Tedium, ad infinitum

Today we celebrate points reset day, where we can gain a measly 980 more points this week from the randomizer and/or raids.  I've been thinking lately just how long it takes to actually buy a piece of gear, if played diligently.  Let's do some napkin math and see where it leads us.

Chest and pants both costs 2200 vp. Gloves costs 1650 vp. Bracers, Rings and Necklace cost 1250 vp. Relic slot is 700 vp. Most classes can only use one of the rings while some may use a suboptimal second ring and reforge the useless stat and require two.

The result is 2(2200)+1650+3(1250)+700 = 10,500.  This is for most classes.
With 980 vp/week, if i cap each week, it will take me 10,500/980 = 11 weeks to get all the gear i need to max out this tier, without raiding.

My hunter is my only raiding character and has had to buy practically every piece of gear from the list, barring the 700 required for the ranged slot, as no gun/bow/xbow is available.  However, i do have the lavabolt, so that's not a problem. the other item that she doesnt need are the bracers. shaving 1250vp off.  The reason for this is because the BoE bracers that drop from firelands is actually better, and so i coughed up about 7k gold for it and bought it.  Both items saved me a total of 1950vp. so to max out my character since i have no luck with drops, i will need 10500-1950 = 8,550vp (9 weeks) to max out my character.  honestly, i've only gotten the headpiece from shannox and a bow. that's it.  still hoping for the ranseur of hatred. after 10 weeks still hoping.  Now this is great and all, 9 weeks of continuously getting capped and i've come a long way.  but i still do not have everything.  i had to take a break for the last two weeks and only did a random here or there.  i am still hoping to get the gloves this week and i should be done with the valor point grind. 

Now 9 weeks or a little over two months of playing and you're awarded with very piece of valor gear.  that sounds absolutely great, but there is always a downside to this. people have real life obligations and cannot raid all of the time.  and even when we raid, there is no guarantee that we'll actually see these points or a conparable drop.  my groups have been plagued with RNG and poor... whatevers. i dont know.  random messups here and there causing us to play longer and longer, then ending the night with just shannox down and maybe rhyolith.  beth kills us at 10% after the 5th try and we call it a night.  so much for gearing.  how do you gear when you dont kill bosses? 

I know, im one of the few minorities who still cant get Beth down even though nerfs has hit two weeks ago.  thanks for the cheering up.  i needed that.  in other news, and back on track, my army of alts require much work. 

For every person who has a main and maybe an alt, there's another person with 10 alts sitting around.  Gearing these alts are a pain but gear them we shall.  for my dk i am about halfway to getting the next and almost final upgrade.  also, my rogue and paladin only has one vp item.  the rest are jp items and some from opening the molton front.  Although all these items are easily gotten, what seems to be a problem has always been gearing my five-ish alts sufficiently throughout the expansion.  Remember that formula above where it's calculated that it takes over 10 weeks to get all the vp items? let's not go into how a zul-roic can turn out and how not finishing it will result in nothing. nada.  useless JPs but no VPs.  yep.  those have happend and 40 minutes of wait plus 80 minites of hurting in a dungeon ends up with ZERO VPs.  thanks blizz. you are the roxxors. I can split up 490 of the points and get 7 from normal heroics and do 4 zulroics.  even then, these are heroics which i've done countless times already.  compound that with having already done these dungeons in normal mode too and you can see just how crazy it all gets.

in any case, what i am trying to get at is this.  while i know that gearing up a toon requires a lot of work, and sometimes i am just happy with gearing them up just enough to do OK damage in a zulroic setting, i do find the whole process tedious to the point of NOT playing my character after i've acheived a certain threshold.  Once i have received my last piece of vp gear for my dk, i will probably never touch her until next patch because blizz has caused me to put all my efforts into her and i have nothing left for rep grinds, mount grinds, or even pet grinds.  yes, pets.  i dont have all of them but i do have a lot.  =P

With the length of the grind i have to set my own standards and limits when acheiving something. And it is not for lack of time that i do this.  i have a solid 3 hours a night and a little more on the weekends to do all of this stuff, but it has gotten to the point where the 40th zulroic is just... enough.  Dont belive me? here...

As you can see, Sethekk halls and MGT did not drop their mounts for me.  but also, a total of 33 successful Zulroic runs.  there have been many unsuccessful ones as well. 

And this is just one my DK. 

None of my characters have even started to do the daily quests for the molton front. None.  Zero.  I've opened up the vendor in the very beginning and that's it.  There's really no way i can gear up my toons, do dailies AND try to raid and make my gameplay meaningful.  meaningful being the ability to gear up well. but people have done this and are doing this right now, and they pvp!!  but for me, i dont consider myself the normal player.  but i still am one of the customers who try to play this game.  it's the basic develop-the-character kinda game.  and i have... five.  and more on the way.  i'll have to one day decide who to focus on but for the time being, the only fun characters have been my dps characters. 

Overall, i just think the gearing process is too long, especially for a game where most of us have alts.  and i wouldnt post this at all even, except for the fact that 4.2 raid content has been nerfed so that we can quickly gear up for the next patch, which is in the PTRs right now.  this means i have about 2 months before all my hard work becomes obsolete and i'll have to start over again.  maybe if i stick to one character, things will be fine. but the fact is there is no one out there with just one character.  we're all playing this fantasy game trying to experience the game from different points of views, some more obvious than others.  but this grind is really causing me some issues.  do i really need 17 zul amans and 16 zul gurubs to finish gearing?  really?  add my hunter, rogue, paladin and maybe another toon and now we have a problem.

in conclusion, the whole moral of this?  i dont know.  i just know the grind is long so come 4.3, these next three dungeons better be awesomer than the ICC 5mans they came up with a couple years ago.  those sets of dungeons were awesome and kept me playing another 5 months.