still 1250, if you want to get your weekly cap you still need to raid

You fail, it's 980 just got changed.

@Gharld I believe you are wrong on your casual raider part. Firelands is going to be easier as Blackwing and Bastion hardmodes and that was already stated by Blizzard as a fact. Old content clear = ready for firelands so why waste time on odl hardmodes? You can max out time and effort in firelands and fill up valor with ZG/ZA whi in my view as a raider is a fail because old hardmodes should have a greater priority. Blizzard should give 280 valor for old raid hardmodes, why? because most people, especially hardcore raiders will reach the cap anyway. As a casual raider I want to reach my cap and see the old hardmodes but they cost me too much time. The cap remains so it doesn't matter if I do 1 Blackwing/Bastion hardmode or 2 ZG/ZA runs and now be honest do you think a hardmode should be worth a fraction of a ZG/ZA run?

---------- Post added 2011-06-11 at 02:12 AM ----------

There is already a thread on this.

Couldn't find it. Post a link please. Oh and this is not a thread about cap reduction.

[Gharld]

You fail, it's 980 just got changed.

@Gharld I believe you are wrong on your casual raider part. Firelands is going to be easier as Blackwing and Bastion hardmodes and that was already stated by Blizzard as a fact. Old content clear = ready for firelands so why waste time on odl hardmodes? You can max out time and effort in firelands and fill up valor with ZG/ZA whi in my view as a raider is a fail because old hardmodes should have a greater priority. Blizzard should give 280 valor for old raid hardmodes, why? because most people, especially hardcore raiders will reach the cap anyway. As a casual raider I want to reach my cap and see the old hardmodes but they cost me too much time. The cap remains so it doesn't matter if I do 1 Blackwing/Bastion hardmode or 2 ZG/ZA runs and now be honest do you think a hardmode should be worth a fraction of a ZG/ZA run?

You're missing the point though. If you dont like not running T11 heroics JUST because of VP and not the gear it drops, you yourself are the one who is devaluing the content. VP in 4.2 will get you Rings, Neck, a Trinket, and Relic/Ranged if I'm not mistaken, as well as the T12 and while some of Firelands may be easier for some casual raiders, I doubt they will be going 7/7 right off the bat. So where are they going to get additional gear to make getting 7/7 go smoother? T11 heroics. Because again, VP will only be getting you, at the most, half of your gear, which is not all too much at the end of the day.

And if you want to argue that theres no point to T11 heroics because you can do Firelands normal fine in T11 normal gear, the VP change has really nothing to do with that at all, so why start that suddenly in here?