Weekend (26 Aug) - Last Minute Details

Weekend (26 Aug) - Last Minute Details

Note: This is to give folks something to read on Monday morning - after reading the "In Her Own Head" post since it looks like you all took an early Friday last week.  :-)

There will be another post before the 5.04 launch on Tuesday so that you are up to date. Below is the latest information about Patch 5.04.

Valor Point/Justice System Conversion
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The Valor Point/Justice Point conversion has finally been announced. There is a three step process that will work just fine for the Wild Family.

Step 1 - When patch 5.04 goes live on 28 Aug, all VPs will be converted to JPs. If the total of VPs + JPs exceed the 4,000 max cap, players will be able to keep those over cap JPs for the first two weeks. VPs can no longer be earned. Anyone over the cap will not be able to earn any new JPs.

Step 2 - At the end of the second week of 5.04, any JPs still over the 4k cap will be converted to gold. All players can continue to earn JPs as long as it is below the cap.

Step 3 - When MoP goes live on 25 Sep, VPs can again be earned at a max rate of 1,000/week. Players can hold up to a max of 3,000 total VPs. VPs are used to buy i489 gear, which are sold by factions and require Revered reputation.

For the Wild Family there is both good and bad news. The good news, of course, is that Wild and JB will be able to make maximum use of the VPs and JPs they have to acquire additional heirloom gear.

The bad news is that Valor Point usage has been "adjusted" to the point I'm having trouble figuring out what's what. More on that at the bottom of the post.

Raid Finder Loot Rules
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Wow, get a load of this! We currently have the need, greed, and pass system to win gear that is randomly dropped from bosses. The new system coming into play (for raid finder and world bosses only) is 180 degrees out from the now old system. I like it, personally, but it has it's faults that I hope Blizzard gets around to fixing. Here it is:

Instead of the random number generator (RNG) blindly picking loot to drop for everyone (potentially) to roll on, there is an independent RNG roll "for each player" to determine if they won loot. Players that win loot are awarded a random item from a list of "spec appropriate items" that go directly to the player. There is no need, greed, pass system for the raid finder. Since there is a loot roll for every player, every player has an equal chance to received loot without affecting the chances of any other player. The items received are soulbound and cannot be traded to someone else. Note that you can still get drops that you already have.

The disadvantage of this system is pretty obvious. You cannot win off-spec gear in a raid finder raid. 

You cannot loot non-mainspec gear for transmog, either. For that, it's back to dungeons, faction gear, normal gear and older content.

Oh, the new system applies to World Bosses. Now, that's pretty cool. Since every player gets their own chance at loot, world boss raids can be as large as you want without affecting the chance at loot. Of course, then they went and snarled that up by saying that "only the group that kills the boss" will get a chance at the loot. Guess you'd better be in the right group.

The Bonus Roll - This seems overly complicated, but with enough effort players can buy an extra loot roll in raids (any kind of raid). The way it works is that players must farm the Pandaren Elder faction for tokens. In addition to using elder tokens to by faction stuff, players can also buy Charms of Good Fortune (1 Charm for 25 tokens). No, I don't know how long it takes to accumulate 25 tokens. Anyway, after killing a raid boss and determining loot, there is an opportunity to buy another, independent loot roll with a Charm. This is a loot roll, not a guarantee of a gear drop. However, the roll will always reward something, even if it's only gold. You can use a Charm only once per boss kill. So - farm Pandaren Elder faction, earn tokens, buy Charms with tokens, use Charms to buy loot chances off dead bosses. Got it?

The Future of Valor Points
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The discussion started out well. Blizzard admitted that VPs were becoming so important they were almost more important than boss kills as far as earning better gear was concerned. Well, first I had to find out how VPs could be used to see if their relative value had changed. I could not find any definitive information about how Tier pieces are acquired, so I first assumed that it's the same as Cata with a few boss drops and the rest bought with VPs. However, Blizz is still considering removing all valor gear from valor vendors (what would they be called, then? no-valor vendors?) and requiring that gear to be earned in only by boss kills. That would certainly lower the need for VPs to buy tier pieces, but now we are at the mercy of the RNG for tier drops from bosses. Not a fair trade, in my view.

That said, VPs are now required to buy faction gear, instead of the usual gold. Yes, not only must we grind faction rep (to at least Revered), we also have to grind VPs to buy the gear those factions offer. That also seems to fly in the face of reducing the importance of VPs.

Blizz says they want players spending more time killing bosses and less time grinding VPs. So, one way they want to do that is make us grind MORE VPs so that we can slightly increase our gear item level a little each week (up to a maximum 8 ilevel points - which, frankly, is not that much of an improvement). What stats the upgrades offer or how that would actually worked has not yet been finalized. Bottom line - you'll need VPs to buy the item level upgrades. 

Finally, note that best and most efficient method for earning valor points in MoP is by doing dungeons and scenarios, not raids! So much for lowering the importance of VPs and increasing the importance of raids.

One poster put it best - earning VPs through raids, which most raiders prefer, has been changed to something more mandatory than ever for progression and earned primarily from trivial and uninteresting content that will be outdated a month into the expansion (ie, endless running of dungeons and scenarios to earn VPs).

The Patch 5.04 Survival Guide
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* Download ahead of time all the latest releases of any addons used.
* All talents are reset, so be prepared to set them up.
* Glyphs have changed. Check them.
* Mana pools are capped. Wow, that I didn't know. Int for higher power spells, and spi for faster regen will be main focus.
* Buffs and debuffs have been redesigned. Learn it.
* The Battle of Theramore will not start on day 1 of 5.04.

There ya go. I'm launching this baby.