Don't Knock It; Valor is Power

VALOR IS POWER!

The outrage over 'Crystalized Fel for Valor' is palpable. Oh No! Casual players are now able to get a 790 ring! LFR players with MYTHIC LEVEL GEAR! Blizzard is making raiding pointless! They are catering to the casual! Unfortunately this attitude is self defeating and will only hurt players more over the next few months. Valor upgrades may be the only way players are able to participate.

Here are a two of the suggestions I've read.
  • You just need to do "all 8 mythic dungeons" (source) each week.
  • Just need to raid, it's 100% drop rate from Archimonde

1000 Valor is easy to get.

Sure, it's easy. I manage to get about 1000 valor each week on my priest while she is running the dungeon events and raiding for her legendary ring. At this time, she is averaging 685 level gear. All her valor points are going to fully maxing out the few 695 (empowered baleful) items and those world boss/shipyard to 715 items. I've spent 2500 valor in the last few weeks upgrading 5 different items.
LFR Hellfire Best In Slot Drops for Elkagorasa
My warlock, while a little better off gear-wise (i695), has a significantly harder time gathering 1000 valor. DPS queues are quiet a bit slower and for Mythic/LFR only his main hand/off hand can upgrade by replacing that timewalking staff. He's down to running Halls of Blood, kill Kazzak and hope for awesome drop from shipyard. 
Give you an idea what an ilevel 795 ring
looks like on 685 ilevel Priest.

Either way, spending 1250 (* 20) valor on a giant ring doesn't make sense. If I am truly going to run mythic dungeons, or normal raids, I need better gear all around, not a giant 795 ring, that doesn't match my 695 level chest piece.  

It's so easy, anyone can do it!? 

I belong to a guild, I am a social player, I know my spec(s), I do my research, I participate. Just by being a 'casual' player doesn't mean I am a noob. It doesn't mean that I am unaware, or unwilling to participate in raiding. I'd love to. (If you are raiding at 11PM PST and need a DPS/Healer/Tank pst me. ). (To me) Casual means family first. I have 3 kids (ages 13, 9 and 2). I help with homework, I run them to practice(s), I do the dishes, and run to the grocery store. If and when that is done and they are all tucked nicely into bed, THEN I get to play.
Crystallized Fel: 5 @ 89 Euros (or $97)

With that said, I do raid, but usually that's LFR due to the lack of dedicated players online at midnight - 1AM. I have managed about 4 times now to get into a normal raid and help out. All four days, we've never gotten to Archie. Last Sunday, we wiped 10-15 times on Mannoroth, the time before that, they were working on Xhul for all night. If not for LFR, I would have only seen the Archimonde fight on youtube.

What ARE you complaining about?

Do you have alts? Do you want to spend less than 20 weeks to upgrade your ring? Valor upgrades work for seasoned raiders as much as they do for casuals, like me. However you want to accomplish this, it's available to you to upgrade your mythic HFC raid gear from 735 to 745, or save and upgrade your ring by one level.  (Note: according to WowHead, you can even upgrade your Tome of Chaos!). I don't know about you, serious raider that you are, but I think 'free' gear upgrades are always a good thing.

Overall, this is the internet. The vocal minority are those complaining. There are probably (now) more casual gamers playing WoW than the serious, must raid 3 times a week crowd. According to WoWHead, only 22% (of the people using their add-on) have completed the 4th phase of the quest. Assuming everyone is using it, 1:5 people have the ring. I can imagine that an even smaller portion of people are playing enough to fully max out their ring in the next ~8 months.

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