I find both good and bad points to this addition. I like the idea of getting better gears as you play more, that definetly is something interesting and I have read all threads on this post so I can say I agree with the fact that upgrading the gear is a good addition to the game.
The only downside that I find quite unfair is Alts, and Offspect. Let me know what you think about those please.
I have two level 90, a paladin and a druid, 87 shaman, 86 paladin 86 DK and rest are all 85 but rogue lvl 80 and no monk. During cataclysm I leveled all classes but my rogue to 85 and geared them so I could do arenas on all of them and be competitive. I understand that I should not care for my alts as much as for my main. However at some point in the season I always feel like I want to play something else, I want to try something new. So I start gearing, leveling, grinding on one of my alts. My point is that once im at the point where I want some change, its going to take me months to get fully non-upgraded gears and even longer to get them upgraded. Yea I sure could start grinding right now on all my alts so they are all set up for when I need them, not not everyone has the time to do so. I dont. I have school, work, and I play more than 20 hours a week. ( I consider myself lucky to be able to do that ). The new feature will hurt alts, even if its not as bad as new players this should be worked on. Possibly make the conquest cap account wide? Maybe it would be a solution to this minor problem. Id love to see everyones opignon on this matter =)
Secondly is offspect. I play holy on my paladin in pvp, but every season I gear up for retribution as well. I love to support my team/partners but I also love going in BGs and pop all cooldowns then global someone. I know I have some skill, definetly not the best player in the world, but im not the worse either, skill definetly helps me in both arenas and BGs but I also need gears to be able to do decent damage. We all know the state of retribution paladin at the moment, its not hard to be good on them. So the major factor on this problem is gears. Since my main spect is Holy, adding upgrades will increase the time it will take me to have the best gears available for Holy, then I need to work on retribution gears which will take even longer. Say I get to 2000 arenas rating, and 2000 Rbg rating. it gives me a cap of over 2600 pts, to get fully gears I need more than 26250 conquest with the non-2200 weapon ( a bit more because I sadly did not have access to my wow account when I looked that up ) That is 10 weeks, 2 months and a half to get fully geared. 2 more weeks for the 2200 weapon so you can get to 12 weeks. Then you need to upgrade those gears. I dont have enough informations about it to guess how much its going to cost, but say its only the main pieces, 1500/piece *5 = 7500conq. So getting a full set of pvp gears would cost you more than 33750 conquest points without the 2200 weapons, thats more than 13 weeks of capping at a decently arena rating/RBG rating if to get one of your 2sets of gears.
Maybe it doesnt sound that bad, but if you wish to have an offspect that is well gears you would need at least 23 weeks of play during a patch. Then, the amount of time you can enjoy those gears depends on the amount of time the patch last. Since on the next tier you can expect honor gears to be better than the fruit of those 23 weeks you ve spent getting geared up.
So What I could suggest would be to first, make conquest cap account wide, as conquest is only available to lvl 90 it shouldnt make too much trouble, maybe also think about adding the same feature/buff you did for valor points to conquest, when you cap on one toon you get a buff that increase conquest earned. For offspect gears, I couldnt think of many ways to help that out, I know its not a big concern for many since only a few classes actually have offspect pvp gears available. Monks, Paladins, Druids, Shamans, Priests, maybe I am missing one? One of my suggestions would be reduce the cost of the conquest gears as the season go on, but dont touch the cost of upgrades. I dont believe its the best solution, Ill try to find a better one for sure but right now its all I have. Please me know what you all think =)