[Update]: World of Warcraft's major Update 9.1 - Chains of Domination is going up for testing on the week of April 12, 2021.

In an effort to make acquiring new items feel a bit more exciting, Blizzard made endgame gear in Shadowlands far less numerous than in the previous expansions. While this has certainly had the desired effect of making each new piece a noticeable upgrade, the newfound item scarcity has unfortunately also made the whole set of Mythic+ dungeons feel remarkably unrewarding.

This goes doubly so for the lower level dungeons as not only do you have a relatively small chance to get the item you want, but the item itself will be of a low item level and thus easily overpowered by stuff granted through random quests, events or world bosses. In order to sort this problem out, as well as make Mythic+ gearing a lot more pleasant for everyone involved, Blizzard will soon be bringing back the fan-favorite Valor Points!

While the exact details are still being worked on, Valor Points will function very similarly to how they did in the past. In other words, by completing Mythic+ dungeons you will be granted a certain amount of Valor Points, with higher level dungeons awarding more points. And then, depending on how many dungeons you completed and at which level, you will be able to use these Valor Points to upgrade your dungeon items all the way to item level 220!

Even though you won't be able to buy the items directly like you would back in the day, this new system should make the gearing process far more enjoyable as you'll always be making forward progress and won't be completely at the mercy of the weekly vault system. So as long as the numbers are even remotely reasonable, I have a feeling Valor Points will be a massive success.

Once the update goes live at some point in March I'll make sure to let you know. Until then, you can read a little bit more about Blizzard's plans for Valor Points (and balance in general) over at the WoW forums.