Wow Patch 5.2: No gear to be upgraded!!!

Wow Patch 5.2: No gear to be upgraded!!! One thing that we won't be seeing with wow patch 5.2 is the ability for the new gear to be upgraded via valor points. As Ghostcrawler explains in a tweet from this weekend:

Jérôme Ouellet@Champlain1635

5 Jan 13

@Ghostcrawler Hi. Is valor pts upgrade system implemented only for in-between tiers period or also for new tiers one like in 5.2. ? Thanks.

Greg Street@Ghostcrawler

@Champlain1635 Our plan at this moment is upgrading only for patches without a new raid / PvP tier. That design could change.

6 Jan 13

 

This makes sense in many ways; the primary focus of the "grind" should be acquiring new gear across all slots, not making minor incremental changes to the gear that you've already seen dropped. Valor points also will continue to be useful in the mid-patches with this philosophy (5.1/5.3), versus just becoming something you've got and are never going to use, which often happens during the later end of a raiding tier.

We're assuming here that Ghostcrawler's note will just apply to wow patch 5.2 gear, and not the total system. It would seem quite odd to just switch off the entire upgrading mechanic all the sudden.