World of Warcraft’s latest expansion Shadowlands has heavily favored players who prefer to get gear through doing PvP thus far, but the return of “Valor Points” might even things out a bit.
With a post to their forums today, Blizzard announced that it will be testing a reward system in its latest PTR for the upcoming 9.0.5 update.
The Valor Point system will make Mythic Keystone Dungeon gear upgradeable based on a scale related to your Mythic Keystone achievements, and by doing Keystones and Callings players will earn Valor Points that can be redeemed for upgrades.
So far, we don’t know how much upgrades will cost, but we do know that there will be a weekly cap to how many points you can get. Valor Points can be used to upgrade only items that drop in Mythic+ Dungeons.
Scaling for the system will highly benefit the most try-hard of players who have already completed the “Shadowlands Keystone Master: Season One” achievement by timing every dungeon at a +15 Keystone or higher.
By doing that achievement, players will be able to upgrade pieces to an item level of 220.
Players who have done the “Keystone Conqueror” achievement, timing every dungeon at a +10, will be able to upgrade items to 213. Players who have time every dungeon at a +5 will have a ceiling of 207, and all players can upgrade items to ilvl 200.
The change by Blizzard comes in response to complaints by many players who prefer PvE content and think that PvP content, like Arenas, give the best rewards in the game.
“After a rewarding first few weeks, we know that many dungeon-focused players reached a point where the only relevant rewards from the system come from the Great Vault,” the post said. “We want to find a way for the loot from the chest at the end of a challenging Mythic Keystone run to feel relevant, without bringing back random upgrade systems such as Warforging.”
There are numerous posts by top players showing that much of their end-game gear has come from PvP. Significantly smaller amounts of end-game gear have come from raids, and little, if any, top tier gear is coming to players from doing Mythic Dungeons.
So far, this change, which will be added to the PTR and likely go live in patch 9.0.5, has drawn mixed reactions from pros.
Echo raider and Mythic Dungeon International competitor Gingi found the move to be a positive one, tweeting “BRO THIS IS SICK.”
Fellow Echo player Fleks, who hasn’t been afraid to be critical of Blizzard in the past, called the change a “good thing.” He wasn’t sure why Blizzard set a cap of ilvl 220 to the system, though.
“Don’t be afraid to make the actual important step by enabling upgrades to 226, clearly this looks like a first draft kind of thing and there is virtually 0 reason to keep it at 220 when its equivalent is not capped at 220,” he tweeted. “Listen to people, set it to 226 and consider 233 weps.”
Golden Guardians healer JdotB, who competes in the MDI, saw the cap of ilvl 220 as “more insulting than doing nothing.”
Twitch most popular World of Warcraft streamer Asmongold might be taking a break from the livestreaming while he works to cultivate his new organization One True King, but he also chimed in on the change.
His thoughts on the matter were exactly what you’d expect from the showman.
“There it is dude,” he wrote. “There it is.”
