In Wrath, outside of the first tier, valor gear (and later emblems of frost) capped at 2-4 slots of the next best gear.
You couldn’t farm anything even closely resembling a full set of the next best gear over time for casuals.
And the better badges, if you weren’t raiding, were limited to 2 per day from the daily heroic quest, while items cost 60-90 badges each.
Badge gear doesn't scale. It's good for catchup gear, but if you're above it already, it's literally a vendor you will never visit. The system they implemented scales, so that even at higher levels you can maybe get something out of it.
What’s funny is CN has the most BoEs of a raid in a long time and it seems to be universally disliked.
264 (normal 25 or 10 heroic) used emblems of frost.
You could buy:
Waist
Gloves
Chest
Back
Trinket
If you were a class that needed a sigil it had those
5 items, one which could potentially conflict with your tier set, and you could only buy the 251 tier set not 264.
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Emblem_of_Frost
And if you weren’t raiding (aka casual) you were limited to 2 badges per day from the daily heroic and items cost 50, 60, or 90.
Hey, only 45 straight days of doing a daily heroic to buy 1 item!
Last edited by Argorwal; 2021-02-12 at 10:37 PM.
WotLK and Cata also didn't have 4 raid difficulties, mythic dungeons, world quests, covenants, m+, torghast legendaries, etc. There are a billion ways to get gear now if you are a casual player, there is no need for a badge vendor.
- - - Updated - - -
Why would you need raid gear if you aren't raiding? Of course it would take a long time if you literally only did a daily 5 man.
There was one dungeon introduced with ToC and 3 really sweet dungeons added with ICC but IIRC they were only really good for trinkets and weapons. For the most part the best dungeons to run were the ones from release which gearing had made ultra-faceroll.
Cata only gave one new dungeon and it sucked.
Although the main reason for not having Valor give gear to casuals is the fact we can get the gear from LFR or solo/world/Covenant content. The biggest problem is the big delay in LFR opening up means that most of the gear is already too low iLvl compared to the Covenant set.
- - - Updated - - -
Most of my guild just do casual content - LFR, Maw, Torghast and the odd dungeon. There are a few who push some middling Mythics but pretty much none who do any "proper" raiding.
Nobody complained at this. Seriously this is the dumbest complaint. First the badge vendor never covered every slot. Secondly it was a slow burn you'd still get more gear by actually going to the raid. 3rdly the bosses never stopped dropping gear if they were really butt hurt about the vendor they could have just not used it. All these fucking people who supposedly complained were getting their daily frost badge and buying up vendor loot as soon as they could.
- - - Updated - - -
well the developers clearly have opinions about how the game ought to reward people they are also unfortunately completely reactionary as well. I can't blame them for being reactionary its a business but their decisions aways seem to be made that favor one group or another or one form.of content or another. Thats why I favor badge systems it makes all content more reward equitable. Same gear same goal multiple ways to do.
They don't seem to be learning on this (or they just like it as it is) because it was an issue from even way back in MoP, where by the time you unlocked the vendors behind reps, never mind getting the rep for the items they were selling, you were way past their ilevel even as a casual like myself so the items were useless.
There, I highlighted the difference to you, in case it wasn't obvious
Yes! I remember this in MOP because it coincided with their decision to not have dungeons reward rep the tabards got gutted. They later added the champion thing after people bitched but they basically gutted the crap out of the rewards. The items you get from REP grinds have been fairly useless for awhile now. Although they didn't make that mistake with the renown crap.
Nice opinion. But have you considered just playing other games that aren't WoW instead of whining on forums how WoW isn't another game?
- - - Updated - - -
"Casuals are leaving" as evidenced by all the internal data Blizzard shares with random internet forum posters for the specific intent of propping up ridiculous arguments.
This solves the problem of nothing to do for gear if you don't mythic raid. Way better the badge gear