Some notes on the upcoming reputation/valor point change to gear is that pre-Throne of Thunder gear will cost Justice Points and cost between 1250-2250 points while having their reputation requirement removed. Shado-Pan Assault gear will have the reputation requirement for honored level gear reduced to friendly while the overall Valor Point cost will be reduced by roughly 34%. Justice Point (i.e. blue gear) will have their overall cost reduced by 75%. Lastly, Justice Point to Honor Point conversion will be increased from 500 Justice Points to 250 Honor Points.
So in looking over these changes, what does this all imply? The most obvious aspect is that moving older gear to a pure Justice Point system should motivate players to do more Heroics if they’re gearing up and struggling to hit the 460 mark for Mogu’shan Vaults/LFR as well as allow players who have bad luck streaks in pre-Throne of Thunder LFR to avoid wasting Valor Points and provide a farming mechanism to catch up. I think reverting the Justice Point cost to the original values for the gear feels a little high in that the Justice Points that do drop from Heroics are still pretty low overall. So I think it probably would be a massive waste trying to gear using that system compared to obtaining Valor for Throne of Thunder gear.
The removal of reputation feels irrelevant at this stage considering that rather than doing dailies, you’re farming boring heroics. I think they should just make older gear purchasable with gold at this stage since the time you’ll invest into trying to gear a single pre-Throne of Thunder epic just isn’t worth it.
Also, why even bother reducing the cost of current Justice Point gear when the crafted PVP items are at the same item level and can either be crafted or purchased for gold? There’s only a few exceptions like the trinket, necklace and rings. But if you’re going to farm Justice Points, you probably won’t even want to waste a single point on blue gear at this point. Again, Blizzard should really look more in depth at that whole system works because it’s painfully obvious that there hasn’t been much pontifications on this aspect.
Next, I find it funny that they reduced the reputation requirements for honored level gear with the Shado-Pan Assault but not friendly level gear. So you’re pretty much going to be locked down in terms of using spare valor until you have enough of an ilvl to do Throne of Thunder part 1. So what will happen with your current valor points? I certainly hope Blizzard doesn’t try to pull another downgrading of Valor Points. They tried in Patch 5.2 with resounding negative response. Even with the downgrade of cost for pre-Throne of Thunder epics to use Justice Points, I think a lot of people will end up resenting once again having all their hard work from dailies and LFR grinds away.
In my book, Blizzard has a lot of things backwards. There’s a few better ways for all of this to work. One is that you leave the reputation for older gear in place, but make it all gold based. At this stage in the game, I think Justice Points really are just an irrelevant currency except for Heirlooms. The currency conversion to Honor can stay the way it is in PTR but the thing here is that the goal ultimately is to get people geared up faster. Here’s the thing: sure Blizzard wants to keep Heroics relevant but you either have to increase the Justice Points dropped per boss or reduce the cost of older epics. The point is to avoid lengthy grinds so that people can get into the Siege of Orgrimmar faster.
You could also change older LFRs to be a Justice Point based system. However, that sounds stupid and you might as well do the same for Scenarios and Heroics as well in terms of the daily reward. Besides, if pre-Throne of Thunder LFRs just dropped Justice Points, then it’ll remove any incentive for people who are geared to continue running them. The nice thing about the current LFR system is that even if you don’t need gear anymore from them, you can run them to help cap Valor Points quicker. So I really hope that they don’t move in that direction.
Another idea is not to make the pre-Throne of Thunder gear Justice Point based and reduce the cost of Valor Points even further. I believe that the Golden Lotus dailies are going away completely, so newer players will miss out on 50 Valor Points per day just from a single faction. That still leaves a few factions but I think a lot of newer players/90s will have a very difficult time trying to access the Isle of Thunder since it’s been stated that the encounters are designed for ilvl 480 people. This is my preference overall and keeps everything pretty simple. I would just reduce the cost of the original factions’ gear down by 75% (right now they’re at 50%) and Dominance Offensive/Shieldwall to 50% (don’t get me started on the Sunreaver Onslaught; that faction and gear are absolutely pointless).
The other option if all Blizzard’s real intent is to try keeping Heroics relevant (which I think is stupid) is to keep the cost of Justice Points at the current Valor Point level. Meaning, the original factions will be at 50% cost (e.g. a ring would be 625 Justice Points) and Dominance Offensive/Shieldwall at 25% cost. Realistically, this probably is the best compromise between the two. By then I think most people won’t even give a shit about Justice Points nor Heroics except for Valor and more importantly I doubt that people who are well geared won’t even bother looking at older epics. The whole thing is for newer players/90s to move faster since they’ll be forced to play catch up no matter what.
Beyond that, if the changes go through as stated, what does that imply for players? First, I think you should use patch 5.3 as a leveling patch. If you’re an alt-a-holic like myself, really push whatever you have left to 90 asap. If you enjoy the gearing grind (or are a partial sado-masochist like myself) then you need to get on this asap. Gearing right now isn’t too bad but I think you want to start making sure that your toons who aim to enter Siege of Orgrimmar to hit their ilvl 480s right now. The new system to me looks horribly thought out and the math behind it is based off an accountant who snorted crack on a lunch break with the developers (that was partial sarcasm if you couldn’t tell). Honestly, the way the new system looks is a massive step backwards. I mean, why should you go backwards to Heroics just to obtain epics using Justice Points? The whole split currency system is an obnoxiously retarded idea and probably has complicated things for no good reason.
Yet you as the casual player probably don’t want to go through another pointless grind. You probably have done the Heroic route and found the drop rates or loot ninjas and possibly even the rude player just not worth dealing with. So you need to ensure you’re protected before you’re forced into the stupid funneling experience that Blizzard wants you to be in.
And I know that there’s players out there who complain, “Well, I have nothing to spend my Justice Points on!” Maybe the issue isn’t that there’s a lack of items to spend Justice Points on. Maybe the issue is that the split currency system simply is not well thought out and that they need to kill it with something far easier to manage.
Honestly, I miss the old Wrath of the Lich King days. Back then the vender gear cost gold and did require some reputation grind. But it wasn’t all that difficult. Just throw on a tabard, do some nice Heroics, then if you really needed the gear, you could buy it with gold. It was a nice, easy system, not some convoluted mess with all these currency conversion issues.