How valuable are they now? What do you even mean by valuable?
So my warrior for example, will be doing the Honor grind with the new system.
The blue honor gear is amazing for warriors. I can effectively skip any pre bis farm with that gear. No 5 mans for me.
Same with the hunter.
I was able to hit rank 12 on four 60s and 11 on this one with minimal PvP per week and no cheese (towers and sand). This toon hit knight at level 51 in a single AV weekend with little time invested, three losing matches.
I don’t think people understand just how easy it is/was to rank up on a dead server. If the NEW system makes it easier, well look out world, we will be tripping over R14 gear on Thalnos! You got any rank 14 top hats?
It makes it easier to get multiple toons up at the same time with no commitments to other players.
You’re not skipping it - you’re replacing it with a BG farm instead.
Some will probably take the same route, there’s nothing really wrong with it. 5 mans will be fine without you, I promise.
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There’s no ranking points but there is player ranks.
You could have just asked for clarification if you didn’t understand.
Was not a slap at Despite or anyone else.
Just a wink at the creativity of those that were on low pop servers.
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Yes, but you’re not ranking against others. Not sure what the right terminology would be.
I’ve been in well-run PVP communities before and so the"mafia" stereotype is annoying. One of my main current pet peeves.
That people have so much hatred for communities in an MMO is pretty gross. They’ve either had a really bad experience which sucks or they have poor social skills making it difficult for them to play nice with others. No matter what you say they’re hard stuck on this made-up stereotype too.
Anyway, I’m not worried about too many R14s, this still isn’t a cake walk and not everyone will PVP. Plus the servers have been running for almost four years and tons of people have Naxx 40 gear.
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Its a stereotype for a reason.
Blizz isn’t making this change because they hate pvp communities.
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I think it’s a good change. PvP gear has a ton of stam, and isn’t BiS for pve. So there’s still better gear out there. The fact that pvp gear which is arguably worse than pve gear, but is harder to obtain makes no sense. Alleviating some of the no life/ no shower/ no job from R14 has 0 negative side effects.
I feel pity for people that obtained GM / HW. It’s a sad achievement to gain. It’s literally mediocre gear for a massive sacrifice of your time on earth. PLUS it doesn’t even make you better at pvp. Coordinated flag captures in a premade doesn’t do anything for you when you’re jumped by a rogue and a mage out in the world.
Thunderfury, Onyxia Tooth Pendant, Onslaught Girdle, Band of Acuria, Quickstrike Ring, Striker’s Mark, Flameguard Gauntlets, Chromatic Boots, Cloak of Draconic Might, Cloak of Firemaw, Drake Talon Pauldrons.
There are a bunch of reasons to go into MC and BWL for a Warrior who has access to all the R14 gear. Warrior tanks would have a few more.
I am not worried about it killing off the scene for MC/Ony/BWL on Era. There are already a ton of R14 players in the game.
On a fresh like SoM2 it will almost certainly be a requirement in a proper hardcore guild to get R14 for certain classes. That was already the case though if you were a Warrior in a guild like APES/Nope, Onslaught etc and was a holdover from the private server speed running scene. For example I think Onslaught required a minimum of R10 for DPS Warriors because a couple of the pieces are that good.
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The hostage takers are scum and in my experience are few and far between.
I realize that others may have a differing view and that’s fine. I get why Mootwo is annoyed by it because they have had the great fortune to be surrounded by players working together as a team to accomplish goals for all. Unfortunately there have been enough of the social vampires about to finally help prod Blizzard into change.
I can look on the coming update as positive but I’m not convinced that it’s going to be the cakewalk that some believe it to be. The upside? Era isn’t going anywhere so people can do it at their own pace and solo.
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What about pre raid?
For better or worse, the old ranking system placed a lot of power in the hands of players with how their behavior could strongly affect others’ ranking outcomes. That power could be abused; however that isn’t something exclusive to just WoW’s ranking. Rarely anyone ever bats an eye at MasterLooter yet that holds similar potential. I would argue this sort of thing is an inherent attribute of any MMO.
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In the case of era, this is a made up issue, given the plethora of already existing content that offers as good, and in most cases outright better gear (for example, vanilla warlock would prefer even bwl gear over the pvp set). The fastest route to that gear still won’t be pvp.
Now that being said, when we eventually get fresh realms, THEN it’s going to be a potential issue as the gear is near universally an upgrade over mc phase gear… But even then you’re talking about a super minority of the most dedicated neckbeards. Even in SoM it wasn’t that bad and the vast majority of people weren’t ranking super hard (I think my SoM guild had maybe 8 total push to rank 10).
But it’s going to be considerably easier to get that R14 gear versus BWL gear.
Don’t have to get into a 40 man. Don’t have to have the loot drop. Don’t have to compete to win the item should it drop.
Vs.
Solo queue 15-25 BGs a week. Guaranteed loot. No competition on distribution.
And still take 100x more time and effort to gear up
By the time you get to 14 someone actually trying to gear via pve is going to be in half or more naxx gear
Have you read the new changes? There isn’t much effort required.
Unless a few dozen BGs a week is 100x more taxing to you. 
And there’s the 100% to it as well. You can’t always pick your drops in raids. I do know when I will get R14 weapons.
Better than you have, apparently. If you want to talk about gate keeping, good luck getting into a pvp premade without raid gear. If you’re still running around with Lobotomizer or unstoppable force, you’re probably an auto decline.
Why do I need to get into a premade to honor farm? I will get caps by myself.
Even if I don’t get the caps I’ll still get R14, it will just take a few weeks longer.