4/10 of a Vortex to upgrade an item to (presumably) t6+ quality when it takes between 2 and 5 full vortices to upgrade the BS items seems unlikely to me.

It's far more likely that these are new items completely either from badges, since that's all the rage these days, or as 25 man drops or heroic sunwell drops.

Ahh, yeah that's a good point. I wasn't thinking T6 quality though, I was thinking more the level of T3 BS weapons. [Deep Thunder] is ilevel 123 and goes to [Stormherald] ilevel 136 with 5 vortices. Since [Deathblow X11 Goggles] start at ilevel 127, I guess we can expect them to end up at ilevel 141, so you are probably right that this isn't going to be 1/10 of a vortex. However, the BoP mats for the Deathblow X11 is only 1 [Primal Nether], so these items seem heavily lowered in reagent costs vs. the BS items. I would therefore expect the cost of upgrading them to be similarly low.

Edit: Beaten to it many times

And it takes one Primal Nether for the goggles, while upgrading to the second BS (weapon) will take several (8-10 from a quick glance).

And the goggles are of superior quality, since the Primal Nethers are used to upgrade to a T4 level, while the goggles are easily T5 level.

I've seen Blizzard overcompensate for having something too weak to begin with. Tailoring/Blacksmithing were strong out of the door, Engineering was trash, now Engineering has almost every patch gotten brand new toys, while the former 2 have been neglected.

Same thing happened with Blacksmithing for WoW Classic, it was trash to begin with, then it buffed and all sorts of new goodies were added almost patchly up until the Burning Crusade.

More importantly, that block value = threat for warriors.

As for engineering goggles vs BS weapons, lets not get carried away. Remember that the weapons are (were?) a far bigger impact.

I'd suspect it's more likely that Nether Motes will be farmable with the engineering mote extractor and a way to combine them into a Primal Nether will be added. If that's the case, upgrading will be hilariously inexpensive.

Personally, I'm hoping that the Nether Motes aren't BoP/ or they can be collected with an alt.

Yeah, it'll definitely be a gem worth considering. I've begun analyzing how much of a damage reduction partial blocks typically add up to now. It'll certainly be worth it as a damage reduction meta on AoE fights, though looking at Hyjal for such data is going to be a highly biased view (A single boss's worth of waves typically involving ~250k damage blocked). I'll see if I can get some data for Prot Paladins from ZA and some stuff in BT as well.

One thing which is going to have a big impact is the gems requirements though. Unless the requirements are the same (or effectively the same) as the Powerful Earthstorm Diamond the stamina lost will be bigger than it appears at first sight. Any purple or green gems you use is a 6 stamina loss per gem for superior quality gems, or a 8 stamina loss per gem for epic quality gems.

Edit:

It would probably interact well with the upgraded version of [Tome of the Lightbringer] depending on the new block value and the new duration it'll have.

(Item sets) It seems that tier 6 sets now have 8 items ... Set bonuses are the same (2 and 4 parts only) but I really can't confirm this while the PTRs are offline.

source: MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies

My bet is on Belt/Neck/Cloak/Ring.

Pick 3 randomly.

It seems that primal motes were simply a screw-up on MMO guy's part, the post was updated to say primal nether instead.

So the first tier of goggles requires one nether, then the next simply requires 4 more? Kind of odd/lame if you ask me, I'd rather see it utilize primal vortex instead.

3 pieces. Probably so it's easier to gear up faster without waiting for random non-set drops. 3 extra bosses with 3 T6 drops each per week. Who knows, though.

"Nether motes are actually Primal nether, did a small mistake while playing with the game files. Engineering goggles recipes updated accordingly."

EDIT: Beaten

EDIT: Misread the post.

Well, my assumption would be that they're being added to T6 bosses, not Sunwell.

(e): just saw this update, so maybe not:

It could be the case that the various boots/bracers/belts that match the looks of the various tier 6 sets will just count for set bonus purposes as well. While those aren't class limited, all the tier 6 set bonuses only benefit the appropriate classes anyway. That's just speculation though.

(Item sets) According to a source, the added 3 items on tier 6 are Sunwell Loots, to let player use their breastplate from sunwell or things like that without loosing their old Tier 6 bonus.

Again from MMO-Champion.

While adding 3 more set pieces makes little sense, it does allow more room for upgrades without giving up set bonuses. I know I would have a hard time finding significant enough upgrades to give up 5% extra damage on fireball.

I think the motivation behind it is to make sure players have a lot more freedom in maintaining the superior 4 piece T6 bonus. It'll be interesting to see if those 3 additional pieces drop in BT/HY or Sunwell.

Edit: I guess it drops from SW25

That's pretty clever too actually, I know more than a few people were wondering if/how they could afford to break up a 4 piece bonus. My 4 piece bonus is ~20 DPS, it would be hard to imagine any one item providing that much of an upgrade.