Diminishing returns on ilvl increase and effort at that point :P 

yeah fuck all this. My ilvl is fine.

Ok, blues answered. 

• Upgrading an item costs 250 Valor for +5 item levels.


• Hellfire Citadel items, Dungeon loot, Baleful items, and crafted items can each be upgraded twice, costing a total of 500 Valor for +10 item levels.


• There is no hard weekly cap on Valor, but the sources of Valor are inherently not infinitely repeatable.


• Valor can be earned in the following ways:
  
  
  
  • Mythic Dungeon (Valor awarded with dungeon completion, once per dungeon per week) – 300 Valor Points
  
  
  • Complete the weekly Event quest from Seer Kazal (Pet Battle Event excluded) – 500 Valor Points
  
  
  • Heroic Dungeon (complete your first random Heroic of the day) – 100 Valor Points
  
  
  • Raid Finder wing (once per week per wing) – 150 Valor Points for Hellfire Citadel wings, 75 Valor Points for Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry wings
  
  
  
  

So, that's 300 * 8 = 2400 valor from Mythic dungeons, 500 Valor from the weekly event (there are now 8 including the Cata timewalking.  1 out of those 8 (pet battle) won't award it, 2 more out of the 8 (arena & battleground) require PvP).  100 * 7 = 700 Valor from heroics.  150 * 5 = 750 from HFC LFR.  75 * 7 = 525 from BRF and HM LFR.  Maximum available per week is 4875 per week, which is 19.5 upgrades per week.  The mythics are barely under half of that maximum.

There are 14 or 15 itemslots at two upgrades each, assuming no swap-in items and depending on whether you have an offhand or not, which means you need a minimum of 2 weeks to upgrade all slots.  To upgrade all slots within those two weeks, you'd need 3500-3750 VP per week, which leaves 1125-1375 per week available to "ditch", at it were.  Non-HFC LFR is worth a total of 525, so if you drop that, you have 600-850 leeway over the remaining options (daily heroic, HFC LFR wings, mythic dungeons, weekly event).  That means, if you do all 8 mythic dungeons, you can drop any *one* of those categories (if you have an offhand, you'd only be able to drop 6 out of 7 heroics or 4 of the 5 HFC wings) and still be fine, as long as you fully complete the other two.

If you aim for 3 weeks for a full upgrade instead, you'd need 2333-2500 VP per week, which is essentially just the 8 mythic dungeons, plus maybe a single heroic 5-man.

Basically, we're going to be running the ever living shit out of those mythics, which means we need a couple spare tanks (or alts, and those alts would have to run each mythic twice, one for main, one for alt).

Edit: If you have multiple gearsets to upgrade, your free-time has my deepest condolences.

Celeste, is there a hard cap on how many we can gain per week?  Or is it only limited by the available sources (since they are all limited per day or week)?

If the later, that means we need to run one LFR wing per week, all 8 CMs per week, and one random LFG per day, plus the weekly event every weekend (which is worth 2 item upgrades just on it's own).

Also, how much are CM's worth?  MMO is reporting 500 for weekly even, 100 for LFG, and 75/150 for LFR (not sure why two numbers there), but no numbers for CMs.

This shit makes me want to fucking cry.

Bleh.  So raiders are back to being forced to run their daily dungeon or weekly LFR in order to optimize.  That's going from the extreme of nothing outside of raids to the other extreme of requiring as much non-raid mindless grind as raid time to keep up.

Sadly the Valor thing is totally intended because they want players to have more content outside of what is already available, like raids. It was brought up. 

Concerns me that Valor isn't available from regular raiding, only LFR and dungeons.  Forces raiders to spam dungeons or LFR just to get their required upgrades to gear.  Won't that be fun.

Cross-Realm Mythic Raiding

• Cross-Realm raiding has been enabled for Hellfire Citadel on Mythic difficulty. You’ll now be able to join with friends or fill that last raid spot to take on the most difficult encounters in Warlords of Draenor.

Item Upgrades and Valor are back!

• Item upgrades are back! Players will be able to earn and spend Valor to upgrade items from Hellfire Citadel, items created from Baleful tokens in Tanaan Jungle, and all Draenor dungeon drops. All the items you’ve already earned are eligible for upgrades retroactively.


• Characters can earn Valor in a number of ways.
  
  
  
  
  • Completing the first random Heroic Dungeon of the day
  
  
  • Completing Mythic Dungeons
  
  
  • Completing weekly Bonus Event quests
  
  
  • Completing a Raid Finder wing for Highmaul, Blackrock Foundry, or Hellfire Citadel for the first time each week.
  
  
  
  


• To upgrade, visit your friendly neighborhood ethereal in Orgrimmar and Stormwind, or Stormshield and Warspear to upgrade your gear by 5 item levels at a time, up to twice per item, for a total potential boost of 10 item levels.

Improved Item Rewards
Mythic Dungeon Loot Improvements

• Mythic Dungeons now have a chance to award items ranging from item level 685 to 725 in 5-item-level increments, with a progressively lower chance as item level increases.


• Mythic Dungeon bosses now also have a chance to drop a new Heirloom Trinket that will scale up to level 110.

Baleful Item Level Boost

• Baleful items now have a chance to create items ranging in quality from item level 655 to 695 in 5-item-level increments, with a progressively lower chance as item level increases.