Originally Posted by
Synthaxx
I think I'd like the Lotus more if it wasn't for the fact I've been trolled out of the next level of rep by a day almost every time. When I thought I'd hit honored with the next round of dailies, I was denied by like 200 rep. Then again, last night, when I thought I'd hit revered, I was once again short by about 200 rep. I managed to farm a cache key. Thinking that was that, I open a cache, and get a rare token that gives me 125 rep. Hooray for having to wait another 24 hours to do yet another quest just to get the last 73 rep. I mean sure, I could go and farm another key, but I may as well just leave it be and wait for reset.
Linking them to other factions was just a bad decision. I don't want to go grind out a faction I don't care about for the sake of unlocking another faction that offers nearly all the rewards I'd want from all of the factions (The tiger and the Onyx serpent). Their dailies aren't too bad, mostly just killing, most of which can be done with AoE (provided I've got CD's available), but the limitation to other factions is something I never want to see again.
In TBC, I didn't care for any of the factions. I grinded them out for the simple need to do so (for flasks and such). The gear was fairly 'bad', and I hated the design of factions. Wrath rolled around and suddenly I had a reason to grind the factions. Exalted was easily accessible and the gear, while still not great, was a crucial step to getting into raids early on in the exapnsion. Cata kept that system to some extent, but some reps were daily only. Now, we got handed this system in MoP where several factions are blocked by a requirement of revered with Golden Lotus.
The gear of those factions is good, but it's no longer the start of the expansion and I moved on to getting better gear the same week the expansion launched (with the Engineering helm for example), or through LFR the same week I started clearing it. It just, doesn't make sense to have this limitation and then need people to grind out the rep for yet another faction, only to have to buy the gear with Valor points. In the time that I've grinded my way to Shado-pan exalted, I'm almost guaranteed to have gotten loot for all the slots that they can fill, and most likely without having to spend valor on it.
I know they wanted to make the expansion more grindy, but the limitations imposed are counter to actually gearing. It makes more sense to run heroics until i460, then clear the first 2 raids in LFR, then gear up to 470 (hopefully, you ended up leaving with at least 1 piece of gear from LFR), and clear the rest. There's quite literally no reason to grind out rep for gear just so you can spend valor points, which again, are limited in the amount you can gather per week. When you consider the mounts and such aren't essential, there's quite literally no reason to grind the rep, and thus no reason to spend the valor (apart from on the upgrade system). I mean sure, there needs to be limitations, but not like this.
At the same time, somewhat off topic but another annoyance, I hate that they limited the number of times you can turn in charms per week is once (1x90 for 3 elder). If I'm prepared to do my dailies each day, I should have the option to hand in more of them per week. This week, I wanted to go in and kill Sha of Fear and use a charm until I got the axe. Reality of it was that even though I've got 180 charms, I only had the option of doing the boss 4 times. Some might say that's enough, but there's not going to be any reason for me to go back there once I get the axe (not more than once per week at least). I'm not saying I'm there to help others clear it, but the fact I'm choosing to clear it more than once does have that advantage.