So... in fact nothing has changed. Now, instead of seeing the loot ninja, the system simply gives the lucky bastard five of those chests that you wanted. You understand that this, coupled with the Valor changes, means that you will be tripling the time to gear up using anything outside of a raiding guild?

@Zack- that's not how it will work, at all. Each player will have the same chance to pick up an item as anyone else. It's possible (although unlikely) that every player in a RF raid could get an item with the new model. Over time, you'd expect to get gear at roughly the same rate as you are today.

What this does do is address the issue of popping into a RF raid an finding that there are 6 other mages in the raid- all of whom will be rolling on every Vanq token that drops. This is a very real problem with the current implementation of Raid Finder that is only made worse by the fact that everyone rolls need on everything.

The VP change looks like it will move VP back to where it was SUPPOSED to be this whole time. VP is not supposed to be a path to guaranteed best in slot loot- it's supposed to be a stop gap. For Raid Finders, this simply isn't the case. VP gear is BiS for someone who will only run Raid Finder- that's a very real issue. By allowing you to upgrade your gear with VP, they achieve the gear smoothing that they want without allowing one tier of player to acquire gear than is more powerful than they need.

In today's terms, let's say you hop into RF with a chest piece that you got from one of the HoT Heroics. It's 378 ilvl, so your chest piece in Raid Finder is better. Let's say you run RF for a few weeks and your chest never drops for you. You can use your VP to upgrade this item over those few weeks to, say, 382. It's still better than you started with, but it still gives you a reason to care about DS.

This is FAR more preferable to today where you'd eventually pick up a 397 chest piece and never give a crap about DS again.

@zackwbrandon re: "...instead of seeing the loot ninja, the system simply gives the lucky bastard five of those chests that you wanted..."

There is a massive difference between one and the other. When the loot ninja willfully rolls against you, there is a perception of malice involved and it induces anger in the player. When the system randomly assigns the reward, there is mostly annoyance and resignation at the bad luck.

This is a quality-of-life change. This is not about improvements in your upgrade path. They are not implementing this to make it more efficient for you to gain gear; this is to avoid personal hostilities.

@zack: Plus, with the new system, four of those chests could drop for 4 different people. Under the current system, there is maybe one chest dropping which you then compete for with other players. There will never be two chests dropping.