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Patch 5.1: Item Upgrades
Patch 5.1 will finally implement the item upgrade system that first appeared in beta. The same frame is being used now, with a background that matches the other Ethereal frames, making it likely that this will be another function performed by our Ethereal friends. The window title still says Valor Upgrade, but the game has support for Valor, Conquest, Justice, and Honor points upgrades.
It appears all items that are upgradeable can be upgraded by 8 item levels, but Conquest and Valor points will do it in two steps rather than all at once. The currency used to upgrade an item is set per item, so you cannot use Honor to upgrade Valor Points gear or any other type than what is set for the item.
Important: There are a lot of details missing about how the system works, it is not intended to be tested yet, and the values are not final!
Upgrade Costs
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Currency
Cost
Item Level Upgrade
Max Number of Upgrades
Valor Points
750 ×
4 Item Levels
2
Conquest Points
750 × 
4 Item Levels
2
Justice Points
1500 ×
8 Item Levels
1
Honor Points
1500 ×
8 Item Levels
1
Upgrade Examples
Heart of Fear Progression
After a few days of progression, there are now 72 guilds that have cleared the Heart of Fear raid on Normal difficulty, with Duality (US-Zul'jin) grabbing the first clear. Heroic progression starts next week, along with the first half of LFR.
Wowprogress shows 32 guilds have completed it in 10 man difficulty, and 40 guilds in 25 man difficulty.
Patch 5.0.5 Hotfixes - Nov 1
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
General
Weapons sold by Ambersmith Zikk can no longer be disenchanted for Ethereal Shards
Classes
Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Stampede Pets summoned into the Arena, Rated Battlegrounds, and Wargames will now do the correct amount of damage.
Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Friendly players activating Monk Healing Spheres will no longer break Mana Tea channeling.
Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Shaman Searing Totem will no longer break on Heroic Elegon due to the line of sight restrictions while the energy vortex is active.
Quests
The quest "In Battle's Shadow" now only requires the appropriate faction to take and no longer requires a quest prerequisite.
Dungeons & Raids
Updated the Dungeon Finder matchmaking system to properly identify Monk classes and their available roles.
Heart of Fear
Garalon now mends his injured legs more frequently in Normal mode.
Garalon will now take longer before he casts Massive Crush.
Players will now be able to zone back to Ta’yak’s room once he’s been killed.
Mogu'shan Vaults
Jasper Chains now casts less frequently in both Normal and Heroic 10-player difficulty.
A few indirect spells will no longer trigger the Spirit Kings’ shields on Heroic Difficulty.
Items
One-hand melee weapons will now show the correct Conquest cost.
The Dreadful Gladiator’s Emblem now displays the proper stats: +809 Spirit, +293 PvP Power, +293 PvP Resilience, +40,673 health for 15s on use
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue with the Battle Spear of the Thunder King in which the quest could not be properly completed due to the spear object not being visible to the player.
Fixed an issue in which classes were sometimes receiving select inappropriate loot items.
Fixed an issue in which players would sometimes be disconnected from the game when knocked off of an elevator.
Fixed an issue in which Ashweb Weavers for the Golden Lotus dailies would sometimes evade.
Fixed an issue in which Captain Doren would evade during the quest, “The Darkness Within” if the player died while he was transforming into his Sha form.
The Ancient Guo-Lai Cache will now properly despawn after being closed.
Heart of Fear Now Live & Raid Schedule
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
The latest Normal difficulty Mists of Pandaria Raid Dungeon is now available: Heart of Fear. Raid Finder and Heroic difficulties will be available Wednesday, November 7.
Raid Finder will unlock bosses in Heart of Fear over time, and all Heart of Fear bosses will be unlocked and available Wednesday, November 14. To access the new Raid Finder dungeons, you will need a minimum item level (ilevel) requirement of 470.
Here is the current schedule for these Raid releases:
Wednesday, October 31 – Normal Heart of Fear
Wednesday, November 7 – Heroic Heart of Fear and first half of Heart of Fear on Raid Finder
Wednesday,November 14 – Second half of Heart of Fear on Raid Finder and Normal Terrace of Endless Spring
Wednesday, November 21 - Heroic Terrace of Endless Spring and Terrace of Endless Spring on Raid Finder
All raids/difficulties will still be fully accessible by November 21, as we had always intended, but we’re staggering the release a bit more.
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Hotfix Timing
The hotfix list posted covers a pretty large window of time (October 26 - Nov 1, as stated). The Jasper Chains change on Stone Guard was made at the end of last week, and corrected the fact that the ability was being cast with roughly the same frequency on 10-player as on 25-player mode. This meant that an entire 10-player raid could quickly find themselves chained to each other, while a majority of a 25-player group would still have been unfettered after the same amount of time. That was never our intent.
Now, as for the Garalon hotfixes, the Mend Leg hotfix was made on Tuesday afternoon, before more than a few dozen people in the world had seen the encounter at all, and certainly before any guilds had defeated it. The berserk hotfix was enacted the following morning. Ultimately, both of these hotfixes were intended to bring the DPS requirement down to an appropriate level for a Normal mode encounter halfway through the zone. Normal mode encounters should be reasonably beatable using available Normal mode gear; we were seeing Heroic-caliber guilds with a significant number of ilvl 502 items (from Heroic Mogu’shan, and more powerful than the handful of 496 epics available from the first two bosses of Heart of Fear) struggling to meet the berserk timer on the fight. We made an adjustment accordingly, and we feel that Garalon remains a step up in difficulty from the prior two encounters in the zone.
Our rationale regarding avoiding midweek hotfixes that make a fight easier only applies to Heroic encounters: When a guild encounters a Heroic boss that seems excessively difficult, they may opt to defeat it on Normal and move on. If we make the fight easier midweek, they don’t have the option to go back and fight that easier version, and that can be frustrating and seem unfair. A Normal mode brick wall is a brick wall regardless, so there is no such potential unfairness. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Reins of the Raven Lord Drop Rate
If you are still looking for Reins of the Raven Lord Lord it's still in the game. Got it as a drop a few days ago.
Could be a bug if the mount is not listed as a drop on the Dungeon Journal. It should be reported to our Bug Report forum. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Account-Wide Cloud Serpent Riding
Some account-wide mounts have restrictions based on profession, faction, or class. In this instance, cloud serpents have a factional requirement. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
LFR Feedback
You are gimping your raid group by not running it. I'm sick of feeling that I have to suffer through the mess that is LFR each and every week. Blizzard made 10 and 25s share a lockout because 25 man guilds were "forced" into running the lower skilled 10s for extra gear each week. This new system is no different but 100x worse due to the nature of LFR.
Actually, the new system is quite a bit different than the 10- and 25-player lockout situation. A much greater percentage of the population will experience each new raid using Raid Finder, compared to normal and (especially) Heroic difficulties. The loot system is vastly different in Raid Finder to account for matchmade players, the dungeons are often split up differently for LFR (i.e. Dragon Soul in two parts), and the quality of loot that drops is lower. Given all of this, the cons largely outweigh the pros in your suggestion to make all difficulties of a raid dungeon share lockouts.
But let's discuss the issue you raise: "I run raid content in an organized group. I don't want to do LFR on top of my normal raiding, but I feel like I have to if I want to gear up as fast as possible."
The statement might be true for some, but I have a lot of follow-ups.
Are you in a guild that has success with Heroic raid progression? This one's pretty important, as any guild that's good enough to be farming, or at least killing several bosses in, Heroic Mogu'shan Vaults and Heart of Fear by the time Terrace of Endless Spring opens via LFR, will not likely need a single piece of gear from LFR. Terrace of Endless Spring LFR items won't be as good as your Heroic raid gear.
Is your guild demanding that you run LFR every week for the chance at some upgrades you haven't made via normal difficulty yet? In your post you say we're forcing you into LFR, but that's not true. I won't argue semantics, but if you're min/maxing your character for every competitive edge possible, that's a playstyle choice.
How badly are you really hurting your raid by not running LFR? Is your progression in normal difficulty such that upgrading from a piece of ilvl 463 gear to 476 gear is "make or break" for the entire raid? With stat inflation, the difference between these item levels is almost negligible, unless you're comparing full sets. But in the amount of time it might take you to get several upgrades via LFR, you should be getting several upgrades via normal difficulty -- and you get a head start on normal difficulty with Raid Finder always releasing at least a week later.
Certainly there's a psychology to hunting down every advantage you can, and the endgame is largely about that. But there are a lot of nuances in the raid progression system to ensure that:
A) Raid Finder has a healthy pool of players from which to choose
B) Organized raiders who regularly tackle Heroic difficulty will have virtually no need to run Raid Finder much at all this expansion (since a new tier's LFR ilvl won't outdo the previous tier's Heroic ilvl)
C) Organized raiders who make progress each week on normal difficulty shouldn't hit any pass/fail gear checks and lose because they're not running LFR every week.
D) You're not forced by the game (AT ALL) to keep running LFR each week for gear if you want to be successful in the higher difficulties.
I asked a lot of questions because you're demanding a very dramatic change to the game, but you've shared almost no details regarding why this change is completely necessary for everyone, and you're posting on an account that gives me absolutely no insight into your level-90 progression.
My point is that everyone including you has now said there is no need to run LFR and Normal each week, so why would any normal mode raider care that they could only do normal modes over LFR difficulties each week?
Mmm.. That's not quite what people are arguing -- at least that's not what I'm arguing.
Yes, I'm saying the game isn't set up so that you'll fail in normal/Heroic raids, if you're not running LFR every lockout as well. But now it sounds like your argument is: "If LFR isn't required for normal progression, no one should care if they share lockouts."
That's very flawed.
You first said we're literally forcing you to do LFR to progress. I pointed out that you're not actually forced to do it, in that you shouldn't hit a brick wall in progression because you didn't collect enough LFR gear. Now you're saying you want us to force everyone to choose between LFR and normal difficulty each week, just because it's not mandatory to run both.
I don't understand the value in asserting that we're forcing you, by design, to make certain raid progression choices -- when we're actually not -- and then arguing we should more directly force everyone to make certain raid progression choices.
How badly are you really hurting your raid by not running LFR?
That's subjective as there is no true way to find out. Let's just assume a raid group of ten people each person has two pieces of LFR gear, that's a lot of extra stats across the raid and def helps against something like a elegon fight with tight enrages.[/i]
Right. So it's a choice you're making for every advantage in the game. Do you want every advantage possible in the game? 'Cause you have to put in extra effort for that.
That was in response to your second post in the thread Z, and ya buddy you knew what you were doing with it and got the responses you wanted of the 11/10 and lolol Zarhym owned that guy blah blah blah. It was rude and not an open dialogue.
You're making big assertions and suggesting (to put it mildly) that we change the lockout system for everyone. If you're serious about this change at all -- and not just trolling -- I reserve the right to review your reasoning in context in order to formulate an answer to your suggestion. In other words, regardless of what you think my job entails, I'd certainly be of less use if I can't even point out logical fallacies in design suggestions, for fear that that'd be rude.
If you'd rather me placate you and say "thanks for the suggestion," sorry. This is a discussion forum. The dialog goes both ways.
1) LFR will remain relevant through this particular tier because it is the first one.
LFR is relevant right now. For sure. My guild for an example is 3/6 H, and 25 man (so we get bonus loots), and at least a third of my raid could still use an upgrade from LFR just due to RNG. We're still going in there! And, when you release HOF and Terrace LFR, I will certainly be in there tons to grab my tier. I have to plan all these LFRs into my week. I know this is a unique situation right now because it is the very beginning of the expansion. I am hoping that you guys' plans to devalue LFR for raiders kick in in a couple tiers with the ilvl changes; however, at this very moment, you should really believe that raiders of ALL flavors are running it.
You're correct. That's why I said in my original post that I didn't want to argue semantics over, "Blizzard is forcing me to do this." Raid Finder absolutely provides a strategic advantage for progression raiders looking to increase their character power as quickly as possible, fill out set bonuses, etc. But yes, over the course of this expansion's lifecycle that should be diminished, particularly for Heroic raiders. The need to regularly run (meaning over the course of several weeks) the Raid Finder versions of upcoming Mists of Pandaria raids should feel far less crucial, if not nonexistent, for dedicated raid guilds.
2) Valor Points.
LFR represents a larger quantity of VP than even raiding. VP is important now for gear, and will be important in the future for our upgrade paths; the cap is pretty far away by design. As long as that holds true, and as long as LFR rewards so much VP, we'll all be running LFR.
Assuming we're talking about an above-average, organized guild, Challenge dungeons are mathematically the fastest path to the VP cap. Of course the difficulty isn't comparable between LFR and Challenge Modes, but a serious raiding guild can go into an organized five-player setting and get to the VP cap faster, as opposed to gambling with a random LFR queue or facerolling LFR with a full guild clear.
You don't even have to be anywhere near a record-breaking time to be getting more VP/minute than in LFR.
3) Not every HM raider hits a new tier in Best in Slot.
You guys are opening instances very quickly. I appreciate that we are being provided with lots of raids, but you must understand that there are tons of times when LFR - at that single moment in time - represents an upgrade path for a given raider even if they are clearing a lot of heroic mode bosses.
Absolutely, and that's okay sometimes. In my first post I said that one of our goals is to ensure that Raid Finder has a healthy pool of players from which to choose. Our goal isn't to make sure progression raiders never want or need to run LFR. Having experienced raiders queuing up is usually going to be a net gain for everyone (in terms of wait times, success rates, etc.). There is usually some benefit to most level-90 players running Raid Finder, but that's obviously very different from "forced content."
It kind of depends on your goals, your guild's goals, and what you want to get out of the game. I'll still assert that Raid Finder isn't a progression roadblock for those who prefer to stick with normal/Heroic raiding.
4) Procs and tier bonuses will be devalued, but once in a while there might come one that's OP.
You also assume that the ilvl change will completely devalue LFR gear. I hope this will be true, but I suspect the devs - who try as hard as they can - will still occasionally throw in a very op set bonus or trinket proc. These things just happen.
I definitely see your point, and even I've been involved in several discussions with the developers about this concept, so I know they discuss the itemization/progression model quite a bit in their daily lives.
Of note, we recently spoke about the Sigils for the legendary gem. Even in that case, they're watching closely and expect the LFR runs simply for more shots at the Sigils will tail off. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
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