Patch 5.3: PTR patch notes are up! Valor upgrades are back!

On the heals of Blizzard’s announcement today of the return of Valor upgrades comes the initial Patch 5.3 PTR notes. Wow!

There is currently no new hunter class information, which is fine with me, and I won’t review all of the other pertinent changes right now – you can see them in the link above. What I’m interested in at the moment is the return of Valor Point upgrades.

To me – and by now, regular readers know that I eat up all the “choice-making” stuff as far as gear goes – this is a good thing, particularly since the costs will be reduced to 4 item levels at 250 VP, 8 (max) at 500 VP, per item. This means that players can increase their overall power with much less fear of making the “wrong” decision and wasting VP in the process. It also means that if you’re hunting for a certain drop, it’s not going to cost 1.5 weeks of VP to upgrade the item you hope to replace soon if that’s your best option in the interim.

As far as I’m concerned, this is a good thing.

I know that there are other viewpoints out there, including the guy posting, in the comments of Blizzard’s Valor Point upgrade blog post, that he refuses to upgrade, ever, and will probably not get raid invites because of that stance. This position baffles me, because, in my mind, if there’s an upgrade, you take it. And if you’re killing raid bosses, you’re earning VP, so you have the currency. So the upgrade is there. So you take it, if it’s the best option after taking into account cost per VP (and other factors). But everyone has a different perspective, I suppose.

I like the changes – although I must admit that I had reached the point where, when the mechanic was removed in 5.2, I didn’t mind at all. It’s nice to be in a situation where the decisions on what to buy with VP are a little more straightforward at the moment. But the mechanic works well with Blizzard’s current M.O., where the even numbered patches have almost all of the new gear, and the odd patches seem to have the upgrade mechanic, giving people something to spend their excess VP on. It works as a slight incremental nerf to content due to an added progressive buff to player power, and makes stat management a little more interesting for people like me who eat that kind of thing up.

I’ll be honest – I hadn’t really thought about Item Upgrades – or Patch 5.3 – at all, since Patch 5.2 dropped, until today. I will say, however, that it’s fun to see how Blizzard really is keeping its patch schedule a bit tighter than in times past, and to see what may be on the horizon. I’ll be watching for any hunter updates, as will many others.

Basically, I’m one of those guys who loves new news about what’s happening in WoW. I’m not alone, am I right?  :)

– – –

Thanks for reading this blurb by Mushan at Mushan, Etc. Comments are welcome!

---