My memory is really hazy, but don't they reset valor (convert to justice) when a new raid tier comes out and reset conquest (convert to honor) when a new PvP season starts? Therefore, there is no valor or conquest to bank when 5.2 drops and people should get all of their upgrades on their current gear done prior to patch day.
-HP
I believe that Blizzard is migrating to the point where justice points are eliminated from the game. I believe it simplifies the PvE side of things to only have one *compensation* currency. Follow this train of thought:
1) When patch 5.2 hits, all valor is reset to zero.
2) After three weeks of capping valor, you are at 3k valor. At this point you evaluate the state of your gear and decide which vendor valor piece to buy based on two criteria: which will provide the biggest upgrade *and* which is least likely to be replaced in the near future. If you're in a raiding guild, I would pick something in a slot where I have a lot of competition in my raid group (e.g., a caster DPS neck) so that it will take multiple weeks of that drop before I feel buyer's remorse.
In this system, valor works as compensation currency -- if you raid for three weeks and have really bad luck getting something to drop for your neck slot, you can buy a vendor valor neck.
3) You raid for a while. Every time you hit 3k valor, you reevaluate your gear and pick a compensation item. If you're super lucky and have all of your gear via raiding, you can now spend valor on your offspec (surprise!).
4) Patch 5.3 hits. The upgrade vendors are back.
5) You raid some more. When you hit 3k valor, you reevaluate your gear and identify your BiS items. You spend valor to upgrade those BiS items since you will not be replacing them. If you have already upgraded all of your BiS items, you can then upgrade your non-BiS items following the same criteria in list item 2 above as compensation for having bad luck in filling out your BiS set.
The only reason valor became an outlet for gearing out off specs historically is because upgrades did not exist. I don't think Blizzard will incentivize spending valor for off spec gear because LFR *exists*. I'm pretty sure Blizzard has metrics showing that normal/heroic mode raiders are queueing up for LFR less often as time goes on. By incentivizing raiders to spend their valor on upgrading main spec gear in 5.3, this means that normal/heroic mode raiders will go back to LFR instead to fill out their off spec sets which in turn helps the LFR community at large.
Edit: It also occurs to me that by incentivizing raiders to spend their valor on their main specs, this creates a market for profession crafted gear for people to use in their off specs.
Edit: It also occurs to me that the issue of buyer's remorse existed under the old valor system. If you bought the Demonbone Waistguard for valor off the NPC in Ogrimmar and then the Runescriven Demon Collar dropped off Hagara, you would have buyer's remorse for wasting that valor on something that was replaced. I suppose the correct argument is that in the past, *heroic* Dragon Soul raiders with piles of excess valor could spend their valor on *inferior* normal mode equivalent gear for their off specs. By that same logic, current heroic/normal mode raiders can just run LFR for inferior gear for their off specs.
-HP
Last edited by hp2; 01-18-2013 at 11:40 PM.
Originally Posted by hp2
They can't provide us with a full set of reasonably priced (even 5k per piece) PVE crafts because that would scupper their plan to force us all into T14. Players don't want to run T14 again to catch up alts or gear an offspec and Blizzard knows perfectly well that even a half viable alternative would have players abandoning T14 over night.
I understand why Blizzard are doing what they are doing, I just don't agree with why they are doing it.
The current VP gear should have been moved to JP vendors. That was previously the perfect solution for players to spend surplus JP on items to either catch up an alt or gear an offspec. It worked fine and there was no dilemma or buyers remorse as JP was a surplus currency.
The reason why they aren't doing that is because players would avoid T14 like the plague and farm JP to catch up.
Basically Blizzard have trashed their previously successful catch up/offspec system in order to protect a progression model that was only ever favoured by a minority.
The irony being that the minority concerned won't gain anything out of this progression model - it won't provide special snowflake status to those doing the higher tiers (as it did in TBC) because millions of players will be able to enter those raids on their mains anyway due to having cleared the previous raids in RF whilst those raids were current. It will not keep the unwashed masses out of T16.
Of course it isn't just alts and offspecs that are causing problems. Blizzard are clearly having problems juggling PVP gear around in a desperate attempt to stop it being used to skip old-RF raids without damaging PVP'ers.
It is a mess. All in the name of this crazy desire to have us running the old raids. This is not TBC/Cata/Wrath where only a small percentage saw the raids the first time around and they were therefore wasted when players skipped them to catch up. We have RF now, everyone has done them to death. The content was fully utilised whilst it was the current active tier.
Sound like there is a "Gear Economy" and its currency is Valor Points. Blizzard is still figuring out how it is going to work, probably because they haven't realized that there is a secondary economy here.........
I like Hp2's sense of things he makes things seem fairly clear.
Yes I would like to see some sort of demand for crafted items., I do not raid due to a squrely work schedule, even LFR does not have enough people in Que when I want to play. That makes me the "Single Casual PLayer" who is willing to do the social stuff, but ends up playing a more single player version of the game. If I could build a "Non-Raider" set out of crafteds as reward for my playtime it would be nice.
I agree with....Toypop? (No, no, the master will be angry, the master will be angry!!)
Seems like all they're going to accomplish is making fresh 90's look at the progression path and say, "Eh, screw it." and not even bother. It doesn't even affect any other players, people already in guilds or on the raiding path will continue on as normal. So I guess it's just a big middle finger to anyone that wasn't in a raid group at the start of the expansion.
I'm really at a loss as to what problem this new system solves.
I see you got your guitar; grats.
I doubt it will make a difference, unless blizzard do things quite differently to how they have been in 5.0-1 then you'll want to enter 5.2 with as little VP as possible anyway.
I believe blizz have said they want an estimated 2 months between raid patches and the interim patch, which is where we can expect to see VP upgrade vendors return.
That's 8 weeks or 8k VP expected to be earned during 5.2, we can presume you want to enter 5.3 with capped VP, so that's 5k VP you want to earn and spend in 5.2 purchasing valour gear.
Each rep faction in MOP factions had 3 items, usually amounting to around 5250 VP cost in total, even if they had a chest, legs and helm - the most expensive VP slots, it would still only come out to 6750, so going into 5.2 with capped VP would result in you VP capping before 5.3 was released, and that's presuming all of the VP items are upgrades - with raid gained rep it's not unlikely that you found a raid upgrade before you earned the rep to purchase the VP item.
If the faction plays out like other MOP factions, then you'll likely want to upgrade the tier 14 items that you expect to last the longest and go in dry.
Ofcourse, blizzard could pull something out of the bag and add the VP upgrade npcs back in earlier than expected, have significantly more VP items on the raid rep faction (though that still doesn't circumvent raid upgrades potentially making them useless, especially considering the itemization of previous rep items - whoo for crit caster gear), or some other cunning workaround.
All speculation, but it's all based on how rep factions currently work, worrying about VP capping is a reasonable worry to have - though I'd hope blizzard have already seen it coming if I can and ensured it won't happen.
You can't look at the valor changes in a vacuum. Remember, they are increasing the drop rates in T14 LFR when 5.2 hits. This will drastically squish the bell curve in terms of the spread between those who are super lucky in LFR (e.g., Lore who got four piece tier in two lockouts) and those who are super unlucky in LFR (those who get nothing but gold). Blizzard will most likely set the 5.2 T14 LFR drop rates in a manner where the average time to hit T15 LFR iLvl requirements is perhaps 2-4 weeks.
I suppose a way to imagine this is, what if the T14 LFR drop rate were 50%. How many weeks would it take you to gear out if you were getting items off every other boss? Even if you got a few duplicate items, you would still be filling all sixteen gear slots pretty quickly off of sixteen bosses in T14 LFR. I would actually recommend that Blizzard increase the elder charm drop rate in T14 (LFR/normal/heroic) to 100% -- if you use a charm in an old raid, you're guaranteed an item (but it could still be a duplicate). This would actually curtail the 'super unlucky' end of the bell curve.
In this manner, new players are not farming JP to catch up in 5.2 -- they're actually raiding in order to catch up in 5.2. They're seeing the content. Furthermore, Blizzard is not invalidating the effort that current tier raiders have put in since new players are 2-4 weeks of T14 LFR behind -- not 16 hours of grinding out JP behind.
Lastly, to combat the Sunwell phenomenon: if a raiding guild needs to catch up a new recruit quickly and don't want to wait 2-4 weeks for them to run LFR, they can craft raiding gear for him using materials from their own T14 raiding efforts.
I think the system will work elegantly.
-HP
I don't know how much the RF drop rate will be improved but I am certain it won't allow "catching up" as fast as you could previously.
If it did allow you to catch up that quickly then does it really matter if you do heroics for 2 weeks or RF raids for 2 weeks? Hell just let us do 5 mans in that case as really what difference does it make? At least that way we wouldn't have all this ridiculous nonsense with JP and the modifications having to be made to PVP gear.
But remember Blizzards statement about not wanting to trivialise the "achievement" or "effort" of those players that had previously ground T14 RF for 6 months? I laugh out loud at the suggestion that anyone that AFK'd through RF's and then got gear by pure RNG luck really cares if someone catches up but regardless I think it is clear that Blizzard is intent on extending the catch up time. It surely won't be as quick as you think. A few weeks would be no "better" than the old system from their perspective.
Also remember that even with the cost of 5.0 VP gear lowered, VP is still not a surplus currency. Once you have spent it on this cheap 5.0 gear for your main spec you will be spending it on the 5.2 gear for your main spec.
You still have no slack with which to gear your offspec. JP was previously the most reliable source of that gear - being a surplus currency that wasn't required for your main spec progression. You just kind of picked it up by accident whilst VP capping in 5 mans.
I couldn't care less about my alts. I gave up on them months ago. I just find it annoying as I want OS gear (healing gear isn't optimal for dailies) but I am being forced to re-run a raid that I have been running for months now and I am bored sick of it.
Why am I being made to do this? Who is it pleasing?! God knows. GC seems to think someone will be pleased and get some perverse pleasure out of it but I sure as heck haven't met anyone who will admit to it.
Maybe I just have a hate-hate relationship with RNG. I have killed the theoretical maximum number of tier dropping bosses possible and used all my coins and yet I only have a two-set. Pretty annoying that Lore got the four set in two lockouts! Makes a mockery of the game though when things like that happen. What about "invalidating the effort" in that context?
If Blizzard have concerns about "invalidating effort" then clearly there are other areas they need to address first! Not that I have a grudge against Lore invalidating my effort because I could hardly call it effort. I have a grudge when I see that happen and then I am told to keep running this old boring raid for months on end because I might invalidate another persons "effort". It is like being punished twice!
This is what I keep asking. What's the point? Is it just to phase in LFR permanently in place of 5-mans? Ok, great, maybe we're just seeing the growing pains of a new system. Other than that, it's frustrating.Why am I being made to do this? Who is it pleasing?! God knows.
If LFR is going to be in lieu of 5 mans, you need to get more gear from it, or the weekly loot lock needs to go IMO.
Da, very da.
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The *effort* is not for getting the LFR loot is for being ready for Tier 15. The normal and heroic raiders will be ready for tier 15; the LFR's will need to do a little more (do they want to?); the player that just get into the expansion at 5.2 will need to do LFR T14 and the same that the previous LFR's to get ready for raid, that difference is what he gets because he wasn't present for 5.0-5.1 that is the effort he has to put a different but equivalent effort to: grinding GL and Klaxxi, killing sha, camping Galeon, LFR to complete sets or remove blues.
What I understand is that blizzard thinks that instant catch up was a bad idea. I agree, not because I feel bad that other players get loot, is because the lose content.
Now, how long it takes for a new 90 to get tier 15 ready is what Blizzard needs to very good at OR react quickly to adjust.
I'm not sure what the problem with 5mans was that they felt they had to jettison them entirely and go with LFR as their pre-raid gearing mechanism. Queues were bad, but LFR doesn't really solve that. Repetition over multiple tiers was a problem (e.g. still grinding wrath release heroics in 3.3 gear), but I always thought that was more just laziness on their part in not adding enough new 5mans. Maybe the effort to produce 5mans isn't as much lower than that required to produce raid content, but they seem to want to invest the time in scenarios. I've always thought 5mans were one of the strongest things WoW had. I don't see why think think scenarios and LFR in lieue of 5mans is an improvement.
For the valor upgrades, the only thing I can think of that they could be trying to do with them is to find a replacement mechanism for the zone buff/debuff. They have a rather significant and obvious problem of raids either being too easy to satisfy the hardcores (tier13) or remaining too difficult for most people to consider them reasonable accessible (tier11, tier14). People were unhappy with the buff/debuff idea so increasing raid tier accessibility by gear increases seems like almost a sneaky way to do the same thing. I just don't see the valor system really doing enough to simulate the zone debuff, however.
Scenarios typically use parts of the world that already exist. There's no new art required. It's something that the quest & encounter team can make without having to wait on modelers and such.
I do agree that the lack of 5man content is troubling though. Perhaps a topic for a future Weekly Marmot.
As for the valor upgrades, I think they do bring an absolutely huge benefit to the enjoyability of the game in that they give you something to continue working on after you've cleared everything. They also help avoid the "we killed everything so now we log in once a week" syndrome that every other tier has had in the past.
I'm curious why that's a problem that needs to be solved...
I've come to the conclusion that I don't agree. I think the valor upgrade system is just another spin to the "it's not an upgrade until I gem, enchant and reforge it" merry-go-round that now includes upgrading. I just don't feel like spending valor to make an item I already have a little bit better is interesting gameplay. I don't find gemming, enchanting and reforging interesting either, but at least two of those three involve using a trade skill or interacting with another player (however indirectly). I'd rather have something concrete to show for a valor purchase, even if it's off spec gear or a main spec consolation prize for a slot I can't fill otherwise.
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