The point of valor, per the blue post when it was introduced, was to solve a problem where players would reach a point where they only had upgrades coming from the vault.
This was a way to make EoD gear something that could be improved as well, with the idea that once you’ve reached a point where you can’t push higher (either at the reward cap or your individual skill cap) and your only upgrades are from the vault you can spend valor on your EoD gear for more upgrades.