Wasted Time

The Valor weekly cap of 1000, is both a gate and a target. With most of the gear in the early part of the expansion only being available via Valor points and Reputation Quartermasters, it stopped people from the worst excesses of 24 hour weekend binges of constantly running heroics, scenarios or worst of all hundreds of Dailies. At 5 Valor for most dailies this equates to 200 Dailies a week, which in my opinion is a real sad way of reaching the Valor cap.

Some people think that it is easy to reach the Valor cap and others like myself have never actually capped out in any given week. The main reason for this is that due to the Reputation requirements, I had nothing to spend my Valor on, and hence no need to cap. The situation is now reversed and I have most of the reputation vendors open and nothing to spend all this valor on. The one faction with tasty goodies for sale is the Raid Faction - Shado Pan Assault.

Since I have started doing regular LFR, I have discovered that the Valor Cap is not difficult to achieve when I can run the 5 or 6 LFR's that are available to me at 90 Valor a time. This makes capping a relatively straight forward 3 or 4 day activity and it leaves the other half of the week for the alts to enjoy the Valor Bonus Buff of an extra 50%. Why would you continue to play your main character after achieving the buff? The buff is great for your max level alts, but is not benefit to the levelling alts who are unable to do the Dailies yet. This kind of reward promotes a certain type of play style at a detriment to other types of play.

 

Now that I am Mystically Epic on my main I want all my alts to achieve the same the level, and the Valor of the Ancients Buff effectively cajoles me to play level 90's rather than lower level characters.

 

At the moment this is not an issue, because I still have 3 level 90's that are wanting Epic gear, and in particular it is important for me to gear up a Healer that is not chewing through the mana quite as fast I am at the moment.

 

The Mists of Pandaria expansion is like riding up hill on a bike, it was originally very hard work with all the dailies to contend with, then the amount of Valor awarded for certain activities was increased, buffs are available, work orders make reputation chasing easier and suddenly you are at the top of mountain and able to freewheel all the way down. Valor and reputation is available in bucket loads and the time constraints are reduced. I have Valor capped for the first time this expansion and I am enjoying time to random activities with my Shaman knowing that all valor gains at 50% and that even doing a handful of dailies is adding to my valor total so much quicker than previously.

 

Having no set parameters on your play is a wonderful part of the game, and so much of our time in game is spent on efficiency and maximising gains. Instead I am cooking, fishing and actively seeking out digsites, because it is a gentle relaxing way to play the game. Sometimes this is just what we want to do, instead of hitting the cutting edge of our current progression.

 

The only problem now is that after the weekly rest I am rushing to Valor cap, so that I can spend more time playing the game that I want to play.