Patches are hard work, but it doesn’t phase us. We still have fun. This is how we feel on patch days… party rock!

ps. I may have made this post ONLY to have something to link to from the amazing image you clicked on. And to make you smile. Thanks to a Twitter fan, Forresst Bo-Borresst, who made it for funsies

I try to cap my valor and bonus rolls each week, but it seems so hard to find enough time to do it all! So I decided to sit down and do some basic math to figure out how long it should really take me. I’ve listed my strategy below – feel free to leave a comment with your own tips too.

Valor Capping

First, let’s cover the basics… sources of Valor Points:

• Normal/Heroic mode boss kills = 40 Valor
• Killing the end boss of each LFR queue = 90 Valor
• Daily quests = 5 Valor
• Champions of the Thunder King - a weekly quest for 150 Valor
• Killing Rare ToT spawns: chance to drop Tome of Valor, which rewards 15 Valor
• Running daily scenarios and dungeons rewards 50 / 80 Valor Points (respectively), and 25 / 40 VP for additional runs on the same day.

Estimating time for each activity:

The biggest surprise when I started evaluating all sources of valor, was that the daily random dungeon rewarded 80 Valor Points (sometimes 60). When compared to running LFR wings for 90 Valor points, the Dungeons started looking a lot more efficient. At least from the “Time Spent” point of view. Here are some rough time estimates for each activity:

• ToT LFR: ~1 Hour per wing
• MSV, HoF, ToES LFR: ~30 min per wing.
• Isle of Thunder Daily Quests: 30-45 Minutes for full set of quests (of course, there are other daily quests you can do)
• If you do “Champions of the Thunder King” each week you get 150 Valor (and 5 Lesser Charms). This is the Shan’ze Ritual Stone quest.
• Daily Dungeon: ~15-30 minutes each.
• Daily Scenario: ~10-20 minutes each.

Queuing for each LFR wing can take a long time, unless you’re a healer or a tank. So if you have a healer or tank friend, it is worth it to set aside a time to queue for these together. It will make your queues very short. However, if you have to wait, you might as well do some dailies or pet battles (see below) to get your weekly bonus rolls.

Here’s a list of all activities that reward valor.

Unless I’m missing an easy way to get valor, it will take a lot of work to Valor Cap each week. Probably 8+ hours, in addition to your normal raiding hours. I wish you luck!! (I know I haven’t been able to find the time to valor cap each week, but I keep trying).

Bonus Roll Capping – 50 Lesser Charms

First, let’s cover some breaking news (breaking, at least at the time of this post). As of 4/23/13, it only costs 50 Lesser Charms (instead of 90) to get your weekly Mogu Runes of Fate! (source) TY @duncanrobertson for the tip, and @Bashiok for tweeting it.

• Most daily quests reward you with 2 lesser charms of good fortune, but some only reward you with 1. Each day’s Isle of Thunder quests will give you 30 charms (10 quests give you 2 charms each, and the 2 Elite quests give you 5 charms each). You need to do these 2 times each week to max out your charms.
• You can also get charms from pet battles!! This seems to be a not-very well-known fact (it was news to me, and I read the 5.2 patch notes at least a dozen times!). You have a chance to win 1-6 lesser charms after winning a pet battle, as long as the pet you’re fighting against is within 5 levels of your highest level pet in the team. A lot of players make a team of level 5 (or lower) pets and fight in the critters in their main towns (Orgrimmar / Stormwind).

Spend your Valor & Bonus Rolls Wisely

You guessed it, your friendly neighborhood Robot can help you decide what to spend your hard-earned stuff on. A fan-favorite is the bonus roll calculator. And a close second is help spending Valor, which will be even more helpful when upgrades return in 5.3!

The legendary quest line gets you a lot of good perks, but will take 4-5 months of farming to complete from start to finish. If you haven’t started it, now is a good time. Why? Because it will take about 1 month of farming to complete the first collection quest. Then the 2nd set of quests requires earning 6k valor, but that’s being reduced to 3k in patch 5.3. So get working on that now

• FIRST REWARD: Legendary gems for your Sha-Touched weapons (might not be very important now with 502 LFR weapons). Here are the gems: Crystallized Dread, Crystallized Terror, Crystallized Horror. Collection requirements: Sigils (farming 5.0 raids) and honored with the Black Prince – takes about 1 Month.
• SECOND REWARD: Eye of the Black Prince: an enchant that puts an extra gem socket on any sha-touched weapon or Throne of Thunder weapon. If you dual wield weapons, you can put an extra socket on both of them, extras cost 2,500 gold. Collection requirements: 6k Valor (3k in Patch 5.3) and revered with the Black Prince. Takes about 6 weeks (3 weeks in 5.3).
• THIRD REWARD: Legendary meta gems that can go in any iLevel 504+ helm: Capacitive Primal Diamond, Courageous Primal Diamond, Indomitable Primal Diamond, Sinister Primal Diamond. Collectin Requirements: “Secrets” from Throne of Thunder bosses and exalted with the Black Prince. Takes about 2 months.
• FOURTH REWARD – COMING IN PATCH 5.3: iLevel 600 Cloaks. Oxhorn Bladebreaker, Oxhoof Greatcloak, Tigerclaw Cape, Jadefire Drape, Cranewing Cloak, Tigerfang Wrap.

Getting Started:

If you haven’t started, now’s a great time to get caught up! You pick up the quest in Half Hill (and other major cities), called, “Stranger in a Strange Land.” Continue the quest line, you will eventually get a couple of quests called “The Strength of One’s Foes” and “Trial of the Black Prince.” These require some rep and raid farming.

First Set of Quests: ~1 Month

• Strength of One’s Foes: Collect 10 Sigils of Power and 10 Sigils of Wisdom. The sigils drop from 5.0 raids, including LFRs, with a ~33% chance to drop from each boss. It should take an average of 3-4 weeks to farm these.
• Trial of the Black Prince: Can be worked on simultaneously with Strength of One’s Foes. Get Honored with the Black Prince: you’re probably already honored if you’ve been doing dailies on the Isle of Thunder. But you’ll want to be revered for a later part of the quest, so keep gaining that faction!
• Fear Itself: After you completing the two collection/grind quests, you will get “Fear Itself” which requires you to kill the Sha of Fear. This leads to “Breath of the Black Prince” which rewards the gems: Crystallized Dread, Crystallized Terror, Crystallized Horror.

Second Set of Quests: 6 weeks (3 weeks once 5.3 releases!)

The quest line will continue, eventually leading to a reward that give you an extra socket for your weapon(s). After a few quests, you’ll come to the farming portion again:

• A Test of Valor: Earn 6,000 Valor. Note, this requirement is being reduced to 3,000 in patch 5.3! Earning valor is simple: any valor you earn is counted. If you are at a cap and don’t earn valor, you don’t earn valor towards this quest either. Spending Valor does not reduce your total (it doesn’t take away from your goal).
• A Prince’s Pursuit: Get revered with the Black Prince. This can be done concurrently with A Test of Valor, if you aren’t already revered.
• Continue down the quest chain to eventually get your reward, Eye of the Black Prince. It places an extra prismatic socket on your weapon (sha-touched or Throne of Thunder weapons).

Third set of quests: ~2 Months

• Secrets of the First Empire: Collect 20 Secrets of the First Empire, from Throne of Thunder bosses. You have a chance to get one on each unique boss kill – that means you cannot ‘double up’ your chances by running both normal and LFR. People are reporting a 20-33% drop rate. Since there are 12 bosses in ToT, you will get an average of 2-4 Secrets per week.
• You also need to collect / make / buy 40 Trillium Bars. Note that you can plant Snakeroot seeds to get various MoP Ore – people are reporting that you get at least 1 white or black Trillium per plant. You can buy 5 Trillium Ore with 1 Spirit of Harmony, however, based on the rate you get Trillium from seeds, it appears to be more efficient to farm for Ore than Motes.
• I Need a Champion: Get exalted with the Black Prince. You can do this simultaneously with the other quest, if you aren’t already exalted.
• Continue the quest chain and you’ll eventually get your legendary meta gem, that can go in a 504+ Helm. Capacitive Primal Diamond, Courageous Primal Diamond, Indomitable Primal Diamond, Sinister Primal Diamond. It is unclear if you can use it in a 496 or 502 helm that you upgrade with Valor in 5.3.

Fourth Set of Quests: Available in 5.3

I am not sure if there is a collection quest, but it does look like there is a role-specific quest (healer, tank, dps) that you need to complete. I’ll update this as we get more information. The reward is your choice of an iLevel 600 cloak:

• Oxhorn Bladebreaker
• Oxhoof Greatcloak
• Tigerclaw Cape
• Jadefire Drape
• Cranewing Cloak
• Tigerfang Wrap

More Information

Here’s a very thorough guide from Perculia and another from Icy-Veins that coves all of the quests in this chain.

I was on the Hearthcast podcast the other day and we were talking about Mr. Robot’s premium subscription. The hosts of the show said it makes total sense to pay $12 a year because Mr. Robot helps you spend your hard-earned currency wisely. This got us talking, which inspired this blog post.

(Listen to the cost discussion at 59 minutes in)

Premium Account = Nickel Slots in Vegas

Trying to get upgrades is a gamble. Will the item drop from the boss? Will the bonus roll give the item you want? If you buy a VP item, will it get replaced the next day from a lucky drop? Because of this gambling nature, Mr. Robot has decided his premium account is like a Nickel slot in Vegas. Put a nickel in the machine and if you’re lucky, you’ll get the gear you want.

Cost to pull the Slot Machine Handle:

Mr. Robot’s premium account costs $1 a month ($0.25 per week). Let’s look at the costs per ‘use.’

• $0.08 per Bonus Roll: If you only use the Bonus Roll feature, and use it for all 3 rolls each week.
• $0.04 per Boss Kill: If you only use it to find upgrades in ToT LFRs, and only do 2 per week (6 bosses a week).
• $0.25 per 1000 VP: If you only use it to spend Valor wisely and valor cap at 1000 VP every week.

If you use it for all of the above, that’s 10 activities per week (3 bonus rolls, 6 bosses, 1000 VP). That comes out to 2.5 cents per activity. So the question to answer: would you pay a couple pennies to get help with each upgrade opportunity? 

Give it a try!

Try any of the premium features for free for a week. And don’t worry, we don’t require a credit card to start the free trial – we aren’t interested in ‘tricking’ you into upgrading. Mr. Robot believes that if you like the features enough, you’ll upgrade. Especially for such a low cost.

Learn more about the premium features here.

Throne of Thunder LFR is open! Here’s the top 5 things to know:

1. BOSS GUIDES: Know the boss fights for the first wing: Jin’rokh the Breaker, Horridon, Council of Elders and the second wing: Tortos, Megaera, Ji-Kun.
2. REPUTATION GETS YOU ITEMS: You gain Shado-Pan Assault rep for running ToT, even LFR. After one LFR run, you will be Friendly Once you reach friendly with them, you can buy trinkets (1750 VP), rings (1250 VP), and wrists (1250 VP). At Honored you get items for your legs, back and hands. And of course, more slots open up with Revered and Exalted. Find out which Valor items are the biggest upgrade with Mr. Robot’s Upgrade Finder. It also appears that you gain rep once per week for each boss, so if you gain rep in LFR, you won’t get it again in Normal mode for that week.
3. BONUS ROLLS: Know what bosses you want to spend bonus rolls on, ahead of time (see how Mr. Robot can help!). You will need Mogu Runes of Fate (instead of Elder Charms) for Throne of Thunder. You get these by turning in Lesser Charms of Fortune to the same NPC at your Shrine of Seven Stars/Two Moons (it’s the same NPC you always turned them in to). If you don’t have the option to get Mogu Runes of Fate, you might need to drop your Elder Charm quest to get it to switch over. Note – you can only turn them in once a week. Also, getting any amount of Shado-Pan Assault faction should open up that option as well. Note: it’s rumored that the failbags have a chance to contain zone-wide drops (things that drop from trash).
4. iLEVEL 480: You need an iLevel of 480 to get in to LFR (but no restrictions for Normal mode). The fastest ways to upgrade: check your 5.0 and 5.1 rep vendors, get the 522 neck, get Elder Charms for lots of 5.0 raid bonus rolls from the loot run, and look in the AH for crafted gear and BoE items. And of course, Mr. Robot can help you find valor, LFR and BoE/Crafted upgrades with his “Find Upgrades” feature.
5. LFR RELEASE SCHEDULE:
   March 12 – LFR Wing 1 “Last Stand of the Zandalari” NOW OPEN!
   March 19 – LFR Wing 2 “Forgotten Depths” NOW OPEN!
   April 2 – LFR Wing 3 “Halls of Flesh-Shaping”
   April 16 – LFR Wing 4 “Pinnacle of Storms”

Mr. Robot can help you spend bonus rolls!

Below are some teaser screenshots, read the full blog post for more information.

Did you know that Haste Rating affects how often you trinket can proc? Well it can, at least for RPPM (real procs per minute) trinkets. I’ve got all the details you need!

What is RPPM?

Real procs per minute. This means if your trinket has an RPPM of 1, it will proc once per minute, on average. If you have an RPPM of 2, it will proc 2 times per minute on average. With the RPPM system, it doesn’t matter how many spells you use or swings you take (like it does on chance-to-proc on hit trinkets).

So, it’s meant to be pretty simple: The trinket will proc X times per minute on average. (For a detailed post on RPPM by Blizzard, click here).

Haste affects the RPPM

The only thing that can make your trinket proc more often is Haste. This includes Haste Rating from gear, the 5% Haste raid buff, and Heroism. Attack speed buffs do not count, only Haste. So if you have 20% Haste, you increase the chance to proc by 20%. So if you have an RPPM of 1 (1 proc per minute) and 20% Haste, your trinket would proc 20% more often. So that would be 1.2 times per minute. It’s that simple!

How Mr. Robot handles Haste for trinkets procs

Mr. Robot calculated fairly accurate, representative sample frequencies and crit/haste values for each class/spec. We then simulate the trinkets using those values, to get a ranking that is close to true. For the first 2 weeks after 5.2, we dynamically calculated the trinkets based off of your personal Haste. However, that caused ‘double counting’ for people who imported stat weights from SimC. So we changed our approach to the one described here.

I have a super detailed post about how Mr. Robot simulates and calculates trinkets, if that interests you. It also lists all of the new 5.2 trinkets with links to WoWDB so you can see which ones are RPPM.

Trinkets got a buff on 3/12!!

The trinkets were buffed in game on 3/12. As of 3/13 at 10:30 AM PST, the new trinket info was posted by Blizzard. We posted updated trinket rankings aft of 3/14 2AM PST. You may need to refresh your browser to ensure you have the new values.

Hi there! We have a lot of cool features to help you optimize and find upgrades. Mr. Robot wants to make sure you’re optimizing your use of the premium account (or free trial). I’ve highlighted a few of my most-used features, so be sure to check them out.

• Find Upgrades: Valor. I use this all the time, and I’m sure it’s obvious why. I don’t want to waste my precious valor, so I ask Mr. Robot for help to spend my Valor Points wisely.
• Find Upgrades: Raids. Whether you’re running MSV, HoF, ToeS or the new Throne of Thunder, Mr. Robot is here to help. He’ll rank gear for your LFR, Normal and Heroic raids so you know what bosses you need the most
• Find Upgrades: Bonus Rolls. This is a cool feature – Mr. Robot calculates the chance your bonus roll will give you an upgrade for each boss. He will even show you which bosses have the biggest upgrades and the most upgrades. It’s a very, very handy feature.
• RoboCouncil. Let Mr. Robot rank boss drops for everyone in your raid. He’ll tell you how big of an upgrade each item is, and if it makes or breaks a set bonus. Then you decide who gets the item or if you want to roll/bid on it.
• Shopping List ++. Get an improved version of the shopping list. Mr. Robot lists out all of your gems, enchants and reforges, as well as any materials you might need for those. He even gives you a check list so you can check tasks off as you get them done.
• Best in Bags. This feature launched very recently. It helps you find the best set of gear from items that you own (equipped, bags, and bank). This is really useful for off-specs! I also use it during raids – when I get a drop I update my gear on AMR without logging out and find out how to optimize it on the spot. This feature is in a ‘beta’ state although everyone can use it. We have a lot of improvements lined up for it.

I hope you are enjoying your premium account. If you currently have a free trial, it only costs $12 a year to upgrade to premium. We wanted to offer a very affordable price so everyone could use it

We recently updated our options menu and added in some automatic option recommendations. Make sure you open the options menu to check them out – it controls what gear you see in the gear lists, how Mr. Robot handles optimizations, and more. We just launched this feature – so if gear ‘disappeared’ from your lists, it’s probably because you need to setup the new filters

Setting the right filters will speed up Mr. Robot. Ranking items takes a lot of time, so if you set filters that reduce the list from 100 items to 50, he’ll rank them faster for you.

These settings are saved on a per-character basis. If you are logged in, you can always load your character with your preferences automatically selected – even if you change computers or go to a smartphone. Have fun!

Recommendation Engine

If you load a gear list that has 75 or more items, we popup a message that asks if you’d like some recommended filters. When you click the “recommend” button, we automically set the filters for you, so you can keep on playing with the gear lists. However, you may be wondering what Mr. Robot changed. We try to be pretty smart – we base it all off of the gear you’re wearing.

• If you have an average iLevel of 480+, we set the gear filters to T15, assume you have access to the Isle of Thunder World bosses and the best crafted gear.
• If you have an average iLevel of 460+, we set the gear filters to T14, assume you have access to Galleon, but not Oondasta and Nalak. We assume you can get 496 or lower crafted gear, but not the crafted gear that required Throne of Thunder materials.
• If you have at least 1 Throne of Thunder drop equipped, we assume you have access to Thunderforged items. This means that Thunderforged items are also added into your BiS lists.
• If you have at least 1 Heroic item equipped, we assume you have access to Heroic items for that tier. This means Heroic items are also added into your BiS lists.

Remember that these settings affect both the gear lists and BiS. Allowing Thunderforged items will assume you want those in your BiS lists. But let’s say you want to exclude them, that’s ok. If you have a Thunderforged item equipped, but exclude them in the options menu, Mr. Robot will still consider all of your equipped items when calculating BiS. So if you have 1 thunderforged item equipped, it will be considered in your BiS

Questions?

I know this is a lot, but the options make this a powerful tool. Let me know if you have any questions for feedback.

So we recently started playing around with OpenRaid. We did a cross-realm Naxx run today for fun that Darrie from OpenRaid helped us organize and run.

This event was fantastic. It started out with invites 15 minutes before the raid, which Darrie did automatically via an OpenRaid in-game mod. Then she got a raid stream live while everyone connected to vent and got their summons. We started on time! This was in part due to how easy OpenRaid has made it for people to run cross-realm raids with strangers. And also in part to Darrie being really, really awesome and on top of it!

Next, while we were in the raid, Darrie reminded everyone to wait to pull bosses until everyone got in the room (to avoid lockouts). She reviewed loot rules, like letting everyone know you could roll need on the PETS! And she even explained how to get achievements for some of the bosses while we were killing trash. That last part, explaining the achievements really stood out to me – what a nice thing to do for everyone

While we killed trash, Darrie even fielded Ask Mr. Robot questions for us to answer in vent. Everyone who attended was great – super nice, asked great questions, and kept vent clear for the questions & answers.

I really couldn’t have run this better myself. I am incredibly impressed with both the technology and the people behind OpenRaid. There’s another raid that OpenRaid is organizing for tomorrow, with Slootbag - Alliance (#1 tank on the server).

Here’s a few pointers for people when you sign up for events:

• When you sign up for OpenRaid, follow their little tips. The big one (IMO) is to enter your battletag. That is a requirement for the in-game mod to be able to automatically invite you across servers.
• Leave a comment when you sign up – say why you’re interested or any other relevant information
• Look for the vent/voice chat info on the event page and have that ready and tested (for example, my mic didn’t work. I felt like such a noob while I fixed it).

If you run a raid, here are some pointers:

• Send out invites 15 minutes early to give you time to handle any missing people or confusion.
• Remind everyone of the vent info (even if you put it on the event page)
• Do your homework and have a list of achievements to explain, as well as any necessary boss tips. Explain these during trash so you don’t hold up boss pulls
• Bring any required keys or special items needed to unlock bosses
• Cover loot rules at the start

Sometimes us humans need a little help translating Robot-speak. Good thing I’m fluent in binary… so I’m here to help.

Below is a list of guides I’ve created, and I’m adding more all the time. If you have a question that isn’t answered in a guide, leave a comment here. Chances are, other people have the same question. Then I can make some more guides

• A FULL list of technical FAQs can be found on our forums as well (no login required to read them).