I completely understand that you don’t want good players to get a lot of 405 gear and upgrade it to 415 right away. High ranks should cost a lot of valor to upgrade.
However the valor cost of lower rank upgrades makes no sense especially in relation to the weekly valor cap. Why should it cost more valor than we can earn in a week to upgrade a two handed weapon from e.g. 392 to 395.
The current system incentivizes players to save up their valor for when they get high ilvl drops instead of using it to progress their lower ilvl gear. This is bad in my opinion and an easy fix would be to make the valor cost scale with the ranks.
Or alternatively let us refund the valor we used on low ilvl item so it doesn’t feel like we wasted it when we find better items or get an upgrade from the vault. Spending valor shouldn’t be a science.
Even with a scaling valor cost, upgrading an item from 376 to 405 would still cost huge amount of valor. So the system would still encourage you to get the 405 item directly from the dungeon. And you also still need the io score to do so.
It just doesn’t make any sense to me that upgrading a 2h weapon from 376 to 379 should cost 1000 valor.
Or alternatively they could let us refund the valor we used on low level items. This way we could use the valor to help us progress but still don’t feel like we wasted it once we find higher ilvl items.
I think valor should also function as a progress system. Not just a gap filler. It should also be used to counteract bad RNG from the vault.
There should be implemented completly new system to counter bad rng . Somethig similar to what we had in s4 of SL, both for raids and for dungeons, aint nobody liked to spam that one dung 30 times a week for one item.
As to valor used as progresion, it works that way, u are free to spend valor on lower ilvl items to max them if u got enough rating, im spending mine to boost items to 415, which in my eyes is progresion. Some use it to get items to 405,which is progresion for them .
The problem is you very quickly can feel like you have wasted your valor. It’s just another “feels bad” situation which the game has enough of already.
I would like to be able to spend it more freely without feeling bad about it or having to analyse the optimal way to spend it.
There is no realy optimal way to spend it . U can wait till u drop 405 and upgrade that to minimalize the potential loss , or u can spend bit more and get that item to tour max from whatever you have .
But there still will be a chance that on your next key run u will get it with bonus stat, or a socket, or u will get that item from vault at higher ilvl , and u basicly wasted that valor anyway no matter what you spend it on.
Probably best advice is to not stress it that much, valor is finite curency , but in the end, u will have all slots filled from vault or crafted.
I mean the optimal way to spend valor is clearly to save it until you get BiS gear in most slots and then use it to fill the gaps.
But overall this seems like a problem that doesn’t impact you much since you’re a good player and tbh I don’t expect you to see it from the perspective of other players.
Wasting your finite valor points with no way of getting them back is to me just a completely unnecessary “feels bad” moment in a video game. Personally I don’t see how making the system less restrictive in how you spend valor will be bad for anyone.
I get your point , and all that “its not worth to upgrade till XY” . But imo if u need to upgrade your gear from 395 to 405( for example) just so you can climb higher, push more keys and have easier time getin into groups, then u should simply go for it and dont look back.
I have a friend that used to this same way, he was saving his valor to use it the most optimal way possible , two seasons in row , first time he quit mid season without spending single one. Second time he started to raid and all of sudden valor had no point for him , using all valor only for his off spec that he played like twice a year…
So yea, system kinda sux, but uncaping it isnt realy an option unless they change it all together .