Item Upgrade is Just Another Grind

[Redcinder]

Good for you, because it is hard to play a mage am I right? I think I figured.

The downing heroics and WoL epeen was just for banter Its still as hard to gear a mage as it is any other character. And easily doable without dailies or vaalor capping Raised another 4 Ilvl last night upto 498 and guess what no dailies or valor spent. !

[Hollowgolem]

Gives me something to do with all my extra honor/justice points. And, if I get geared past needing Valor/Conquest before a season/tier is no longer the top, I can do something with those, too.

There's really nothing wrong with this system. Stop whining.

[AnarchyEU]

People need to get out of the mindset of minmaxing and feeling compelled to do everything possible to maximize their character performance when they're in a guild ranked 50,000 world, what's the point?

As patches roll through, better gear is available and all the time you spent perfecting your character is gone, it's totally pointless unless you want to be world first.

Just enjoy the game, if you get kicked from your guild for not playing 100 hours per week to keep your character perfect then find another guild that you enjoy being in.

[Hell-Nicø]

Simple reply :
The upgrade system make the raider to still have an interest on farming the otherwise useless point and that's FREAKING great cause that end once and for all the "raider don't have thing to do out of raiding" which is one of the most meaningful improvement for the raiders since hard mod.

[patcherke]

Perhaps they should have gear drop from raiding that is even better then upgraded blues from heroic dungeons?

I was talking about Valor points, but I guess you knew that already. I was not mentioning the additional possibility of loot drops.

[Pahya]

most important, they put away head enchants ^^ cause of the grinding

[patcherke]

Then i hate it and will be moving to rift fully, lets just hope it doesn't come to that :P

thing is: you will not be upgrading a complete tier worth of ilvl. a tier is 13 ilvl, and you can upgrade a total of 8 ilvl, or 2/3 of a tier ilvl.
these upgrades is to enhance your current gear, at a time where there is nothing better yet, and are not meant as a replacement for future gear, at all.

[Quilzar]

most important, they put away head enchants ^^ cause of the grinding

No, the took away head enchants because there was only ONE way of getting them.

In MoP there are plenty of ways of getting gear and there are now more options to spending valor.

Is the system perfect, of course not (what system will please everyone?) but I much prefer choice.

[Powerogue]

It certainly feels like It'd lower the significance of getting a new piece of gear. It's literally the same piece, just with higher stats.

Then again, scrapping the gear set you worked so damn hard on to the nearest vendor every tier was also depressing. It made the achievements of each new gear piece not feel like they were worth anything.

I'm not sure how they can solve that, TBH.

[Synstir]

No, the took away head enchants because there was only ONE way of getting them.

In MoP there are plenty of ways of getting gear and there are now more options to spending valor.

Is the system perfect, of course not (what system will please everyone?) but I much prefer choice.

Could you pls specify "plenty of ways of getting gear in MoP" in comparison to Cata?

[Vaelyn]

I don't know why people are saying 'you don't have to do it', 'it's optional'. Independently it is optional. Playing the game is optional. When you want to complete PvE content at a certain pace (clearing everything on heroic before the end of a tier) it immediately becomes less optional, because in a situation like this it becomes expected that you do everything to optimize your character. It comes down to having to choose between either raiding and repeatedly farming artificial content every day, or doing neither, and many people will definitely choose neither. It is not good for the health of the game.

The entirety of this raiding tier has already been completed by people who didn't have this available to them over last weekend. It IS optional because they were able to go without. If you CHOOSE to use this to your advantage, great. If not, you can spend more time wiping a bit and fine-tuning your execution of mechanics and rotation, because gear is not greater than personal skill. Never has been. Never will. It still pains me to out-DPS 481 iLevel characters on my alt who's still rocking 466 by not 1 or 2k DPS, but 20 or even 30k :-P

Like numerous people have stated, Blizzard hasn't, doesn't, and most likely will not in the future balance future raid tiers around having this. Typacally, new raiding tiers are balanced with you having an iLevel about or just below the iLevel of drops from the tier before it (normal mode that is, not Heroic). So you don't have your Heroic gear with +8 on every slot? So what. You shouldn't need it. If you're in completely unupgraded Heroic gear when the next tier comes out you'll be 13 iLevel above the threshold :-P

As many have stated, this is something to spend VP on that gives you a boost so VP doesn't become trivial when you're still gaining VP but have no slots below 489. It actually helps people who don't do dailies and aren't revered/honored with the factions to purchase gear. They've probably gotten epics out of LFR or even normal raiding and can slightly upgrade those with their previously-useless VP.

---------- Post added 2012-11-29 at 08:09 PM ----------

Could you pls specify "plenty of ways of getting gear in MoP" in comparison to Cata?

Sha of Face-Roll
LFR
Scenarios
Crafting Professions
Raiding
Heroics

I have 5 level 90's right now and 3 of them are able to queue for the higher tier LFR (470 or better), one of them MSV LFR and the last one just dinged this week, but I leveled him only to grind rep with Golden Lotus and Tillers cuz he's my LW and I want to make my own pants enchants for my main. Anyway, the point I'm making in this is that "gearing up is easy." MSV is tuned for people in 463 iLevel Blues to down it. HoF is tuned for people in 476 to 489 epics to clear it (Terrace is the same). Those iLevel thresholds aren't too terrible to hit. People are struggling on mechanics of the encounters and then trying to gear up to minimize the effect of failing at those mechanics. The world-first guilds did these bosses in horribly crap gear though. I don't know how people justify complaining about what is "mandatory" and what isn't for gearing up to raid these days.