As expected, an announcement was made regarding the upcoming changes with regards to the downgrading of Valor Points to Justice Points. In conjunction with this, current Valor gear from Patches 5.0 and 5.1 are being reduced in cost by 50% and 25% respectively. Along with that, Blizzard has mentioned that new items will be made available for spending Justice Points with the emphasis on Heirloom gear and Pet items.
Okay, I made a long rant about what a stupid idea this was. The downcasting of Valor to Justice in major tiers is not new news. What is new is that reducing the current valor gear to become justice point gear but rather reducing the cost of valor. First, I want to say that this is a really idiotic idea. I think the past systems worked fine in terms of moving of the downgrades. But this new system hasn’t been thought out.
My major issue in all of this is that the current justice gear for all intents and purposes is practically worthless. The amount of justice points gained through boss kills is so tiny that you’re honestly better off farming heroics for better gear than using justice points for anything unless you’ve coincidentally managed to have such a horrible streak of luck that you gained enough justice points. Having the current tier of gear from venders being reduced to justice points actually makes farming Heroics somewhat of a useful task. But I feel that once you hit the minimum level to enter LFR, then Heroics become an extreme waste of time. You’re better off using the time waiting for queues doing dailies for the amount of points you gain (not to mention reputation).
Second, and quite a few people pointed this out on the forums, reducing the cost of current valor gear by 50% and 25% seems silly when potentially there is better gear to purchase. You may argue that it might take a while before you can acquire the gear to get into the new LFR. So the argument might be made in favor of alts. However, definitely for toons that have enough gear, it feels somewhat pointless.
Even for alts though, I don’t really like the argument of “well, we still want you to go through progression.” Supposedly, the drop rate for gear should increase. But it just feels like a massive grindfest no matter how you look at it and that’s where I have my major issues. I mean, what exactly does “increased drop rate” mean? The drop rates for LFR are quite terrible right now. Also, when the new LFR opens up, does that mean older LFRs will stagnate? I’m seeing 30-40 minute queues outside of the first two days of resets. And even during resets, I often am placed into 20+ minute queues.
I think that this whole situation doesn’t feel well thought out at all. I thought that Blizzard learned their mistakes from older expansions where people were focused on current tier content. My worry is that once we get a few months into the new patch, the so-called progression will start dropping off and older LFRs won’t be used anymore.
This topic really made me consider dropping my subscription. I mean, the gear invalidation thing is getting to me. Also, the way everything is working is telling me just to focus on leveling alts, skip dailies and work on professions until the last patch. Or better skip all current raid tiers and just do older content since I’ve outleveled everything. There’s such a schizophrenic thought process at Blizzard that is too experimental and frustrating to deal with.
Of course, I could just switch to Path of Exile like everyone else did. I mean, it’s free to play.