More on Valor Points in the 6.2.3 patch notes

Well, we got the patch 6.2.3 announcement this morning, and now we have the patch notes themselves. One of the things that’s most interesting about this patch is the completely unexpected return of Valor Points. Well, completely unexpected by me, anyway. So what are they, are they the same as what we had before Warlords, how do we use them, and what can we do with them?

Luckily, the patch notes go into a bit more detail about that.

Let’s start off with what we’ve been told:

So essentially this returns Valor as a pure upgrade currency — as of right now, it appears the only thing you can do with Valor is upgrade your gear with it. We’re told you can update Baleful gear, HFC gear, and all dungeon drops, but no mention is made of the previous tier of raiding. As of right now it appears that Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry gear might not be upgradable in this fashion, but this isn’t entirely clear — the text says all your currently earned gear is eligible retroactively, but then lists specific items that do not include those raids. Considering that you can get Valor from LFR in both Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry as well as HFC, that seems odd to me, especially when all Draenor dungeon drops are upgradeable in this fashion.

Valor seems reasonably easy to gather — with LFR, first Heroic, Mythic, and Bonus Event Quests all granting it, you can pick and choose or do everything you possibly can to get it. We don’t yet know how much Valor you’ll get per run or how much upgrades will cost, however, so there’s no measure of how much of a grind this is. No Valor cap has been announced yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is one like we’ve seen in previous expansions.

Each piece of hear can be upgraded twice, gaining five ilevels per upgrade, so it’s basically the exact same system as we had in Mists. And though neither mentioned nor promised, we may eventually see it expanded to four upgrades if we keep following the Mists pattern. As of right now, you can get a total of 10 ilevels in two upgrades per item. To buy your upgrades, there will be the usual Ethereal vendors in Orgrimmar and Stormwind, as well as new ones in Stormshield and Warspear where you can upgrade your gear.

It seems like this both increases the longevity of gear and serves as a soft nerf to the HFC content over time — by introducing this, your entire raid group can get incrementally stronger, helping them overcome content they were stuck on. It also allows you to extend the life of that stubborn older trinket or other item you just can’t find an upgrade for.